• Journal

Three Movies You Need to Watch This October (Before Something Watches You)

Look, I've been around long enough to know that October is more than a month on the calendar. It's a season in the oldest, darkest sense of the word. The kind of season when the membrane between what-is and what-might-be gets thin as cigarette paper. When shadows pool in corners like spilled ink. When you find yourself checking the rearview mirror a little too often, even though you're pretty damn sure, pretty sure, there's nothing there.These three films? They understand that. They get it in their bones.

Sinners
Directed by Ryan Coogler

This one rises up from the red clay earth like something that's been buried too shallow and too long. You can practically smell the kudzu and the rot. It's got the weight of old sin pressed between its scenes, the kind that curdles in your gut like spoiled milk, the kind your grandfather never talked about but carried in his eyes until the day they closed for good.Faith and guilt tangle together here like copperheads in a mating ball, and underneath both of them, something older waits with the patience of stone. The film asks a question that'll stick with you. What if redemption isn't salvation at all? What if it's just another cage, another kind of purgatory with cleaner wallpaper?

Bring Her Back
Directed by Danny & Michael Philippou

Grief is a hungry thing. The Philippou brothers know that like they know their own heartbeats.This film opens the front door for grief, sits it down at the kitchen table, pours it coffee in your mother's good china. And grief, being grief, it settles in. Makes itself comfortable. Starts rearranging the furniture when you're not looking.What gets me is how quiet it is. How tender. There's a dread here that doesn't need to shout, it just sits beside you on the couch, close enough that you can feel its body heat, and waits for you to notice it's been there all along. It's the kind of horror that feels like recognition.

Weapons
Directed by Zach Cregger

Reality cracks. Not all at once, that'd be too easy, too clean. No, it spider-webs slowly, each fracture showing you a different flavor of terror reflected back. The movie shifts under your feet like black ice, and just when you think you've got your balance, just when you're sure you know what you're watching...You realize the lens has turned around.The camera's looking at you now, friend. And it sees everything.

A Final Word (The Kind You Ignore at Your Own Risk)

These aren't the movies that make you jump and giggle and check your phone ten minutes later. These are the confessions you overhear through fog, through snow, through the white noise between stations. They're the slow kind of fear, the patient kind, the kind that moves in and unpacks its bags and settles into your spare room like a relative who's never going to leave.They don't end when the credits roll.They're still there when you turn off the TV. When you brush your teeth. When you lie in bed and hear that floorboard creak in the hallway, the one that never creaks.Sweet dreams.And keep the lights on if you want.Won't help, but you can try.