my wife recently asked me why i like horror movies. she really doesn’t. she describes it as two hours of bad feelings and tension followed by a lingering suspicion that the world really contains, if not supernatural phenomenon, a deranged psychotic who wants to do something bad to people. she’s not wrong.
for me there are some successful ingredients to horror:
camp: it is bizarre, ludicrous, and unrealistic.
predictable: it leans into tropes. you know who is going to die. you can’t wait to see how it happens.
shock: it takes you out of your comfort zone, upsets your balance, and makes you question what comforts you.
philosophy: it bends your morals, reroutes your priorities, and introduces you to new concepts.
some of these are a bit at odds with each other, but if something starts campy and predictable then becomes shocking and philosophical, then that’s really something!
spooky season lets us lean a little bit into comfortable horror. it lets us turn death and terror into camp and sugar. it allows us to put Christianity and paganism into a blender for a bit. it makes light of our brief shadow on the earth and lets us air out the horrors in our haunted heads so we can better cope with the real terrors that we grow increasingly aware of every day.
so here’s a sprinkling of spook for your speakers.
it’s a little campy (Dracula “Ye-Ye” in spades, and I’ve Got A Bone is more clever than Minecraft rap has any right to be). there’s some familiar territory (it wouldn’t be Halloween without Siouxsie Sioux in the mix). naturally, some genre hopping (be prepared to bounce from shockabilly to funk to goth to metal to neosoul and back). and when all is said and done, an unspeakable terror will lure you into your inevitable and unescapable doom.