This surprise box office hit had a teeny-tiny budget of only $320,000, making it the most profitable independent film release ever at the time. Director John Carpenter skillfully staged the scares by recreating what he loved about scary carnival rides, with some touches of techniques introduced by Alfred Hitchcock for good measure. He particularly understood the key ingredient to making a villain so scary: never getting a good look at the attacker, which explains why Michael Myers continues scaring audiences to this day. Yet there’s another ingredient to his success as a villain: he’s not in faraway castles or mountains like Dracula or Frankenstein, he haunts an average American suburb.
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John Carpenter knew how to utilize these components to churn up some solid screams, and complemented them with an intense musical score he wrote and performed himself. These efforts ended up giving birth to the slasher film, which in full honesty may just be a bad thing because of the painful genre cliches they started. Not to mention the sequels that erupted afterward paved the way for a groan-worthy franchise that, like Michael Myers himself, refuses to die. Even then, Halloween made the necessary push by enlightening the concept of the horror movie monster, which at the time hadn’t been done for a while. Yet more importantly, this defining feature film of the Halloween season opened the door for many independent filmmakers who needed the push to get noticed.

R (DLSNV)
Horror
1 hr. 31 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Inspired by a real condition where people die while having a nightmare, A Nightmare on Elm Street helped define the slasher movie with its innovative use of surreal special effects. The clever spectacles all were done under the constraints of time and budget, yet still made tremendous use of their resources to send shivers down the audience’s spine. Two of the characters’ deaths were filmed inside a revolving set, and it made possible the horrific sight of blood cascading upward from a bed onto the ceiling. There are more visual tricks to explore the possibilities of a killer who can use any means possible to attack his victims in their nightmares by bending reality, be it by turning the stairs into goop or by chopping off his own fingers.
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Yet none of this would have been nearly as impactful without the iconic design of Freddy Krueger, a villain whose appearance was inspired by a scary drunk man Wes Craven ran into as a kid. With his red and green striped sweater that’s meant to hurt the eye, and with his burnt skin made to resemble pepperoni pizza, Freddy Krueger has become one of the greatest horror villains ever. Wes Craven’s career-defining film right here may be just as flawed as any slasher movie, but it sure as heck set the gold standard for what any scary movie must do to make the audience feel a bit queasy!

R (DLSV)
Horror
1 hr. 31 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Of all the slasher films that started their own endless franchises, Scream is perhaps the best of all of them. With its self-aware storytelling that cleverly mixes humor and terror, it leads to no surprise that the movie’s original title was going to be, "Scary Movie.” Its plot revolves around a bunch of teenagers who love scary movies and ultimately are forced to face the very scenarios from the genre they claim to know so much about, and on the way, every cliché of the slasher genre is addressed. In fact, the script is so self-aware that director Wes Craven even includes critical references to himself and the movies he’s directed!
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Yet this film also works as an excellent showcase of generating fear, as established by the famous opening scene where Drew Barrymore’s character is the victim of a tense phone call. The rest of the cast was full of actors who were well-known on television until starring in this movie helped launch their careers on the big screen. But the real star of this genre-defining piece of entertainment is its chilling soundtrack, which kicks up the adrenaline as it turns the suburban setting into a massive house of horror. It’s hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t get the creeps from watching Wes Craven’s masterpiece, a movie that made future slasher films lean more toward the real world instead of the supernatural.

R (DLSV)
Horror/Thriller
1 hr. 51 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Jordan Peele’s Frankenstein contraption of classic sci-fi, horror, and Western tropes is an unforgettable critique of humanity’s addiction to spectacle, while also being a smorgasbord of cinematic tricks that challenge the imagination of future directors. These tricks aren’t just limited to makeup prosthetic effects or recreating the look of a cheesy 1990s sitcom, they also include alien sound effects inspired by echolocation. More impressive still are the scenes set at night; they were done in a day-for-night approach, where the scenes were filmed in the day and then fixed in post-production to look like nighttime, but unlike other techniques, this movie had two cameras right next to each other being used at the same time: one infrared, one color, and then the two shots were combined to create a realistic night look.
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Besides just the new filming techniques, Nope is also a generally exceptional piece of filmmaking. Almost 40% of it was done on film IMAX cameras, which makes the beautiful desert views feel even more like the classic Westerns from the 1950s. Rather than quick cuts, the editing style actually lingers a long time on the scary moments, masterfully utilizing the art of anticipation. It all proves why Peele is the new Quentin Tarantino: an unapologetic director who turns his filmmaking style into his own genre and isn’t afraid to twist what’s familiar with the underbellies of what’s unfamiliar.

R (DLV)
Horror/Sci-fi
2 hr. 10 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

The Academy of Motion Pictures did not nominate Us for anything, yet they at least should have recognized it for the miraculous sets created by production designer Ruth De Jong. The vacation house alone had so much thought behind it, with art décor featured from both African American painters and local Santa Cruz artists, each spanning back as far as the 1980s. There was also the underground tunnel, where the walls came apart to reveal green screens behind them, that way, the hallway could be extended for specific shots. In addition, so much thought went into this underground tunnel with every object placed intentionally to decorate the set while providing the key details of the backstory.
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Then there’s the maze, which is full of spooky details connected to other motifs throughout the film, and that includes the façade. When in the 1980s setting, the maze has a politically incorrect Native American mascot on the front, then in the present-day setting, it no longer has the Native American. Besides just being a visually stunning masterpiece, Jordan Peele’s second feature film is remarkable for how it depicts a healthy Black family in a circumstance where they’re treated like a traditional White American family. His approaches to the horror genre further solidify why Jordan Peele is one of the most influential directors of today, seeing how much he’s proven with what audiences will enjoy.

R (DLV)
Horror/Comedy
1 hr. 56 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

It was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, a surprise blockbuster that experimented with what can be considered entertainment in a post #BlackLivesMatter world. Peele got the idea to make this movie when everyone started to believe racism was over after Obama became president, and this idea resulted in a motion picture that provides commentary on serious topics while still being fun entertainment for the masses. Peele pulls that off with the ways he orchestrates the audience’s fear; there are the familiar cinematic elements such as shaky cam, dark lighting, extreme closeups, and creepy music, but this steps it up with its treatment of the “Sunken Place,” which represents the metaphorical place people from minority groups cannot speak because White supremacists have marginalized them.
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It’s also worth mentioning how, unlike other horror films, the characters here use common sense to get out of danger, which gives it the needed layer of authenticity and credibility to the way it represents what it’s like being Black in an all-White setting. There’s really so much that Get Out will change about the entire movie industry, but the biggest change will be its evidence that movies about Blackness could indeed do great critically and financially, even when marketed to a primarily White audience. That in turn will open the door for more talented artists who are outside the racial majority and are in the most overdue need of attention.

R (DLV)
Horror/Thriller
1 hr. 44 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

While John Krasinski originally didn’t plan on a Quiet Place sequel, he still picked up on the success of his horror smash-hit by building on all that it had the potential for, including the possibility of this concept turning into a franchise. The expansion of this world devastated by an alien invasion is such a keen exercise in allowing the setting to dictate what the characters’ personalities and struggles are like, particularly in how others outside the movie’s main family were affected. The family by the way is now deprived of their familiar resources at the farm and is stretched beyond their limit, the deaf daughter, Regan, most of all. While this sequel isn’t nearly as focused on silent communication as the first movie, Regan takes on more of a protagonist role to inspire other girls, women, and the entire Deaf community.
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This form of entertainment is accessible to everyone, with large action set pieces that required a lot more hands-on work than the first movie. The open-endedness of the finale likewise proves that there’s still more room for this concept to grow into a third installment, or perhaps even a television series. But even if those don’t ever happen, A Quiet Place Part II shall solidify its legacy as an ideal blockbuster to set the standards for how to create effective popcorn entertainment while also crafting a narrative that delves into the psychology of loss and survival.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 37 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.

A Quiet Place only has 2-3 minutes of dialogue, with a screenplay of only 67 pages, but it still works tremendously as a blockbuster that continues to challenge what defines popcorn entertainment. Its post-apocalyptic world is built with some frightening sound effects, dark lighting, and a slow-moving camera that are masterfully implemented to generate a sense of urgency. It’s a genius work of utilizing ambiance instead of dialogue to tell the story, and it had proven so effective that the audience in the movie theater was reportedly too afraid to eat their popcorn, thus making noise, while watching the movie.
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When John Krasinski was brought on to direct, write, and star in this groundbreaking exercise of orchestrating thrills, he pulled greatly from his own experience raising his newborn daughter. His efforts with this hefty project grew even more personal when his casting decisions relied on instinct rather than auditions, as his decision to cast his wife Emily Blunt to play his character’s wife added to the impact of the film’s major events. Also in this cast was Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actress who played the deaf daughter, and she along with a deaf coach on set ensured that all ASL communication between the family was clear and accurate. Ultimately, no movie exists quite like this one, and no movie may ever be quite like it either. Except of course, for its sequel.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 30 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.