Films

In the dark, a waking dream

The great adjustment

Between January 2018 and December 2021, I watched 569 films. I know this because I track the films I watch on Letterboxd. That’s a lot of films.

Read more

In the Earth (2021)

A fascinating, horrible, blackly funny film about Covid, nature, group dynamics, and how humans exist in relation to other forms of life.

Read more

Ghostbusters II (1989)

To finish my parade of eighties sequels, I went with this, which I can remember seeing in the cinema at a birthday party. The chemistry isn’t the same, and Bill Murray is... unpleasant.

Read more

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Five years after the killings of Crystal Lake, a new camp has been created, and a killer again picks off the counsellors one by one.

Read more

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Ten years after the Haddonfield killings, Michael Myers escapes, forcing Loomis to return and protect Laurie Strode’s daughter, Jamie.

Read more

Halloween II (1981)

When Michael Myers’ body goes missing, Dr Loomis continues his search on the streets of Haddonfield, while Laurie is taken to hospital and sedated.

Read more

Planet Terror (2007)

An accidentally released biochemical weapon turns soldiers into a pack of marauding flesh-eating mutants. Soon the local population swamp the hospital creating a relentless circus of cheesy dialogue and amusingly extreme violence.

Read more

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1987)

Clowns on screen have never frightened me, not even Pennywise, although on the page he was a different proposition. This film isn’t trying to scare you.

Read more

Scream 4 (2011)

Sydney returns to Woodsboro on the fifteenth anniversary of the original killings to promote her new bookbut her niece, Jill, is in the High School, which presents another Ghostface with new victims.

Read more

Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)

Gonzo decides to miss his friends Halloween party to take up an invitation by The Great MacGuffin, his favourite magician, to stay a night at the most haunted mansion in the world.

Read more

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

An abusive husband has writer’s block. When a killer murders a woman he has agreed to meet, and then others are found dead, he forces his wife to help him.

Read more

Censor (2021)

Enid Baines is a censor at the British Board of Film Classification. Her parents decide it is time to have her long-missing sister declared dead. Enid’s daily life, the films she has to watch, and memories of her sister, begin to bleed together.

Read more

La Llorona (2019)

A former general found guilty of genocide is trapped in his house by protesters, and strange things begin to happen to the family as the ghosts of the past insist on being heard.

Read more

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Ana, a nurse, wakes up to the start of a zombie apocalypse, and manages to hook up with a police officer, Rhodes, and three other survivors and hide in a nearby shopping mall.

Read more

Night of the Demons (1988)

A disparate group of misfits are tormented by a demon after a seance-like party game on Halloween night. The second half of this film rips.

Read more

Saw (2004)

Two men wake up chained by the ankles to radiators on opposite sides of a locked room. There is a dead man between them with his brains blown out, clutching a tape recorder.

Read more

Triangle (2009)

Triangle is this year’s first such nugget of gold. It’s about the patterns of thought, feeling and action we find ourselves in, the bad habits we can’t break, especially with the people we love.

Read more

The Crazies (1973)

A military developed virus is accidentally released into the water supply of Evans City, Pennsylvania, and the military attempts to impose martial law to contain its spread.

Read more

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

A unique film set in a small mining town, with the young male characters mostly miners. It was exciting to see working class characters and locations in a film like this.

Read more

The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971)

I though The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail would be a giallo, or at least a proto-slasher, but it is far more a crime-thriller. A wife inherits a million dollars and becomes the focus of a killer.

Read more