2021’s #31DaysOfHorror
In October 2021, I took part in #31DaysOfHorror. If you don’t know it, it’s a challenge where you watch a horror film every day in October, culminating in Halloween.
- Werewolves Within (2021), dir. Josh Ruben.
- Jakob’s Wife (2021), dir. Travis Stevens.
- The Addiction (1995), dir. Abel Ferrara.
- Lisa and the Devil (1973), dir. Mario Bava.
- Shadow in the Cloud (2020), dir. Roseanne Liang.
- The Thing From Another World (1951), dir. Christian Nyby.
- The Thing (1982), dir. John Carpenter.
- The War of the Worlds (1953), dir. Byron Haskin.
- A Quiet Place (2018), dir. John Krasinski.
- Nightmare Beach (1989), dir. Umberto Lenzi, Harry Kirkpatrick.
- Salem’s Lot (1979), dir. Tobe Hooper.
- Nosferatu (1922), dir. F.W. Murnau.
- The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971), dir. Sergio Martino.
- My Bloody Valentine (1981), dir. George Mihalka.
- The Crazies (1973), dir. George A. Romero.
- Triangle (2009), dir. Christopher Smith.
- Saw (2004), dir. James Wan.
- Night of the Demons (1988), dir. Kevin Tenney.
- Dawn of the Dead (2004), dir. Zack Snyder.
- La Llorona (2019), dir. Jayro Bustamante.
- Censor (2021), dir. Prano Bailey-Bond.
- Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), dir. Sergio Martino.
- Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021), dir. Kirk R. Thatcher.
- Scream 4 (2011), dir. Wes Craven.
- Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1987), dir. Stephen Chiodo.
- Planet Terror (2007), dir. Robert Rodriguez.
- Halloween II (1981), dir. Rick Rosenthal.
- Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), dir. Dwight H. Little.
- Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), dir. Steve Miner.
- Ghostbusters II (1989), dir. Ivan Reitman.
- In the Earth (2021), dir. Ben Wheatley.
I took a couple of extra weeks to fit these films in, so it was more like forty-five days of horror, but I posted a film a day on Twitter, with a link to these short blog posts:
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Werewolves Within (2021)
1 Oct 2021, 07:01
To kick off this year’s #31DaysofHorror I chose Werewolves Within, a comedy-whodunnit-horror based on a Ubisoft video game. I heard screenwriter Mishna Wolff (perfect name) and director Josh Ruben talk about making it, and it sounded like ...
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Jakob’s Wife (2021)
2 Oct 2021, 07:08
The irrepressible Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden star in this story of a woman’s mid-life crisis being super-charged by an encounter with a vampire. Anne lives a quiet life as the wife of minister Jakob, who is a pillar of ...
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The Addiction (1995)
3 Oct 2021, 07:28
After two quite light films, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction is a hard turn downwards into the circles of hell. Kathleen is studying for a doctorate in philosophy in a grungy, black-and-white New York, where the streets are lined with ...
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Lisa and the Devil (1973)
4 Oct 2021, 06:42
Lisa and the Devil lives in one of the lesser-known corners of the Mario Bava-verse. Telly Savalas as the possible devil Leandro is an amusing presence, and if he is not particularly devilish, the dream-like plot definitely is. Lost ...
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Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
5 Oct 2021, 06:50
Horror stretches across many genres, and you can’t always know in advance how horror-y a film is, so with Shadow in the Cloud we are in war-action-horror territory, in that order. Maude Garrett arrives at an about-to-takeoff B-17 in ...
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The Thing From Another World (1951)
6 Oct 2021, 06:51
After Shadow in the Cloud, I wanted a calmer, less frenetic experience, but to also feel like the next film flowed from it naturally, so I chose The Thing From Another World. It’s set not long after the end ...
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The Thing (1982)
7 Oct 2021, 06:49
I’m breaking one of my #31DaysofHorror rules with The Thing, because I saw it almost exactly five years ago. It was a key film in getting me into horror movies again after a fifteen year hiatus. The chance ...
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The War of the Worlds (1953)
8 Oct 2021, 06:52
I recently watched the Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds, which I found surprisingly bleak, so I thought I’d go back to the original 1953 adaptation, The War of the Worlds, to see what that was like. That was also ...
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A Quiet Place (2018)
9 Oct 2021, 07:25
My brain combined The Thing and The War of the Worlds to suggest to me A Quiet Place, one of many recent horror blockbusters I hadn’t seen. A family are trapped in their valley by blind alien creatures with ...
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Nightmare Beach (1989)
10 Oct 2021, 07:39
It’s the late eighties, and it’s Spring break, somewhere near Miami, Florida. Thousands of young people are in bars and cars all along the seafront, drinking, sunbathing and having sex. A biker gang has a vendetta against local police chief ...
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Salem’s Lot (1979)
11 Oct 2021, 06:30
Salem’s Lot has a special place in my heart. It was the first scary book I ever read. The film is the two part miniseries I remember from the eighties stitched together. It smartly does away with the ...
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Nosferatu (1922)
12 Oct 2021, 07:09
I wanted to see the original Master, so I put on the oldest unseen film in my collection, Nosferatu. I appreciated the original Dracula and Frankenstein, but they were pretty dry in places. Nosferatu is ten years ...
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The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971)
13 Oct 2021, 06:57
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail involves Lisa Baumer, whose husband is killed in a mid-air plane explosion, and her inheriting from him a million dollars. They had an open marriage and lived in separate countries, and soon people ...
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My Bloody Valentine (1981)
14 Oct 2021, 07:02
My Bloody Valentine is one of those films that is talked about with reverence in horror circles, but until I got back into horror in 2017, I’d never heard of. In Valentine Bluffs, Canada, twenty years previously, the mining ...
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The Crazies (1973)
15 Oct 2021, 07:04
It’s hard to know what to make of this period of George A. Romero’s career. He was experimenting, I guess, because how else does an artist follow up a debut like the seminal Night of the Living Dead? He made ...
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Triangle (2009)
16 Oct 2021, 07:21
One of the reasons I do #31DaysofHorror is to catch up on my ever-growing list of films to see in the hope of finding one that blows me away. Triangle is this year’s first such nugget of gold. ...
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Saw (2004)
17 Oct 2021, 07:50
I really, really didn’t enjoy Saw. Perhaps it’s because Triangle was so good, or my age, or the film’s reputation, although this first one is considered by many to be a bit of a horror classic. Two men wake ...
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Night of the Demons (1988)
18 Oct 2021, 06:47
I might have been too harsh on Saw, but it can take it, and this is the eighteenth film of my #31DaysofHorror. I’m in a dip. To lift my spirits, I wanted a palate cleanser, but rather than go ...
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Dawn of the Dead (2004)
19 Oct 2021, 06:50
This time last year, I took a chance on George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, and in the summer I believed the hype and watched Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. I must have a hunk of ...
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La Llorona (2019)
20 Oct 2021, 07:17
Some subjects are horrific enough without the added charge of being in a horror film, so I had been avoiding watching the much lauded La Llorona. It’s about the aftermath of the trial of a general who ordered the ...
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Censor (2021)
21 Oct 2021, 06:58
Censor has been on my radar all year, since I heard about it, partly because it was set in the era of video nasties, and partly because it seemed to speak to the whole experience of watching horror films. ...
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Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
22 Oct 2021, 06:30
I can’t decide if I’m enjoying these borderline gialli. Sergio Martino knows how to build tension, as characters roam the rooms of a massive run down mansion in the Italian countryside, and it depends if I’m in the mood for ...
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Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)
23 Oct 2021, 07:20
I started this journey with an adapted video game, and nearing the end I find myself watching an adapted amusement park ride—Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion meets the Disney-owned Muppets to create Muppets Haunted Mansion. The first period of The Muppets, ...
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Scream 4 (2011)
24 Oct 2021, 06:30
The original Scream changed the course of horror cinema, but I didn’t enjoy Scream 2 or 3 half as much, so when Scream 4 came out to mixed reviews, I skipped it. That was a mistake. Scream 4 is ...
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Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1987)
25 Oct 2021, 07:03
Clowns on screen have never frightened me, not even Pennywise, although on the page he was a different proposition. Killer Klowns from Outer Space isn’t a film that’s trying to scare you. It’s more of an adult cartoon playing ...
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Planet Terror (2007)
26 Oct 2021, 07:01
If Killer Klowns is lovingly sewn together by your coulrophilic neighbour (wait, no…), Planet Terror is a grindhouse pastiche ruthlessly tailored by a master craftsman. It’s ridiculous fun, and as much as I am not an admirer of style ...
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Halloween II (1981)
27 Oct 2021, 07:13
The original plan was to watch Halloween Kills in the cinema, but the reviews were so awful I couldn’t bring myself to go. Instead, I went for the original sequel, Halloween II. I was surprised to see Dean ...
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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
28 Oct 2021, 09:16
I heard someone on a podcast say Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was their favourite of all the Halloween sequels. I was never a sequels guy growing up, these films were never on television in the UK, ...
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Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
29 Oct 2021, 07:33
The #31DaysofHorror train keeps chugging along with my exhausted corpse tied to the front. Friday the 13th Part 2 is many peoples franchise favourite, and I bought it for three quid a couple of years ago, so if ...
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Ghostbusters II (1989)
30 Oct 2021, 20:47
To finish my parade of eighties sequels, I went with Ghostbusters II, which I can remember seeing in the cinema with friends back in the day. My father took me to see the original Ghostbusters, at Swansea Odeon, when ...
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In the Earth (2021)
31 Oct 2021, 18:28
And so we arrive at the final film of my 2021 #31DaysofHorror, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth. Wheatley is always interesting, and Kill List is a masterpiece, so I was happy to see him return to folk ...
