Excuse the Quality: 31 Days of Spooky Movies 2017

Spooky Films 4:

31 Days More!

The Challenge:

Watch a spooky movie every day of October
Movies watched during previous years challenges don’t count towards your goal.

Wow! Can you believe I'm already on year number 4 of this challenge? Seems like just yesterday that I started this thing as one of my many attempts to get people to engage with me on Facebook. And now I've been off that damnable site and have also apparently lost my ability to be concise.

I mean, jeez, look at how short and less rambley those old posts are!

In other news, as some may have noticed, I only just got around to creating entries for the last bunch of movies I watched for last year's challenge. In my defense I did go way over par that year. Also life is stupid and between work, and cleaning, and getting enough of a distraction from life to not go crazy, well...one is not left with tons of time or (more importantly) energy.

So perhaps I won't get my posts up in a timely matter, but goshdarnit, I like this challenge too much to not get it done eventually.

I spent a lot of time leading up to October contemplating what exactly counts as a spooky movie. I just can't quite pin it down. Like where is the line between a Thriller and a Horror movie if they're both about human murderers? Monsters are often a sign of a spooky movie, but also quite common in Fantasy/Adventure.

See what I mean?

I suppose it is a foolish and restrictive exercise to put everything into a box. At the end of the night you've just got to pull a Potter Stewart and go by your gut.

I've rambled enough here, but before I go I should mention that I'm currently working on a couple of things relating to these challenges:

Creating individual posts for the 2014 & 2015 challenges. As mentioned earlier I had initially created the format for the first two years to work as Facebook posts, but now it just makes it hard to look for anything specific.
Making a master list post to contain all the horror movies I've ever watched for these challenges. And then a couple others that group them according to different categories so as to make it easier for people to browse for something they'd be into.

Below you'll find the basic guidelines I use when giving movies their Fright/Gore ratings. And below that you'll find a list of all the movies I've watched for the challenges from years 2014-2016 (with links to their reviews), sorted according to date of original release.

So there you have it my friends! Have a frightfully ominous October, my little Hellraisers...

...if you dare!

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--Keep in mind that ratings operate on a sliding scale and things like Execution, Realism, and my own unavoidable Bias all have an affect on the ratings.

However, that being said, these are the basic guidelines I work from.--

Guide to Fright Factor ranking:

0 - You’ve accidentally gotten a horror movie confused with your Yoga workout DVD.

1 - Sure there’s some “spooky” imagery/themes in here, but the same could be said of the Halloween section of a department store.

2 - You have started to feel afraid for the characters in the movie. Because...for the love of God, why are they splitting up? The killer is behind you! LOOK BEHIND YOU!

3 - The fear of the film has escaped into your real world. You’ll still go in the water, sure, but not with the same carefree abandon you once did.

4 - My door is locked, right? And the windows? I’m just going to go double check. Did...did you hear something? Ha ha...ha...have you seen my baseball bat?

5 - I’m going to need you to hold my hand to ground me in reality please. Just...oh dear sweet baby Jesus...oh, we’re all going to die. Why did I think I was brave enough to watch this?

Guide to Gore Factor ratings:

0 - Rom-com Level gore
You might see such horrors as a sprained ankle or a newly delivered baby!

1 - Monster Level gore
You’ll probably see some ooky-looking monsters. Possibly a touch of blood, perhaps even see a shadow doing something suggestive of violence to another shadow, but you probably really won’t be seeing anything worse than a cut.

2 - “I’m Serious” Level gore
Here you might start to see the film trying to prove that their threat is really serious! They’ll show some some post-attack wounds or some blood sprays, but you’ll never see the actual infliction of the wound UNLESS the weapon is a knife. Horror films love knives so they can have “Oh! He cut her arm that means he’s serious”-kind of stuff, where a fake knife and some blood packets suggest a lot without really showing anything that bad. You might also see something like a person transforming into a monster, a monster transforming into an even oogier monster, someone getting an injection, or even a corpse of some sort.

3 - Witness Level gore
Now we begin to see wounds actually being inflicted. You might see someone get bit or something lobbed off. Probably a fair bit of blood is being thrown around. Maybe even some organs making a brief appearance. The gorier bits are generally very quick though.

4 - WTF! Level gore
At this level the movie is showing exaggerated levels of gore and trying to elicit a visceral reaction from you. It will undoubtedly feature all sorts of over-the-top crazy-ass shit that you really will never see in your lifetime (thank God). Maybe a head will be torn in two, maybe a person eaten alive, perhaps even an unfortunate encounter with some farm equipment or something!

5 - Look Away Level gore
This movie has 100% completely crossed the point of no return and entered the realm of nightmarish blood bath. They are purposefully showing you all the grotesque shit they can think of in order to gross you the fuck out. Expect long-shots of really fucked-up things happening to people, and to be left with not only a queasy stomach, but also a sense that whoever made this movie has some serious issues.

Dead Films

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