Werewolf by Night (2022)

I had not heard of this Disney+ special or even the Marvel antihero of the same name until I perused the Halloween section of Disney+. Among the movies I hadn't seen, this was the only title to grab me. I realize its status as a movie is a stretch at a mere 55 minutes, but it felt long enough to me.

The Bloodstone is a gem that weakens and angers monsters but strengthens monster hunters. Now that longtime wielder Ulysses Bloodstone has died (so much for the Wikipedia claim that he's immortal), widow Verussa (Harriet Sansom Harris) hosts a contest to see who will own it next. Five accomplished hunters plus Elsa (Laura Donnelly), not the Arendelle queen but Ulysses' daughter by another woman, are assigned to kill a Lovecraftian creature trapped in a labyrinth. Elsa cares only about an inheritance from a father with whom she did not see eye to eye. One of the hunters, Jack (Gael García Bernal), secretly wants to free the monster, for reasons of kinship. Yep, it doesn't take long to guess he's the title character, and no, nobody calls him "Wolfman Jack."

It Follows (2014)

This was the first Halloweeny title I found on my Netflix list. It also happened to be leaving Netflix today. Sorry if you wanted to see it there but read this too late.

College undergrad Jay (Maika Monroe) has casual sex with "Hugh" (Jake Weary), only to learn that he's not whom he claimed to be and has dishonorable intentions toward her. He forcefully conveys that he has been stalked by a killer monster invisible to everyone it hasn't targeted yet, and the only way he knows to get it off his trail, at least temporarily, is to have sex so it goes after the partner instead. He does want her to survive too, if only because the monster will turn its attention back to him otherwise. Most of the movie consists of Jay escaping the monster, often with help from her true friends, who vary in how much they believe her. And yes, she keeps the pass-it-on option in mind.

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

The only Godzilla movie I'd seen before was the 1954 original, which my dad and I found surprisingly serious. Most of the rest sounded schlocky, and Pacific Rim confirmed that I had little interest in kaiju. But GMO (heh, appropriate initials) got such a warm reception that I had planned to see it in a theater, only to discover that I'd waited too long. Once I saw that it was on Netflix, I pounced.

The story is really about Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a World War II pilot who first cheats his way out of a kamikaze mission and then is too scared to shoot the titular mutant dinosaur during an island rampage. He goes home to face poverty in a bombed Tokyo neighborhood where neighbors tend to blame his cowardice, tho one Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) and an orphan in her care, Akiko (Sae Nagatani), shack up with him to improve their chances. He gets a job sweeping for naval mines -- and then sees that Godzilla has gotten even larger in the wake of Bikini Atoll experiments. As further devastation ensues, Shikishima and his compatriots (among them Hidetaka Yoshioka, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Yuki Yamada, and Munetaka Aoki) can see that the world's governments aren't helping, so they take it upon themselves to try to kill the beast.

Halloweentown (1998)

I hadn't heard of this when it was new, probably because it was showing only on the Disney Channel. Only now that I've seen it on a couple lists of favorites to stream this time of year did I take any interest, and still not much. Mainly, I wanted something short and readily available to kick off my October-appropriate reviews.

Every year, single mother Gwen (Judith Hoag) forbids her children from going out on Halloween night, but her mother, Agatha (Debbie Reynolds), pays a visit the kids welcome much more than Gwen does. What makes this year different is that Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown), 13, overhears an argument between the adults and learns that they are a family of natural-born witches, tho Gwen insists on raising them as mundanely as their late non-warlock father would. Furthermore, Agatha comes from a hidden town populated with all sorts of beings most humans don't welcome -- and its citizens have been turning suddenly hostile and vanishing to parts unknown. When Gwen refuses to help solve that case, Marnie sneaks aboard the magic bus that Agatha catches, along with Marnie's preteen brother, Dylan (Joey Zimmerman), and seven-year-old sister, Sophie (Emily Roeske).

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

I enjoyed the first two entries in this trilogy more than most viewers, but I couldn't be sure that I'd like the threequel. Some posters show the vampires at the beach by day, suggesting excessive deviation from the previous setup. Interestingly, while IMDb votes reflect diminishing returns for the series, Rotten Tomatoes reports a gradual climb. I didn't dare check it out in a theater and might never have gotten around to streaming it, but after my dissatisfaction with an art film, I needed...well, a vacation.

Dracula (Adam Sandler) appreciates the many happily married couples at his hotel, not least his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and son-in-law Johnny (Andy Samberg), but they make him miss his long-gone wife. Mavis thinks his stress comes from being too busy for family time, so she arranges a vacation on a cruise ship that caters to monsters but still has a place for humans like Johnny. Indeed, Captain Ericka (Kathryn Hahn) is human -- and immediately sparks the romantic interest of Drac, of all monsters. He's concerned that this is not what Mavis had in mind for their trip. He should be more concerned with how Ericka really feels....

Tremors (1990)

One glance at the poster told me to expect something pretty trashy. It looked like a Jaws knockoff minus the water. The movie even had Land Sharks as a working title. Nevertheless, it gets occasional mention to this day, including as an inspiration for part of Stranger Things. It seemed as good a choice as any to round out my October viewings.

Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are on the verge of leaving the fictitious ghost town of Perfection, Nevada, to look for less lowly job opportunities. They meet a visiting grad student, Rhonda (Finn Carter), who wonders about some irregular seismograph readings. Then they discover some extraordinary deaths outside town. The cause: rapidly burrowing worm-like giants, which the citizens eventually dub "graboids." Between rock slides and downed power lines, it's too late to leave the area or get outside help before the graboids reach the rest.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I don't normally watch movies with middling ratings across the three major sites, especially in genres that aren't among my favorites. But this one did spawn quite a few sequels, launch some fledgling careers, and make #9 on a Nostalgia Critic list of best recent Halloween movies/series. Besides, [REC] taught me that even without originality, a "found-footage" flick can scare me.

The story begins somewhat in medias res in 2006, when Micah (Micah Sloat) buys a camera and tripod in response to cohabiting girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston) telling him that strange things happen around her at night, supposedly thanks to a malevolent spirit. He doesn't really expect to catch anything spectacular -- maybe he hopes to reassure her that it's all in her head -- but as weeks pass, the signs get harder and harder to dismiss as natural or harmless occurrences. When they invite vaunted ghost expert Dr. Fredrichs (Mark Fredrichs), he soon declares it the work of a demon instead, and the demonologist he recommends is unavailable for now.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

I wasn't sure I could still enjoy mockumentaries, as the last one I did was A Mighty Wind in 2003. Sacha Baron Cohen struck me as largely tasteless, and shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation turned me off in no time -- something about the combination of social awkwardness and shaky cameras, I guess. Was it them, or had I changed? Regardless, a focus on vampires promised something different.

Netflix describes the theme as three vampire housemates, but for most of the movie, four or five share the house. These five are all men who somehow wound up in Wellington, New Zealand. Don't ask me why they agreed to be filmed when they otherwise try to keep their vampirism a secret. By agreement, the cameramen carry crosses just in case, but vampires aren't the only supernatural danger to turn up....

Kwaidan (1964)

Yup, another 1960s horror set in feudal Japan already. But there are key differences, starting with the fact that this piece is a compilation of four stories, with no recurring characters between them. I hadn't seen a film like that since before I started this blog.

Might as well summarize them in order of presentation. In "Black Hair," a samurai gets a divorce against his wife's pleas, not because there's anything wrong with their relationship, but because he's seen an opportunity to marry into wealth; as you can imagine, he lives to regret it. In "The Woman in the Snow," a frosty demoness spares a man's life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her, which gets tempting when he falls for a reminiscent beauty. In "Hoichi the Earless," a blind shamisen player gets unknowingly solicited by ghosts to play a ballad about the battle that killed them, prompting his caretakers to fear for his place in the land of the living. In "In a Cup of Tea," a samurai sees a face clearly not his own reflection in (wait for it) a cup of tea, and his reaction does not please the owner of that face....

Army of Darkness (1992)

It's unusual for me to watch a threequel (well, third entry, anyway) before either of its predecessors. Perhaps I was tempted by the title, which suggests a big departure from the unappealingly named The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. I've mentioned my concerns that director Sam Raimi tends toward more grotesque violence than I like, but I heard that this outing was relatively comedic.

What I had missed was the setting. Apparently, tampering with the mysterious forces associated with the Necronomicon tome not only arouses the wrath of the undead; it can open a time portal. Protagonist Ash (Bruce Campbell) gives us a brief synopsis of his past troubles to explain how he came to be chained up in the Middle Ages. Fortunately, his modern technology, knowledge, and general badassery get him out of immediate trouble and into good graces. Unfortunately, he's not quite sharp enough to reuse the tome properly. Soon he brings danger to the castle of one Lord Arthur (not necessarily the king; Ash estimates the year 1300) and must decide whether he cares enough, particularly for one Lady Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), to help rather than flee.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

I confess I did not really watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, let alone the movie. Only with Firefly did I become a mild fan of Joss Whedon. It made sense for him to return to writing horror, with past comrade Drew Goddard, for a bit; in other genres, he loves to kill at least one of the heroes eventually.

If the title sounds awfully generic for horror, that's deliberate. It's no spoiler to say that this movie combines dozens of classics and not-so-classics of the genre...with The Truman Show. A secret, possibly government agency is basically making a scare-by-number horror flick featuring five young adults (the only actor among them you're likely to know is Chris Hemsworth), who thought it'd be fun to camp off the grid, unaware that they're being manipulated to engineer their deaths...at first. We see plenty of scenes at HQ, where the humans (among them Bradley Whitford and Sigourney Weaver) seem like ordinary people aside from their lack of sympathy for the victims. How could they do this? Well...

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)

One of my most viewed posts on this blog compares Hotel Transylvania and its two rivals at the time. In the present review, I'm not inclined to compare HT2 to anything besides HT1, but feel free to skim the old post before continuing.

The sequel begins with the wedding of Dracula's daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) to human Jonathan (Andy Samberg), in the formerly all-monster hotel that has grown friendly to humans. In a matter of minutes on screen, they have a son about to turn five (funny I should watch this right after Room) named Dennis, or "Dennisovich" as Dracula likes to call him. It turns out that "Papa Drac" (Adam Sandler) has not entirely gotten over his bias against humans: He won't entertain the likelihood that his progeny doesn't take after him in powers. As a result, the formerly overprotective father has become an underprotective grandfather, dangerously hoping to summon Dennis's latent potential. Dennis and Jonathan may be easygoing about this fixation, but Mavis will move them away from the hotel if it seems necessary.

The Babadook (2014)

Somehow I had thought of this Australian horror as a potential companion piece to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, probably just because it happened to be out around the same time, but it so happens that both are the first features of female directors. TB has the distinction of a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and a rather middling 6.9 on IMDb. I think I know why, but first, as usual, a synopsis:

After seven years, Amelia still isn't dealing well with widowhood. Her son Samuel (born the day her husband died) adds to her stress in many ways: always speaking his mind, practicing dangerous magic tricks and stunts, and believing in -- and preparing for -- monsters. The last behavior becomes more pronounced after she reads to him from The Babadook, an alleged children's book of mysterious origin, about a sort of bogeyman named for his distinctive style of knocking at the door. As the days pass, it gets increasingly hard for Amelia to dismiss Samuel's fears as unfounded....

Triple Feature: ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, and Hotel Transylvania

Boy, the next movie I saw after Vampyr also had vampires but otherwise couldn't be more different if it tried. I considered reviewing HT on its own, but I had recently seen the other two participants in its Hollywood "duel" and felt like talking about them too. You may ask, "Why bother with comparisons instead of just reviewing a film on its own merits?" Well, not everyone has the resources to make watching all three feasible, so why not help weigh the options?

To qualify for a duel, movies need to come out around the same time with similar themes -- in this case, comical PG family animations focusing on the undead circa Halloween 2012. At present, PN and FW are exactly tied on both the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes. HT does marginally better on IMDb but much worse on RT, as you might expect from the one that didn't get nominated for Best Animated Feature. I'd rather not discuss box office figures. I'll start with synopses.