It’s here! It’s Here! The most wonderful time of the year! Yes, folks, we are into October. All this month we are going to bring you some of our staffs favorite creepy, mysterious, and downright scary picks this month. So, without any further delay, onto the picks!
Brooke’s Pick
The Alienist
If you like your shows to be creepy with a Victorian flair, then watch The Alienist on Netflix (if you haven’t already). It does a wonderful job of evoking late 19th century New York. A place almost as dark and gritty as Jack the Ripper’s London around the same time. In fact, that’s pretty much what we’re dealing with here: an American Jack the Ripper (and not that wackadoodle theory about H. H. Holmes being Jack the Ripper, that’s ridiculous). Daniel Brül, Dakota Fanning, and Luke Evans all bring it with excellent performances and the whodunnit will tease you and keep you guessing all the way through. So put on your corset, find your pocket watch, and get creeped out in Victorian style.
Michael’s Pick
Rosemary’s Baby
A young, married couple is starting off their fabulous new life together in a stylish New York City apartment. Their elderly neighbors start getting way too friendly. Much to Rosemary’s dismay, her husband Guy seems to have a warm relationship with the Castavets, and the couple starts bequeathing Rosemary with strange gifts.
After a horrifying nightmare, Rosemary soon learns she is pregnant. Her neighbors recommend a strange doctor who puts her on a bizarre regiment. Soon, it seems as if no one will listen to her and leave her alone—not even her husband. Life gets more horrifying. Then, Rosemary learns the devastating truth behind it all.
This is one of the classic horror films that anyone that calls themselves a scary movie fan should see. In addition to the panic-inducing psychological horror, the conclusion of the movie will leave you dumbstruck. Mia Farrow does a terrific job playing a young woman at her wits’ end.
In addition to the horror, there’s a lot of other themes that make this a timeless classic like religion, feminism, and marriage. This is definitely one to add to your Halloween queue.
Anelise’s Pick
Ice Cream Man
I consume a lot of horror—in a variety of forms—and one of my recent favorite finds has been the comic series Ice Cream Man. If you like unsettling, philosophical reading with eerie art to match, then this series is definitely your speed. To be honest, the most recent issue (#7) was my favorite so far. It captures death and grief and the ending of things so well, and I have not been able to stop thinking about it.
Greg’s Pick
Scream
For most of my teen years, the horror genre was stuff in a bit of a rut. You could only see so many sequels of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Streets before they all meld together. Then in 1996, Wes Craven introduced the world to Scream. It broke all of the rules because the characters knew all of the rules. Despite knowing all of the rules, many of them end up falling to those same rules. If they didn’t, then it wouldn’t be much of a horror movie. For me, the movies that followed we not nearly as good. But Scream did kick off a whole genre of horror in which the characters knew what was coming before it happened. For that reason, Scream is a great movie to start any horror marathon.
