It’s Halloween and 31 Days of Horror looks at the controversial film Audition. Audition is a 1999 horror film directed by Takashi Miike, based on the 1997 novel by Ryu Murakami. Starring Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina, the film is about a widower, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ishibashi), who stages a phony audition to meet a potential new romantic partner. After interviewing several women, Aoyama becomes interested in Asami (Shiina), whose dark past affects their relationship
31 Days of Horror looks at the controversial film Freaks. Freaks, is set amongst the backdrop of a travelling French circus and follows a conniving trapeze artist who joins a group of carnival sideshow performers with a plan to seduce and murder a dwarf in the troupe to gain his inheritance. However, her plot proves to have dangerous consequences.
31 Days of Horror looks at the film Let Me In! Let Me In is a 2010 romantic horror film written and directed by Matt Reeves and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloë Grace Moretz, Elias Koteas, and Richard Jenkins. It is a remake of the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In, adapted from the 2004 eponymous novel. The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who befriends and develops a romantic relationship with a female child vampire in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the early 1980s.
31 Days Horror looks at the science fiction horror film The Dead Zone. The Dead Zone is a 1983 American science-fiction thriller film directed by David Cronenberg. The screenplay, by Jeffrey Boam, is based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film stars Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Martin Sheen, Anthony Zerbe, and Colleen Dewhurst. Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a coma to find he has psychic powers.
31 Days of Horror looks at another found footage horror film. Paranormal Activity is a 2007 American supernatural horror film produced, written, directed, photographed and edited by Oren Peli. It centers on a young couple (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) who are haunted by a supernatural presence inside their home. They then set up a camera to document what is haunting them. The film uses found-footage conventions that were mirrored in the later films of the series.
31 Days of Horror looks at the found footage film, The Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a fictional story of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard—who hike into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 to film a documentary about a local myth known as the Blair Witch. The three disappear, but their equipment and footage are discovered a year later. The purportedly “found footage” is the movie the viewer sees.
31 Days of Horror dives into The Others! The Others (Spanish: Los otros) is a 2001 English-language Spanish gothic supernatural psychological horror film written, directed, and scored by Alejandro Amenábar. It stars Nicole Kidman, Fionnula Flanagan, Christopher Eccleston, Elaine Cassidy, Eric Sykes, Alakina Mann and James Bentley. Set in 1945 on the Channel Island of Jersey, it focuses on a woman and her two young photosensitive children who experience supernatural phenomena in their large manor after the arrival of three new servants.
31 Days of Horror looks at another Stephen King Classic. The Mist (also known as Stephen King’s The Mist) is a 2007 American science-fiction horror film based on the 1980 novella The Mist by Stephen King. The film was written and directed by Frank Darabont. Darabont had been interested in adapting The Mist for the big screen since the 1980s.
31 Days of Horror looks at one of the best psychological horror films. Jacob’s Ladder is a 1990 American psychological horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, produced by Alan Marshall and written by Bruce Joel Rubin. The film stars Tim Robbins as Jacob Singer, an American infantryman whose experiences before and during his service in Vietnam result in strange, fragmentary visions and bizarre hallucinations that continue to haunt him. As his ordeal worsens, Jacob desperately attempts to figure out the truth. The film’s supporting cast includes Elizabeth Peña and Danny Aiello.
31 Days of Horror looks at this Sam Raimi classic. Drag Me to Hell is a 2009 American supernatural horror film directed and co-written by Sam Raimi. It stars Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, and Adriana Barraza. The plot, written with his older brother Ivan, focuses on a loan officer, who, because she has to prove to her boss that she can make the “hard decisions”, chooses not to extend an elderly woman’s mortgage. In retaliation, the woman places a curse on the loan officer that, after three days of escalating torment, will plunge her into the depths of Hell to burn for eternity.