Start Your Spooky Season By Streaming These Slasher Movies
Plus: the best of what's new to streaming this month!
October is here and you know what that means. It’s time to get spooky with it! We have made it a tradition every October to recommend a few horror movies available on streaming services, and this year is no different. Today, let’s talk about slashers, one of the most enduring horror subgenres since their 70s and 80s heyday with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare On Elm Street. We’ve recommended one classic and one recent slasher for you.
It’s also the first of the month, which means we are keeping you up to date on the best of what’s new to streaming in October. In addition to all those great titles available, October 2021 is one of the most exciting months for new movies in a long, long time. This weekend a holy month of CINEMA begins with The Many Saints of Newark (in theaters and on HBO Max), The Guilty (on Netflix), and the Venom sequel (in theaters). In fact, Drew was recently a guest on The CineBoiz Podcast to discuss this October's movies. Click here to have a listen.
Billy recommends…
Halloween (streaming on Shudder)
I’m sorry to recommend something on a niche streaming service like Shudder, but when we talk about slashers I need to recommend a classic. One of the most upsetting openings of all time. A first person perspective that we assume is a serial killer that we have seen time and time before. Instead, our killer is a child, Michael Myers. An effective prologue that jumps forward 10 or so years and sets the tone for the rest of the movie. This isn’t the original slasher, but it probably is the one most often cited.
With many classics I try to put myself in the shoes of a viewer who saw it at the time it was released. To a modern day viewer we are familiar with this horror formula, but back then it was a visceral experience that was unlike what many people had seen before, especially in the horror genre. Once a trope is established it is thrust into every copycat movie for the foreseeable future. Something so violent, angst filled, sexually charged, and weirdly funny had not been discovered by mainstream moviegoers at the time.
I love adding the mental gymnastics to create a more well-rounded experience, but Halloween doesn’t need my wandering diatribe to convince you all this movie is great. Director, writer, and composer John Carpenter gave everything he had to his projects and this is the movie that forced Hollywood to give this man full reign.
Halloween is one of the most profitable independently made movies of all time. A $300,000 dollar budget turned into a $70 million box office run. The success has not cheapened the legitimacy of this movie. It is as fun as it is unsettling and for that it is a movie I revisit time and time again this time of year.
Drew recommends…
Freaky (streaming on HBO)
Freaky opens with a familiar scene: teens hunted by a silent masked psychopath. But then this killer pulls off his mask and it’s… Vince Vaughn? Next we meet 17-year-old Millie, an uncertain high schooler just trying to get through the day. If you know the premise of Freaky, you know these two end up magically swapping bodies. Now, you may be thinking, Really, another body-switching comedy? But Freaky is a slasher comedy at heart that wields its body-swap tropes in enjoyable ways.
With two well-cast leads, Vaughn and Kathryn Newton, Freaky gets a lot of humorous mileage out of its premise. Vaughn gets the chance to have a blast playing a teenage girl, giving one of his most engaging performances in a long time. Meanwhile, Newton is surprisingly adept as a middle-aged serial killer, adopting a dead-eyed stare and menacing body language. The movie also plays out the ramifications of this switch, with Millie slowly adapting to her new physical strength and the Butcher (Vaughn’s killer in Millie’s body) frustrated by having to find new methods to carry out his murder spree.
While it’s not all that scary (it is pretty gory, however), Freaky has enough laughs and a ticking clock plot -- the body swap becomes permanent if they don’t switch back in 24 hours -- to keep you entertained and emotionally engaged. Freaky isn’t the most original horror-comedy out there, but it’s a good bit of fun that does well by its genre mash-up.
New To Streaming In October 2021
Netflix
A Knight’s Tale
Bad Teacher
Ghost
Gladiator
Hairspray
The Holiday
Malcolm X
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Spy Kids
Step Brothers
Titanic
Tommy Boy
Zodiac
Amazon Prime
Atonement
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Die Hard movies
Fight Club
Taken
The Graduate
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
The Thing
Hulu
Air Force One
Ali
From Russia With Love
Goldeneye
Goldfinger
The Hunger Games movies
Mad Max
My Best Friend’s Wedding
Rushmore
Sleepless in Seattle
Snatch
Sweet Home Alabama
Total Recall
HBO and HBO Max
Bad Boys
Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure
Black Christmas
Black Hawk Down
Blazing Saddles
Gangs Of New York
Hitch
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2
Lincoln
Misery
Moonrise Kingdom
Say Anything…
She's All That
Wall Street
Links
One of DYLA’s most highly anticipated movies got a trailer this week: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza. We are giddy for PTA’s coming-of-age film to finally arrive.
Daniel Craig has been promoting his upcoming (and final) Bond movie for 18 months now. As No Time To Die finallyyyyy opens in theaters next weekend, Craig talked to the New York Times about his experience as 007, Knives Out sequels, and the weekend. Speaking of, you made it to another weekend, readers:
