TheAllergyGirl 🎃🏳️‍⚧️

i have great recommendations? 🥹

the substance

if you didn’t vibe with the substance then what are we even doing here

happy death day

one of my favorite slashers of the last decade

thea lore: i briefly considered tree as a name bc of this one, but i wasn’t brave enough to tell others that i was a girl and i wanted to be called tree

so uh i didn’t do that

this movie gets a lot of flack, but i think the way it depicts the generational trauma within laurie’s family is quite compelling, while also demonstrating a just how engulfing a horror film’s legacy can be for its scream queen

works wonderfully as a double feature w Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

halloween (1978)

dr loomis being so proud of himself after making a group of kids shit themselves he’s so silly omg

obviously a classic, but dr. loomis behaving like a looney tunes character always sends me like look how smug he looks after scaring those children

the outwaters

i don’t claim to fully understand all that happens in the outwaters, but even when i saw it as an egg, i recognized there’s some gender fucky shit happening here

smile 2

i LOATHE the first smile movie with a passion and needed to be convinced by a great number of kino enjoyers that yes, somehow Smile 2 is good, actually

and yes, it’s quite good, actually

barbarian

perhaps my favorite movie to show people for the first time

videodrome

well mark me down as scared AND horny

midsommar

idk man, this one haunted me for weeks after i first saw it, and still go to bat for it every time. midsommar never ceases to make me feel something

suspira (2018)

kind of amazing that luca guadagnino takes what’s probably the most iconic giallo slasher film of all time and turns it into an artistic exploration of post-war/post-holocaust guilt and grief

twin peaks: fire walk with me

donna: do you think that if you were falling in space, that you would slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?
laura: faster and faster. and for a long time you wouldn't feel anything. and then you'd burst into fire. forever. and the angel's wouldn't help you. because they've all gone away.

lake mungo

i admittedly wrote off lake mungo for a long time (bc i confused it for lake placid) but it’s such a devastating look into a family’s complicated expression of grief. while not as personally devastating as the next film, it takes an honest look into who we know and how little we actually know them

scooby-doo on zombie island

i guess everyone got a lil post-modern in the late 90s

this movie freaked me out so badly as a kid that i couldn’t finish it during a sleepover and had to have my dad hide the vhs tape bc i was certain zombie pirates would seep out of it in my sleep

(also, the animation is still stunning)

i wish i could rewatch skinamarink again for the first time

heck

another prototype film, heck is a short film from kyle edward ball and serves as a good litmus test as to whether you’d vibe with skinamarink
watch with the lights off, go with its rhythm, and treat the ambiguity and fuzziness of both memory and image as a quality. didn’t expect it to make me cry

wes craven’s new nightmare

a test run for the meta-quality and self-awareness of scream, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare brings freddy kruger into “the real world” to explore the toxicity and inescapable demands of fandom. a mean-spirited and honest final note for Wes on the burned boogeyman

hell house llc

i love this silly little franchise quite a bit—a found footage film about a bunch of friends setting up their annual haunted house in a derelict hotel in upstate new york. as long as we keep coming back to the abandon hotel for more to uncover, i’ll keep checking in

i saw the tv glow

if you don’t see this as a horror film then i don’t care what you think of it

climax

climax is still the only noé i’ve ever seen, but goodness, what a trip
i’ve watched the opening dance sequence countless times, and it’s astonishing both as an evocative work of choreography AND a interpretive dance foreshadowing the depravity that’s yet to come

the night of the hunter

fuck everyone who shamed charles laughton out of ever directing again, bc night of the hunter has some of the most haunting scenes and shots that i’ve ever seen. never forget what they stole from you

cont: i saw this while i was teaching during the pandemic and it surprised me in the way it shows how teachers have had to become superheroes of sorts for their students. regardless of what the zombies are metaphor for, Lupita does all that she can to protect her students innocence on a field trip

little monsters

i was supposed to write about this one for the horror film blog i was with at the time, but i was busy ruining my life bc i couldn’t accept that i was trans
anyways, it’s a cute horror comedy that unfortunately features josh gad, but lupita nyong’o is absolutely radiant as she protects her students

huesera: the bone woman

massively underseen—a spanish horror flick from a few years ago centered around motherhood, maturation, and erasure of the self. i watched this before i came out of the closet, and it wrecked me for days. i guess its pregnancy horror, but this trades in leering schlock for haunting vulnerability

the birds

some days, this is my favorite hitchcock

fun fact: i wrote a prose poem once about this movie. it was snarky and self-indulgent. it went over well in workshop

malignant poster

genuinely the only james wan film i love. i remember watching malignant during the pandemic and almost couldn’t believe what i was seeing. what begins as a stylistic domestic thriller quickly becomes a giallo slasher before revealing its face as a demented action flick. go into this one blind

It Follows immediately cemented itself as a modern classic and so much more than a metaphor for stds. in fact, i fear it’s more concerned with the inevitability of aging, and how that constant perpetual lurch towards death is one we’re always walking towards. and that disaterpiece score?????? ugh 💯

small poster for the blair witch project

a perfect film in my eyes—captures the purest essence of what found footage films could be and immerses itself in a believable and palpable sense of dread. i wish i could have seen it in theaters when it came out, but i was a child who got freaked out by The Scooby Doo Project on cartoon network

oh goodness, where to begin?

yknow, horror IS my favorite genre..