The Season of Scares!!!

Fall is my favorite season.  I love how the colors of the leaves change as the weather begins to cool.  I love the layers of clothing we have to start putting on and how cozy it feels.  I love having a cup of hot chocolate to warm up.  

Not only that, but it's the season that Halloween dwells.  How fitting it is for the sun to go down earlier so that the creatures of the night can come out.  Halloween, the one day of the year that people can act like monsters and be praised for it.  Children go mad for sugar and are allowed to indulge.  

My favorite thing about Halloween are the scary movies.  As a child, scary movies were always fun to watch.  I was scared as hell growing up watching the Nightmare on Elm st. films.  Freddy Krueger was one of THE scariest monsters ever created.  A monster that get you in your dreams?  I sure as hell didn't want to sleep alone when I was a kid after seeing those movies.  Then there's Jason from the Friday the 13th films.  Unstoppable, unrelenting, hiding behind that scary ass hockey mask.  He was a killing machine that you could not reason with.   I couldn' resist.  Being scared is fun.  It's still fun today.

Ever since Kat (my girlfriend) moved to Chicago in 2011, we started somewhat of a tradition.  The week leading to October 31st, we watch a scary movie every night.  Here are 5 movies that I can remember from the past few years:

28 Days Later

A "zombie" film that's brilliantly directed by one of my favorites, Danny Boyle.  It follows Jim, a bicycle courier, who wakes up in a hospital in the middle of the "zombie" apocalypse in London.  Ok fine, they aren't zombies.

Tag line:
His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't.

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The Lost Boys

No. they were not an 80's hair band fronted by Kiefer Sutherland.  "The Lost Boys" (title inspired by the kids from the Peter Pan stories) was a quintessential 1980's movie with vampires.  It's gory, it's corny, it's got the 2 Corey's.  It's excellent.  

Tag line: 
​Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire.

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Poltergeist

This classic is one of the earliest scary movies I can remember watching as a kid (I was born in 1982, same year as when this film came out).  It's so deceiving at first, seeming like a regular family drama with cute children. The parents even smoke weed to relax at one point in the film.  Then they move to a new home and it all goes downhill.  Today, the film hasn't really aged well in the special effects department, but the behind the scenes stories and urban legends surrounding the film still gives me goosebumps.

Tag line:
They're here.

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The Strangers

This film creeped me out.  It's one of those movies where you scream at the characters because they are doing something extremely dumb which causes their demise.  It stuck with me though, because it's something that can easily happen in real life.  It's not paranormal.  They aren't make believe monsters.  They are psychopaths or simply bored assholes.  These exist in our world.  

Tag line:
Because you were home. 

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Quarantine

This movie is a blast.  This one also starts off normal, with a news reporter reporting on some firemen hanging out at the firehouse.  Nothing scary.  Then they get a call to an apartment building.  That's when the shit hits the fan.  Everything comes crashing down as some kind of virus has gotten the residents acting feral.  It's a found footage "zombie" movie and the way the local authorities and government reacts to this incident in the movies is how I imagine it would be handled in real life.  Anything to contain the virus. 

I know it's an American remake of a Spanish film titled "Rec".  Well, this is about Quarantine.  I haven't seen "Rec", maybe I'll see it some time in the future.  For now, Quarantine is awesome to me.  

Tag line:
Contain The Truth.

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Halloween is in about a week and a half.  I'll be looking for new scary movies to watch.  Any suggestions?  

What are your favorite horror films?

Leave some comments!!!  Happy Halloween!!!