13 of The October 13

With this film, the October 13 comes to a close for 2025. For the final movie of the list, I decided to give Terrifier 2 a chance.

I had watched the original Terrifier last week as a part of the October 13, but I did not like it much. Outside of a neat new killer, Art the Clown, there wasn’t much to the film.

Terrifier 2 however takes a much different route. I did enjoy this one much more.

It started off with some brutality that made me look away from the screen a couple of times. I am not a huge fan of the graphic blood and gore in the franchise, but that is something that I have never been much of a fan of.

What was different with this movie compared to the first one was the protagonists. Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) were two characters that I really enjoyed. I thought both of them had much more development than any character in the original and I wanted to see them survive the movie. It was nice to have some characters to root for.

Now, the third act was weird and magically bizarre and I am not sure if I loved how things happened, although the conclusion to the movie was oddly satisfying.

I did like this film better than the first one. It was still too long, but I was cheering for Sienna and Jonathan the whole time. Maybe I can watch Terrifier 3 for next year’s October 13.

12 of The October 13

I had high hopes for this film.

The Uninspired was based on Kim Jee-Woo’s 2003 Korean horror film, A Tale of Two Sisters. I have never seen that film so I did not have to worry about a comparison.

According to IMDB, “Anna returns home after a stint in a mental hospital, but her recovery is jeopardized by her father’s new girlfriend and ghastly visions of her dead mother.“

I started with this movie and I was intrigued with what it was laying out. There was kept its story close to the vest at the beginning, and I liked the very beginning of the film. Then, it seemed to take a shift into a situation with a manipulative girlfriend that we’d seen many times before.

Sadly, that middle part of the movie was so dumb that the film skidded to a halt. It became nonsensical several times. Then, in the third act, the film went completely off the rails as the film tried to pull a poor man’s Sixth Sense twist that really did not work… at all. I found it to be totally ridiculous and it did not make any sense, nor did they care that it did not.

I was really disappointed with the film.

11 of the October 13

In all honesty, I am not sure I have any idea of what happened in this movie.

The October 13 headed back to 1932, thanks to HBO Max, for a black and white gothic horror movie entitled Vampyr.

It is bizarre, wild, disorienting and nightmarish. And I am not sure I know what happened.

According to IMDB, “A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.”

The info drop they present us with included a lot of details that we have not seen in vampire stories before, which is fine, but it was a little difficult to follow.

The visuals of this movie, especially the odd out-of-body experience that our main protagonist, Allan Gray went through happened without any explanation at all. The death of the doctor at the end of the film, smothered in flour, was also as weird of an ending as you could expect. Then, Gray and Giséle, who had been kidnapped by the doctor, were on a boat.

It all feels more like a fever dream than anything else.

10 of the October 13

With this year’s October 13, most of the films have been from the last 10-15 years. I wanted to find something older to add to the list, so I went to HBO Max and found a film from 1945 featuring EYG Hall of Famer Boris Karloff called Isle of the Dead.

According to IMDB, “On a Greek island during the 1912 war, several people are trapped by quarantine for the plague. If that isn’t enough worry, one of the people, a superstitious old peasant woman, suspects one young girl of being a vampiric kind of demon called a vorvolaka“

The film was a slow burn for much of the runtime, as the characters stuck on the island began to fall from the plague. However, once the identity of the “vorvolaka” was revealed and she went on her spree in the end of the film, the story picked up rapidly.

Boris Karloff gives a great performance as General Nikolas Pherides. The General was very much suspicious of Thea (Ellen Drew) and the combination of the sickness and his own paranoia led to a madness gripping him. Karloff was definitely the stand out of the actors involved.

The music of the score worked extremely well, creating a sufficient feel for each scene.

The story was simple and the horror did elevate near the third act. With a strong performance from an iconic horror actor, Isle of the Dead ended on a strong note.

9 of the October 13

This is the third Hell House film that I have seen. I have not gone in any specific order. I started with the original Hell House film and then, for the October 13 for 2024, I watched the Hell House LLC: Origins film.

This, the first sequel to the original, has been on my queue on Amazon Prime for quite awhile now.

The film had some moments to it, but it was a step down from the other Hell House films that I have seen. The found footage/documentary format does work well for this series. This film added the “Morning Mysteries” talk show idea to help build the suspense of what was going on.

However, the twist at the end was laughable. There were good moments leading into this, but none of them would be as remembered as this horrific ending twist. It is perhaps one of the worst ending sequences I have seen in a long time.

Even if I had been engaged with the film up until the ending, that would have truly wrecked it. As it is, I was mildly interested in the film prior to this, but it took a major nose dive after that.

8 of the October 13

I have avoided the Terrifier franchise up until this point. I figured that I could include this in the October 13 this year since I found them available on Peacock. I have always enjoyed a good killer clown.

Of course, I much prefer Pennywise to Art the Clown.

I did like the design of the character of Art the Clown. He looked good. After that though, I was not much of a fan of this movie.

The biggest problem was that none of these characters, including Art, meant anything to me. There was really no story to the film. Sure, most slasher films have a limited amount of story, but there usually is something. This was lacking completely.

The killings were gruesome and had a bit of humor to them. I had to roll my eyes at the hacksaw killing because of how impossible it would be. If you know, you know. It felt as if the gore was the only thing that Terrifier had going for it.

The ending in the morgue made no sense as there had been zero hints prior that Art was anything more than just a kook in a clown mask.

While Terrifier was just 1 hour and 25 minutes long, the sequel expanded to a whopping 2 hours and 25 minutes, which will probably prevent me from watching it any time soon. The first film did not inspire me to want to invest that long into a second taste of Art the Clown.

7 of The October 13

For the next film in the October 13 this year, I went to Netflix for a 2024 Philippine found footage film based on a Korean film from 2018 called Gonijam: Haunted Asylum.

According to IMDB, “Reality TV stars face mounting supernatural horrors while filming at haunted Xinglin Hospital in Taiwan. As paranormal activity intensifies, group dynamics crumble and a dark force manipulates their survival choices.“

The idea of a group of online celebrities doing a livestream inside a horrendous haunted asylum and streaming their eventual deaths across the internet does not sound like a situation that is improbable. In fact, I could see something like this taking place in the world of YouTube today.

It seemed as if most of these actors were playing some form of themselves during the film. They all did an exceptional job of creating tension and anxiety through their outright terror and panic to escape the horrors that they were facing.

A few of the deaths were terrible, including the ones that were more quiet, like Zarck, who appears to have caught some kind of deadly virus and he was breaking our in scabs and growths.

While a lot of the dialogue was members of the team just calling out each other’s names (aka “ALEXA!”, “QUEN!” etc.), it built that feeling of confusion and hysteria.

This was a good use of the found footage subgenre and the movie had some interesting comments to make on the online community. The responses to the live stream on the side of the screen were very realistic.

5 of the October 13

Scare me is a comedy horror film written, directed and starring Josh Ruben, who has also directed Werewolves Within and Heart Eyes.

I do not remember where I found this film while I was compiling my possible list of the October 13 this year, but I am truly pleased that Scare Me made it. Comedy-horror is difficult to do. There are way more examples of films that try it and fail than those that are successful. Josh Ruben appears to be someone who can find that perfect mix between the genres.

Fred (Josh Ruben) rented a cabin in the Catskills with hopes of doing some writing. Fred meets Fanny (Aya Cash), who had written one of the best horror novels of all time. During a power outage, Fanny comes over to Fred’s cabin and the two of them take turns telling stories, trying to scare each other.

This was really great. It was so funny and still provided that creepy feel that you didn’t know what was next. Josh Ruben and Aya Cash worked well together, creating some compelling stories to present to each other.

Chris Redd joined in on the fun for a short while as Carlo the pizza delivery guy.

The film uses a ton of references from other horror movies including Jaws, The Shining, Misery, and Poltergeist. The movie clearly has a love for horror films and the manner in which they are created, while also messing with the tropes of the genre.

I watched Scare Me on Amazon Prime, specifically with Shudder. It was an excellent time, blending humor and horror perfectly.

4 of the October 13

There was a movie from 1959 called House on Haunted Hill, that starred Vincent Price. It was a fun time as five people were challenged to stay the night in a haunted house for $10,000.

Well, in 1999, the fee goes up.

It was $1,000,000 dollars in the 1999 remake, and it was at an old abandoned insane asylum.

And I would not classify this one as “fun.”

The film included  Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan as those poor souls trying to survive the night. That’s a decent cast list of actors, but the writing was anything but good, and character development was lacking even more.

Some of the special effects were bad, although it was 1999, so you have to take that into consideration. Of course, 1999 had the Sixth Sense come out and those effects were much better.

This was nowhere near as good of a movie as the Vincent Price version, and it was the first poor movie in the October 13 for this year.

2 of The October 13

A first for the October 13, a documentary.

Netflix’s documentary The Devil on Trial featured the supposed demonic possession of 11-year old David Glatzel. This was a case taken up by Ed and Lorraine Warren. During the exorcism, Arne Cheyenne Johnson reportedly challenged the demon, which everyone took as a bad thing.

Then, Arne Cheyenne Johnson killed his friend with a knife, and his trial was the famous “The Devil Made Me Do It” case. The judge would not allow that defense, but the doc presented that case.

I will say though that this doc was very balanced, because one of David’s brothers, Carl, provided an other side of the story. He came out and told a story about his father coming into the room, slapping David after he had been cursing at his mother, and David went and sat down. His manner of telling the events was definitely calm and convincing.

He also mentioned the belief that their mother was giving her kids and husband Sominex in their food. Again, he was very believable in the way he presented the details.

The doc presented both sides of the Warrens. The side where they have helped a lot of people and another side where they were in it to make money. I like the Warrens, but you have to wonder about their motives.

I did enjoy the doc, especially since it did not push one side or the other.