“There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.”
― George W. Bush

Oh, but they can, George. The American people absolutely can. And to think, there was a time when the world thought you would go down in history as the most polarising U.S president ever. There may not even be another one at this point.

Anyway, in other horror-related news that doesn't involve U.S politics, I’ve been meaning to share a summary of the films I’ve watched over the Halloween season. Here’s my breakdown of five titles that stood out - for better or worse.

‍Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I have to admit, of all the sequels I was expecting this year, a follow-up to the original Beetlejuice was not one of them. Compared to some other attempted revivals of late, this sequel ain’t half bad, either – at least if you remember that the first was as much of a disjointed jaunt into transcendent gothic silliness as this one is.The story is thus: the death of Charles Deetz (Jeffery Jones got booted from this project for, pretty justified reasons) has brought several generations of the Deetz family back to Winter River for the funeral service. Among them are Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), now a host for a supernatural TV talk show, and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), plucked away from a tedious existence at a boarding school. 

While Lydia is still plagued by visions that, somehow, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) is going to show up in her life again, Astrid is experiencing the existential disillusionment that comes with processing the death of her own father (Lydia’s ex-husband, Richard (Santiago Cabrera)) just two years ago. That is until she meets a fellow teen in the neighbourhood, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), whom she immediately bonds with. When Jeremy soon reveals that he’s actually a ghost, he offers Astrid a chance to visit the after-life and be reunited with her father again. Not a hard choice to make, really. Except Jeremy - even as a spectre masquerading as a local kid - is not all he seems. Once Lydia finds his real motive for literally ‘spiriting’ her daughter away, she has no option but to turn to the agent of chaos that brought her in touch with the after-life all those years ago, to save her. And what was that guy’s name? Say it again three times?

What separates Tim Burton’s sequel to his own 1989 cult favourite from the rest of the tired reprisals of old IPs we’ve seen of late is that a good chunk of the main cast from the original are back again. Better still, they haven’t lost the enthusiasm for it all - Keaton doesn’t skip a beat getting back into the same stripey trousers and the wisecracks from 35 years ago, and Ryder paints a great portrait of a Lydia who has grown up and now has to handle both the trials of motherhood plus her own PTSD from meeting Betelgeuse the first time around. Catherine O’Hara is still delightfully insane as Delia Deetz, Charles’ widow and unhinged modern artist, and Jenna Ortega’s casting is pretty timely off the back of her time as Wednesday Addams - even if she doesn’t necessarily tread new water with Astrid. When the gags and the one-liners work, this sequel feels every bit as anarchic as the original, and Burton’s creativity for twisting the macabre with the absurd is still abundant, and exceptionally good fun. 

When the gags don’t work - which happens almost to the same frequency that they do - the film gets a bit tedious. Willem Dafoe’s cameo as a dead actor turned criminal investigator in the afterlife comes off confused and unfunny thanks to some lousy scripting. A repeating gag of a train that takes its ghostly passengers deeper into the under-realm - complete with a Soul Train style dance party on its platform - is also overused and dumb. There are now also a whole bunch of those shrunken-head dudes from the first movie here on show for Minion-style humour - a kind of humour that will certainly grate at points. And to top it all off, there are even moments when this movie packs so much rambly dialogue that it begins to feel - dare I say it - slow, something you could never say about the original. 

So this is by no means a perfect sequel. But the amount of love poured into it by those who still genuinely care about the piece - particularly Keaton - manage to keep it an entertaining second chapter. Besides, what other film series could be unabashedly ridiculous enough to get away with inserting a serenade of Richard Harris’ MacArthur Park into a climactic scene, and getting away with it? 7 / 10

A Quiet Place: Day One

Hands up who wanted yet another Quiet Place sequel? Oh, so it was you, eh? Well congratulations on manifesting this turgid third (turd?) entry into being. 

For reasons I still can’t quite fathom, the creators of A Quiet Place: Day One decided it would be a good idea to take the first five minutes of the first film and stretch it into a two-hour piece. Then convince a solid cast containing the likes of Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn to come along for the ride, and re-tell almost the same story, with the same scares, from a *Spongebob rainbow hands* different perspective! 

Anyway, Nyong’o plays Sam, a New York hospice patient terminally ill with cancer who is persuaded to go along with her fellow tenants to a theatre show in Manhattan. Surprise surprise, the show is also right around the same time as the monstrous Death Angels from the first two movies launch their attack on Earth. As Manhattan begins to fall to the alien menace, Sam soon twigs that using silence to avoid them is the key to survival. Thanks to her cat Frodo, she then meets Eric (Joseph Quinn), an English law student, and the pair attempt to make sense of the impending apocalypse around them as they try to get towards an evacuation point.

Granted, Day One does at least try to pull off a different take on the franchise by injecting more human pathos into the platonic relationship that develops between Sam and Eric. There’s a genuinely poignant message about living your best life even in the face of death somewhere within all this muddle. Unfortunately, the pace is just so bloody slow, and the scares just so utterly predictable (“quick let’s be quiet - whoops!” *loud sound emitted*), that it’s really hard for you to stay focused on it. If ‘day one’ of this alien invasion was this much of a snoozefest, I seriously hope we don’t get to experience any more. At least the acting’s alright - including the cat. 4 / 10

They Live (1988)

Of all the 80s cult horror movies out there, They Live continues to get a hell of a lot of praise. John Carpenter’s stab at a Ray Nelson short story is lauded for a number of reasons, but is particularly highly thought of for its iconic imagery and its scathing critique of 80s consumerism. I wasn’t sure what to expect of it going in as it seemed there was a lot going on with it. Sunglasses that reveal aliens hiding in plain sight? Check. Global conspiracies coercing humans into a never-ending cycle of ‘buy, consume, breed’? Check. The WWF’s own Rowdy Roddy Piper as a convincing 80s action hero? Again - weirdly enough - check. They Live is definitely a lot of things. And a lot of those things are pretty enjoyable, even if they’re stretched thin over a basic plot.

Piper plays Nada, a transient who rolls into Los Angeles in the hope of finding some construction work to make ends meet. When he begins work on a site opposite a church across the street, he notices a number of people going in and out of the building at unusual times. Stranger still, the church is then shortly raided by police, making him curious about what exactly is going on inside. He investigates the church at night, only to make a disappointing discovery of boxes upon boxes of cheap-looking sunglasses in the church’s basement. But his disappointment soon turns to shock when he puts a pair on in daylight, and suddenly sees that the world around him is nothing more than a subliminal environment compelling him to remain enslaved to a consumer society - messages such as “OBEY”, or “MARRY AND REPRODUCE”, are revealed where regular old advertisements would otherwise exist. Even more disturbing is that some of the humans around him are not ‘human’ at all, looking more like bug-eyed, skeletal aliens in appearance. 

Trying to make sense of what he sees, Nada tries to convince fellow site worker Frank (Keith David) of the conspiracy, whose own skepticism counts for nothing as the pair become targets for the beings that Nada sees behind the glasses. With dark forces against them, it isn’t long before Nada and Frank are leading the frontline for a resistance movement against these creatures, and discover just how far they’ve infiltrated every facet of American society.

They Live is one odd duck. The plot is essentially a Twilight Zone episode stretched into a feature length movie. And yet, its unusual placement within a contemporary 80s setting moves it away from its 50s sci-fi TV show inspirations into a curio of its own time. Everything about its horror elements - especially the visual design of its human-mimicking alien villains - is owed to the classic science fiction of old. But everything else about it is just balls-out 80s action all the way, especially when it comes to the crass dialogue and action scenes (in particular, the fight scene between Nada and Frank manages to be both a pastiche and an all-time classic at the same time). It’s a car crash of a combination that shouldn’t work, but it’s smartly (and intentionally) done in tongue-in-cheek fashion. Satire of any nature cannot succeed without that key element, and because of that, even when this movie dials up its B-movie histrionics to ridiculous levels, its underlying message of the ills of unchecked capitalism never ends up diluted in any way. They Live knows it’s ridiculous - and it knows that you know too.

Thanks to the film’s knowing winks, both Piper and David end up great in their roles, either slotting well into the comedy of the premise, or delivering iconic lines and kicking ass when any of these needs arise. There are definitely plenty of moments when the whole thing could have benefited from a quicker pace (if there is one thing people forget in their nostalgia-tainted view of 80s movies, it is that a lot of them really sucked for pacing). The ending, too, although played for laughs, also feels abrupt and clumsy. Nonetheless, They Live is still a fun ride. As a bizarre juxtaposition of 50s B-movie terror with 80s attitude, it deserves every bit of its cult status. 7 / 10

The Mist (2007)

The Mist is yet another film that’s long been on my radar, recommended to me by countless people but never quite watched until now. That said, I can now say that it deserves the hype that it’s gotten in online film circles, especially given it’s a late 2000s release and as such, comes from a time when horror wasn’t really setting the world alight.

The Mist is yet another Stephen King novel brought to screen by Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile), and centres around a family forced to deal with the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm that has brought damage to their neighbourhood in Bridgton, Maine. Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his eight-year old son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and their neighbour Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) head out to replenish supplies from the local supermarket - completely unaware that an all-enveloping mist has suddenly begun to descend on the town. When a local resident (Jeffrey DeMunn) bursts into the supermarket warning about monstrous entities hiding in this mist, the supermarket explodes into a panic, immediately going on lockdown. Unable to leave and blocked from getting back to his wife, David has no option but to protect Billy and wait it out with the rest of the shoppers holed up in the market. Little do the shoppers realise that the threat doesn’t just come from outside. Their developing paranoia and mistrust for each other, as well as their own attempts in combating the outside menace, pose their own lethal dangers too.

Part Lovecraftian horror, part study on mob mentality (a King specialty), The Mist does a decent job of juggling both. It makes clever use of the vaporous nemesis of its title too, framing it as a constant, suffocating danger that is never truly out of sight or mind at any point. As an atmospheric device, it’s a truly oppressive shroud; from a filmographic perspective, its pale, deathly hues cast a suitably sickly tone over the scenery, and cloaks everything in dread. Visually, this is a movie that constantly succeeds in putting you on edge. You’re never quite sure if something is going to break into the supermarket, and you know for damn sure that anyone who steps outside is going to be dead pretty quick. And when the monsters are eventually revealed, they are sufficiently eldritch enough to leave a memorable mark. 

For a movie about a threat whose sole effect is to obscure sight of what lies behind it, The Mist certainly knows when and how to pull its veil back to let its full horror go on show. When it comes to parting the narrative fog over its characters though, it’s a little less effective. There are some good performances nonetheless - Thomas Jane is solid in the lead as David, as is Laurie Holden as Amanda Dunfrey, a local school teacher who emerges as David’s most trusted confidant. There are also solid appearances from Marcia Gay Harden, playing a religious zealot whose dangerous sermons to the captive crowd make her the film’s main villain and the proponent for the film’s violent mob aspect. Toby Jones is also great as the market’s assistant manager, who becomes another one of David’s crucial allies once the fervour of the market’s mob frenzy becomes too much to bear. 

Outside of these four though, everyone else is bang average – and that’s a lot of ‘bang average’ given the size of the cast and the banality of the dialogue. There’s far too much focus given to a number of other characters and side stories, ranging from disgruntled blue-collar mechanics (William Sadler), an elderly teacher colleague of Amanda’s (Frances Sternhagen) whose every line is something stereotypically liberal, and an army soldier (Sam Witwer) whose love story with one of the supermarket cashiers (Alexa Davalos) is killed before it even starts. You know most of them are going to wind up dead anyway, so what’s the point? Focus on the main characters, the scares and be done with it. Instead, all of these distractions and dead-end side plots kill The Mist’s pace during its middle. At points, it even makes it feel like less of a feature film, and more of a high-end TV movie with far lower stakes - and that’s just not something a horror film with a premise such as this should ever do.

Ultimately though, the fights and the genuine creepiness of The Mist’s hidden threat end up doing enough to keep most avid horror viewers engaged. And those that do suffer through the lack of cleverness from the film’s dawdling second act will be rewarded by an ending that genuinely remains one of the most shocking in modern horror - and the very element that raises this film to worthy watch status. 7 / 10

Psycho (1960)

What kind of amateur film critic would I be if I didn’t drop an opinion on Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Psycho? Still an amateur, but that’s neither here nor there. I also can’t promise that it’s going to be any different a take from what you’ve probably read before (especially considering I just called it a ‘masterpiece’ in the first sentence). So we’ll just cut to the chase and be done with it.

Psycho is the disturbing tale of Phoenix office worker Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who goes on the run after being trusted by her employer with a $40,000 deposit intended as a bank transfer. Pulling into a roadside motel to spend the night, she is acquainted with its owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), whose seemingly innocent nature is offset by an odd preoccupation with his own mother, who supposedly still lives on the property. That same night, Marion is brutally murdered in her motel room shower. Her sister Lila (Vera Miles), as well as Marion’s lover, the divorced Sam Loomis (John Gavin) - whom Marion was embezzling the money for in the hope of having a life together - soon grow suspicious of her disappearance. A collective of private eyes, police sheriffs and Lila and Sam themselves begin to close the net around motel owner Bates, leading to the shocking truth behind Marion’s death, and the deeply twisted figure that accomplished it.

So what makes Psycho so good? So many things: Hitchcock’s knack for a great shot and even better cuts between them: his techniques remain a massive influence on modern film today. There’s the uncluttered plot that unravels itself at a rapid, satisfying pace free of the bog-down details of current-day features. There is the timeless performance of Janet Leigh as Marion (who in my view, could have won an Oscar for that one scene alone of her driving on the freeway, ruminating on the possible reactions of her embezzled boss). There is the somehow even better performance from Anthony Perkins who didn’t just create a serial killer icon in Norman Bates, but put forth a performance of a trapped child in a psychotic adult’s body with such disquieting alacrity that it remains a tremendous study in acting, period. Then of course there’s the iconic shower murder, the delirious climax and the subtle, chilling overlay over the final shot of a grinning Bates at the very end. Like I said, so many things - most of them you’ve probably already heard time and again.

Perhaps it would be more original to ask what’s bad about it? If anything, a bit of datedness: some of the acting is stilted in that way of its time (essentially the very end of the 1950s). And while the shower scene remains a landmark moment in film, some of the effects used in Psycho’s other dramatic, bloody moments look a bit daft (though even then you can’t fault the ambition for the time). But all vintage has to age to be considered as such - and Psycho remains as clear an example of vintage cinema brilliance as it gets. 10 / 10