The season is upon us and Halloween is only a couple of weeks away. Now is the time to decorate your home, pick out an outfit for the evening and watch some horrific Halloween films. No I don’t mean the Michael Myers franchise, I mean the films that fill your soul with spiders and cobwebs, making your skin crawl and your nerves tingle.
This list will consist of the five movies that embody the spirit of Halloween the best. Honorable mentions include A Nightmare Before Christmas, which has plenty of Halloween elements such as Halloween town itself and a skeleton as its protagonist. However the story focuses on Christmas much more than Halloween. If anything it’s a wonderful Christmas classic, but not a great Halloween film.
My second honorable mention is slasher flicks. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Chucky, and any other slasher film won’t be featured on this list. My reasoning is that most of these have little to do with Halloween and a lot of these are not good films. I considered putting Halloween one on this list, but re-watching it I don’t get the Halloween spirit. Instead all I can think about is how muddled and poorly handled its sequels were,
The last honorable mention is Batman Begins. Although many will view it as a Batman film and nothing more, the element of fear brought on by the antagonist Johnathan Crane aka The Scarecrow sets an eerie mood similar to Halloween. The visuals also provide a dark and creepy fall atmosphere. The reason it doesn’t make the list is simply because it’s not actually set during Halloween and it strays away from that tone throughout the movie till the end. With that being said, here are the five best Halloween movies.
5. Creep
In 2014 Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice collaborated and released a film titled Creep. This movie follows Josef, a cancer ridden man with only weeks left to live, and a camera man named Aaron who was hired to film a documentary similar to what Michael Keaton did in the film My Life. Josef begins to share deep secrets as his bond grows with Aaron, and the truth is slowly uncovered. This is a very simplistic movie, with only two characters in it and five locations in total. The atmosphere created bone chilling and with Josef’s odd quirks and moments of comedy allow for an interesting character study. The story is set during fall ,mostly at night. This makes it more eerie and will creep out any viewer. I’d also recommend its sequel, Creep 2 which is a fantastic continuation of the first film and further develops Josef’s broken psyche.
4. Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Sleepy Hollow: In 1999 Tim Burton adapted Washington Irvin’s classic tale of Sleepy Hollow, with Johnny Depp as the titular character Ichabod Crane. The film uses a darker color pallet, consisting of blues, blacks, browns, and grays. The only bright color in the film is the red blood that splatters as the horsemen remove his victims’ heads. The setting is as Halloween as it gets, fall weather, Gothic buildings and props, and pumpkins all over the place. Burton adapted the source material in a fun way that stays faithful without being a carbon copy of the book. The movie never takes itself too seriously, but it never becomes too silly to where you can invest into the story. Any Tim Burton film from the nineties could have made this list, as he had mastered his craft of Gothic horror mixed with comedy at this time.
3. Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
I previously mentioned that I wouldn’t be putting any slashers on this list. However the original Nightmare on Elm Street relies more on the psychological and supernatural elements in the story, rather than gore and mindless killings. Freddy Kruger portrayed by the always fantastic Robert Englund is what turns an overall good film into a classic. Freddy isn’t his typically comedic self, he’s more sinister in the original movie with only a few well timed quips placed throughout. He acts as more of a boogeyman rather than a dream demon with unlimited powers. The kills are all great and incredibly memorable, especially Johnny Depp being dragged into his bed, followed by a fountain of blood spraying out of a hole in his mattress. Fun fact this is Depp’s first feature film. It just has more going on compared to a Halloween or Friday the 13th, Freddy is a fully fleshed out character and so is Nancy the main character of the film. She’s written intelligently and is not a damsel in distress. With its memorable kills, Freddy’s fantastic showing, and Wes Craven’s strong visuals and dialogue this film places number three on the list.
2. The Exorcist (1973)
When The Exorcist was initially released audiences dubbed it the scariest film ever made. The previous holder to this title was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, but with the combination of makeup used on Reagan (a possessed child) and the film’s special effects put it above any horror film that came before it. The gross showcase of Reagan decomposing throughout the film along with the horrific voice the demon slowly creeps out of her makes it bone chilling and heart breaking. The main character Father Damien Karras is the best part of the film, his journey from being a simple priest, to a man hell bent on saving Reagan’s soul at any cost is incredibly fascinating and will have you glued to your screen. The ending of the film alone would place this at number 2 on the list and combined with the fantastic characters, effects, and atmosphere make it a shoe in. The Exorcist is the gold standard for films about possession, and it doesn’t smother its audience with religious over tones which us an impressive feet.
1. Universal Horror Pictures
My number one pick is an incredibly big cop out, and I’m not apologizing at all for it. The Universal Horror pictures include Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932) and all the sequels that followed. So my number one film is actually 20 films compacted into one category. However I think it’s valid considering they’re all classics in their own right and they all personify the spirit of Halloween. I’m also lumping in Young Frankenstein (1974), which isn’t a universal horror property but still takes plenty of inspiration from it. It also has Gene Wilder in it with his best performance as Fredrick Frankenstein (that’s pronounced Frankensteen) so I have to put it at the number one spot. Any of the Universal films are perfect for this time of year and they all hold up beautifully decades later.