Spooky Season Year-Round – Autumn
By Mahad Mubbasher
The Lair of the White Worm (1988), Ken Russell. Image courtesy of Vestron Pictures
The pumpkins are mouldering, the plastic spiders are packed away, the candy bucket is empty. Halloween – even after this year’s greedy annexation into the November weekend – has long come to an end. And with it goes the October spooky season, the one time of year the median moviegoer goes out of their way to watch horror films.
But, I ask you, why? Why should this genre, as lively and dynamic as any other, be relegated to one month out of twelve? In my view, horror can be fitting, resonant, and even festive, at any given time of the year; spooky season is perennial. To make my case, I’m compiling a calendar of horror movies – films that match each season in their plot and setting or, more tantalisingly, their atmosphere and their all-important vibes – to keep horror on your mind no matter the date.
First, a watchlist for the waning days of autumn.
Harvest Moon
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), Frank De Felitta. Gore Warning: 1/5, Intensity: 2/5. Image courtesy of CBS. Available to watch on Shudder (US) and Amazon Prime.
Let’s set a baseline for what makes a horror movie feel autumnal with a ghost-story chiller. Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) is an obscure TV movie about a quartet of supposedly upstanding men getting picked off, one by one, after a travesty of mob justice, and it nails everything we’re looking for. It’s got plenty of bleak exteriors and well-lit night-time scenes, and an excellently eerie soundscape of wind howling over the fields. The film’s harvest time aesthetics and visceral feeling of the chill in the air give it a tangible connection to the changing landscape and weather that characterises this season. Dated but well-meaning depiction of disability aside, the movie’s real joy is in presenting a bunch of loathsome, cowardly protagonists and watching them fall satisfyingly apart in the face of inevitability. Admittedly, it is set in part over Halloween, which maybe undermines my thesis here. Still, the sunny but not warm Deep South setting makes it feel more like an October movie than a Halloween one – it’s pumpkins, not Jack-o’-lanterns, if that makes sense.
Back to School Season
Jennifer’s Body (2009), Karyn Kusama. Gore Warning: 3/5, Intensity: 2/5. Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox. Available to watch on Disney+.
It’s not really that surprising that horror goes so well with high school, and this means there’s a whole plethora of education-set horror movies that coincide with the start of term time. Jennifer’s Body (2009), the modern classic status of which has by now been firmly cemented, is but one. The unappreciated-in-its-time genius of writer Diablo Cody’s and director Karyn Kusama’s (whose 2015 thriller The Invitation is also worth a punt, while you’re at it) collective vision has been extolled and reclaimed every which way. I’ll only add that the darkening days, the late-2000s fashion, and the soft emo-rock bangers that fill the soundtrack and undergird the plot make it perfect September viewing; for when you’re next looking for an excuse to rewatch.
Suspiria (1977), Dario Argento. Gore Warning: 3/5, Intensity: 4/5. Image courtesy of Seda Spettacoli. Available to watch on Shudder and Amazon Prime.
Another such film is Suspiria (1977), the most beloved of infamous giallo-master Dario Argento’s filmography and the old money to Jennifer’s Body’s nouveau riche, doing the ‘re-evaluated classic’ long before it was cool. It follows a newcomer to a sinister ballet school plagued by a set of grisly murders, but the plot is probably the least important (and least developed) ingredient in the stew. The film expands the parameters of our autumn aesthetic, especially with its ethereally striking approach to light, colour and set design – the reds alone are more vibrant than most entire movies – but the long shadows and sense of biting chill are still there. Just call it an impressionistic representation of the season’s explosion of colour, pile on an outrageous murder set piece or two and an iconic score and it feels like a hex being cast on you, the viewer.
The Fall Folk
The Lair of the White Worm (1988), Ken Russell. Gore Warning: 2/5, Intensity: 1/5. Image courtesy of Vestron Pictures. Available to watch on Amazon Prime (US) and Tubi (US).
Perhaps the most consistently autumnal subgenre, under our evolving definition that prizes the cold, the bleak, and the rural, is folk horror. Eerie countrysides and dark woodlands, grasping trees and pagan rituals, deep connections to the land and the renewal of the seasons – it’s a rich field, and pretty much any choice will fit the brief. You could go with the subgenre’s biggest touchstones with The Witch (2015) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), and you’d be right to do so. But I’d like to steer you elsewhere – towards The Lair of the White Worm (1988), a breathlessly bonkers horror-comedy that’s as absurdly funny as it is incredibly horny. It has enough dead trees, grey skies, and comfy jumpers to satisfy our seasonal prerequisites, plus overlayed religious, sexual and homoerotic imagery, a stunningly attractive cast (Hugh Grant! Amanda Donohoe! Peter Capaldi!), and more snake-related double-entendres than you can shake a stick at.
The Ritual (2017), David Bruckner. Gore Warning: 2/5, Intensity: 2/5. Image courtesy of Netflix. Available to watch on Netflix (US).
If a graphic, psychosexual romp with slightly wonky pacing isn’t quite your speed, I’d suggest 2017’s The Ritual. A far more conventional but no less effective ‘wander around in the woods’ picture, The Ritual is lean, functional and reliable, and squeezes a veritable gallon of ‘was that just a tree, or something else’ tension out of its clever framing and foley. The performances are strong, the atmosphere is rich, and the film balances its sometimes-grating characters with a true all-timer of a beasty at the end.
Family Night
Hereditary (2018), Ari Aster. Gore Warning: 4/5, Intensity: 5/5. Image courtesy of A24. Available to watch on Amazon Prime.
Here me out: if Knives Out is a Thanksgiving movie, why can’t Hereditary be? Ari Aster’s 2018 occult flick that helped codify ‘A24 horror,’ for good or ill, is pretty much identical to the cosy Agatha Christie send-up if you look at it from the right angle. Aside from major first-act swerves and mysterious plot twists in the background, which both foreground the anxious family drama, the simmering intergenerational resentment that spills over into dinner table shouting matches also form the mainstays of the archetypical, un-idealised family holiday. I rest my case. True, this little niche is only strictly autumn – sorry, fall – specific for Americans, but throw in Rosh Hashanah and sometimes an Eid or even two (lunar calendar depending), and I think the experience is widespread enough to place this movie firmly into the autumn column.
All Hallow’s Eve
Ghostwatch (1992), Lesley Manning. Gore Warning: 1/5, Intensity: 3/5. Image courtesy of BBC. Available to watch on Shudder (US).
Alright, I couldn’t resist popping in one exclusively Halloween rec here at the end. Ghostwatch may not hold the same power now as on October 31st, 1992, when it tricked thousands of unsuspecting viewers into genuinely believing that it was the live, non-fiction programme it pretended to be and that those were real, non-fictional ghosts. But the sheer verisimilitude it conjures, from the authentic presenters (anyone recognise the guy from Robot Wars?) to the dry rhythms of British live television, still has an impact. By grounding the scares, the film magnifies them, as its did-I-just-see-that subtlety gives way to a slow and inexorable escalation of tension. It may not have the flash or the imagery of the spooky staples, but it's my choice for Halloween night.
Watch them, rewatch them, or file them away for next year (or forget entirely, you’re allowed), I hope these movies would broaden horror’s place in the calendar for you. And please remember – if you’re in the southern hemisphere, read this backwards.