Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Being exposed to scary movies was once a rite of passage for all kids, whether it was watching Nightmare on Elm Street on VHS at a mate’s place during a sleepover or having your parents foolishly think Watership Down was merely a harmless animated film.
Modern parenting wisdom might caution against it but these experiences, and the associated years of recurring nightmares, will one day be looked back on fondly when those kids have grown up.
So, this Halloween, why not make some new core memories by subjecting the family to a spooky movie night.
Because scary movies have been around almost as long as movies themselves, with the first films of the mid-1890s joined in 1896 by a three-minute horror flick by George Mellies, titled Le Manoir du Diable, or The House of the Devil.
Mellies’ intention was not to terrify the audience, but his movie had many of the tropes now synonymous with the genre — skeletons, ghosts, transforming creatures and even Satan.
Things took off from there, as cinemas earliest auteurs looked to classic literature for scares, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was adapted in 1915 and more famously in 1935 with Boris Karloff in an iconic iteration of the monster.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920 and Nosferatu two years later are still considered among the most influential movies of all time, let alone in the horror space.
From the very start, Hollywood studios recognised the return on investment offered by low-budget horror films, and it’s even more apparent now.
Just consider 2007’s Paranormal Activity, which was made on an initial production budget of $20,000 and went on to gross $270m at the global box office while spawning a franchise worth more than $1.2 billion.
Saw, created by Australia’s James Wan and Leigh Whannell, cost about $1m to make yet generated a franchise worth $1.6b.
Other exampled of low-budget horror flicks to launch successful franchises include Friday The 13th, The Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.
Adelaide’s Danny and Michael Philippou (aka RackaRacka) parlayed viral vids on YouTube into the opportunity to make a maiden feature in 2022’s Talk To Me, which cost $4.5m and made $129m.
Then, this year, we had the twin gen Z viral horror flicks, Obsession and Backrooms, which together made $1.3b against a combined production budget of $15m.
Here’s the horror flicks to watch this Halloween.
HALLOWEEN (1978)
John Carpenter’s original movie about escaped mental patient Michael Myers is the archetype for all the slasher movies that followed. Carpenter also composed the soundtrack, which is just as legendary.
Midsommar (2019)
Folk horror is a classic sub-genre of scary movies and this one by Ari Aster, starring a young Florence Pugh, is elite.
The Exorcist (1973)
The first horror film to earn an Oscar best picture nomination, director William Friedkin’s supernatural masterpiece is considered one of the greatest films ever made.
Train to Busan (2016)
Where would the horror genre be without zombies? If you haven’t seen this propulsive (and occasionally repulsive) Korean film then this is the weekend.
Gremlins (1984)
For those with reservations around showing the aforementioned films to kids, here’s an option that still delivers decent scares. As far as creature horror goes, Gremlins is a relatively family-friendly classic.
