vampires, spaceships, and fantastical worlds—the tales of L.E. Teetzel

Not too long ago, you would not catch me dead watching a horror movie. And now I have long lists of horror movies I love. Who woulda thunk?

Also: buckle up, this one’s a long one.

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Halloween (1978)

1. If you ask me to pinpoint what exactly it is I love about this movie, I can’t do it. I don’t know exactly what it is except… everything? Or how well it comes together to create the story, anyway. And it never really toes the line with corny like a lot of other slasher do (as much as I still love a lot other slashers, even the corny ones). Also, as I’ve learned over the last couple years, I really love John Carpenter. There’s just such style to his movies. Also, related to the particular style of the movie, I absolutely adore Michael’s inexplicable flair for the dramatic. Stealing his sister’s headstone to put on the bed above a staged body? Putting a jack-o-lantern on the bedside table? The whole wearing a mask thing in the first place? Dude has got serious issues, probably centred around Halloween, and it’s a little ridiculous but a lot amazing.
2. Dr. Loomis is one of my most-hated characters in any movie, ever. He just gets progressively more crazy as the movies go on, and this opinion doesn’t change even if you only consider the first movie. Him saying “Evil is gone from here” after they discover Michael’s escaped from the prison where he’s being kept is proof enough of that. Michael might be evil (in classic slasher fashion, we don’t know [and should never know] what exactly he is), but Loomis is… Well, I don’t know what exactly Loomis is, but I know I hate him and that he makes my skin crawl. The first movie is where he’s the least offensive but come on. At the very least, he’s a super shitty psychologist or whatever kind of doctor he is.
3. The scene where Michael puts on the sheet and the Bob’s glasses before killing Lynda is one of my favourite in the movie because, while it seems so strange and a bit out of character, it’s really not. The last time Michael was in Haddonfield, out of prison, was Halloween when he was a kid. He got close to his sister, who he also killed after she’d had sex, when he was in costume. He wears a mask at all times maybe because that was his last memory before being locked away. Maybe he feels more himself wearing the mask. Who knows? But the ghost scene has always stuck out to me. I like that we don’t know anything about Michael Myers, but I also enjoy trying to piece together what I can from the clues we’re given. (Mind you, I don’t know if John Carpenter has any more answers about Michael, considering this was the only movie Michael was supposed to be in; Halloween was supposed to be an anthology series but Michael was just too popular, and then Halloween 3 flopped, which is kind of a bummer. As much as I love Michael as a villain, I think an anthology would have been cool.)

10 William Shatner masks out of 10.

BONUS: I really think the fact that they tried to connect Laurie and Michael in the original sequels and/or tried to explain Michael’s apparent ability to resurrect are a big reason why none of the original sequels ever really connected to people the same way the first movie did. The unknowable nature of a slasher villain and their abilities is vital to their character and status as a slasher movie villain (which is unlike any other kind of villain). I also love when they reference this in Halloween (2018) as something people told themselves to make them feel better, because the desire to humanize killers is such a familiar one..

Halloween (2018)

1. Okay, the next three might be long, but I don’t care, because these thoughts have been bouncing around in my head since I saw the trilogy in the theatres. I love these movies for a lot of reasons, won’t hear any slander against them, and have a lot of thoughts about them. So buckle up, buttercups. We’re gonna start with the portrayal of Laurie and the physical manifestation of her trauma and her PTSD from the original movie. In Halloween (1978), she is wholly innocent. The “girl scout” as she calls herself. I wouldn’t call her naive or anything, because she’s quite clearly strong and resourceful (using whatever she can find to injure Michael, getting the kids to safety before herself, etc.), and she learns quick—she is the Final Girl. And in this movie we see that she never stopped learning and that she only grew more resourceful. To the point where she built literal walls around herself. She built herself a fortress. She made herself a fortress. However, all of that, all of her skills, have turned her into a sort of monster herself. Michael isn’t going to get her or her family, no matter what, and unfortunately, that determination to survive has become her whole life. It destroyed her relationships with her ex-husbands, daughter, and granddaughter. Made her a “basket case.” She was labelled an unfit mother and her daughter was taken away—the last vestige of normalcy stripped away. She never moved beyond being the Final Girl. She shared her fear and skills with her daughter and spent her whole life waiting and getting ready for Michael’s return. It’s sad but, I think, very understandable after what she went through at such a young, vulnerable age. After the friends she lost. Most people would be able to move on, eventually, to find a way to live their life, but what and who Laurie faced was unlike anything else. Michael made Laurie into the other side of his coin (right down to Allyson seeing Laurie out the window, the same way Laurie first saw Michael). Which is a fascinating evolution for a Final Girl. She’s also created two more Final Girls: her daughter through her own traumatic childhood, and her granddaughter through her daughter’s refusal to continue the cycle of trauma. Karen is the Final Girl of her own life (as much as I don’t like her, I get it), and Allyson goes through an evolution similar to Laurie’s to become a more traditional Final Girl. This is literally the best way they could have handled Laurie in a sequel, and I think it was the only way they could have done it.
2. Dr. Ranbir Sartain is Dr. Loomis’s successor and he’s more deranged than Loomis, which is, uh, something. The podcasters from the beginning of the movie fall into the same category too, all three of them obsessed with Michael. But Dr. Sartain is literally the cause of the whole mess in these movies, because he is so obsessed with the idea of seeing what will happen when Michael and Laurie are reunited that he goes out of his way to make it happen, nearly killing Deputy Hawkins in the process. The fascination with Michael is a recurring theme because, like I said above, we don’t know and should never know exactly what Michael is or why he is the way he is. Why can he survive injuries that would kill any normal human? As much as my lore-loving brain would love to know, we don’t need to know. It is entirely irrelevant to the story and everyone who becomes obsessed with Michael, even if it’s in the name of studying/trying to understand him, ends up dead or getting a bunch of other people killed. Michael is basically a black hole in human form—okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but I’m thinking about how he draws everyone in, whether through engendering obsession or making them afraid, and anyone who can’t escapes ends up dead.
3. Micheal spends the first half of the movie being reborn into the monster we know from the first movie. He’s been kept in jail for forty years, literally chained up and confined to various small boxes. He is stripped of everything we associated with The Shape. No blue coverall, no mask, no heavy boots, no knife. Once the bus crashes and he’s free, every time we see him he regains a piece of himself: the coverall and steel-toed boots from the mechanic, his mask from the podcasters, and the knife from a victim. He actually uses more weapons in this movie than I remembered, because the butcher knife in his hand is so iconic. The final piece of the puzzle that is Michael Myers doesn’t click until he sees Laurie. I’ve always wondered if he actually recognizes her, or whether he’s just doing the only thing he knows how to do: kill. After all, Sartain is the one who brought him close to Laurie’s house. Who probably told him where to go. As Michael never speaks, we’ll never know, and just have the assumptions of everyone saying he’s after Laurie to go on. I mean, I’m sure he actually does recognize her because they formed this weird bond when she escaped/survived, but it’s still an odd dynamic. He’s not a serial killer who sees his sister in the face of everyone he kills, because he kills indiscriminately, paying no attention to any details. I’d believe that he thinks Laurie is his sister. Or that he’s just decided she needs to die. Again, my lore-loving brain wants to know, but I also know that knowing might ruin it.

10 bowls of goopy orange Halloween dance pudding out of 10.

BONUS: I don’t know that Laurie, Karen, and Allyson in the back of the truck at the end was a reference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I think it was and it’s a nice nod to one of the OG slashers.

Also: I promise these will be shorter after I’m done with the Halloween movies. I’ve just had these thoughts in my head for A LONG TIME. And apologies if these ramble on. I don’t really edit these too much.

Halloween Kills (2021)

1. I love the fact that this one picks up before the end of the first one. This trilogy is about Michael becoming not just Laurie’s boogeyman, but all of Haddonfield’s. This is a trilogy about a monster taking over a town through fear, and starting this movie by showing how Michael and that night in 1978 have haunted others, particularly Hawkins and Lonnie, and not just Laurie, is an easy way to show that this isn’t just Laurie’s story, or her family’s, anymore. It never really was. We were justing seeing the events through Laurie’s eyes, so, to us, it’s always been her story. She was our way into the world and story; it would be very different if we were following Michael instead. The way they filmed the flashbacks too, showing moments from the first movie in greater detail, expanding on scenes, and making new ones look like they’re from the original movie, and then including the grown-up Lindsey and Tommy, the little kids Laurie protected, in this movie… It’s such a slick way to really connect everything. Michael Myers has always been Haddonfield’s boogeyman. I remember people not liking that this movie didn’t focus on Laurie as much, and while I agree to an extent because I love Laurie, I really think this makes Michael scarier. Because he’s not just killing. He’s terrifying everyone, turning good people into monsters, leaving death and grief in his wake and not all of it at his own hand. This is exploring an aspect of horror movies and slashers that very rarely gets touched on: what happens after. We’ve seen how Laurie handled surviving. Now we’re seeing how the town handled what happened. In a small town where nothing happens (as one of the deputies describes Haddonfield in a flashback), a multiple murder by a former resident would be big news—clearly, as it’s never been forgotten and that night has become a local legend. I absolutely adore this exploration. And the moments in the hospital when we get to see Laurie be softer, vulnerable, and, well, human again.
2. The way the tension builds in this movie is nuts, even though you know Michael’s going to live and he’s going to keep coming. Because, while you know that, you also know that the mob mentality isn’t going to lead anywhere except getting a lot of people killed. But who? Who is going to make it? Who won’t? And will they die at Michael’s hand, or will something go horribly wrong? This movie really makes it clear that Haddonfield was a powder keg waiting for a spark. Like, none of these people are bad people, but they’re scared. They’ve been scared for forty years. They’ve all been waiting for Michael to come back, even if they didn’t know they were waiting. I like that they made Tommy that spark, because I imagine he feels guilty about not being able to do more that night, even though he was a child. I imagine he’s had nightmares his whole life thinking about the night the boogeyman became real. He was spared from seeing the worst of it, but intense fear could be just as traumatizing. And, I’m guessing, he’s never had much therapy, if any. So given the chance with Michael’s escape on Halloween, the powder keg of Tommy blew first, spreading those sparks to everyone else, to the whole town, culminating in the mob chasing a man through the hospital and eventually killing him because they thought he could be Michael Myers—even though he very clearly was not. The mob breaks up and cools down once the man is dead and everyone is filled with regret. But, this just adds another layer of fear to the brew of the last forty years, as the citizens of Haddonfield have now seen what Michael can turn them into, what he can make them do (not literally, but you know what I mean). So, when the mob comes together again to beat the actual Michael to death in the street, the tone is very, very different than the hospital scene. It’s more desperate at the same time it’s cathartic, and it’s clear, even before it happens, that the mob will not win this time. Because, as Laurie’s and Hawkins’s voice over says, it won’t be brute force that kills him.
3. “He’s a six year old with the strength of a man” is the first real description of Michael that doesn’t describe him as pure evil. I’m not saying that Michael is not pure evil, because of course he is. Slashers are very binary (usually) when it comes to the good vs. bad, and Michael is very much bad. However, as we’ve seen, thinking of his as pure evil leads to a distorted view and, in the case of his doctors, to obsession (we don’t really get to see this with Loomis in just the original movie, but it’s inferred through the fact that Loomis’s notes are part of what led Sartain down the rabbit hole), which leads to destruction and death. Hawkins viewing him as a human with the mind of child (which means he doesn’t fully know or understand the world/what he’s doing/what’s going on) before agreeing with Laurie that he’s evil is one of the things which keeps him from falling victim to the deadly obsession. He’s been obsessed with his guilt for forty years, which has also acted as a buffer. Laurie had her family, even if they weren’t on good terms, so despite her obsession with survival and being prepared for Michael’s return, she never fell into the black hole either (plus, she’s the Final Girl, so she can’t die). I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but I really do think that the ability to separate Michael from the idea of pure evil is paramount to staying alive after encountering him. This would probably make more sense if I did this in a traditional essay format but yolo, ya know?

7 tiny cheese knives out of 10.

BONUS: I love the music that plays when they’re getting ready for the showdown in the street at the end. Such an epic track that combines the sound of the original soundtrack and something new.

Halloween Ends (2022)

I’m literally writing this MONTHS after I did the other ones because, well, I simply have too many hobbies, but we’re back to it now. But my feedback might not be as in-depth as it was when I watched the other movies back-to-back, but I still have lots of thoughts about this movie and this trilogy.

1. I will fully admit that this is not my favourite of the new Halloween movies, but I do like it, and I really like the direction they went. It recast the whole new trilogy in a new light and really made Michael feel bigger and badder and actually true evil as he’d been called for so long. This is the movie where we really see how Michael’s presence had infected Haddonfield beyond just the killings and the confrontation/obsession with Laurie. Laurie’s voice over at the beginning really illustrates this (LOVE when Laurie points out that Michael went to prison and she put herself into a prison of her own making). And after the chaos of the first two movies, he just vanishes, into the sewers/storm drain (not totally sure), one of the many systems that keeps a city functioning and alive, and infects it. Corey is the obvious manifestation of this. He gets infected when he meets Michael in the sewer, and who knows why Michael let him go (I think it had to do with seeing the darker side of Corey, seeing whatever is in him reflected in Corey), but Corey, now angry and confident and murderous, then goes on to infect others in Haddonfield: aggravating Allyson’s attitude and trauma and emotions and fear, leading Laurie to fall off the sobriety wagon, poisoning Laurie and Allyson’s relationship, killing the unhoused man, making himself sicker by leading Allyson’s ex to Michael and asking Michael to show him how to kill, etc. We know Corey doesn’t really want to be like this because he knows something is wrong with him and he fights it when he can. (For the record, the guy playing Corey does an EXCELLENT job, and I waffle between liking and hating Corey every time I watch this movie, but he always creeps me the fuck out.) We also see Michael’s influence in those he’s left without family members, and in the hostility people still have towards Laurie, as they assume it’s her fault, that she taunted him, and caused all the pain and strife. Haddonfield is still chugging along, but the town is sick and it’s because of Michael—literally and in the spectre of fear he’s left over everything. The town needs a boogeyman, a bad guy, and they’ll find a new one when the current one leaves.
2. Laurie’s arc is probably my favourite part of this movie to be honest. It starts and we see that’s she’s trying to live a normal life, to reclaim the life she was never able to have and/or never let herself have. We don’t know much about her life between the first movie and Halloween (2018). We don’t know who she had Karen with, but we do know that Karen’s childhood was rough and centred around learning to protect herself. I’ve always assumed that, right after the attack, Laurie tried to have a normal life—got a job, met a guy, become a mom—and that it was Karen’s birth that triggered her fear and hyper-protectiveness. The guy left, leaving Laurie alone to her untreated trauma and everything else. But here we see her trying to be normal. Relaxed, dealing with her trauma, healing. She’s processing what’s happened to her through writing a book and therapy and sobering up. She doesn’t do well at everything (ie, burning the pie), but she’s trying. She’s bought a house that isn’t a prison or a trap. But we still see hints of who she used to be, of who she still is, deep down. Warding off the bullies and then opening a switch blade to slash the tires. (I laughed so hard when that knife came out the first time I saw the movie.) But when she sees Corey after Michael lets him go… She knows. She can sense the evil, sense Michael’s touch. She knows something’s wrong and that something has changed in Corey. This is a sickness she knows, having had a shade of it herself. (The parallels between Michael and Corey in that scene are GREAT.) The rest of the movie is then her finding a balance between who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be. And, thankfully, she does achieve that balance, once she’s finally free, Michael’s finally dead for real, and Haddonfield is cured of its infection. I love the character of Laurie Strode and more than anything, I love what this trilogy allowed her to do and who it allowed her to become. I LOVE that she gets her happy ending finally with Hawkins. So, so deserved.
3. Michael’s arc, while shorter and played out through other characters as well as him, is almost as good. I think my response to it is partially just out of interest, because somehow they’ve managed to give a character without humanity and who never says a word, an arc that you can follow and understand and, in a way, appreciate. Like, we don’t know why Michael is the way he is or why he can’t die or anything, really, but we know he has to kill. We’ve seen him rebuild himself into the true monster after escaping prison and we see him burned back down to nearly nothing. At the beginning of the movie, is a shadow of the monster he was, living off whatever he can catch and drag into his den. He is wounded and scraping by. We see him leave his den to help Corey kill—in a twisted way, finding Corey seems to revive him a little bit—and we see him watching Laurie like he used to. I don’t think he’s done this before, since Laurie has been able to move on and she’s so attuned to his presence. Seeing Laurie awakens something in Michael, I think, but it also is the beginning of the end. After Corey steals his mask, reducing Michael further and then becoming a pale imitation of Michael (he doesn’t have the strength or placidity of Michael; he tortures in a way Michael never did), Michael strives to rebuild himself again, like we saw at the beginning of the first movie, but never fully accomplishes it. Corey in Michael’s mask and totally lost to his sickness, goes to Laurie to try and kill her, but of course he fails because if anyone was going to kill Laurie, it would be Michael himself. Michael kills Corey, taking back every shred Corey stole, including the mask, and then the final showdown begins. But Laurie’s done the work and has, at least partially, moved on with her life. She has begun to heal and has helped Allyson begin to heal. Michael is incapable of moving on, and, after the last movie, he is physically less than he ever has been before. Plus, he’s old and diminished by his time in the sewer. He is physically sick now too, and it is impossible to stand up to everything Laurie represents, everything she has passed on to Allyson. When she unmasks him, that is the end of him and everything he represents. She kills the infection at its source. They even use what could be seen as an extreme form of bloodletting to do it. Then, as Hawkins says, “it’s time for Haddonfield to start healing,” and they display Micahel’s dead body on the way to the dump where they shred him. A final, clear, end. The infection is gone. Everyone can heal. A perfect end.

Look, I know a lot of people didn’t like this movie or this trilogy or whatever, but I absolutely love all of them. Halloween is perfect on its own, but what this trilogy has done has elevated the story of a man killing a bunch of people and terrorizing them on Halloween, to a story about trauma and grief and the power we have over how we live our lives and I very clearly have a lot of thoughts about it, lol.

7 funky old houses out of 10.

Friday the 13th (1980)

1. This was probably one of the first classic horror movies I watched. Maybe even one of the first horror movies in general. I did not find it scary then, and I was like, thirteen or fourteen maybe? Not until the end, anyway. That sting at the end still gets me sometimes if I’m not prepared. One of the best jump scares ever, in my opinion. I was also deeply confused because I knew Friday the 13th meant Jason, but I had no idea he wasn’t in the first one except at the end. Literally no idea. Obviously when it came out, it would have been a good twist because there’s no way you’d expect an older woman in a cozy sweater to be the bad guy, but it wouldn’t have had the same legacy hanging over it as it does now. I kind of like the surprise factor it has for those who haven’t seen it and who, like me, expect machetes and hockey masks in the first installment.
2. All the teenagers in this movie are SO DUMB. Like, don’t get in a stranger’s car? Don’t get in ANOTHER stranger’s car in the middle of the woods where no one is around to see or hear you? Don’t like an ass in front of a cop? Don’t forget to put your clothes back on after playing strip Monopoly before you run out into a thunder storm? Like. They’re just so dumb I can’t get over it. But then, slashers don’t really work the same way if everyone’s smart. At least not in classic slashers.
3. I doubt it would have been when the movie came out, but it’s funny to me how obvious it is who the final girl is going to be from the minute she shows up on screen. She’s more quite and reserved, artistic and sweet, and has physically cute features. She’s the only one playing strip Monopoly who doesn’t lose any clothes (thanks to a convenient interruption), and she’s the only one who shows any brains in trying to escape from the killer but she still only escapes by the skin of her teeth.

6 cable-knit sweaters out of 10.

BONUS: The second time I watched this movie, when I was older, I couldn’t get over the fact that a baby Kevin Bacon was in it and I didn’t know that or recognize him when I was younger.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

1. The first time I watched this movie, it was Halloween, it was high school, and I lived on Elm Street. It was also SUPER windy and there were lots of tree banging against the house and a lot of other weird noises. I hadn’t yet really started watching horror movies. Was this a smart decision? Absolutely not. Did it make the first viewing of this classic memorable? You’d better believe it. Especially later when I realized this movie is really not that scary and is, in fact, heckin’ corny. Still love it though. Truly no horror like 70s/80s horror. I also love the Freddy makeup.
2. Honestly I’m never sure how I feel about the vigilante justice angle, because like, yeah, there are some people who probably shouldn’t be out among everyone else or maybe even shouldn’t be on the planet anymore because all they do is harm and take the lives of others, but also like… a bunch of people ganging up to kill him and then burning his body and hiding it from everyone until their kids start to get murdered? I dunno. Like, his fate isn’t too harsh to me, but something still makes me a little squicky about the whole thing.
3. Everything else aside, Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger is just pitch perfect. And I love all the nods to it and such he’s done over the years. Nothing makes a movie/character better than an actor who is just fully invested.

6 ugly-ass sweaters out of 10.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

1. Okay, like, granted, I wasn’t alive in the mid-70s to know what people did for fun, but it seems to me like driving into the middle of nowhere to see an abandoned house would not be a good time, and especially not be a good time when it’s hotter than hell outside. I mean, I think they were originally going somewhere else or something, but like… I dunno. This just seems like a really long and boring day and a really bad idea to begin with. It’s definitely a bad idea to pick up hitchhikers too. Don’t do that. Also don’t hitchhike. It also seems like a bad idea to go up to a creepy house with lots of weird shit and a lot of hidden old cars (I stress hidden because my dad is a car guy and I know he’d have lots of old cars around if he could) and bones hanging around outside and inside the house to ask for some gas. I mean, I know teens in slashers don’t generally make the best decisions and that’s a function of the genre, but like ??? I love this movie but I am just baffled, honestly.
2. WHO JUST WALKS INTO A STRANGER’S HOUSE??? This movie is full of bad ideas, I tell you, horrible ideas.
3. The dinner scene is so iconic. Leatherface with makeup over his mask haunts me more than almost anything in this movie, except maybe the grandpa because that man is terrifying and I’m more than half convinced he’s no longer human. Marilyn Burns can scream like nobody’s business and while it does grate on me after a bit, I can’t blame her because that experience must have been so fucking traumatic. I think that’s part of why that scene sticks in my brain so well.

BONUS: I need to know if the makers of The Last Of Us took inspiration from the opening credits of this movie for the opening credits of the game because it certainly seems like they did. And it was an awesome choice. In the game, they use the credits to fill players in what’s happened in the twenty years since the prologue, and in this movie, they use them to fill viewers in on the state of this area of rural Texas, including the monument made of dead bodies they find at the beginning. It sets the tone for the whole movie and sets viewers on-edge right away. Brilliant.

DOUBLE BONUS: I, like many, fell for the marketing and thought this was based on a real story for a very long time, and it wasn’t until I actually watched the movie and did some research into it that I realized it was based in part on Ed Gein but was mostly fictional.

TRIPLE BONUS: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out October 11, 1974, in the US, and Black Christmas came out October 11, 1974 in Canada, meaning that those two films together kind of started the slasher genre as we know it. There were other films beforehand, obviously, but these two really kicked it off.

8 “face” masks out of 10.

Scream (1996)

1. Every time I watch this movie, the more brilliant I think it is. I love when movies of a certain genre/subgenre subvert expectations in clever, funny, and/or smart ways, and Scream does it so well—it just gets more apparent the more horror movies I watch and the more familiar I get with the genre. This is probably my favourite example other than Cabin in the Woods. I love the hints of subtle foreshadowing (ie., the cover of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” playing when Billy first appears) and the way the movie plays with viewers’ expectations of who it’s going to be and of the genre while also still playing into them in some ways.
2. If I think about the concept of this movie too long, I get really anxious because, unlike a lot of other horror movies, this is just real dudes killing people in a fucked up way, wearing a fucked up mask and costume. There’s no supernatural element, no magic, no nothing except some seriously messed up people, and out of all the horror movies, this one could like, really happen? And probably has? Gives me the shivers just thinking about—which adds a lot. I also think this movie traumatized a whole generation into being afraid to answer the phone. Like me. Even though I didn’t actually watch this movie until long after it came out. I mean, I have anxiety and don’t like answering the phone anyway, but even just the trailers and people talking about this movie left an impression on me because I wouldn’t watch it for AGES. And like, how could the Ghostface mask not leave an impression on you?
3. My biggest problem is how insufferable some of the characters are while still being realistic. Teenagers are jerks. I’ve always had a problem with the stereotypical teenager characters but some of them are just downright awful people in this movie and it bothers me more every time I watch it. I like Sydney though, and Dewey. Enough that I’ve watched all the Scream movies lol. But like, Billy annoys me so much. OF COURSE Sydney hasn’t been the same since her mother died. I hate him SO MUCH. And that was true before I knew he was the killer. Like teenage boys can be awful but seriously. But the movie almost got me the first time I watched it and he apologizes. I almost started to like him.

8 creepy little moustaches out of 10.

BLOODY BONUS: How GOOD is the opening scene with Drew Barrymore? Like, it’s creepy and nostalgic (hello channel three on the TV to watch a VHS; this whole movie gives me major nostalgia for the 90s but that also be because that’s when I was a kid) and just SO GOOD. Like, hanging in a tree by her intestines? HELLO???? Also major props to her mom for having the piece of mind to put the fire out before panicking about her daughter.

WEIRD BONUS: Courtney Cox in this movie reminds me so much of my mom. The colour and style of her hair make the little similarities they’ve always had much more potent. It’s so WEIRD.

Psycho (1960)

1. Okay, I’m not sure Psycho really counts as a slasher, but it kinda does? I’m putting it in this Three-Thoughts regardless. Before I watched Psycho the first time, I had no idea what the movie was beyond the scenes everyone knows: the shower, the house on the hill, and the chair turning around to reveal the dead body. I did not know there was so much other plot, or that the movie was almost two separate movies. I was, however, riveted. This movie is a fucking classic for a reason. It was a nice reminder that classic movies, or even just old movies, should really be watched before they’re judged, because yes it’s black and white, yes it’s very different from any movie that would get made today, but this movie—all of Hitchcock’s movies probably—are foundational to modern horror and there’s also just something so fascinating about movies as a glimpse of a different time too. Both culturally and how movies were made.
2. The tension in this movie is off the charts. It’s done so masterfully. The music helps too, obviously, but the way Janet Leigh plays each scene she’s in—the way every actor plays the scene they’re in—is just so easy to feel the anxiety and fear. Obviously Marion’s breaking probably several laws and she’s on the lam, but UGH this movie is just such a masterpiece I can’t get over it. I almost don’t have anything to say about it other than I don’t think it would be possible to get away with half the stuff she does today. And I don’t know if the voice overs we hear are her imagining what others are saying or actually what’s being said, but either way, they also keep the tension high.
3. After the confusion of the first viewing, which was only brought on because I had no idea what the actual plot was, I actually really like the format. The format today would more likely be a opening scene of someone getting killed/going missing and then the rest of the movie would be people trying to find them/figure out what happened. I like that here, Marion’s story gets equal attention as her sister and boyfriend trying to find her. We get to know Marion, know what happened, and know what kind of person she was. It gives another depth to her loved ones trying to find her and/or figure out what happened, since viewers already know. It’s an entirely different kind of tension. I just love it, and I cannot imagine how it felt to experience the twist at the end with no prior knowledge of what was coming.

10 lovely old cars out of 10.

Ready or Not (2018)

1. When I went to see this movie in the theatres, I had literally no idea what to expect other than a good time because the trailer looked fun. Horror and comedy go together well, especially because a lot of people deal with horrific things with jokes—if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right? And sometimes you don’t want to/can’t cry. Anyway, I didn’t know what to expect but I was blown away and it instantly became one of my favourite horror movies, if not one of my favourite movies ever, just because it’s so bonkers and fun and ends with one of the biggest HELL YEAH moments ever. I think I actually said HELL YEAH in the theatre while I was also giggling because like, what the hell? I love a movie that just goes for it, you know? And this movie just goes for it. There aren’t many modern slashers that hit in the same way the old ones do but this one gets pretty damn close.
2. Totally unrelated to anything else, I love the wardrobe and sets in this movie. Grace’s wedding dress is stunning and the way the mansion is decorated (except for the hunting-trophy/games room because what the fuck) is just so my jam. I would change some of the furniture but the character and colours and vibes are just immaculate. Except for, you know, all the murdering and devil-worshipping rituals. I’m obsessed with the phthalo green bedroom and I’ve always wanted a house with a dumbwaiter for some reason? Like, a lot of rich people are evil, even if it’s not to the extent that these fucks are evil, but damn, the houses are nice.
3. I’ve never had an issue with gore and kind of love it? in movies. I know that sounds weird, but whatever. This movie is gory as HELL, to the point of ridiculousness, and yeah, I love it. I could say something more intelligent about the rich vs. poor, exploitation, deals with the devil, other tropes… but I don’t care and honestly, that’s not why I like this movie. The final girl is a total bad ass—her screams as so awesome; I could also say something intelligent about the descent into animal nature when we’re forced into a state of survive or die—and the movie is a gory good time. I cannot wait to see what they do with the sequel.

8 pairs of yellow Converse out of 10.

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