October is here, and the release calendar is stuffed. Giant snakes, cursed mixtapes, a murderous unicorn, and a sixth trip into the Further all land within two weeks of each other.
We have already seen every movie on this list and reviewed each one on the podcast, so these aren’t guesses based on a trailer. Some we loved. One we did not. We will tell you exactly where each one landed, so you can plan your spooky season around the good stuff (and know what you are getting into with the rest).
Our scores are in Digs, out of 10. They measure how much we enjoyed a movie, not how scary it is.
Beware Boiúna (In Theaters October 2)
Mike P. Nelson took his cast and crew deep into the Amazon to make this one, and you feel it in every frame. Jessica Rothe, Kiana Madeira, and Logan Marshall-Green are covered in mud and sweat the whole time; you can almost feel the humidity from your seat. The snake hunts on land and in the water; it does not discriminate, and nobody is safe. Real stunts, real explosions, and a twist halfway through that we never saw coming.
It is not trying to be silly. It takes the giant snake movie seriously, and that is what makes it fun.
On our scare scale, it sits in Fun and Wild with Solid Scares. Meaghan gave it a 7.5 and Arthur gave it an 8, so it lands at 7.75 Digs. Arthur’s advice:
Yes, you should go see it on the weekend and have fun with it.
Insidious: Out of the Further (Digital October 6)
We rewatched all five earlier Insidious movies in one week before seeing this one. Not required homework, but it helped. Jacob Chase (Come Play) takes over, and Amelia Eve plays Gemma, a single mother who learns she can travel into the Further and drag what lives there back out with her.
The demon design is the best part. Cyrus, the blindfolded cult leader, looks great, and the Lipstick-Face Demon shows up at the eleventh hour like the diva he is. The set design is clever too, and we left the theater still arguing about a flashlight.
Our biggest gripe? No Specs and no Tucker. Not even a cameo. Those two carried the humor of this franchise for over a decade, and the movie feels it.
We both gave it 5.5 Digs. Six felt too generous, and five felt too harsh. Strip away the new ability and the formula is the same as always, but the lore is finally building toward something bigger. It is a solid night in now that it is on digital.
Other Mommy (In Theaters October 9)
This is the big studio horror release of the month, and we wanted to love it. Rob Savage (Host) adapts Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, and Jessica Chastain plays a dual role as Ursula and the entity pretending to be her. Her frozen, unblinking smile is the image everyone will remember.
The cast is the highlight. The scares are not.
This is a film that builds from nothing and therefore takes away all of its tension.
The kitchen scene from the trailer happens in the first ten minutes, before you even know these people. The camera and music also tell you every single time whether you are looking at Mom or Other Mommy, so the ambiguity that makes the book so creepy is gone. “It’s kinda creepy. But not too creepy,” Arthur said. Meaghan has a separate complaint: “I still hate that title.”
There is still good stuff here. The ball pit scene (65,000 balls!) and the giant hand rising from the ocean look fantastic. We put it in Fun and Wild with Light Scares, and we both landed on 4 Digs. If you go, go for Chastain.
Not Sure What to Watch?
Answer 4 questions, get curated horror movies to watch.
V/H/S/Mixtape (Shudder, October 9)
The ninth V/H/S movie is built around sound and music, and it is completely unhinged in the best way. GWAR hosts the wraparound as a deranged 90s metal music show, popping tapes into the machine between segments. Barbara Crampton turns up in a puppet segment, and RZA directs Death Tone, which might make you look at sound design a little differently.
This one is just batshit crazy.
Quick tip from experience: do not eat dinner during the opening. We did. It was a mistake.
It sits in Creep Me Out with Solid Scares. Arthur gave it an 8, and Meaghan gave it a 7 (she found it a little less cohesive), so it lands at 7.5 Digs. If you are the kind of V/H/S fan who lives for the cuckoo-bananas segments, you are going to have a very good night.
Buddy (Digital October 13)
We caught Casper Kelly’s Buddy in a packed house at Fantasia, and the room went wild for it. The movie drops you inside It’s Buddy!, a 90s children’s show hosted by a giant orange unicorn who wants the kids to sing, dance, and obey. One kid refuses. Things get bloody, fast.
The sets are period accurate to a fault, right down to the oversized clubhouse that makes everything feel like it was built from a child’s point of view. Then there is Buddy himself. When you hurt Buddy, things happen to Buddy.
Buddy becomes something else, let’s put it that way.
The practical effects are excellent, and there are a lot of them.
It does not dig deep into theme, and it is not trying to. It gets everything right about what it is doing. We both landed on 8 Digs without comparing notes first, which makes it our top-scored pick of the month. Arthur was laughing for half the movie. It is on digital as of yesterday, so grab some friends and watch it with a group.
Bonus: Resident Evil (Still in Theaters)
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil opened September 18, but it is still in theaters and still worth the trip. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier who takes a double-pay delivery to a hospital in the Colorado mountains and has a very, very bad night. It has zero interest in being the Resident Evil movie the internet has wanted for twenty years. It works anyway.
Meaghan’s tagline: “Don’t lose your keys.” It makes more sense the further you get in.
This one split us harder than anything else this year. Arthur gave it an easy 8.5 because it is nonstop, funny, and never drags. Meaghan went with a 6.5. “What you see is what you get,” she said, and she meant it as a ceiling more than a knock.
That averages to 7.5 Digs, with Fun and Wild and Solid Scares on the scare scale. The creature design alone is worth a ticket, and it makes a great party movie.