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Halloween Roundup! What's your favorite scary movie?

We asked our panel of Smart People the quintessential question from Scream: What's your favorite scary movie? No one answered with that movie's choice: "Showgirls. Absolutely terrifying."

Elizabeth Donald: Oculus (2014)

I could have gone with so many choices here, because scary movies are my jam. I generally don't go for the torture porn or slashers - Saw just makes me angry and while I'm a sucker for Halloween, I like the stalking creepiness far more than the actual carnage. I will arm-wrestle Jason (below) any day of the week and twice on Sunday over The Exorcist, because I really like horror movies that grab hold of the subconscious, the political and social fears that torment us in the wee hours of the morning, and give them a supernatural face.

If Exorcist was about parents facing the changes of the 1960s through their suddenly-incomprehensible children, then The Purge movies are a conglomeration of all our social and political fears compiled into one. The Haunting of Hill House - a surprisingly good and absolutely not faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson - is about family drama and depression manifested in a haunted house. I don't even need to get into the social politic of Get Out or Us (and Jordan Peele isn't really fond of Us Halloween costumes), because that's been well-discussed everywhere. There's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which has a different permutation in every generation that remakes it), and the Dawn of the Dead remake, which shines far above the original with the single most horrifying opening sequence of any movie ever (as Jason says, #sorrynotsorry). 

But I'm going to go with Oculus, as the movie I find most genuinely frightening and that I desperately want to rewatch this Halloween season. At a certain point even acknowledged classics like Nightmare on Elm Street or Alien lose their fear because I've seen them so many times I know when the killer is going to hop up and go stabbity. While watching Halloween has become a family tradition while we wait for the trick-or-treaters, I can easily go get a snack because I know from the (terrific) John Carpenter music when the next boo is coming.

Oculus rose and fell in 2013, barely noticed by most viewers, and that's a shame. Starring Doctor Who alumna Karen Gillan and Maleficent's Brendan Thwaite (a Brit and an Aussie playing American twentysomethings), it's basically the story of a haunted mirror that ... collects souls? Possesses its owners with homicidal mania? We aren't quite sure, but we know the mirror is bad news.

Mirrors are creepy things, aren't they? They show us the world around us and ourselves, but only a reflection as perceived by the eye. What if what we see in a mirror isn't exactly how it is... or how it's supposed to be? 

Oculus takes that unreality a step further, where we can no longer trust anything we see - and neither can our hapless siblings, trying to solve the mystery of what happened to their parents long ago when the mirror first came to their home. Rory Cochrane (of Argo) and Battlestar Galactica alumna Katee Sackhoff play the doomed parents in flashbacks... or are they? They could easily have devolved into standard-issue horror victims, but Cochrane and Sackhoff manage to make their roles into three-dimensional humans caught somewhere between marital strife, mental illness, domestic violence and demonic possession. Does it seem like that list has a step too far? They bring us there, and it's creepy as hell. 

A combination of excellent actors and the visuals of a perfectly ordinary house with an extraordinary mirror make for a suburban-terror tale that leaves me doubting everything I see, from the apple in my hand to the mirror on the wall. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

 

Jason R. Tippitt: Various

I'm not a huge fan of traditional horror (#sorrynotsorry). I should have realized I had a problem when everyone told me The Exorcist would scare the hell out of me (pun intended) and instead it bored me to tears despite the Max Van Sydowness of it all.

The splatter genre isn't my thing, slasher films make me feel insulted, and torture porn makes me feel dirty but not in a good way. People scare me more than zombies or ghosts or vampires.

My ideal Halloween-season viewing would be something like HBO's excellent Mindhunter television series, which uses a mixture of real characters and composites to re-enact the creation of the FBI's behavioral crimes unit, the people who hunt serial killers (and who came up with that term). Love or hate Bret Easton Ellis, the movie Less Than Zero was a formative movie for me in the 1980s that did more to scare me away from illegal drugs or even underage drinking than any number of hell houses or smashed-up cars parked outside my high school did. It made me care about a group of friends (Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, and Robert Downey Jr.) and grieve as addiction did its worst. Kicking soundtrack, too.

Any production of Hamlet will do -- whether the ghost is a true spirit from the land of the dead or the prince's subconscious, take your pick, the route the young Dane takes is going to end up just as bloody.

Of course, there are always exceptions. The next time I watch Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, my eyes will not be the only ones riveted on the screen. Reading calorie counts -- well, let's not go crazy here. Have a happy Halloween!

 

Jim D. Gillentine: Phantasm (1979)

Made famous because of the flying silver ball that could kill you by drilling into your head and sucking your brains out, the movie became a cult classic and spawned a five-movie film franchise that just recently wrapped up. The movie is about a young boy named Jody trying to deal with the loss of his parents and his recently killed brother. When he sneaks to the funeral to watch, he sees the caretaker of the funeral home pick the coffin up by himself and put it back into the hearse. And thus the mystery starts with Jody trying to find out what is going on in his small town and trying to deal with the possibility of his older brother Mike leaving him with family to find better things in life.

Why is this movie one of my favorite scary movies? I think it has to do with Angus Scrimm, who played the Tall Man, who [redacted for spoilers]. His screen presence was so strong, and you can see that he threw himself into the role with all of his heart and soul.

I watched this movie when I was a young teen, on channel 24 Creature Feature one Saturday night in my room all alone. Because of Scrimm, I had to turn the light on. When he would call to Jody, in that tenebrous voice saying, “BOOOOOOY!” it would send chills down my spine. You never knew what was real and not real. Anything you saw could have been an illusion, and you were always trying to determine if what Jody was dealing with reality or a trick from the Tall Man.

Phantasm also provides me with one of the funniest moments from my teenage years. My brother Lee had a friend staying over one night and I saw that the movie was showing on the late-night Creature Feature again. I bet him and his friend that they couldn’t watch the movie all the way through with the light off. They both scoffed at me and said they could make it. About 30 minutes into the movie, Lee had to go use the bathroom during the commercial break. When he returned, he turned the lamp on before sitting down. I laughed and he promptly told me to shut the f--- up. So thank you to the Tall Man, for scaring me and giving me a good laugh.

 

Honorable mentions:

Jaws (1975) - Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum... 

Jacob's Ladder (1990) - A bereaved Vietnam veteran fights his own mind as he struggles with the death of his son.

The Ring (2002) - Urban legend becomes movie as a journalist investigates a "cursed videotape" that kills the viewer within seven days. Based on the Ringu series in Japan, it was unusual at the time for relying on creep factor rather than the torture porn that was all the rage. 

Twilight Zone, "The Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" - Based on the Ambrose Bierce short story, any further details would be spoilery.

Watcher in the Woods (1980) - An American family moves into a house in England where a girl once disappeared... 

They Live (1988) - Science fiction action thriller... follow the bouncing genres, Roddy Piper is a drifter who acquires magic sunglasses that reveal the world is being run by grotesque alien critters who masquerade as us and use subliminal messages to get us to consume products, breed, etc. 

The Conjuring and Annabelle series - If you can forget that the Warrens were real people and the movies are boolsheet, these are very creepy possession/haunting flicks. 

The Scream series - Envisioned as a send-up of '80s teen slasher flicks, they accidentally reinvigorated the genre by simultaneously satirizing and improving upon them.

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) - An anthropologist chases rumors of a "zombie drug" to Haiti, where he falls deep into black magic and live burial. Starring Bill Pullman, it was loosely based on a nonfiction account by a Harvard anthropologist who delved into zombification folk-medicine practices in Haiti (but was criticized by some of his peers).  

IT - Elizabeth says: I gotta go with the TV series, plus or minus the world's second-silliest fake spider. The kids are amazing (especially the late Jonathan Brandis) and the adults fare pretty well in their fight against the amazing Tim Curry as Pennywise. Nothing against the new crew, which did the best it could with the inexplicable changes made to the script, but I can't be afraid of the buck-toothed New Pennywise. Curry was terrifying just standing by the side of the road, waving with a balloon in hand. 

Copycat (1995) - Sigourney Weaver as an agorophobic profiler and Holly Hunter as a cynical detective team up against a serial killer who copies the various methods of actual serial killers in a suspenseful flick that is as much a tour of the strange psychology of serials as it is making us afraid of them. 

The Omen (1976) - A movie so evil that David Warner plays the good guy.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Hush" - We only allow a few TV episodes on this list or it would be nothing but The Twilight Zone. But "Hush" seems to make everyone's list, as the Gentlemen float in and rip your heart out without offering the release of a scream.

Blair Witch Project (1999) - It either worked for you or it didn't, and if it did, it was a shotgun blast to the head. 

28 Days Later (2002) - A pioneer of the "fast zombie" fun of the early 2000s, Danny Boyle's British take on the zombie subgenre deals with the darkness in human souls as much as the survivalist focus of most zombie flicks. 

Carnival of Souls (1962) - A woman survives a terrible accident, but is drawn to an abandoned carnival. Remade in 1998, but no one saw it. 

The Wicker Man (1973) - A Scottish detective flies to a remote village on reports that a young girl is missing... but no one admits to ever having heard of her, and they have some odd rites... 

Approximately half of the Stephen King oeuvre, including The Shining, which is beloved by Kubrick fans and someday Elizabeth will write her definitive reasoning why the TV miniseries was superior in almost every way, right before she enters witness protection.

Breaking Bad: El Camino

An extended meditative and emotionally satisfying epilogue, quite worthy of the Breaking Bad brand, El Camino feels more like lost pages from the original story.

This Netflix "event" movie reunites fans with Jesse Pinkman (Emmy winner Aaron Paul). In the wake of his dramatic escape from captivity, Jesse must come to terms with his past in order to forge some kind of future.

With El Camino, Vince Gilligan knows what he's doing, and it doesn't take him long to shift everything into higher gears. This is Gilligan operating near the peak of his calibre, and he takes time to fix one of the few crucial things of the show that he didn't get quite right the first time. He reinforces the main theme of Breaking Bad: that none of us know what we are capable of until we are pushed to the limits and our own survival is on the line.

Visceral, ruminative, and totally worth your time, particularly if you are lucky enough to see it on the big screen, El Camino is currently playing at the Chase Park Plaza in St. Louis as well as on Netflix.

 

Rahul Menon was born and raised in New Delhi, India, and currently lives in Illinois. He is an assistant director, screenwriter and occasional actor, as well as a computer science engineer who worked as a software analyst and in advertising and marketing prior to entering the film industry. His screen debut was as screenwriter and assistant director of Saayanna Varthakal (Evening News) in 2018. He is currently pursuing a masters degree at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Facebook, Instagram, IMDB.

Roundtable: Joker is no laughing matter

This weekend, the CultureGeek Roundtable pinned on the squirting flowers and went to see Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips. Here's what our panel had to say.

 

Rahul Menon

When you hand him the Oscar, can you introduce him as Joker?

Joker is what you get when you have a mediocre, overbearing director standing on the shoulders of one of the greatest actors of our time.

I've heard the audience and few critics say that this movie does a bad job of making us sympathize with the devil, and I have to completely disagree with them, because I feel this is more of a piece that's showing us how or why that devil came to be.

The portrayal of violence has been a controversial topic of discussion, for months now, even before the movie released! My two cents? It doesn't have as much as violence as John Wick or Anna or Ready or Not or Liam Neeson's Cold Pursuit.

The film is a psychologically rich portrait of a mentally ill loner that just happens to take place in a world that will one day yield a cowl-wearing billionaire vigilante. It lays out this life in decline and dares us to watch how it turns out. It works much better as a singular character study than as a broader sociopolitical drama. And regardless of where you will personally sit in reaction to its material, the fact it's inspiring conversation is an achievement in itself, and is nothing less than admirable in my opinion. I feel that the less you think about Joker as a comic book movie, the more you'll like it. I would always prefer movies that make you want to have discussions over the disposable ones that come out every other month.

The movie definitely is a calculated risk on WB's part, and I really hope it works for them, as that would open doors for more R-rated "superhero" films from the studio. It would make them stand out from all the Marvel films, which will (hopefully) hit saturation soon, now that the grimace has turned into ashes. I imagine how the movie would've played out if there wasn't a commercial imposition that the main character has to become the Joker at the end, or may be. WB could've gone the M. Night Shyamalan Split route and kept the entire Joker thing under wraps, calling the movie Arthur or something.

If only Todd Phillips' movie had the depth or clarity of vision to match up to its star's performance. But even with all its negatives, Joker stands out as a formidable and twisted film, both primarily because of Joaquin Phoenix. He isn't so much an actor as a moral contortionist in this origin story that features too many overt nods to the Scorsese movies from the 70's and 80's. Phoenix has plumbed depths so deep and given us such a complex, brutal and physically transformative performance that it would be no surprise to see him take home a statuette or two come award season. Heath Ledger definitely would have been proud, if he was able to witness this.

And with that, we have the clown who fights Batman as the most coveted role in Hollywood.

Jim D. Gillentine

In the latest movie from Warner Brothers under the DC banner, director Todd Phillips tries to show one of the possible ways that a man might snap and become a villain.

In Joker we are introduced to Arthur Fleck, a party clown living with mental illness and a condition of uncontrollable laughter when he is stressed. He tries to care for his mother, hold down his job, and stay balanced in a city that is suffering from crime, corruption, and a nasty garbage workers strike. As one bad thing after another happens to him, he begins to slip into madness, and we see the results of his fall.

Is Arthur Fleck a victim of his environment? Is he a madman that should be feared and we hope gets killed in some way? I really don’t know, to be honest. The movie has shown me one thing: Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is powerful, frightening, and one of the best if not the best performances this year. He at least deserves to get an Oscar nomination, if not win the bloody thing.

This movie isn’t your usual comic book movie. There are no crazy CGI special effects, no super powers, nothing magical. Just a gritty, dirty city and one man’s journey to become a villain. There are a couple of Batman Easter eggs here and there if you look for them, but this isn’t Batman’s story. This is Arthur's story, so don’t expect to see a superhero to show up to save the day.

 

Elizabeth Donald

If you removed the word Joker from this movie, and renamed the Waynes as the Jones family, this movie would probably be shed of many of the complaints about it. But it is not a movie that should be ignored.

It's not a superhero movie, nor the kind of film that one usually associates with comic books. That's partly because most people think of comic books as inherently fantasy, magic skills and funky devices and spandex costumes with awesome back spin kicks and flying - even from fans. That, of course, is only one level of comics, a medium that has illuminated depths and darkness far beyond the grittiest crime drama. I said when The Dark Knight premiered that if it were not a Batman movie and was billed as a mob drama, it would have taken home best picture. I had that same sense watching Joker, that this movie could have been billed as any crime drama outside of Gotham City, and it would be viewed very differently.

Joker is not best picture. It has many flaws, pacing among the worst of them - for a good portion of the film, I found myself hoping it would hurry up and get to the point. It has created an indescribably vicious urban hell that is basically the worst nightmare of the early 1980s brought to celluloid. As we walk the streets of Gotham with Arthur Fleck, we are uncomfortable watching the awful things that happen to him, because we know there can't be a happy ending for the bad guy - and he's the bad guy, right? 

We should be uncomfortable. Joker is the most political movie I have seen in years, a movie centered not on spandex and fisticuffs, but on a deeply divided, inequitable society. The things happening to Arthur are the same things that happen in our actual society, on the abuse of the different, the harshness of the streets, the selfishness of many humans, the cruelty of those in power. It is disheartening to watch, because we know these problems and that they have no easy solutions. 

But what exactly is the politic of Joker? From one perspective, one could view it as a mockery of the resistance movement, that the poor and angry 99 percent are sheep being manipulated by a madman into violence over nothing. "Those who oppose this unjust establishment aren't given a specific ideology, just explosively violent rage," writes Matthew Rozsa of Salon. "It offers no solutions beyond 'burn it all down.'"

From another perspective, it could be viewed as a warning to the 1 percent: the consolidation of power and money among the very few is enraging those who fight and die in the streets, and there will come a boiling point. Thomas Wayne is the walking personification of privilege here, spouting nonsense about how wealth just means you worked harder than the rabble, and speaks of the protests against him with such disgust and dismissiveness that in another decade, I would wonder how he could strive to be elected to anything. There is a sense that the wealthy of Gotham City live in a carefully protected bubble, and Arthur pierces that bubble in the most violent way possible. 

Rozsa hit on another of the major concerns: that Joker could be seen as a dangerous manifesto that could compel those who struggle with violent tendencies to commit acts of violence. And I must admit, it struck my mind that as much as Joker was uncomfortably real and awful to me, to someone of a similar mindset as Arthur, it could be quite the inspiration. 

Is it responsible to create works of art that feed the darkest of impulses? Conversely, is it responsible to whitewash such art to the point where we can simply pretend worlds like Arthur's do not exist? These are questions for far wiser minds than mine. 

One of the major concerns many fans had going into this film was that the Joker has always been an enigma. Any attempt to codify an origin story for the Joker is met with disdain and/or backpedaled quickly out of existence. The Heath Ledger variation played on that very mystery, with Ledger's Joker giving a different tale to everyone he meets about the source of his scars.

Fortunately, this was one area that I felt Joker handled well. There are multiple possible backgrounds for Arthur, and we are never sure which is the real one. It makes a mastery of the unreliable narrator structure, with repeated instances where we are unsure if the events unfolding are real, or merely Arthur's imagination. Even the ending puts the film itself in an entirely new perspective and leads us to question everything we've seen. For some audiences, this will be enormously frustrating; for others, it makes the film complete. Therefore it's difficult to know whether to recommend this movie, as it will definitely be one of those "love it or hate it" films. 

One thing no one can dispute: Joaquin Phoenix has turned in a career-level performance. His physical contortions are matched and surpassed only by the emotional gamut he runs as this deeply damaged human attempting, in his words, to find joy. Phoenix is acclaimed for his method acting, and one can only imagine the depths to which he had to reach to find this particular character. Joker is more of a character study than a story, with the wider background of the crime-ridden, disastrous dumpster fire that is Gotham City as mere background to illuminating Arthur. 

Is the Joker a born psychopath who found his way to becoming the Clown Prince of Crime, or is he a troubled, damaged man pushed into horrible acts by the torment of the city? Joker has no answers for us, not even in the form of a bat.