I love October! Its what many of us Octoberites call Halloween month, the weather has changed, which is an especially good thing for those of us suffering from Summer allergies, or who just hate any temperatures above 80 degrees, and I get to knit lots of hats, sweaters, and scarves without looking weird.
Its also time for me to focus on Scary Movie Stuff (which is the technical term, probably). Of course I do this all year long, but I have the excuse now to drop everything else I’m writing and focus on things like the scariest short movies, and reviews of my favorite scary films.
So here we go, and I’m going to start the month off with my top five favorite scary short films right now. There will be more of these as I fall down that rabbit hole of short, scary films on YouTube.
Tinglewood
This is a very effective, straight horror story with genuine emotional depth. It’s about a family that goes camping, and ends with a fight for survival, when they meet with the unexpected.
Mannequin
I think I told you guys about my fear of inanimate objects coming to life. This film worked for me just fine.
Happy Valentine’s Day
This isn’t scary so much as tragic, but I loved the style in which it was done. It’s been Gorgeously filmed, Backwards!
The Monster Under My Bed
This one startsed off pretty scary. I too have that monster under the bed fear sometimes, but ultimately this turned out to be deeply cute.
Battleground
About twenty or so years ago, this video was in an anthology show of Stephen King stories based on his book, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. This specific story however is from his very first anthology, written in the 70’s, called Night Shift, and it’s also one of my favorite short stories, written long before the movie Toy Story. It’s both funny and deeply terrifying.
As an added bonus here are some of the scariest movies to watch this month:
The Ritual
I talked about this movie in one of my short reviews. It’s still available on Netflix. It’s a lot deeper than it looks.
Radius
Although I was somewhat disappointed in the ending of this movie, I did get really caught up in this movie’s premise. It’s about two people, a man and a woman, who can’t be separated from each other for a certain distance. They have to remain in each other’s radius, or everyone else in their radius will die. The movie spends the first third with them figuring out what’s going on, the second third of the movie is spent putting them in intense and inevitable situations where they will be separated, as they try to solve the mystery of what happened to them and why. I thought the final third of the movie was rather anti-climatic, but makes sense given the setup of the first part of the movie. This is also available on Netflix, and is for those of you who like suspense, but not a lot of gore.
The Monster
I thought this was a pretty terrifying premis especially since the monster is never explained. Which means of course that the monster isn’t really the focus of this movie, and is a symbol of something else.
A mother and daughter are fleeing an abusive relationship, I think, and their car breaks down on a deserted road, and they are menaced by a monster. This is pretty straightforward but the plot is complicated by the antagonistic relationship between the mother and daughter, which I found just as compelling as the danger provided by the monster.
Theres quite a bit of for in this one, and those of you who don’t like to watch children in danger, take warning. This movie is free for Amazon Prime subscribers.
Seoul Station
If you’ve seen the Korean zombie movie, Train to Busan, then this is the animated prequel. It chronicles particularly of how the zombie plague in the second movie began and stars a different cast of characters. I discussed this in one of my mini-reviews. Like the live action film, it’s basically one long chase scene, but entirely animated. This is the first time I’ve ever encountered an animated zombie film, and it is a very intense film that is not for children.
This is also available through Amazon Prime’s Shudder subscription. Shudder has a monthly cost of 5.00. I got it as a gift for my Mom because she absolutely loves horror movies.
Geeking Out about It 