The Scariest Things

Well, that was fun! 2024, though it started slow, managed to pack in quite a few worthy films. The six critics of The Scariest Things debated who deserved a spot in the top 10, and there was a wide spread of picks. There were a few standouts most of us agreed to, but to find out, you'll have to listen to the podcast!

Horror Musicals: When they work they are next-level works of art. It's some of the worst material ever created when they don't work. Eric cajoled/dragged Liz and Mike to participate in evaluating one of his favorite sub-genres, the Horror Musical. A spotify soundtrack list is included in this post for you to hear the songs from the films we discuss in Ep 191.

Once upon a time, the major broadcast television networks used to produce feature films for their movies of the week. Many of the great made-for-tv horror movies have found new audiences with restored Blu-Ray issuances and streaming options, giving some long-lost classics a new lease on viewing life.

Cinephiles and physical media collectors, this episode is for you! The Criterion Collection has been the premiere distributor of cinematic excellence for decades. Did they find room for horror? Yes, they did! It is a very select group of films, but you might be surprised at some of the inclusions. Here are our picks from their horror library.

★★★.5 out of ★★★★★ Intensity 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 The Letter sumptuously recreates the era of H.P. Lovecraft's 1930's New England. This languidly paced mystery feels like a Call of Cthulhu adventure, set in an elaborate mansion, and stocked with scheming characters with old grudges. This little indie film has big aspirations and ambitions but could have used a little streamlining. Prepare yourselves for lots of exposition and dark musings in period dialogue, while appreciating the fine details and rich textures.

Aaron Moorhead is one half of the prolific writing/acting/directing duo of Moorhead and Benson. The acclaimed duo produced some of the past decade's most mind-bending cosmic horror movies. It was only appropriate that he would serve as the keynote speaker at this year's H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and he took some time out of his busy festival schedule to talk with Eric Li about his Cosmic theories and theses.

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Cosmic Horror meets found footage in the parasomnia-infused Dream Eater. Documentarian Mallory and her boyfriend Alex retreat to a snowy cabin, celebrating Alex's 30th birthday. There, they hope to relax and get relief from Alex's violent sleepwalking episodes. Unfortunately, fate would have it that something ancient and evil is behind his psychological traumas, and Mallory struggles to make sense of it before it destroys them both.

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 The Daemon was a perfect vessel to be unleashed at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. The debut feature from Devino and Yohe taps into all of the key tropes of Cosmic Horror: coping with inner demons, battling psychoses and grief, dreams from the underworld, and elder gods rising from the deep. Add in some wonderfully grotesque body horror and you get a banger of a movie. Plus: we get Azathoth. If you know, you know.

Let's turn back the clock to revisit an underrated year in horror movies: 1999. It's certainly a good time to put 1999 in perspective for its silver anniversary. In hindsight, this was a hinge year. Many old horror themes were getting swept away as new genre tropes emerged.

It has become a Summer tradition: The Scariest Things joins forces with our Podcasting sisters from the East Coast, The Jersey Ghouls, to do some summer school homework. This year's assignment from Liz was to spin the Wheel of Misfortune and receive a Horror Movie Studio. We then were to report back on their history and legacy, along with some recommendations. It was an education for us, and we're passing it along to you!

When considering foreign language horror, do not sleep on Spanish productions. It's not usually the first stop in horror, with French Extremism, Italian Giallo, and J-Horror often getting the most notoriety. There are some legendary titles from Latin America that you should consider. In Episode 186, the Scariest Things gives you nine titles worthy of a watch.

Oddity is the scariest horror movie of 2024. It crushed the film festival circuit, drawing acclaim at SXSW, Overlook, BiFan, and Fantasia Fest. The director, Damian McCarthy, took some time to talk with The Scariest Things to tell us about how he crafted the surprise horror hit of the year.

The 2024 Thingy Awards! It is time for the Mid-Year Scariest Things grand celebration: Once again, we surveyed and received votes from our favorite fans and industry contacts to determine the best horror movies of last year. If there were a couple of themes from last year: Possession and Australia. We got a lot of both in 2023, and it was GOOD. It was one of the best years for horror in the past ten years!

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★ Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 In Ghost Game, a trio of mischief-makers stakes out an old manor with a dark legend surrounding it. Their goal: stay in the house without the new residents discovering them. Internal relationship conflicts, a disturbed resident family, and the potential of a supernatural haunt upend their Ghost Game efforts. A solid cat-and-mouse thriller with fun haunted house tropes propels this film, which was the centerpiece of the Portland Horror Film Festival.

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity: 🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸, with sexual assault trigger warnings. DID I?, the winner of the Portland Horror Film Festival's Goule D'Or (Best Feature in Festival) Award, takes an honest approach to the cruelty and ramifications of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The psychological thriller invests its time with Genevieve, a bookish junior editor at a publishing company who struggles with her alter ego, Stevie, who is a bit of a wild child. Her traumas are buried deep, and it puts several new wrinkles into the good/evil dichotomy that films that used what used to be called multiple personality disorder under the microscope.

★★★★ out of ★★★★★ Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for copious comic gore The Invisible Raptor is a crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. This spoof of Jurassic Park flips the script on the behemoth tentpole franchise by not trying to do digital dinosaurs at all. Instead, The team behind The Invisible Raptor did the monster movie without the monster, and it worked brilliantly. This is a meta-movie for the Easter Egg enthusiasts, but be warned, there is so much blood and shit in this movie that it isn't for the squeamish or the kiddos! (Though the twelve-year-old me would LOVE this movie.)

It was a dark and stormy night! Prepare to enter the foggy moor with The Scariest Things as we discuss the genre's roots in Gothic Horror, the ornate and narratively complex origins of horror film.

It has become something of a Hollywood crutch. The cynical amongst us consider prequels, sequels, and reboots to be lazy storytelling. Franchise horror comes in all forms. When obvious profits are predicted, big-budget studio films and straight-to-streaming B-movies fall into the same formula. Rinse, repeat, and rinse again. We think we can do this a little better.

At the Overlook Film Festival, The Scariest Things caught up with up-and-coming director John Rosman, who was on hand to present his debut feature film New Life. This thriller was a sleeper surprise at the festival. A political thriller that morphs into a toe-curling body horror show halfway through. The film is in limited theatrical release and can be streamed online now!

Spooky Time Episode 27: The Wheel of Misfortune is back, and so are The Jersey Ghouls!