For the final day of my horror marathon, I’m watching Ghost Story from 1981 – a choice that feels meant to be after spending time with Alice Krige in She Will yesterday. Throughout this month of horror viewing, I’ve followed various threads and themes, and one of the most intriguing has been my unplanned journey through Alice Krige’s performances. From Gretel and Hansel to She Will, I’ve found myself drawn to her remarkable ability to transform from vulnerable to vengeance-seeking, from earthly to otherworldly. Ghost Story, one of her earliest roles, seems a perfect way to close this journey, as it showcases her gift for inhabiting characters who move effortlessly between our world and something more mysterious.
Though I read Peter Straub’s novel years ago, the details have largely faded from memory, leaving behind only atmospheric impressions and half-remembered plot points that feel more like déjà vu than actual recollection. It’s a peculiar way to approach the film adaptation – familiar yet fresh, like returning to a house you lived in as a child. [Edit: I just read this review to refamiliarize myself with the book, and they make it sound so good that I almost want to read it again.]
The story follows the members of the Chowder Society, four elderly friends who gather regularly to share ghost stories. When one of their sons dies mysteriously, it forces them to confront a terrible secret from their youth. Through flashbacks, we learn of Eva Galli, a beautiful and mysterious woman who captivated their younger selves. During a drunken encounter, their unwanted advances led to her death – a crime they covered up and have kept secret for fifty years. Now, a woman named Alma Mobley, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Eva, has appeared in their lives, seemingly intent on revenge. Even though I don’t recall much of what I read, I’m realizing that the film strips away much of what made Straub’s novel so rich – in the book, Eva is an entirely different sort of supernatural entity, and the town of Milburn itself is practically a character, with Straub weaving an intricate tapestry of its inhabitants, their relationships, and the way evil slowly infiltrates their lives. The movie foregoes this larger canvas to focus more narrowly on the Chowder Society and their secret.
The film brings together an ensemble cast of Hollywood legends – Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman – as members of the Chowder Society. At first, their old-world mannerisms and antiquated phrases like “twaddle” and “the jimjams” paint a picture of genteel respectability. But as the film peels back layers of time, we discover a far uglier truth. The flashbacks reveal not distinguished gentlemen, but predatory young men surrounding a lone woman, their drunken desire leading to Eva’s death.
Watching this in 2024, it’s impossible not to think of how frequently we’ve seen this pattern play out in real life – respected, powerful men whose carefully maintained veneers of dignity mask histories of violence against women. With each new revelation about a beloved male celebrity or public figure, the shock lessens; the pattern becomes clearer. These men in Ghost Story, with their literary quotations and refined mannerisms, represent a particular type of masculine privilege that uses cultural sophistication to disguise darker impulses. As the internet wisdom goes: “men is too headache” – a phrase that manages to be both funny and devastatingly accurate when considering centuries of similar stories, both fictional and real.
The parallels between Ghost Story and yesterday’s viewing of She Will are striking. In both films, Krige portrays women who suffer abuse at the hands of men in positions of power and influence. Both characters find their way to revenge through supernatural means – Eva through ghostly manifestation, Veronica through the power of the witch-burned land. It’s fascinating to see how Krige, from these early performances to her recent work, has brought such depth to these stories of women turning trauma into terrible power.
Horror delights in showing up everywhere – in perfumes and podcasts, in fantasy shows and folk tales. It lives in vengeful ghosts and haunted apartments, but it also surfaces in unexpected moments, in stories that seem to be about something else entirely. Through films about power and transformation, through tales of revenge and redemption, horror keeps finding new ways to speak to both personal and universal truths. And that’s the thrill of it. Each October, I return to this ritual of shadows – watching past midnight, reading between meetings, stealing moments wherever I can find them – because horror reminds us we’re not alone in our darkest moments. It gives shape to our fears, voice to our rage, and sometimes, unexpectedly, light in the darkness.
P.S. Here’s a little video I shared today of some Halloween fragrance picks!
P.P.S. I also watched the new Salem’s Lot this October, but it was so bad I decided not to even write about it! What did you think?
Day Thirty-One of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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For day 30 of my 31 days of horror celebration, I found myself drawn to She Will, a 2022 psychological horror/folk horror film that feels like a hidden gem in the “good for her” subgenre. If you’re not familiar with this particular corner of horror, it encompasses films where women who have been wronged find their way to revenge or redemption, often through supernatural means. Think Jennifer’s Body or The Vvitch, where female trauma transforms into something powerful and terrible. Midsommar frequently comes up in these discussions, though there’s ongoing debate about whether it truly fits the category, given how the cult systematically manipulates Dani, breaking her down and rebuilding her as part of their commune through careful orchestration of trauma and false community. These genre conversations are always evolving as we collectively examine these films through different lenses. What matters is what resonates with you, and She Will definitely felt like a strong addition to my own list.
Beyond its compelling premise, what sealed the deal for me was the casting of Alice Krige in the lead role. Having just watched her mesmerizing performance in Gretel and Hansel earlier this month, I believe I’m entering my Alice Krige era. Though I primarily knew her as the Borg Queen from Star Trek, I’m now discovering her extensive career in horror – a delightful revelation that’s perfectly timed with my month-long horror deep dive.
In She Will, Krige plays Veronica Ghent, an aging film star who retreats to a remote Scottish healing center following a double mastectomy. Accompanied by her young nurse Desi (Kota Eberhardt), Veronica arrives at a mystical woodland estate where the ground is tragically rich with the ashes of women burned as witches centuries ago. As Veronica grapples with her own trauma – both from her surgery and the abuse she suffered as a child actor – she discovers that the land itself seems to be offering her a supernatural means of retribution.
The film cast its spell on me immediately, reminding me, at least initially, of weird fiction wizard Robert Aickman’s eerie story “Into the Woods.” Like Margaret Sawyer in Aickman’s tale, Veronica finds herself at a remote retreat that promises some form of healing or escape. Just as mysterious paths surround Margaret’s Kurhus through dense Swedish forests, Veronica’s retreat is encircled by Scottish woods that feel alive with strange possibility. In both works, the isolation isn’t just geographic – it’s a severance from the normal world that allows for profound transformation. Both women enter these spaces as one thing and risk emerging as something else entirely. The Scottish wilderness in She Will is captured with the same kind of brooding atmosphere that Aickman conjures in his prose – a sense of gloom and barrenness that somehow promises something more than mere desolation. The trees stand like ancient sentinels wrapped in perpetual fog and mist, creating that same chest-clutching unease that Aickman does so masterfully.
Aside from immensely enjoying the brooding atmosphere and reveling in my fondness for “people head off to a remote place and weirdness ensues” horror, the heart of the movie lies in watching the relationship between Veronica and Desi unfold. There’s something quite lovely about seeing their initially frosty dynamic gradually warm into something genuine and meaningful. Their growing connection grounds all the supernatural elements in something deeply human and real.
Clint Mansell’s haunting score further enhances the film’s emotional resonance. As a devoted fan of Mansell’s work on The Fountain (my favorite soundtrack of all time), I was thrilled to find his signature ethereal, swelling compositions enhancing the film’s otherworldly elements.
Looking back, I wish I had planned a double feature of She Will and Gretel and Hansel – both films showcase Krige’s remarkable talent for bringing depth and nuance to roles that blur the line between victim and avenger, between the natural and supernatural. Both stories exist in that liminal space where fairy tale meets horror, where women’s pain transforms into power.
This late in my horror marathon, it’s been fascinating to trace the various themes and performers that have captured my attention – from my exploration of apartment horror to my Osgood Perkins phase, and now this unexpected Alice Krige mini-retrospective. She Will is perhaps among my favorites of this month’s viewing, offering something sophisticated and strange, a folk horror tale about vengeance that feels more like a dark fairy tale about resurrection and redemption.
Day Thirty of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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As we approach the end of our 31 Days of Horror, I’m taking a slight detour from our usual fare of films and novels to explore the visual arts – specifically, the mesmerizing and unsettling work of Marci Washington.
While her artwork appears in my book The Art of Darkness: A Treasure of the Morbid, Melancholic, and Macabre, my fascination with her ghostly visions predates the book’s conception, and if you are unfamiliar, I think you’ll soon understand why her work deserves a spotlight during this season of shadows.
Before we dive into Washington’s spectral world, a brief reminder about The Art of Darkness. This book was, as I’ve often said, born in my blood – a culmination of my lifelong obsession with what lurks in the shadows. It’s a carefully curated exploration of artworks that haunt and horrify, mesmerize and delight, examining how artists throughout history have grappled with the darker aspects of the human condition.
The book spans centuries of artistic expression, investigating how artists have channeled their fears, obsessions, and inner darkness into powerful visual statements, asking vital questions about why we’re drawn to the macabre and what comfort we might find in facing our demons.
In her piece “Through the Thinnest of Veils,” which appears in The Art of Darkness, a shadowy figure in flowing white seems to be simultaneously emerging from and dissolving into the darkened wallpaper behind it. The scene is illuminated as if by nothing more than our eyes adjusting to midnight darkness or perhaps a slim sliver of moon through filmy curtains.
The wallpaper pattern is barely discernible, appearing almost rotted, as if infected by black mold, yet there’s an undeniable beauty in this decaying opulence.
Washington’s work creates windows into multiple dark narratives that exist in a liminal space between past and present. Her Gothic tableaux unfold in series after haunting series: pale, debauched ghosts posed like fashion magazine models against haunted manor backdrops; a grey stone lodge set against an eerily bloodless aurora; a clifftop crowned with a crumbling castle that could have emerged from Simon Marsden’s haunted lens; an enigmatic sphinx with eyes cast moonward in an agony of ennui; twins with long hair and piercing gazes that could have stepped from a Jean Rollin film.
These scenes of decadent society in crisis, these explorations of haunted houses seem to pulse with ancestral memory. Looking at these pieces, one gets the sense that darkness itself is seeking expression through her brush – not as something to fear, but as a medium through which forgotten stories and buried truths emerge. The paintings feel less like creations than revelations, as if Washington has found a way to tune into frequencies that whisper from the shadows, channeling voices that have long waited for their moment to speak.
Working in flat washes of gouache and watercolor, she creates grotesque faces and distorted bodily forms that seem to stare beyond the page into another dimension. Her palette captures that precise moment where fall surrenders to winter – somber dark greens, blacks, and creams punctuated by shocking splashes of blood red and enriched with brown and gold hues that hint at faded opulence. It’s eternally night in her world, whether we’re peering into candlelit drawing rooms or watching figures dissolve into moonless forests.
In her compositions, dismembered bloody hands and heads float suspended in negative space, while livid figures collapse within rooms where the wallpaper itself seems alive with malevolent intent. The patterns, inspired by Edwardian designs, have evolved into something predatory – all sharp angles and hungry shadows where ghosts might make their home. Her world is one of hidden stories, bloody handwritten letters, spirits that refuse to stay buried, forest threats that lurk just beyond the frame, poisoned drinks in crystal glasses, and haunted manors that hold centuries of secrets.
Washington uses the familiar tropes of Gothic horror – the haunted house, the ancestral curse, the vampire’s kiss – to create something that feels both classic and unnervingly contemporary. Her artwork suggests that history isn’t a linear progression but a cyclical haunting. The ghosts of past empires, particularly those of Edwardian England, continue to cast long shadows over our present moment.
Looking at her pieces evokes the great Gothic novels – Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and the like. Like these masterpieces, her work uses the seductive conventions of Gothic horror to draw viewers into a deeper contemplation of decay, both moral and physical. Beneath the surface of her ghostly figures and decaying mansions lies a darker tale of spiritual crisis and cultural anxiety that feels remarkably relevant to our own uncertain times.
Her more recent work seems to suggest the possibility of awakening from this societal stupor, with figures reaching between realms as if seeking ancient knowledge and long-suppressed power. In one striking piece from “A Spell To Break The Spell,” a woman looms with arms outstretched overhead, her pose echoed by a spider suspended in its perfect web beside her. Behind her, a riot of nocturnal blooms erupts – spindly white lilies and other night flowers burst forth while shadowy branches descend and tangle overhead, their yellow leaves flickering like flames yet fluttering like moths.
What at first appears as a gesture of menace reveals itself as something more complex – a position of resolution, of determination. The images are both beautiful and terrible, suggesting that transformation requires facing our darkest truths.
This is why dark art matters. When we engage with work like Washington’s, we’re not just indulging in morbid fascination. We’re participating in a centuries-old tradition of using art to process our fears, confront our demons, and find beauty in the darkness.
As this season of horror continues, I invite you to lose yourself in both Washington’s work and The Art of Darkness. These paintings hold secrets in their shadows – yours, mine, ours – waiting in the darkness between wake and sleep, between past and present, between what was and what haunts us still.
Day Twenty-Nineof 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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The First Omen hit theaters this year, promising to reveal the dark origins of the infamous Antichrist story that launched the franchise. But before we get into how this prequel manages to make satanic prophecies boring (how??), I should mention that my experience with The Omen series is pretty much limited to a maybe-memory.
Okay, so here’s the thing about The Omen franchise and me – my earliest memory of it might not even be a real memory? I was like five or six, wandering around my grandmother’s house, and I stumbled into a room where the TV was playing what I think was The Omen. All I remember are Dobermans barking at a gravesite, and to this day, thinking about that scene still terrifies me, and I won’t go anywhere near Doberman… but honestly, who knows if that was even the right movie? My sister claims I made her watch it with me when she was thirteen, but I have zero recollection of that. Then again, I barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, which is actually one of the main reasons I do this whole October horror blog thing – and really, why I blog at all. It’s like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for future-me to remember that hey, I existed and did some stuff.
The First Omen commits what might be horror’s greatest sin: it’s boring. Set in 1971 Rome, we follow Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), an American novitiate preparing to take her final vows at a Catholic orphanage. The setup promises dark secrets, religious conspiracy, and supernatural horror. What it delivers instead is a paint-by-numbers exercise in predictability.
And let me tell you, I called EVERYTHING. Not because I’m some kind of genius film critic or horror savant – this movie is just that obvious. At every turn, even in its most specific moments, The First Omen telegraphs its punches so clearly you’d think it was reading from a “How to Make a Religious Horror Movie” handbook. Margaret’s roommate? Saw it coming. The orphanage’s dark secrets? Called it. The true nature of her own existence? I’d sketched out the entire revelation in my head halfway through the film.
There’s a car accident scene. And not just that this accident happened, and how, and when, but even very specifically what ends up clutched in Margaret’s hands afterward… I saw it coming from a mile away. Actually… there are TWO car accidents and I predicted them both! At this point, I was basically playing Movie Plot Bingo and getting blackout every time.
Bill Nighy shows up as Cardinal Lawrence, which, of course, is great, and in fact, my sister and I joked that this review should merely consist of: “Last night, I saw a movie with Bill Nighy in it.” Nell Tiger Free genuinely tries her best with what she’s given, bringing an earnest vulnerability to Margaret that the movie honestly doesn’t deserve. But when you can predict every “shocking” revelation, every “surprise” twist, and every “dramatic” turn, it’s kind of hard to stay invested.
Here’s the thing about prequels, especially ones dealing with well-established mythologies like The Omen: we already know where this story ends up. We know about Damien, we know about the whole Antichrist business, we know the broad strokes of how this all plays out. So if you’re going to drag us back to the beginning, you better make that beginning absolutely spectacular. You need to show us something we didn’t expect, give us some mind-blowing revelation that makes us see the entire franchise in a new light, or at least tell the story in such a compelling way that we forget we know the ending.
Instead, The First Omen just… connects the dots. It’s like watching someone fill out a paint-by-numbers picture where you can already see all the numbers. Sure, technically you’re seeing how it all began, but in the least interesting way possible. It’s not just that I could predict every twist and turn – it’s that the movie seems completely uninterested in doing anything surprising or meaningful with its position as an origin story. Why even bother telling us how it all started if you’re not going to make that beginning remarkable?
You know what’s funny? That maybe-memory of catching glimpses of the original Omen at my grandmother’s house is more interesting than anything in this prequel. At least that experience left enough of an impression that I’m still wondering about it decades later. This new movie? I’m already struggling to remember parts of it, and I just watched it.
This is exactly why I do these 31 Days of Horror posts. Because otherwise, this movie would just blend into the fog of “oh yeah, I think I saw that once” memories. At least now I have written proof that I sat through it and somehow managed to become a horror movie fortune teller in the process. Not because I’m special – this movie is just THAT predictable.
You know what’s weird? I didn’t set out to watch religious horror this October. My viewing plans were all about late ’90s nostalgia, old apartment-based creepiness, and my ongoing fascination with horror that deals with media, technology, and archivists. I even developed a short-lived Osgood Perkins phase (before Long Legs maybe killed that particular obsession). But somehow, I’ve found myself knee-deep in devil babies and Catholic dread.
Just think about it: we’ve had The Sentinel’s watchful priest guarding an actual portal to hell, Apartment 7A‘s devil-baby cult shenanigans, the Catholic Church’s involvement in Grotesquerie, and Evil‘s X-Files-but-make-it-Catholic investigations into religious phenomena. And now here’s The First Omen, arriving like some kind of lazy, predictable cherry on top of this unplanned religious horror sundae.
Maybe it’s not just me. Religious horror seems to be having a moment right now, which makes sense in its own weird way. In times of uncertainty (and wow wow wow do we have lots of those), people tend to grapple with bigger questions about faith, evil, and what lies beyond. Plus, there’s something eternally compelling about taking the symbols and structures meant to comfort us and turning them into sources of terror. Though I wish The First Omen had done something more interesting with these elements than just checking off boxes from the Religious Horror For Dummies handbook.
Day Twenty-Eight of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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There’s something deliciously horrible about watching a grim serial killer thriller while visiting my baby sister, whose usual viewing preferences lean heavily toward period dramas, Friends, and Taylor Swift tours. She still hasn’t forgiven me for involving her in my 1899 binge a few Christmases ago! She has very little patience for nonlinear, timey-wimey bullshit, for the surreal and experimental, or for disjointed, unreliable storytelling. Also: she is absolutely not a horror fan.
But here I am, eight episodes deep into Grotesquerie on her Hulu account, probably forever altering her algorithm recommendations, wheeeee!
Several people have recently mentioned Grotesquerie to me, and while intrigued, I never actually bothered to look into what it was all about or who was involved. I basically went in knowing nothing.
Turns out this is a Ryan Murphy project, following Detective Tryon (Niecy Nash-Betts) as she investigates a series of gruesome ritual murders murders alongside Sister Duval, a nun with an unusual interest in true crime. In some ways this actually does feel very American Horror Story-esque to me…that sense of lurid, over-the-top sensationalism is there for sure.
While the series draws clear inspiration from things like Se7en and Hannibal, it has a dreamlike quality which takes it to different places entirely. Scenes bleed into one another with nightmarish dream logic – you’re in one location one moment, somewhere entirely different the next, with no clear transition or resolution between them. Around episode seven, this stylistic choice begins to make a disturbing kind of sense… or does it? The more I watch, the more I suspect we’re dealing with an Inception-like layering of reality – dreams within dreams within dreams, each one masquerading as the truth until it too begins to unravel.
My sister and I sat on the sofa until late in the evening watching this, and as of now I have just finished episode nine. Also, I don’t think she was really watching. She had several books and a laptop open in front of her, only looking up occasionally to offer snarky commentary, biting remarks, and withering critique. I suspect I will be making this up to her with a Bridgerton marathon.
Day Twenty-Seven of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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I’m writing this from Indianapolis, where I’m finally visiting my baby sister after promising for years to come see her new house and spend an autumn weekend together. Since I’m writing this via my tablet (not the most efficient setup), this’ll be brief, but sometimes horror, like family visits, is best served in small doses. Hur hur, just kidding Melissa!
My sister isn’t a huge horror fan, but she suggested we watch the 2005 Amityville Horror remake together. While I’ve read the book and seen the 1979 original years ago, I am fairly certain that there are some plot points in terms of backstory in here that are wildly different, especially towards the end. Of course, I could be wrong, like I said, I don’t recall all of the details.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Ryan Reynolds plays George Lutz, who moves into the infamous Long Island house with his new wife Kathy (Melissa George) and her three children. The house comes with a dark history – in 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family there, claiming voices in the house told him to do it. The Lutz family gets the property at a suspiciously good price, but soon discovers why as George begins to transform under the house’s influence, experiencing vivid visions of the murders while a ghostly presence threatens his new family.
One aesthetic/pop culture detail that particularly resonated with me was the KISS posters adorning one of the children’s walls. Those same posters terrorized me at my cousin’s house when I was young – perhaps planting the seeds for my lifelong fascination with the things that frighten me. Seeing them in a horror film felt like a peculiar full-circle moment.
Despite being set in 1974, the film can’t quite shake its 2000s sensibilities. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but there are some blurry/glitchy effects that seem very 2003- 2007 to me. Quick cuts, those choppy frame-rate effects where ghosts move in this jerky, unnatural way…I am hopeful that somebody knows what I mean, because that’s the best I can explain it!
But what really got under my skin wasn’t the supernatural elements – it was the terrifyingly realistic premise at the heart of any haunted house story: the financial trap. Imagine emptying your life savings into a house, only to discover it’s teeming with malevolent spirits. There’s no escape route when your bank account is empty. You’re stuck there, sharing space with whatever entities claimed the property first. That’s the real horror of Amityville – the crushing weight of homeownership colliding with forces that want nothing more than to shatter your sanity and claim your soul as their next basement tenant.
Day Twenty-Six of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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After my recent appreciation of Osgood Perkins’ Gretel & Hansel, I found myself deeply disappointed by Longlegs. The film follows FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) investigating intriguing ritualistic murders–and she’s possibly psychic, too!– but overall, the story drowns itself in shadows and uncertainty. Nicolas Cage appears as our mysterious killer, and despite the marketing buzz about his “transformative” performance, he’s…exactly Nicolas Cage, just pale and weird and freaky – leaving me unsure whether to be grossed out or exasperated by his presence. So…lower your expectations, I guess. Are they pretty low now? Go even lower.
Whil Perkins’ signature atmospheric style remains, sort of– all shadowy corridors and deliberate pacing (not quite the striking fairytale forest terror of Gretel and Hansel) – the film never quite coheres into something meaningful. It drifts between sterile FBI offices and the grimy, cluttered world of Harker’s mother and never quite finds its footing as either supernatural horror or serial killer thriller. Longlegs seems to mistake opacity for profundity, explaining its demonic elements through heavy-handed exposition while somehow still managing to leave more questions than answers.
This is, without question, my most disappointing film of the year, and I’m already tired of thinking about it. Someone will probably tell me I need to watch it again to appreciate it and see all the nuances or whatever, or that I need to read some think pieces or interviews or watch a Q&A with Perkins to understand the story and intentions more thoroughly. Come on! Get out of here with that! I’ve only got this one precious life, man! And that’s just not how I’m gonna spend it. Onto the next one.
Day Twenty-Five of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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If you’re expecting a straightforward retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Osgood Perkins’ Gretel & Hansel might throw you for a loop. This stylized dark fantasy shifts the focus squarely onto Gretel (Sophia Lillis with her hair of January fire muted with mist and grime), reimagining her as the elder sibling. The film’s dialogue is fascinatingly bizarre – theatrically, almost poetically olde-timey one moment, then strangely modern the next, creating an abstract cadence that somehow works perfectly with the film’s otherworldly rhythm, like a dark bedtime story being whispered in an ancient tongue.
All of this is heightened by Robin Coudert’s haunting and hypnotic electronic soundscape, which thrums beneath every scene like some half-remembered nightmare. And like any good fever dream, not everything here needs to make sense: their mother goes from desperate to axe-wielding lunatic in record time, a surprisingly chill huntsman casually deals with a random zombie, and Gretel’s fierce protectiveness of her brother somehow culminates in sending him off alone into the world.
The film follows our young protagonists as they’re forced from their home into a wilderness that feels pulled straight from a Tin Can Forest piece – all fog-saturated colors and deep folkloric shadows, where every twisted path seems to lead somewhere ancient and strange. When they stumble upon a geometric black house that practically hums with sinister energy, they meet Holda (Alice Krige), a witch who serves up her poison with precise, deliberate care.
Krige is absolutely magnificent here – her performance a masterclass in controlled menace, each smile a calculated display of power. The flashbacks to young Holda are weirdly jarring, though – she looks like someone wandered off a 2019 Instagram witch aesthetic page and into medieval Europe. As she begins to draw Gretel into her world of dark magic and forbidden feasts, the film transforms into a coming-of-age story about power and the price of survival.
I’m particularly taken with the film’s stunning visual language. Cinematographer Galo Olivares crafts frames that could be hung in a gallery – all symmetrical compositions and deep shadows. The witch’s modernist house seems to defy architectural logic, its sharp angles and triangular motifs suggesting something ancient and wrong beneath its clean geometry. Every frame feels purposeful, every shadow deliberate, creating a fairy tale that’s both beautiful and deeply unsettling.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with some of Perkins’ other work – The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House prove he’s an expert at crafting a spooky atmosphere. And now that I’m out of my old apartment horror phase, I think I might be diving into an Osgood Perkins binge. There’s something very recent of his that’s calling my name…
Day Twenty-Fourof 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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You may recall how I was just lamenting the scarcity of “old apartment horror” while reviewing Apartment 7A? Well, after maybe the hundredth reminder about a certain film from a patient friend on social media (I swear I have some kind of mental block about this movie), I finally sat down to watch The Sentinel (1977).
Well, guess what? That mental block existed because I had already seen the film! I read the Jeffrey Konvitz novel several years back, and I must have immediately rented the DVD by mail through Netflix back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. No wonder I was resisting the idea of watching it; by my 31 Days of Horror rules, I have to watch/read/whatever things I have never watched/read/whatevered before.
[EDIT: in the course of writing this, I discovered that there is actually a sequel to this novel! But then I read Grady Hendrix’s review, and I’m good. I don’t need to read it.]
Anyway, I did watch it, and I maintain that it still counts because I obviously didn’t remember much about it from the first time around! Here’s the gist: The Sentinel follows Alison Parker (Cristina Raines), a gorgeous, constantly booked fashion model who, rather than marry Prince Humperdinck, moves into a creepy old building full of weirdos, and which is perched over a Hellmouth!
Ok, I guess that’s not quite the whole thing. Alison loves her doting lawyer boyfriend (Chris Sarandon), but she isn’t ready for that kind of commitment! So she goes out looking for a new place to live and snags what seems like the deal of the century: a gorgeous Brooklyn Heights apartment in a stunning old building. The kind of place that makes you wonder how anyone at all could afford it, especially a shampoo model in 1977. As an aside, as Alison and her friend were checking out apartments, they would exclaim at the outrageous rent prices– one place, for example, being $600 a month. LORDY BE. $600 for a 2-bedroom apartment in Manhattan!
Of course, as with all suspiciously good deals in horror movies, apartments, or otherwise, there’s a catch. The building has a collection of eccentric, intrusive, lecherous neighbors that would make the Bramford residents seem tame by comparison. And there’s also a mysterious blind priest who spends his days sitting at a window, just being weird and creepy in general.
The Sentinel weaves together Catholic religious horror with all the unsettling elements that make old urban architecture so perfect for fear – the weight of history in every creaking floorboard, the sense of being surrounded yet isolated, and the peculiar way that beautiful old buildings can shift from grandeur to menace when darkness falls. The building itself becomes a character, with its ornate moldings and shadowy corridors hiding secrets that feel ancient and malevolent. The film also features one of those incredible 1970s ensemble casts that only this era could provide: Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Orbach, and Beverly D’Angelo, among others. It’s the kind of lineup that makes you realize just how many legendary actors were working in horror during this period. Or how many of them stumbled onto a set? I don’t know how it works.
A bit of a warning – the finale goes places. Like, PLACES places. Without spoiling too much, let’s just say it makes some bold choices about using actual carnival performers that would definitely not be okay today. But if you can get past that (significantly offensive and exploitative) issue, there’s something fascinating about how the film combines Catholic mythology with urban isolation and the particular anxieties of being a young woman living alone in the city.
Speaking of young women living alone in threatening urban spaces, watching The Sentinel sent me down a rabbit hole of other apartment horror films. A Threads user reminded me that there’s Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water (2002), where a single mother and her daughter confront the creeping dread of a decaying apartment complex. The Japanese original captures that same sense of urban isolation that The Sentinel does so well, though its horror emerges from the crushing weight of poverty and abandonment rather than religious dread. Even the American remake maintains this atmosphere, thanks to its brilliant use of Roosevelt Island – that strange slice of New York caught between boroughs, where the abandoned smallpox hospital still looms, and the tram ride is said to feel like crossing over into another world entirely.
Then there’s Candyman and Cabrini-Green – probably the most powerful example of apartment horror I can think of. Those towering concrete structures tell us everything we need to know about urban decay and racial segregation, while the endless corridors and institutional neglect create perfect conditions for both supernatural and social horrors to take root. Looking at all these films together, I’m struck by how they work from opposite ends of the urban experience – from the ornate luxury of the Bramford and The Sentinel’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone to the institutional decay of Dark Water‘s complex and Cabrini-Green. But whether the walls are covered in elegant molding or crumbling concrete, these films tap into the same fears: that strange loneliness of being surrounded by people but completely cut off, those walls that promise safety but might just be keeping you trapped. They understand something essential about city living – about how our homes can turn strange and threatening, in ways that are sometimes supernatural, but often all too real.
Since posting about apartment horror on social media, people have been sharing their own suggestions. Archive 81 definitely fits – the way that series uses its apartment building’s architecture and history is fascinating, while also scratching that itch I have for stories about obsessive archivists and haunted media. The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, Shivers, and No One Gets Out Alive are all in there too, though I’ll admit while I have watched the first two, they’ve all gone a bit fuzzy in my memory, and the third I don’t know anything about at all other than it may be based on something Adam Neville wrote. Clearly, there’s more to explore in this corner of horror than I initially thought.
AND just as I am wrapping up, I saw a long-time commenter and friend of the blog mentioned POSSESSION in terms of apartment horror…how could I have forgotten that one? They also reminded me of certain things that occur in that movie, so no wonder Sam Neill subconsciously came to mind for my gender-swapped devil baby pregnancy that I mentioned yesterday, ha ha!
Day Twenty-Three of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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While critics and reviewers don’t seem very taken with Apartment 7A, the recent prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, calling it subpar, lackluster, and “the weakest of the devil baby movies this year,” (ha!) I found myself more forgiving. As someone with a soft spot for the rare “old apartment horror” subgenre, I thought it was a welcome addition to a category that doesn’t get enough entries. By “old apartment horror,” I mean stories set in those grand, aging urban buildings where the architecture itself seems to harbor secrets and malevolence. Now, I’ll admit that Rosemary’s Baby itself leans more heavily into devil baby horror than old apartment horror, but I’m here for the creepy vintage urban living spaces. There’s something about those ornate, aging buildings with their mysterious tenants and dark secrets that I find marvelously thrilling.
Beyond Rosemary’s Baby, there aren’t many films that truly capture that unsettling vibe of old apartments harboring malevolence. Roman Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy” comes to mind – Repulsion, with its claustrophobic portrayal of a woman’s mental breakdown in a London flat; Rosemary’s Baby itself, set in the ominous Bramford; and The Tenant, where the protagonist’s paranoia is amplified by the bizarre Parisian apartment building he moves into. Sure, there are books like Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door and Nat Cassidy’s Nestlings that tap into this niche, but all around, it seems like underexplored territory. So while Apartment 7A might be continuing the devil baby tradition, I’m watching it for the old apartmentness of it all.
(I took this question to social media, and AGAIN, someone reminded me of The Sentinel. Why do I have such a mental block about this film? That’s it. I am watching The Sentinel next!)
Anyway, Apartment 7A follows Terry, a struggling dancer in 1960s New York, played by the always impressive and wildly expressive Julia Garner. After a painful ankle-breaking career setback, Terry gets entangled with a mysterious older couple who promise her fame and success. Of course, this being a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, we know things aren’t going to end well for poor Terry.
I have to admit, every time I looked at Garner as Terry, I half-expected her to hiss impatiently, “I don’t know shit about fuck” (channeling her role as Ruth from Ozark) or inquire in an absolutely insane accent, “What are you wearing? You look poor” (à la her portrayal of Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna). This is an actress who gets to deliver the most hilariously iconic lines in her other roles, and it was a bit of a mental adjustment to see her in this particular context.
Apartment 7A may not match the impact of the original, but I appreciated its attempt to explore how someone might fall into the clutches of a sinister cult. Garner’s performance is captivating, and Dianne Wiest brings a cruelly zany energy to her role as Minnie Castevet. I know a lot of people complained about the visuals being anachronistic or not working for various reasons, but I actually loved them. That bedazzled demon monstrosity everyone seems to hate? I thought it was really pretty! But I’m a magpie for sparkly things. I also loved the German Expressionist (or? what would you call that, anyway?) dream sequence bit. Sometimes, a little visual flair goes a long way!
That being said, I’m growing weary of films that consistently portray women as victims of supernatural terror. It’s high time for a fresh perspective on this genre. Picture this: a consensual devil-baby story where the mother-to-be is fully on board, and the horror is experienced by the unsuspecting father. Imagine Sam Neill, circa In the Mouth of Madness, as a former priest who left the clergy for love. Unbeknownst to him, he’s destined to father the Antichrist, with a devil-cult orchestrating the entire scenario from the start. The twist? The demonic influence was within former holy-roller Sam Neill all along! Now that’s a devil-baby movie I’d be excited to see.
Day Twenty-Two of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021
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