Group Feature: Our Favorite Halloween Movies

Halloween brings that eerie time of year during which you grow hyper-aware of every creak and bump in the night, every crinkle in the leaves behind you as you walk home at 2 a.m. Whether you’re easily frightened or not, there’s something perversely amusing about placing your already paranoid bum in front of a TV in a dimly lit living room to have the bejeezus frightened out of you by a spooky film. Sometimes the Halloween flicks that capture our heart aren’t super terrifying but have a dark charm and humor, while others are the kinds of films that sneak into your psyche and plant a seed of terror that returns every year. Here are some of ACRN’s favorite Halloween flicks.

Abbie Doyle, Editorial Director: Blair Witch Project

I don't do scary very well. When I was in middle school, one episode of Criminal Minds was enough to completely shatter my psyche, remove all feelings of safety and send me sleeping in my parents' bed for two nights. An appreciation for things scary took many years to develop, and only with pressure from peers was I able to gradually watch creepier pieces of film. So when I was 19 and someone suggested watching The Blair Witch Project, I was grudgingly willing to do so; I figured I could handle it well enough.

I was wrong. I am very, very easily affected by tension in movies, so within the first 20 minutes of *The Blair Witch* I was sweating, anxious and horribly enthralled. I kid you not, I was covering my eyes with my hands and peeping through my fingers like a child. But no joke, The Blair Witch Project is one of the most creative narrative films I have ever seen. This movie is so good I watched it probably five times within a week of first seeing it. It's an insanely good scary movie with plenty of content to really mess with your mind, and I am SO FRICKIN' TICKED that Netflix no longer streams this wonderful, horrifying movie. And now I have one question for you, dear reader--who found this found footage? Who picked it up off the basement floor?

Megan Fair, Features Editor: The Babadook

While pretty much anything frightens me and I can’t watch most thrillers without looking up the plot synopsis on IMDB halfway through the film, I somehow let our Editorial Director con me into watching the acclaimed psychological thriller The Babadook. Although I’m fairly certain that the stress of watching the film shaved at least three years off my life, I would recommend this terrifying film to anyone with a love of great cinematography, believable character development and tension-building terror.

The symbolism-heavy film not only plays on supernatural themes like the dreaded bogeyman, but it also stirs up the darker anxiety of everyday adults: dealing with the death of a spouse, being a bad parent, having an unbearably ill-behaved child that makes life hell on top of being widowed. While those are tangible fears, the bogeyman that is the Babadook is truly the stuff of nightmares. His appearance on the black and white television show the mother is watching, his silhouette on the coat rack as the mother pleads for help from the police, his gravelly croak of “baaaa-baaaa-doook-doook-doook” and omnipresence in their life are all things I still think about every single time I pass the door to our cellar. Gives me the dang creeps.

Van Williams, Contributor: Donnie Darko

As you get older, something about October and Halloween seems to get lost. For most of our peers, it seems Halloween is only a holiday for funny costumes and binge drinking. But when October rolls around every year I still can’t help but feel the urge to be spooked, to feel scared, to walk a little faster up the stairs at night.

The movie that most embodies October to me is Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko features a young Jake Gyllenhaal portraying a disturbed high school teenager who suffers from early onset signs of paranoid schizophrenia. Gyllenhaal’s delusions are haunted by a large bunny named Frank who has catastrophic predictions for the future. The movie counts down the days to Halloween and never fails to offer a relentless sense of uncomfortableness as the leaves change and fall in a town where everyone is pointing the finger at each other. Coupled with the best use of a Joy Division song I’ve ever seen in a film, this movie is everything to love about the spookiest month of the year.

Daniel Marco, Contributor: Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice might not be the first film that pops into your mind when it comes to Halloween movies, but it is for me. My family and I would watch it without fail every weekend before Halloween, and it never got old for me. It’s not necessarily scary or frightening, but it does have thing going for it; it’s more fun to watch than any other Halloween movie.

Seriously, all the silly looking props, the cheesy 1980’s Danny Elfman soundtrack and the infamous dance around the dinner table to “Day-O” are so much fun to experience. Plus there’s Michael Keaton being funny as hell and absolutely killing his role. Is there a funnier performance in a Halloween movie than Keaton’s Beetlejuice? I don’t think so, and he is the #1 reason why I can watch this movie every Halloween and still laugh my ass off.

Jon Fuchs, Contributor: Friday the 13th Part 2

Disregard anyone else’s opinion: the Friday the 13th franchise is the king of all slasher movie franchises (more like A Nightmare on SNORE Street!). By the word “franchise,” I’m really just talking about parts 2-4 and 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason. Forget Part 1, an overdramatic mess I blame for every terrible modern horror movie, and forget 5-10 and that god-awful 2009 remake, since the series was actually supposed to end at Part IV. Friday the 13th Part 2 will always have my heart (and I think I mean that literally).

When a horror movie begins with a refrigerated, decapitated head and an explosion in the opening credits, you know it’s about to get real. That’s what makes Friday the 13th Part 2 so great: it’s corny. It’s one of those movies Scream makes fun of, and it’s one of those movies you yell at drunk with your friends.

But it’s self-aware; it’s not trying to be mind-blowing because it knows that all you want is sex, drinking and gore, and that’s exactly what it gives you. And as someone who really hates jump scares, the ending of this movie has one of the most genuinely scary jump scares I’ve ever seen. If you want a good horror movie to watch while binge drinking with friends (WHICH ACRN AND I DO NOT CONDONE), then Friday the 13th Part 2 is the movie for you.