Scary Movies For People That Hate Scary Movies
Let's talk about horror
What’s up team! After an admittedly longer than I thought break, your boy is back to talking about movies #online again. Glad to be back, sorry I was gone, I was depressed, etc…
Since it’s my first newsletter back, we’re gonna keep it relatively light today and talk about something near and dear to my heart: Halloween. I love Halloween. Top 3 holiday without question. That said, when it comes to one of the bigger Halloween traditions of horror movies, I am still a little bit of a rookie.
Up until about 3 years ago, I was a Certified Baby Bitch when it came to scary movies. I actively avoided them. I was a 28-year-old man who was afraid of things that go bump in the night. Then HEREDITARY came out and there was a discourse™️ on horror. I had really started to take movies and my taste in them seriously and didn’t want to miss out on the discussion. So I put on my big boy pants, bought a ticket to HEREDITARY in the theaters, watched it (mostly through a gap in the hat I was pulling over my face), and then didn’t sleep for two weeks. I wish that was a joke, but reader, it simply is not.
Now, I am an almost 31-year-old man (yikes) whose first choice still isn’t horror, but who definitely loves the experience of getting spooked amongst friends watching a movie.
Below is a list of a few scary, scary-ish, or “not even really that scary” movies/shows that I enjoy around this time of year. If you’re like me and don’t love horror with the fervor of some of your friends, I hope you take a moment to take some of these out. They’re a good intro into the genre and they helped me push my comfort zone of what I would watch.
One final note, some of these movies are only available to stream on a service called Shudder, which I highly recommend. You can add it to your Amazon Prime subscription for $6 a month and I definitely find it worth it. You can also get a free seven-day trial, so if you don’t want it for after Halloween, you can cancel it
Movie: Over The Garden Wall
Where To Watch: Hulu
Is It Scary: no, not at all
I’m starting this list with the least scary thing that I watch every Halloween season and that is the television show OVER THE GARDEN WALL. OTGW is an animated miniseries that debuted on Cartoon Network in 2014. I watched the 10 episodes then and something about it struck me so much that I watch it every year around Halloween. I know animation is not everyone’s thing, but this one is really special. The animation is incredible, the writing is really good, and while it’s not scary, it’s definitely not just for kids. There are some really good moments, some mild scares, and the voice cast is just incredible (Elijah Wood rocks). It’s 10 episodes but each episode is 10 minutes or less and you can knock it out in short order.
Movie: Nightmares In Red White In Blue/In Search Of Darkness
Where To Watch: NIRWB - Prime/ ISOD - Shudder
Is It Scary: not really
Even though I was scared to watch horror movies as a kid and young adult, I always found them fascinating and still do to this day. Horror is a genre that is always changing and evolving, but still one that is almost guaranteed to make you money or help you break into film as a young creative. A lot of people get their start in horror.
The two films above are not horror movies, but documentaries about the horror genre and they’re both absolutely fascinating to me. NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE takes a look at the American Horror Movie through the years and how each decade produced different types of horror tropes based on society at the time of their making. IN SEARCH OF DARKNESS is an expansive (4 and a half hours!) documentary about the horror of the 80s that takes you through the decade from 1980-1989. That one’s a bigger commitment, but if you’re interested in movies at all, not just horror, I can’t recommend it enough. The details and insight offered in both of these are great.
Movie: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Where To Watch: Amazon Prime
Is It Scary: pretty scary, IMO. Maybe not as much as I thought, but definitely got me a couple of times
I’ll just get it out of the way and say there are so many good scary movies made in the ’70s and ’80s and there’s no way I could cover them all fairly in this newsletter so if you get it and think “well what about movie X? Why didn’t you include that?” just know that it’s personal and I didn’t include it specifically because I don’t like you.
This is one of my favorite OG horror movies. It’s got great effects, and for a movie made in 1974, it holds up surprisingly well. The original Leatherface is such a good movie villain and some of the kills in this movie are nuts. Plus, the final shot is iconic for a reason. I revisit this one a lot around Halloween. If you can handle this one, I recommend a lot of the other earlier classics like HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and CARRIE.
Movie: Sleepaway Camp
Where To Watch: free on Prime
Is It Scary: in the ‘80s way, sure. it’s also funny and campy
This is hands-down my favorite 80’s horror flick. I’m going to keep it light on details in this description because honestly the less said about it the better. There are teens at a (you guessed it) sleepaway camp, and they’re all getting murked. It’s great. And it has the best final 10 minutes of a horror movie, maybe of all time. The ending is such a twist that it somehow still kind of surprises me no matter how many times I’ve seen it. This movie rocks. Watch it.
Movie: SE7EN
Where To Watch: Hulu or Prime if you have the Showtime add-on. Rent on Prime if you don’t.
Is It Scary: it’s creepy with scary moments
This is a movie that I saw in high school after I watched FIGHT CLUB (I know, shut up) and wanted to get into more David Fincher movies. This is the first one I picked and whooo boy, I didn’t really know what I was getting into. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman play detectives tracking a serial killer who kills his victims based on the 7 deadly sins.
The “what’s in the box” moment has been memed to death, but this movie is still genuinely very effecting and has some really scary moments around the kills of John Doe. Unfortunately, this movie also stars Kevin Spacey, and obviously that guy fucking sucks, but as a movie, this one is still one to watch if you feel comfortable with doing so.
Movie: The Blair Witch Project
Where To Watch: HULU
Is It Scary: you bet
I was 9 years old when this movie came out, so I had precisely zero interest or ability to see this movie, but I remember at the time my family was hosting a German foreign exchange student named Dennis and he was OBSESSED with this movie. The first night he went and saw it, he had the three guys who he went with stay over at our house because they were all so freaked out by it. They saw it 3 more times after that and they debated on if what happened was real or not.
I watched this movie in 2015 or so, roughly 16 years after it debuted and I gotta say, I can see why he had his buddies spend the night that first night. There are a lot of “found footage” style horror movies and they weren’t even new in the 90s, but man this one just feels different. It feels like it actually happened and the last 15 minutes had me chomping on my fingernails.
Movie: REC
Where To Watch: Prime
Is It Scary: hell yeah
This movie is really, really good and owes a lot to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. A reporter and her cameraman follow a fire unit to a late-night call to an apartment building that gets quarantined while they’re inside. The police won’t let them out and they won’t tell them what’s going on. The rest of the movie is them documenting what happens to them throughout the night, the footage being found the next day.
I’m not really sure why, but this is, to me, one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. I watched this movie in college one night with some friends during a Halloween party that was winding down. I lived alone at the time and “slept” with a bat next to my bed for the next, I don’t know, month or so? The ending monster in this film is terrifying. It is so effecting and scary and I cannot believe they made this movie for only like $2 million.
This is a Spanish movie with subtitles, but don’t let that scare you off (lol). This is probably the scariest movie I’ll recommend to you, but if you can make it through this one, you can handle a lot of other things I feel like.
Movie: Hereditary
Where To Watch: Hulu or Prime with the Showtime extension. Rent on Prime if not.
Is It Scary: 10-4 chief
HEREDITARY, as I mentioned in the opening of this newsletter, was the movie that brought me truly into the Horror field. Besides the previously mentioned REC, it’s easily the scariest movie on the list, but hot damn is it also a masterpiece of a movie. Toni Collette deserves an Oscar as a matriarch coming apart and taking her family down with her. Alex Wolff looks like he actually might die in real life in this movie and there are some genuinely terrifying sequences in this movie that kept me up for a few nights. If you can handle this one, I also recommend checking out his other film MIDSOMMAR, which is not as scary, but in my opinion, is much more upsetting.
Movie: IT (Part 1)
Where To Watch: HBO Max
Is It Scary: it definitely has its moments
I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed this film. It’s kind of like if STAND BY ME had a really scary clown thrown in. I really enjoyed all the young actor’s performances in this movie and there are some really scary set pieces in this film, particularly the sequence in the garage while they’re flipping through the old photos on the projector.
This movie was a pretty big hit for a good reason. It’s a blockbuster movie with some genuine scares, but also does a really good job capturing what it’s like to be a kid who maybe doesn’t fit in until you find your people. Not to sound like a sap, but the movie does a good job of balancing that feel with it’s horror and it’s really effective.
That’s a pretty good list to get you started. I hope you check one or a few of these movies out and that they provide you with adequate or above-average scares for your All Hallow’s Eve. Thanks for sticking around and it’s good to be back. Talk to you soon.
In Search of Darkness is one of the best horror docs!! This and Terror in the Aisles are my top two favs.