Home Gaming The Halloween Countdown: 31 days of horror to look at

The Halloween Countdown: 31 days of horror to look at

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Do you are feeling that? That chill within the air, that tingling sensation in the back of your neck? It will probably solely imply one factor. That’s proper: Halloween season is as soon as once more upon us!

Right here at Polygon, we love horror. We cowl it all 12 months spherical, whether or not it’s rating the scariest new releases of the 12 months or curating lists of the spookiest horror motion pictures to look at on Netflix.

We particularly love Halloween, although, a vacation devoted to all issues scary and spooky. Which is why, yearly for the previous 4 years, Polygon has put collectively a Halloween countdown calendar, choosing 31 of our employees’s high horror-themed or Halloween-adjacent picks throughout motion pictures, TV, and on-line movies all through the month of October, all obtainable to look at at residence. It’s been a lot enjoyable, in actual fact, we’re doing it once more — with an all new batch of movies, reveals, and movies to select from.

Day by day for the month of October, we’ll add a brand new suggestion to this countdown and let you know the place you’ll be able to watch it. So curl up on the sofa, dim the lights, and seize some popcorn for a spine-tingling marathon of Halloween-adjacent delights.

Jennifer Connelly standing in front of a wall decorated with posters of insects in Phenomena.

Picture: Anchor Bay Leisure

The place to look at: Obtainable to stream on Plex and Pluto TV with advertisements and to hire on Amazon

Kicking off the Halloween horror film season is a fragile artwork. Only a few days into the official begin of fall, it’s necessary to choose precisely the fitting film to subtly shift that chill within the air from cozy to spooky as gently as you’ll be able to. With that in thoughts, we’re easing into Halloween this 12 months with Dario Argento’s Phenomena, an ideal mix of spooky, campy, and bleak that units that stage good for the frights to return.

Phenomena takes place in a distant city in Switzerland at a boarding faculty the place Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of a well-known American actor, is the most recent scholar. The one drawback is there’s additionally a serial killer rampaging via the city, and when Jennifer witnesses one of many murders, her life is all of the sudden in grave hazard. The excellent news is she has an inexplicable telekinetic energy over bugs to assist preserve her alive.

And whereas the film isn’t fairly as foolish because the premise would suggest, it’s among the many most weird and enjoyable of the various sleazy slashers of the Eighties. However what actually elevates it to a particular place is that it’s one of many uncommon horror motion pictures the place the supernatural is seemingly wholly on the facet of fine. It’s uncommon {that a} film lets us unambiguously root for the magical energy at its heart, giving the entire thing the unusual, otherworldly feeling of a very grotesque fairytale.

All of this makes for a tremendously entertaining and odd thriller film, and an effective way to start a month stuffed with horror motion pictures. —Austen Goslin

A woman leaning around a corner with a man standing at the end of a long hallway in Mute Witness.

Picture: Sony Footage Residence Leisure

The place to look at: Shudder, AMC Plus

Anthony Waller’s 1995 horror thriller is a premise straight out of a waking nightmare. Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), a mute particular results make-up artist, is in Moscow figuring out of a dilapidated film studio on a low-budget slasher. After returning to the constructing after hours to choose up an necessary piece of kit, Billy by chance locks herself inside with no means of getting in contact with both her sister Karen or her sister’s boyfriend Andy. Issues shortly go from dangerous to worse when she secretly stumbles upon the filming of a snuff movie perpetrated by a pair of Russian gangsters. When the gangsters suspect that another person is contained in the studio, Billy should discover a solution to escape undetected earlier than her personal life is put into hazard.

Mute Witness is a terrific cat-and-mouse homicide thriller full of teeth-clenchingly tense sequences and a compelling lead efficiency courtesy of Marina Zudina. The primary hour of the movie is expertly paced and edited, ingratiating the viewer inside the structure of the studio earlier than transitioning right into a mad-dash climax that’s breathtaking and terrifying to behold. If that isn’t sufficient to pique your curiosity, the movie touts a quick but memorable cameo look by Sir Alec Guinness (Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia) in one in all his remaining on-screen performances. —Toussaint Egan

John Goodman and Denzel Washington in Fallen.

Picture: Warner Residence Video

The place to look at: Obtainable to hire on Amazon and Apple

For those who ever get uninterested in the identical previous restaurant cuisines, the reply is commonly to search for a fusion restaurant that mixes a few your favorites, taking spices and strategies from completely different cultures and mashing them up into one thing new. The identical goes for horror motion pictures: For those who’re bored of the standard executions of all of the acquainted tropes, a style mashup like 1998’s Fallen could also be one of the simplest ways to search out some new taste in acquainted concepts.

In Fallen’s case, director Gregory Hoblit and screenwriter Nicholas Kazan put the serial-killer procedural thriller and the possession horror story in a blender and use concepts and strategies from each to boost the drama. Hoblit is a police-show vet (Hill Road Blues, NYPD Blue, LA Legislation, um, Cop Rock) who retains the motion grounded and gritty, even because the supernatural edge pushes the story removed from the style’s regular beat.

Denzel Washington stars murder detective John Hobbes, with John Goodman as his companion Jonesy. The 2 males (working below a sinister lieutenant performed by Donald Sutherland) lately cracked a homicide case that despatched a serial killer (Elias Koteas) to the gasoline chamber. After his loss of life, although, the killings begin once more, and Hobbes and Jonesy begin working a brand new case that appears to be the previous case. Horror vets will know the place that is going lengthy earlier than they do, however Hoblit ramps up the eerie stress as Hobbes’ life begins to unravel.

A whole lot of horror entails folks encountering the supernatural for the primary time and fumbling for a response that can allow them to survive, however the stakes all the time appear larger when the protagonist is in legislation enforcement and in concept has to observe procedures, obey guidelines, and presume innocence. (See additionally: The Hidden, Angel Coronary heart, Longlegs, and so forth.) Washington makes for a terrific rule-following cop who’s caught in a terrifying state of affairs the place not one of the guidelines he’s discovered can probably apply. The result’s a solidly creepy film with simply the slightest tinge of realizing camp. —Tasha Robinson

An alligator bursting out of a sewer drain in Alligator (1980).

Picture: Scream Manufacturing facility

The place to look at: Prime Video, Peacock, Shudder

Creature characteristic administrators usually cite Jaws as inspiration for holding again on full monster carnage till the top — the much less you present, the scarier it’s. Screw off! If a film guarantees a giant mutant alligator terrorizing the town, then we finest see a giant mutant alligator terrorizing that metropolis, and infrequently!

Excellent news: Alligator is strictly that, with the added bonus of nice performances, a depraved humorousness, and a contact of social commentary.

Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Breaking Dangerous) stars as detective David Madison, a cop with a status for doing good whereas dropping his companions within the warmth of motion. When phrase of a killer alligator prowling the sewers reaches the floor, Det. Madison springs into motion with a Dr. Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker), a herpetologist whose no-bullshit strategy to amphibian analysis paves the way in which for a traditional zinger-filled romance. Solely the legendary John Sayles might squeeze a throwback screwball romance right into a killer alligator film and nonetheless discover room to stay to the bumbling forms.

Very like Jaws, Sayles and director Lewis Teague interrogate the failed establishments that enable a 36-foot hyper-metabolic alligator to run rampant in Chicago — not solely can the cops not get their shit collectively, however the alligator is barely dino-like after consuming a biotech firm’s discarded animal carcasses, all radiated with progress components. In contrast to Jaws, Teague places his big alligator puppet to good use, snapping its jaws on numerous victims, from alleycats to random children in a pool. Blood splatters, Chicagoans run for pricey life, Det. Madison complains about his receding hairline, and by the top, issues go increase. Alligator isn’t tremendous scary, however it’s a raucous good time, a lower above most monster B-movies of any period. —Matt Patches

A young woman (Mia Wasikowska) in a white dress resting on a bed surrounded by shoe boxes in Stoker (2013).

Picture: Scream Manufacturing facility

The place to look at: Obtainable to hire on Amazon and Apple

Park Chan-wook is within the high tier of residing filmmakers for me, so in fact I’m keen on even the “minor” works in his catalog. Stoker, his solely English-language film thus far (though he’s made two English-language miniseries, together with the improbable The Little Drummer Woman), is an eerie, atmospheric psychological thriller that’s an ideal match for individuals who need to take part in spooky season with out getting too scared.

It’s India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) 18th birthday. Her father (Dermot Mulroney) has died, and her mom (Nicole Kidman) has welcomed his youthful brother (Matthew Goode) into their residence. What follows is a Hitchcockian gothic fairy story full of sensory delight. The rating is pitch-perfect within the eerie environment it supplies, and Park by no means fails to ship memorable photographs.

Oh, and enjoyable reality: The film was written by Wentworth Miller, of Jail Break/CW-verse fame, below a pseudonym. —Pete Volk

Oct. 6: Physician Who, “The Empty Little one” and “The Physician Dances”

A boy wearing a gas mask pointing his finger at something off-screen in the Doctor Who episode, “The Empty Child.”

Picture: BBC

Physician Who has two tones: the triumph of mind and romance over brute drive and cynicism, and heebie-jeebie-inducing horror that retains younger viewers peeking via their fingers, hiding behind the sofa, or dreading the occasional nightmare about it for years.

This two-parter from the primary season of the franchise’s 2005 reboot embodies the most effective of each. Certain, it’s the one which gave us the indelible Physician line, “Simply this as soon as… everyone lives!” However it’s additionally an episode that made me, a grown-ass grownup, fearful of my very own ringing house intercom. Set in London in the course of the Blitz, the Physician and co. battle a wierd plague that appears to be transmitted via telephones.
The cellphone rings, you decide it up, a creepy little British little one voice on the opposite finish says, “Are you my mummy?” 5 minutes later there’s a knock in your door, and the creepy little British little one is there sporting a gasoline masks, saying “Are you my mummy?” and BAM, you’re a gasoline masks zombie now. Tens of millions of Physician Who followers have by no means recovered. —Susana Polo

A eyeless man holding a syringe in Jacob’s Ladder.

Picture: Artisan Leisure

The place to look at: MGM Plus, YouTube

Adrian Lyne’s flawed however engrossing psychological horror film Jacob’s Ladder has had wide-ranging affect, given its reasonable success, inspiring Konami’s Silent Hill sport collection and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Chalk that as much as the movie’s horrifying, hallucinogenic visuals, which symbolize Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer’s descent into insanity.

Jacob’s Ladder is ostensibly a film about a military vet and divorced dad making peace together with his demons, that are introduced as corporeal torturers in Lyne’s darkish thriller. Jacob (Tim Robbins) experiences disturbing visions of shapeshifting apparitions pursuing him via a dirty and harmful Seventies New York Metropolis. Looking for solutions, Jacob learns he’s not the one one affected by unusual visions; members of his former platoon are, too, and so they imagine they had been the victims of a secret authorities drug-testing operation.

As Jacob’s hallucinations intensify on a collision course with actuality, he’s stricken by the reminiscences of the household he’s separated from — which features a very younger Macaulay Culkin! — and guided by his fierce chiropractor, performed by Danny Aiello. Because the head-spinning reality about Jacob’s visions are revealed, Jacob’s Ladder virtually calls for an prompt rewatch. That’s straightforward to suggest, as a result of regardless of its nightmarish horrors and stylized gore, Lyne’s film can be one thing of a unusually comforting rewatch. —Michael McWhertor

A sneering puppet and a smiling man (Anthony Hopkins) in Magic (1978).

Picture: Darkish Sky Movies

The place to look at: Shudder, Prime Video, Peacock

Magic is an inexplicable movie within the filmographies of virtually everybody concerned in it. It’s a nasty little psychological chiller, a faintly dirty, sub-Hitchcockian programmer from 1978 a couple of ventriloquist whose life has been taken over by the vicious dummy who represents his id which explains for this troubled, introverted man’s surprising success. However it stars Anthony Hopkins and is directed by Richard Attenborough from a script by William Goldman with a rating by Jerry Goldsmith! You don’t get rather more prestigious than that in ’78.

Happily, none of those luminaries condescend to the fabric or attempt to costume it up as one thing it’s not, and so Magic is simply what it needs to be — a scary, twisted film that’s by turns amusing and disturbing. Hopkins, who discovered close-up magic and ventriloquism for the function, is mesmeric and uncanny within the movie’s finest scenes, that are simply him arguing with himself as Fat (the dummy) tries to stop Corky (the person) from reconnecting together with his previous love (Ann-Margaret). Magic is a bitter little capsule that will get to the guts of why puppets are so sinister. —Oli Welsh

A woman stacking sugar cubes into a pyramid in Next of Kin (1982).

Picture: The Criterion Channel

The place to look at: Criterion Channel

For those who’re in search of a slow-burn psychological thriller with a brutal giallo-esque third act that’ll have you ever gripping the sting of your seat, Subsequent of Kin is the horror film for you. The movie facilities on Linda (Jacki Kerin), a younger girl who inherits possession of a retirement neighborhood from her estranged mom who has lately handed. As weird and unexplainable happenings start to happen round the home, together with a collection of suspicious deaths, Linda grows to suspect that her mom’s loss of life might not have been from previous age and that she herself could be subsequent.
With eerie slow-motion sequences and disorienting dolly zoom photographs, Subsequent of Kin conjures a way of nauseating environment and chilling terror that elevates it far past its “Ozploitation” origins. In contrast favorably to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining by none aside from Quentin Tarantino, Subsequent of Kin is a cult-classic horror movie that’s greater than worthy of creating the time for. —TE

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