The Rite + 5 Underseen Horror Films
October 2021 Issue
Hello!
I’m excited to announce that work has started on my first self-published horror comic, The Rite. This 12-page, single-issue story will follow three hikers seeking adventure in the Mojave but finding something much darker lurking in the shadows of the desert.
With the scripting completed, I’m also pleased to announce that Hernán Gonzalez will be doing the art for the book. You can check out some of his great work here and his Instagram here.
Once we’ve completed the art, the plan is for a simultaneous physical and digital release so more information on how to get your copy will be coming soon!
Speaking of horror, October is finally here, and, to me at least, that means it’s spooky movie season. If you’re like me and always on the lookout for something new and scary this time of year, here are five underseen horror films to spice up your Halloween viewing:
The Lodge (2019)
The Lodge had the misfortune of being given a limited theatrical release in February 2020, just before we all began living our own real-life horror story. And like that story, this film features a family trying to keep it together and make the best of their isolation. The less you know going in, the better. The zig-zagging plot has the claustrophobic paranoia of John Carpenter’s The Thing combined with the psychological weight of Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Carpenter once said there are two types of horror stories; internal and external. Ones where the evil comes from the outside, “the other” we can’t understand, and ones where the threat originates in the human heart. The shifting perspectives of this film might allow for it to be both.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
Anna Lily Amirpour’s debut film about a vampire haunting the streets of an Iranian “Bad City” is part horror, part spaghetti western, and part tender, if doomed, gothic romance. Shot in stylish black-and-white, spoken entirely in Persian, and with art direction that features 50s muscle cars alongside pulsing synth-pop, this film feels as otherworldly and outside of time as its vampiric antihero. While the film features plenty of scenes of the titular Girl menacing the misanthropes of Bad City, my favorite moments are the long, tense, takes of burgeoning affection between her and another one of the decaying town’s lost souls.
A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
The quality and tone of the Nightmare series runs quite the gamut; from the envelope-pushing imagination of the original through the schlock of Freddy’s Dead. I’m an unabashed fan of all of it and right in the middle of the series is Dream Warriors, a film that, to me, contains all the best qualities of the franchise as a whole. Dream Warriors not only has some of the most imaginative and off-the-wall kills of the franchise, but Robert Englund also gets to give some of his best Freddy one-liners without sacrificing any of the dread that would be absent from the later sequels. Top it off with Dokken’s hair metal title track, and you’ve got a film that is the zenith of 80s slasher popcorn fun.
Day of the Dead (1985)
While George Romero practically invented the zombie film with his seminal Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, not enough is said of his mercilessly bleak third foray in the genre, Day of the Dead. The film’s apocalyptic tone rings especially scary in 2021; humanity’s survivors are divided into two conflicting factions unable to resolve their differences in the face of global crisis. The film’s opening titles showcase a cityscape strewn not just with zombies, but with alligators roaming the streets and piles of cash rendered useless. Humanity’s influence on the world is rapidly eroding in the face of catastrophe and things only get worse from there.
Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director Charles Laughton is probably best known for enjoying a successful acting career that spanned the 30s through the 60s, but his sole turn in the director’s chair was a one-and-done masterpiece. The film almost plays like one of Grimm’s fairy tales, but rather than Hansel and Gretel escaping a witch, we follow two young children fleeing’s Robert Mitchum’s scheming preacher-turned-serial-killer. Mitchum’s performance oozes sinister charm and would be enough to carry this film, but Laughton’s expressionistic use of shadow and macabre imagery keeps this sixty-year-old thriller effectively frightening even in 2021. And finally, if you enjoy filmmakers echoing their influences, check out Spike Lee’s reinterpretation of Mitchum’s love-and-hate monologue in Do The Right Thing.