by Nick Taylor
Boo! You all thought this half-alive miniseries was dead for good, but you were wrong! I have returned from the grave for one final shriek to celebrate some of my favorite new watches from this October, along with a shout-out to a surprisingly durable favorite. As I wipe off my makeup from a long night of trick or treating, enjoy your candy and feast your eyes on these!
The Ghost Ship (1943, dir. Mark Robson)
Having only seen Mark Robson’s entries into Val Lewton’s ‘40s horror filmography, I’m curious how I’ll react to the films of Jacques Turneur and other directors who have a more overt authorial signature. Robson is able to conjure a disquieting atmosphere, flexible enough for different kinds of spookiness yet thin enough to be punctured repeatedly by the veiled threats against our protagonists and the funereal enclaves they investigate. Here, the starchy, underplayed megalomania of the ship’s captain (Richard Dix, superb) attracts but also betrays the homoerotically charged bond he develops with an impressionable new recruit (Russell Wade). There’s no ghosts here, but the encroaching sense of menace as things go increasingly, hideously awry is quite potent. Robson choreographs several stunning sequences with a tight hold on the sound mix and camera angles, making scenes like a descending chain smothering a sailor or the barely-submerged threat beneath a late night stroll even more menacing for the mundane quiet overtaking these scenes of violence. So much seamen to handle in a tight 69 minutes, and I imagine some folks finding the story and style undercooked, but I was under its sway as soon as we left the shore.
The Ghost Ship is currently streaming on Hulu and is available to rent on most major platforms.
Kwaidan (1964, dir. Masaki Kobayashi)
A tremendous, unspeakably beautiful feat of blending overtly theatrical conceits with cinematic grammars and movements. An anthology film with only a voice over to connect its tales until the finnal chapter, Kwaidan tells four unrelated ghost stories connected, ranging from 20 minutes to over an hour apiece. I love the multiple, blatant unrealities the film cultivates, from the painted backgrounds to the off-kilter lighting schemes and camera placement. A deep purple robe can be just as sensuously discordant as the black, sweet-smelling hair that drapes a neglected wife or the many mediums used to depict a ferocious naval battle. The first story is too slowly-paced for its own good, and the ending caps everything off with a winking, purposefully not super satisfying note. But the middle two stories, “The Woman of the Snow” and the forebodingly titled “Hoichi the Earless” are beyond reproach, perfectly paced, shot, and designed tales of unlucky men finding their lives upended by ghostly interference. I don’t honestly want to go too deep on what happens in these stories, and even then, knowing what happens can’t prepare you for how sumptuous Masaki Kobayashi brings it all to life.
Kwaidan is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and HBO Max, and can be rented on most major platforms.
The McPherson Tapes (1989, dir. Dean Alioto)
Handily one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and one of the earliest examples of found-footage horror a full decade before The Blair Witch Project. The McPherson Tapes follows an American family celebrating a birthday party for 5-year-old Michelle in a woody Connecticut home. Their celebration is soon interrupted by a power outage, and as the men go to investigate they find several little gray men and a ship outside a neighbor’s home. Alioto’s grainy photography can’t quite make the alien costumes convincing, but I’m more than happy to go along with it for the sake of how richly he depicts the harmonies and fractures of its Reaganite family. The opening dinner conversation details the relationships between parents, siblings, spouses, as individuals and as a tightly bonded unit with the kind of casually lived-in detail any film would kill for, let alone the tonal and technical challenges of a found footage horror film seemingly filmed in one shot. Bemused interest and condescension towards the camera-wielding brother ring as authentically as hushed talks of alcoholism and clearly long-standing arguments about who’s pulling their weight in the family.
Then shit hits the fan, and we get to see these characters desperately try to hold onto any sense of control. Confident alpha males reach for their guns in panicked crisis, lumping the slacker brother with the women and children. Pantomimes at restored norms trick themselves into thinking everything is okay again only to realize they're still totally fucked. Grandma holds court with an unparalleled skill at keeping the peace, even as she’s trying to calm her own nerves. It’s an astonishing feat of capturing human behavior in the face of a completely unknown, unfathomable threat, worth celebrating any time of year.
The McPherson Tapes is free to watch with ads on Youtube and Tubi, and can be rented on most major platforms. It has also been posted in its entirety on YouTube here.
The Conjuring (2013, dir. James Wan)
I would have jumped on the opportunity to write about this for its tenth anniversary had I remembered its release date. So here’s my chance now: The Conjuring still fucks after a decade of sequels, expanded universing, and familiar templates in scares and style calcifying across the genre. Yes, the real Ed and Lorraine Warren were charlatans, and it’s weird to hear them treat the Salem Witch Trials like they were a real hotbed of Satanic activity. Yes, a good chunk of the dialogue betrays a clunky understanding of human behavior.These caveats are unnavoidable, though if they work for you, so be it.
But mostly, James Wan’s filmmaking and grasp of characterization is so much sturdier than it has any right to be. I maybe still don’t know what to do about the odd, half-committed first-person camera interlude, though the dead-autumn color palette and lightning are more novel and inventive than I gave it credit for - the shot of slivered light carving Lorraine’s face in the black void is so casually artful. Recognizable strategies around negative-space ghosts are ideally utilized, as are the shock cuts in the editing and the robust foley work. The single lightbulb in that creepy-ass basement has more kilowatts of light than most horror films released today. Most of all, I’m surprised how rousing this continues to be as a character study, at how earnestly Wan depicts the two central families and the love that keeps them together. Lili Taylor plays her frayed, loving, potentially doomed mother with such a warm spirit and remarkably committed physicality. More than anything, this remains a top-tier showcase for Vera Farmiga. Her watchfulness is so ideally calibrated with an intellectual immediacy and the heartfelt, hokey-yet-bracing charge this film needs. She and Patrick Wilson create a wonderful partnership, a couple deeply entwined beyond the rites of marriage. Bless the cunty outfits she gets to wear, too. Let the cop and the hot assistant guy fuck and this film would have everything.
The Conjuring is currently streaming on HBO Max, and can be rented on most major platforms.
If these titles still aren't enough for you, there's also the immortal actress-lead classics The Innocents and The Haunting, the bugnuts nastiness of Murders in the Rue Morgue and Bela Lugosi's insane eyebrows, and the creeping malice of The Mummy. Among 2023 offerings, New Religion is my clear favorite of this year's horror movies, but you can't go wrong with Birth/Rebirth either. Oh, and Cláudio is 100% right about A Haunting in Venice. Fun stuff. But what about you, dear read? What are some of your favorite horror films you've watched for the first time? What classics do you pop in religiously every year? And what will you be doing to celebrate the holiday while The Great Pumpkin soars across the sky?