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.

Night of the Living Dead, with its disturbing atmosphere, made an impression on its original audience for how it proved the potential behind zombies in the movies. To make the film look as chilling as it does, the makeup artists for the ghouls took the time to emphasize the prominent features of each actor’s face. (For instance, an actor with a narrow nose would have ghoul makeup that made his nose look even more narrow.) Other actors portraying the ghouls had black makeup around their eyes and gray powder on their bodies to appear dead, while the blood effects were made from black paint and chocolate syrup.
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The movie is made to feel all the more claustrophobic inside a single house shot in black-and-white film with stark lighting, yet the scope also feels a little bigger with some news reporter scenes included from Washington D.C. For as uncomfortable as all the creative decisions feel, the ending was equally as uncomfortable for audiences at the time, because the co-lead, a Black man, was wrongfully shot and killed by law enforcement. Yet the filmmakers felt this ending was necessary because it reflected the death of Martin Luther King Jr., which happened while production neared its end. Ultimately, while this film may suffer from paper-thin unlikable characters, it’s still just the right kind of entertainment necessary to help anyone appreciate the possibilities behind the horror genre.

NR (LV)
Horror
1 hr. 36 min.

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

Despite its goofy plot and bad acting, this spooky little movie could very well develop a cult following someday from those who were kids when they first saw it. And it’s understandable why it would: it’s a twistedly magical piece of family entertainment with a teeny tiny house that erupts in surrealism. Moving into this house is an orphan, Lewis, who must embrace the concept of being the family’s black swan as he lives with his uncle (Jack Black) and neighbor (Cate Blanchett), forming what resembles a mock-Addams family. Outside their front porch, jack-o-lanterns adorn the scene, inside the moonlit walls, the tick-tock sound of a clock is heard, and when the climax hits, the blood-red tint of a lunar eclipse takes over. Everything about the aesthetic of this little fantasy world just screams Halloween.
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As far as the humor goes, Jack Black pulls out a saxophone solo that makes dogs howl and his sentient griffin bush cover its ears, then that same griffin bush, like a family cat, poops in the backyard pond against the uncle’s orders. These little funny bits help balance out the unsettling atmosphere while sustaining that edginess to make kids watching feel like they’re in Lewis’s place; in turn, those kids and kids-at-heart who feel a little weird within their own families could potentially resonate with Lewis. So while The House with a Clock in its Walls isn’t perfect, it’s perfect for Halloween!

PG (DL)
Comedy/Fantasy
1 hr. 44 min.

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

Coco had its world premiere in Mexico the weekend before Día de los Muertos, the very holiday the movie takes place on, and there are many more instances that prove how far Pixar went to authentically portray the Mexican experience in this feature film of theirs. The Land of the Dead depicted is full of careful details taken straight from Mexico’s history, such as how the buildings are stacked on top of each other as a reference to the city of Guanajuato, and how these buildings at the bottom look primitive with pyramids, then gradually look more modern as they get closer to the top.
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Creating the Land of the Dead was one of the longest most laborious processes Pixar ever undertook; there were over 500 individual outfits made, and when using them to dress the skeleton characters, a problem quickly came up. The clothing kept clipping into the bones of the skeleton models, so the animators had to develop a new program called, “Continuous Collision Detection” to stop this from happening. Animating the guitar playing was also a challenge, yet the team pulled it off with the fingers of the guitar players always forming the correct chords. There’s clearly much sincere love here for not just music but family as well, which will ultimately make this landmark Pixar production a classic that leaves every eye moist by the end every time.

PG (DS)
Fantasy
1 hr. 45 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, 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.

Steven Spielberg’s most personal film went against the trend of other alien invasion movies by other filmmakers; unlike other popular movies of the genre like War of the Worlds or Alien, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial featured aliens who, similar to Spielberg’s other movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, don’t want to hurt humans. To create this non-threatening lovable alien adopted by a lonely boy, the designer for E.T. took inspiration from wise old people like Albert Einstein, with the alien voice provided by an elderly woman whose voice afterward was electronically modified and mixed with animal sounds. On set, many techniques were utilized to bring him to life, such as hiring a mime to control his hands, yet at other times, the E.T. puppet had to be controlled entirely by wires and computers.
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It may have been a kids’ movie, but Steven Spielberg understood what kind of film he was working on and spoke to the kid actors at their level. He did this by keeping the order of scenes filmed throughout production chronological to the story’s timeline so the kid actors wouldn’t be confused—the kids weren’t even told what would happen next in the story until the day of shooting each scene. And it all worked out: this nostalgic portrait of the 1980s suburb is one of the most influential movies of the decade and made possible many of the sci-fi movies of today.

PG (DL)
Sci-fi
1 hr. 55 min.

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

This first ever “high school musical” redefined cinematic musicals with its roller coaster of an experience that anyone can sing along to. Up until the 1970s, Hollywood musicals were known for their squeaky-clean adaptations of the classics, like The Sound of Music or Mary Poppins; any more mature musicals like Cabaret or The Rocky Horror Picture Show were not designed for the masses. Grease on the other hand went against the grain by focusing on teenagers in the 1950s, with music from the culture, and numerous sexual references that could only be made in the ratings system era. The result of this daring direction entertained all the teenagers of the time who wanted something which spoke directly to them, striking that balance between mature content and wide mass appeal.
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While not a “good” movie by any stretch, this grand achievement in writing more modern music for a more modern musical film paved the way for what types of motion pictures people wanted to see. G-rated family fare like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory weren’t really “cool” anymore, just like the rest of the 1970s in Hollywood, the musical genre was growing up, and now even Broadway is willing to make more entertainment exclusively for the adults. The main takeaway isn’t just that daring content will leave an impact, but that anything with catchy songs and a nostalgic time period will more likely entertain the masses.

PG (DLS)
Musical/Historic
1 hr. 50 min.

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