Ten Days of Terror!: Short Horror Films

Film: Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 8; The Signalman, Blood of the Beasts (Le Sang des bêtes
Format: Streaming video on various players (Fire!).

When you watch things off a curated list, you end up going in some strange directions and to some odd places. The Shudder list of movie moments contains 100 movies and, inexplicably, 1 episode of a television show, specifically the 8th episode of the Twin Peaks reboot. But, I’m compelled by the list to watch what’s on the list. Since I planned to watch the show anyway (only 35 years late on the original series), I knew I’d get here eventually. And, since the episode is a touch less than an hour long, it qualifies as a short.

While you’re always going to need some background when you jump into a series, this is honestly one of the few episodes that you could watch on its own without a great deal of background. The opening sequences won’t make a lot of sense (honestly, a lot of it won’t make a great deal of sense anyway), but for a great deal of this episode, you don’t need much of the background lore.

Ten Days of Terror!: 1000 Women in Horror

Film: 1000 Women in Horror
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’m not really a documentary guy. I like them in general when I watch them, but I don’t tend to seek them out. The exception to that is documentaries about horror and horror movies. These, I love and watch them as soon as I can. That includes round-up shows like the Bravo 100 Scariest Movie Moments, but also actual documentary films like Nightmares in Red, White and Blue and Horror Noir. So, when I became aware of 1000 Women in Horror (thanks, Brittani!), I watched it immediately.

My desire to watch this is not just that I like horror documentaries. It’s also that I think the most interesting horror being done right now comes from women and minority populations. Sure, there are going to be exceptions, and a lot of horror movie history rides on the backs of the three Cs of horror—Carpenter, Cronenberg, and my personal favorite Craven. But today, the really interesting stuff, the really transgressive stuff, and the films that genuinely have something more to say than just blood and jump scares are coming from women, and I am absolutely here for it. Mike Flanagan gets honorary woman status for this observation.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Night Strangler

Film: The Night Strangler
Format: DVD from Peotone Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

I’m just old enough to remember when Darren McGavin wasn’t famous for being the dad in A Christmas Story, but for being Carl Kolchak. I didn’t watch the movies as a kid, but one of my brothers watched Kolchak: The Night Stalker during its brief run. There are a couple of episodes that I remember distinctly. The Carl Kolchak character, a newspaper reporter who gets regularly tied up in supernatural murders, started with The Night Stalker made-for-TV movie, which was followed by The Night Strangler. The Kolchak stories feel like a natural parent to The X-Files, and this is not hampered in the slightest by the fact that they were written by Richard Matheson.

So, while the show was highly influential, the show would have never happened without the two made-for-TV movies and without the charm of Darren McGavin. The Night Strangler sees our newspaperman hero, fired from his job in Las Vegas after writing about vampires, relocated to Seattle. Because we want to have some consistency between this sequel and the original, we’re going to also import Carl Kolchak’s newspaper editor Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland) from Las Vegas as well, fired from his editorial position in Vegas for supporting Kolchak’s crazy vampire story.

Ten Days of Terror: The Endless

Film: The Endless
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

Movies about cults feels like an untapped genre to me. There is something inherently upsetting about cults, and in many ways, there is something fascinating about them as well. I say this as a person with no religious faith and happy to be that way. I won’t go into a diatribe here, but I do think the notions of religion are inherently disturbing on a cosmic scale. Most religions essentially tell us that we are the surveilled playthings of something of infinite power. The Endless is a film that makes this idea manifest.

Brothers Justin (Justin Benson, writer and co-director/producer) and Aaron (Aaron Moorhead, the other director/producer) are survivors of a cult that they left when they were very young. Justin remembers this as a cult where the people talk about mass suicides and the men castrate themselves. Aaron, who is younger, remembers it more fondly as a place where he was safe and was fed decent food. Aaron is fed up with the life he and Justin are leading—broke, working menial jobs, and always hungry. They receive a video tape from Anna (Callie Hernandez) welcoming them back to the group. Aaron is interested and coerces Justin into going back for one night.

Ten Days of Terror!: Afflicted

Film: Afflicted
Format: DVD from Earlville Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

I am not generally a huge fan of found footage movies, although there are certainly those that have been done well. [REC] and Noroi are great examples of what can be done with the style. The problem I tend to have with the style is that it often comes across as lazy. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, but it also easily breaks the fourth wall by being edited. I tend to go into found footage wary, and I don’t always love finding out that the movie I’ve signed up to watch is done in this style. So I wasn’t really pleased to learn that Afflicted is going to be a lot of shaky cam, shots that don’t really show us anything, and editing in something that by definition shouldn’t be edited.

I should also say off the top here that Afflicted dives into a very different subgenre of horror. Yes, it’s found footage, but this is going to go in a different direction than most. It’s actually the most similar to Chronicle in a lot of respects. That said, I don’t want to completely spoil the surprise of where this goes, so I’m going to put a spoiler tag here—this will contain spoilers. I’ll keep them toward the end as much as I can, but if you haven’t seen this and don’t want the movie spoiled, you should stop reading here.

Ten Days of Terror!: Lights Out

Film: Lights Out
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

The thing that made the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre revolutionary was not the implied blood, but the fact that everything happened in bright daylight. There was no hiding the horror in the shadows. The makers of Lights Out evidently decided that this was a bad idea and created a movie with the opposite premise. Our monster in this film can’t appear in light—it’s light that causes her to disappear. That premise seems really scary on the surface, but when it comes to a film, it means the audience isn’t going to see a damned thing.

On the surface, I get this decision. Having a creature that you can’t really see or get a close look at is scary, and the film is actually smart enough at one point to create a method for us to see the monster in question. Up to that point, though, this is a movie that lives almost literally in the shadows. Scary for the characters in the narrative, but frustrating for the audience trying to see anything.

Ten Days of Terror!: The White Reindeer

Film: The White Reindeer (Valkoinen peura)
Format: Streaming video from AMC+ on Fire!

Lycanthropy is a pretty common trope not just in movies, but in culture. We tend to think “werewolves” when the idea comes up, but different cultures have different animals that evil people turn into. The DC character King Shark is based off the Hawaiian legend of Nanaue, a man who could turn into a shark. Not all of the were-creatures are as viscerally threatening as a wolf or a shark. Case in point is The White Reindeer (Valkoinen peura), a Finnish horror film where the title character is a shapeshifter.

The White Reindeer is very much a folk tale, the sort of story that feels like it was told around a fire at night by Laplanders herding reindeer. A girl is born to a Finnish family. Her mother Maarita (Mirjami Kuosmanen) names her Pirita (also eventually played by Mirjami Kuosmanen). It is prophesied that Pirita will become the subject of a great song of the people. Of course, all great tales need a hero, but they also need a villain.