October & the cinema

I'm currently working on an entry about the roadtrip Sarah and I took recently—complete with photos!—but in the meantime I thought I'd start posting about October movies.

Sarah and I have decided to watch a bunch of scary movies over the whole month. We've compiled a list of 35+ movies and ranked them from comedic to terrifying. We're planning on starting easy and working our way through the list so that the week of Halloween is packed to the brim with classic horror favorites. I figured I'd write a short entry as we watch each movie.

We started last week on October 1st with So I Married an Axe Murderer, the Mike Meyers classic. I hadn't seen it in years but could quote every other line, mostly because nearly all of that movie has made it into my family's lexicon thanks to my parents quoting it all the time. ("I'm a human blanket!" is a particular favorite, as is any command starting with "Head!") It was a bit weirder than I remembered, but still really fun, and Sarah enjoyed it as well. She's picked up a few of the quotes as well and has started using them.

On the 2nd we went to see M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit at the theater. I'm a fan of a number of Shyamalan films—The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village (and The Happening and The Lady in the Water were both pretty good, I thought)—but lately he's been having a rough streak, so I haven't seen any of his movies in years. The Visit did well on Rotten Tomatoes and looked pretty good from trailers, though, so we gave it a shot. We both really enjoyed it. It was funny (when appropriate), unnerving, very well paced, and definitely scary when it tried to be. There were a couple great jump scares and a good storyline/premise overall. I'd recommend it.

I didn't see anything on the 3rd, but Sarah went to Hotel Transylvania 2, so there's that. (She didn't like it much.)

Yesterday, the 4th, we watched a couple of the "scary" episodes of Spongebob ("Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost" and "Scaredy Pants") and then a Scooby-Doo episode ("Haunted House Hang-up"). Not too bad for a Sunday evening. :)

Tonight we'll watch either The Tingler or Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, I think, or possibly Ghostbusters. Coming up this week are probably Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown, and then some Tim Burton films, and after that we'll dive into some zombie and vampire fare. I'll keep updating as we watch more films.