Welcome to the Critic’s Sanctum’s 5th Annual 31-Day Horror Marathon!
This year’s theme is: debut horror feature films. Every feature selected is it’s director’s debut film and the choices range are split nearly even between seminal classics of the genre and promising modern debuts.
The list is organized by release date to help anyone wanting to join along better appreciate the way the genre develops and builds upon itself.
However, this year’s October brings with it a Friday the 13th. To celebrate the spooky coinciding, I will be revealing a “bonus” film every Friday of this month (6th, 13th, 20th, 27th) that will be in line with the aforementioned theme. Feel free to check back on these dates to see what the respective bonus films are.
The List
DATE
FILM
DIRECTOR
YEAR
TIDBITS
10-1-2023
Black Sunday
Mario Bava
1960
The film would be worth watching for it’s opening sequence alone. This 230- second chunk is not only the most sustained, immaculate piece of film-making in the work proper but also one of the greatest introductions to a film in the history of the horror genre.
10-2-2023
Night of the Living Dead
George Romero
1968
Every time I watch this, I become increasingly astounded by how the limitations and obstacles encountered in the low-budget filmmaking ended up creating a mood and aesthetic and that established an entire-subgenre (zombie). And that’s not even talking about the brilliant social commentary angle introduced via the casting of the lead. Talk about the stars aligning.
10-3-2023
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
Dario Argento
1970
Another entry that cemented a (sub)-genre (giallo) [1]Mario Bava technically established the sub-giallo with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and then further refined the formula with Blood and Black Lace, but it is Argento’s entry that took these … Continue reading,Argento’s debut is stylized and hypnotic. It’s no wonder everyone wanted to ape it after its release. Yet few entries have ever managed to touch the heights achieved here.
10-4-2023
The Last House on the Left
Wes Craven
1972
Using an early Bergman masterpiece as a starting point for any film, let alone a debut one, seems a foolhardy idea doomed to failure, but Craven’s re-interpretation of Bergman’s The Virgin Spring actually treads new ground and shockingly makes its Swedish progenitor look tame in comparison. There is no reprieve here and the cold-hearted nature of that decision rings is more than makes up for some technical flubs here and there.
It can be overwhelming at times to pick a film to watch when they require a large time investment (especially when following a list like this on a day-by-day basis). That’s why I picked only features with runtimes under 100 minutes for this year’s 31 horror films in 31 days marathon.
To keep the list as diverse as possible, I made sure to limit each director to only one entry and also have at least one film from most of the major decades of film (1920-2020). The assortment of films below explores a wide range of horror sub-genres and themes so anyone following along should (hopefully) find a few entries they enjoy.
This is now my 4th year doing this marathon and I’ve learned that my challenge is less so watching the films on their allotted days(which I’ve managed every year) and more so getting out a review/analysis out within a certain amount of time. To remedy this issue, this year I’ve decided to post minor tidbits regarding my thoughts after watching the day’s respective entry. As opposed to my normal reviews, these comments will be shorter and more casual, so those viewers looking to follow this journey have something to latch onto.
While I’ll aim to get a proper review out for each entry in a timely manner, there’s a good chance delays inevitably occur so hopefully the tidbits can help tide things over till I can post and link the reviews proper.
To those looking to follow along, whether it watching the films in order with me or just perusing my comments, best wishes and Happy Halloween!
There’s something beautiful in how Carpenter is able to take something so seemingly simple and elevate it into a tense nightmare. Even the title credits evoke a sense of dread with the pulsing score and steady camera movement. Never before has a stationary jack-o-lantern evoked as much dread.
This film might as well be a tutorial on how to construct a found-footage film: – have a realistic framing mechanism that explains why the film is edited and presented the way it is –add some improvised acting to inject the necessary realism required – maintain enough narrative/visual ambiguity to force the audience to imagine the worst.
10-3-2021
The Blackcoat’s Daughter
Oz Perkins
Oneiric editing and crisp framing emphasizing the isolation of the characters make this horrific exploration of ennui all the more compelling. I appreciate the way the film tackles (and subverts) horror conventions in regards to its themes more every re-watch.
10-4-2021
Frankenstein
James Whale
Boris Karloff’s performance as the titular monster is legendary as he imbues the creature with a childlike innocence that juxtaposes against its murderous actions, generating both a sympathy and a horror at what follows. Masterful with a capital ‘M’.
As is tradition, this year I’ll be watching 31 horror movies- 1 for each day in October. Last year my list was focused on helping me push though and get all the reviews I needed to finally publish my Best Horrors of the 2010-19 Decade List. Unfortunately, that challenge failed and the movie’s on the list are still being reviewed. The biggest takeaway I’ve gotten from both years attempting this challenge is keeping up 1 review a day.
While I’ve never failed at watching my allotted movie on it’s day, I have failed, especially last year, to get the reviews out on time, if at at all. Thankfully, the year since has been invaluable in both helping me develop my more thorough review style, something I was just starting to experiment with last year at this time, and in helping me better learn my limits in regards to quality and output.
That is why this year, my marathon list contains a host of re-watches from previous years. As part of my Site Update Project, I’ve gone through and started the process of taking my older reviews, namely ones without images or any longform analysis, and have been pushing them up to a much higher standard. The marathon gives me a good excuse and opportunity to invest time in some of my eldest reviews and help standardize them.
However, that doesn’t mean that I won’t review any new films. I have a healthy assortment of newer releases and classics I haven’t gotten to review yet. It’s just the focus this year is more on treading old ground again as opposed to trying to expand as fast as possible to new territories. Movies that I’ve reviewed before are marked with an *.
To that end, I will try to post reviews up to 4 days of the “watch” date presented below. For example, if a movie is to be watched on the 4th, the review or updates to review should be up by the 8th. Reviews will be marked with hyperlinks once “finished”. This delay should ensure that I have time to go more granular on the reviews that need the effort without severely compromising the flow of the marathon itself for those viewers following along. While there may be a few delays, I expect to be able to adhere to this schedule for the most part. With that out of the way, here’s the list.
As is tradition, this year I’ll be watching 31 horror movies- 1 for each day in October. Last year I used this marathon as an opportunity to A- jump start my website and get some reviews out and B- increase my knowledge of the sections of horror cannon I was unfamiliar with (namely slashers). Since October 1st of 2019 to now, I’ve watched more horror films than I can even count. This is in part due to my newfound love of genres I’ve previously never given much thought (slashers and giallos) and also my desire to finish a comprehensive Best Horrors of the 2010-19 Decade List. I’m happy to say the list is done (after many iterations and re-watches) and will be fully revealed before the end of the year (along with some fun new announcements).
To get excitement up regarding it, my marathon for this year visits some of my favorite horror movies from different sub-genres, countries, and decades. Given that I have to get a review for every movie on the list, quite a few of the entries are ones that are making it on the list while a lot of the older movies are ones that I think have heavily influenced the list’s frontrunners.
If you’ve been following the site since last year, you’ll have noticed a significant lag in output since March. While that’s partially due to moving the site over from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and fixing/updating portions of the site, the real reason has been I’ve been busy just watching movies. I mean 4-5 a day. Once I started really delving into what the “best” horror of the past 10 years was, I realized I needed to do more research. Not just into the horror cannon, but into the history of movies in general. Now that it’s been close to a year of playing “catch-up”, I’m pleased to announce that the site will be back on track with more than enough releases to satisfy those of you who have been kind enough to stick with me.
With that out of the way, here’s the list. Every movie will be updated with a link to the respective review within a day of the “date”. EX: If a movie is to be watched on the 4th then expect a review on the 4th or 5th.
EDIT 10/15/20 – You might’ve noticed that the reviews have been paused since 10/3 (Don’t Look Now). Due to recent projects and the increased effort I put into reviews (finding stills and trying to make sure the reviews are more informative than before) I’ve been stalled on getting the actual reviews out, but I’m hoping to get caught back up by the 20th and should be able to maintain the review schedule from then on. EDIT 10/31/20- Oops. As you’ve noticed quite a few of the reviews have still to be published – they should be over this upcoming week. I can say I watched all of these movies on the day of (more than once) , so challenge complete. Unfortunately, writing reviews for all of them at the level I wanted them to be proved to take up more time than I imagined. Lesson learned for next year’s challenge.
EDIT 10/1/21 – Unfortunately, playing catch up didn’t work out so well. While I ensure I’ll get to these reviews at some point, this challenge is “over”.
I’ve loved horror movies for a long time, but I’ve always found it hard to talk about it with others because of my lack of familiarity with the western cannon. As a kid I started off with horror movies like The Ring and The Grudge and subsequently got into Asian horror. Because of this I never ended up watching common American classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street.
This challenge was my chance to play “catch-up” and improve my understanding of western horror history. I thought it’d be hard because of how many slashers I’d have to watch. I’ve never liked blood – it always makes me feel queasy – so slashers were my natural enemy. However, I did look forward to movies like The Silence of the Lambs and The House of the Devil, because I like supernatural and psychological movies and I find them easiest to get lost in.
The biggest part of the challenge I was scared about was actually forcing myself to watch a horror movie everyday and then write a review within the day. Yes, I tell my friends what I think of movies all the time but writing my thoughts out is a lot more time intensive than casually speaking them. My biggest concern was having a competent review for each movie.
Now that the challenge is done- I thought it’d be interesting to go ahead and analyze the results and experience overall. Did I meet expectations? Was it everything I wanted and more? How did my reviews compare to aggregate sites like IMDb? Tune in and find out.
GENERAL STATISTICS
I went to Metacritic and IMDb and found the aggregate ratings for each of the movies I saw. The Metascore on Metacritic uses a scale of 100. I scaled it back down to a scale of 10 to make comparing the numbers easier.
The sample size is only the 32 movies I saw during the challenge, so take the numbers as you will. As I get more reviews up here I can do more robust analyses. This particular retrospective might seem more trivial, but it’s a fun journey nonetheless.
NOTE: Ratings may change as more reviews are added over time so if you view this well after the posted date- keep that in mind.
Based on my ratings you can tell that this month was good for me. Out of the 32 movies I saw 8 movies that I would classify as a 10. Those movies were:
The Shining
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Thing
The Silence of the Lambs
In the Mouth of Madness
Candyman
Jaws
The Lighthouse
Even though I’d say I’m more willing to give 10’s than other critics, I still find it amazing how many of the movies profoundly impacted me. On top of these 8 “unicorns”, an additional 4 movies made the A+ squad meaning that 37.5% of the movies I saw were good enough for me to want to recommend then to everyone. These additions include:
Night of the Living Dead
Nosferatu
28 Days Later
Ringu
The distribution of these movies genre-wise is also something I’m surprised by. I didn’t think that I would rank any slasher up that highly, but Candyman and Texas Chain Saw Massacre were both so nuanced that I couldn’t help but be entranced by both movies. I love supernatural and psychological movies so that part makes sense.
Genre
Count
Supernatural
3
Psychological
3
Slasher
2
Monster
1
Science Fiction
1
The movie I ended up liking the least was Friday the 13th, which I gave a 7.2. After A Nightmare on Elm Street, I was hoping that one of the other great slasher series could give me something meaningful to bite into. Unfortunately, despite having a few nice moments, the movie didn’t hit me the way I wanted it to. It’s funny- before I started the marathon I didn’t want anything to do with the movie, but after being spoiled by some great ones, I started looking forward to the ones on my list. Congrats slasher movies – you got a fan in me.
RELATIONAL ANALYSIS
Review Source
Mean
Median
Standard Deviation
Me
9.09
9.25
0.81
IMDb
7.49
7.5
0.61
Metacritic – User
8.03
8.3
0.96
Metacritic- Meta
6.82
7.3
1.56
My friends have always said I’m a film snob, and I’ve always maintained I’m not. But everytime I end up loving a horror movie (The Witch, It Follows, The Babadook…) it ends up being one of those divisive movies that gets good “critic” reviews but not so great user reviews. That’s what made the comparison of the major statistics so surprising.
My ratings were closest to the Metacritic – User ratings and also furthest away from the Metacritic – Meta ratings. It’s also interesting that that’s the only source that had a standard deviation well above 1. It seems like “critics” are more broad compared to a more “in tune” user base. I’d be interested in finding out why that’s the case, but that’s for another time when I have more data and better codding knowledge.
I also wanted to check out just how different my A+ movies differentiated from the way my counterparts ranked them. Maybe my self perceived greats were so good that they elicited similar reactions in others. I’ve excluded Nosferatu, Candyman, and Ringu because they have missing Metacritic data.
Title
IMDb Difference
Metacritic Meta Difference
Metacritic User Difference
The Shining
1.6
1.2
3.4
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
2.5
2.0
2.5
Night of the Living Dead
1.6
1.0
0.6
The Thing
1.9
1.2
4.3
The Silence of the Lambs
1.4
1.2
1.5
In the Mouth of Madness
2.8
3.2
4.7
28 Days Later
1.9
1.8
2.2
Jaws
2.0
1.2
1.3
The Lighthouse
1.7
1.7
1.7
The differences are promising in a certain light. Though my final rating for most of the above titles is higher than my counterparts, their position comparative to other movies on the list remains similar. I may give higher ratings – but those ratings are in line with (for the most part) the trend of rating horror movies. The biggest exceptions to this rule so far are The Shining and In the Mouth of Madness. Both movies are cult classics and I appreciated their depths into darker, more Lovecraftian themes. After looking it up, I found out that they’re part of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”. When I found out I still had one movie, Prince of Darkness, to watch I felt tremendous jubilation.
In a more general sense, the ratings for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Night of the Living Dead, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Lighthouse have the closest score distributions out all the movies. The Lighthouse is the most striking given that every source sans myself had given the movie an 8.3.
WRITING STYLE REVIEW
When I first started writing reviews, I thought the process was overwhelming. I’ve always been someone who just focuses on plot and interpretation. I’ve always appreciated things like score and camera angles but never thought about how they impacted my viewing experience. Trying to find a way to incorporate discussion about all the elements was my first big hurdle.
My earlier reviews like , Review: The Hour of the Wolf, exhibit the issue clearly. When I mention certain things, they come off as static and feel more like statements that have to be there as opposed to streams of natural thought that followed from the previous one. This is mainly because I’m not the best at using commas, so translating my spoken thought into proper written work is… difficult to say the least. If you’ve been reading for a while, you may notice I use a lot of “-“‘s in my work. I don’t know how correct it is, but the feeling it creates feels natural.
Thankfully, my more recent reviews are more fluid, even if the difference isn’t as big as I wanted. Sentences extend for longer and there’s more voice and expression in everything. There’s probably a lot more, but I’m more interested in seeing where my writing is at in a year, so I’ll wait until then to take a deeper look.
FINAL TAKEAWAY
Overall, this experience was great. Watching a movie and writing a review everyday was challenging but was also incredibly rewarding. I was forced to critically inspect each movie at multiple levels and ended up appreciating the craftsmanship at work.
The hardest part of the process was feeling like there was a constant deadline for each movie. Some of the movies hit emotional beats pretty hard and it was difficult to force myself to watch a movie the next day. Balancing a movie a day on top of work and everyday life was also challenging and something I should’ve prepared around more.
The more serious movies that were playing in theaters proved to be the hardest to review. Joker and The Lighthouse both moved me and brought up a lot of interesting points, but I couldn’t pause, write out my thoughts, and rewind to catch up with certain points like I could do back at home on my PS3.
I’m definitely planning on doing this challenge next year, but now I think I have some good changes to make the process more manageable. I definitely need more fun/cheesy movies to lighten the mood. Being scared and philosophically boomed is great but there’s a charm to less serious movies. At the very least, they would serve as a much needed change in current that would keep the experience fresh.
Confession time. I’ve never really gotten into and watched the Stars Wars films. It was never that big among my friend group growing up so I never had a reason to watch any of the movies. When I finally decided to give it a go in middle school, I made the mistake of ordering Episode I from Netflix (this was back in the envelope days) because I assumed the series went chronologically. I remember feeling let down and confused and promptly returned the disc and never returned to the series.
Obviously I later learned that the (in)famous prequel sequels were not indicative of the moments fans (including a lot of my friends) fell in love with. Given that the last movie in the sequel trilogy is coming out in December, I decided to finally give in and catch up on all the movies to join in on the “conclusion” of the epic. After a lot of back and forth, I decided to watch the series in the original order. After that is Rogue One and Solo and then onto the newest movie itself.
The dates aren’t set in stone and are more like tentative mini deadlines for myself to help pace the exposure. I’ll try and stick to it for the most part. If I enjoy the series a lot and find myself having extra time I was told to watch the animated Clone Wars series from 2008. I don’t know if I’ll get to it, and if I do, I probably won’t get to watch all of it before Episode IX, but it’s something to keep in mind.
EDIT 11/24/19 : So if you can tell from the above, I’ve really been enjoying Star Wars. If I’m being honest, I’ve been loving the movies a lot and want to get more into the meat of the story. As such, I’ve decided to actually try and finish The Clone Wars and as many comics/books/etc that I’m interested in/have time to get to. Check below periodically for new additions. If you have any recommendations on what to check out feel free to comment!
Edit 12/26/19: This thread is done – once I’m done with the comics, Clone Wars, Rebels, etc I’ll make a bigger meta thread of my thoughts on everything. Until then, it’ll just be period reviews of the same.
This year I’ll be watching 31 horror movies- 1 for each day in October. I haven’t watched most of these movies or don’t remember watching them because I was too young to comprehend them at the time, so most of my thoughts to them will be pretty raw.
After watching and thinking about the movies, I’ll be posting my review/thoughts up on here. I’d love it if you left your feedback and experiences as well. Or if you want to lurk and follow along- that’s cool too. The more the merrier.
NOTE(10/3/19): I might move movies around, but if I do, the list below will be updated to reflect the change. The movies themselves will not change, however.
NOTE (10/28/19): After a few friends of mine pointed out that Joker is not officially categorized as a horror on any mainstream sites like Wikipedia , I’ve decided to add a bonus horror movie as a substitute. I do think the Joker movie is a horror and will address that concern later, but I think the arguments against it are decent enough to warrant a bonus movie. As such I will be watching Hell House LLC for a bonus 32nd movie.
The Selection Process
Most movies were picked off of the Dreadit Movie Guide. I usually watch a lot of supernatural movies and shy away from anything that has even a little bit of gore which is why I tried to “face my fears” on this list and add them on . I also wanted a bit of variety which is why there’s a healthy mix of sub-genres. I wish I could add more foreign films – goals for next year.
