5 Halloween Movies for People Who Don't Like Horror

Although today I would consider myself a fan of horror movies, I wasn't always so keen on them. My siblings and I weren't allowed to watch horror films as children, but even after becoming old enough to watch what I wanted, they still freaked me out. I used to get incredibly anxious when watching films that I thought would show violent scenes, and sometimes even reading about a gory or disturbing film was enough to make me feel physically unwell. 

I eventually managed to overcome this fear of violent movies through what basically amounted to self-imposed exposure therapy (an experience I might write a blog post about later, if anyone is interested), but I am still very sympathetic to those who prefer to avoid films involving violence or horror. Having such an aversion also shouldn't mean that you can't partake in Halloween, a holiday that I believe can be appreciated with or without traditional scary movies.

In order to provide some non-horror alternatives for Halloween lovers this year, I have compiled a list of 5 movies that offer spooks without the scares, so to speak.

Addams Family Values (1993)

The sequel to the earlier but less well-received 1991 film The Addams Family, Addams Family Values features the iconic family dealing with a new baby and a gold-digging nanny. It's funny and sweetly macabre, as the Addams family are, and as it is family friendly you can rest assured it has little to no scares or violence. Even without those aspects, the gothic aesthetic and black humour of the Addams clan is enough to make this a Halloween classic.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Written and directed by New Zealanders Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement, who you might know from their involvement in Thor: Ragnarok and Flight of the Conchords respectively, What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary focused on the lives of a group of vampires living together in the city of Wellington. While I would warn any potential viewers that this film does contain some blood and a bit of violence (vampires need to find their prey somehow, after all), all of this is played for laughs and is not intended to be serious or disturbing. If you can see through the blood, you'll find a film that is fun, witty and doesn't take itself too seriously.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Henry Selick's beloved stop motion musical follows Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, as he attempts to steal Christmas from Santa Claus. But is it a Christmas film, or is it a Halloween film? The Nightmare Before Christmas's holiday-appropriateness has been debated so much, it might even rival Die Hard for the title of "Most Contested Christmas Movie". Personally, as I like this film a lot, I think it works well for both seasons - although possibly a little more for Halloween, simply because its aesthetic is so wonderfully spooky. Another family friendly option, this is a good choice if you love creepy Halloween vibes but can't stand any level of violence.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Recently, TikTok has been abuzz with people fawning over Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka in the 2005 film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but personally I've always been more of a fan of Gene Wilder's interpretation. Besides Willy Wonka, I'd argue that Wilder's second best role was as a young Victor Frankenstein in Mel Brooks' 1974 movie Young Frankenstein. This is a live-action, black-and-white comedy, a satire of classic horror movies in general and the many adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in particular. If you want to avoid scary films but also want to watch something targeted at adults rather than children, Young Frankenstein is an excellent choice.

Beetlejuice (1988)

It wouldn't be a list of Halloween films if we didn't include at least one Tim Burton movie, would it? (And no, I'm not counting The Nightmare Before Christmas.) The one I have chosen for this post is Beetlejuice, although really most Tim Burton films meet the criteria - The Corpse Bride specifically was a close runner up. Like Young Frankenstein, this is another non-violent Halloween film that isn't made for children. Its plot revolves around a ghost family who are disturbed by the arrival of some new humans into their home, so they decide to recruit an eccentric and borderline-demonic entity known as Betelgeuse to drive the invaders away. It's creepy, funny, and frequently downright bizarre. Plus, it features a young Winona Ryder as the human family's goth daughter Lydia Deetz.

***

I hope that this list has offered some ideas for non-horror Halloween viewing. Halloween was my favourite holiday even before I stopped being scared of violent films, so it's certainly something you can celebrate and have themed movie nights around without having to watch movies that make you uncomfortable. 

I would love to hear any other suggestions for alternative Halloween movies, if anyone would like to share them with me either directly or in the comments of this post. Happy watching!

Game Review: Haunt the House: Terrortown

Before we get into the meat (or rather, the vegan frozen pizza) of this review, let me say that I am very sorry for the colon catastrophe happening in the post title. I wanted to keep to the formula of "[Medium] Review: [Title]" that I used last post, with Slaughterhouse Rulez, but I didn't anticipate the awkwardness which occurs if the title of the game itself includes a second colon. Yet if this is indeed a type of grammatical horror, perhaps this is fitting for a Halloween post? I'm going to choose to believe this is the case, while I leave the title as it is instead of spending any more time looking for a viable alternative.

Since my last spooky review ended up more on the negative side, I am happy to be continuing my series of Halloween posts with an entry about something I actually enjoyed. The chosen topic of this post is not a film or a book, but a game, specifically Haunt the House: Terrortown (as you may have already guessed from the title).

Terrortown's "Mansion House" level is based on the
Haunt the House browser game

Haunt the House was first released in 2010 as an in-browser flash game on the website Armor Games. It was free to play and featured only one level, in which players controlled a cute but vindictive ghost whose home has been taken over by unwanted human guests. The goal of the game is to fly around the house, possessing objects and scaring the humans into leaving the house, allowing your little ghost to return to their peaceful, guest-free afterlife. 

Haunt the House: Terrortown is both the expansion of and sequel to the original Haunt the House. Unlike its predecessor, Terrortown was released for multiple gaming platforms, including Playstation Vita, iOS, Android, and PC. I naturally purchased the PC version, which you can buy through Steam for about 4 euros if you just get the base game or a little under 6 euros if you get the soundtrack with it. 

If you're thinking it sounds a bit exploitative to have to pay real money for a game you could just play online for free (if it's still up on Armor Games, that is), it's worth noting that Terrortown comes with many features that the original game lacked. Besides improved graphics, Terrortown includes three extra levels, new ghosts, a full soundtrack, and more detailed gameplay. You will also have Steam achievements to aim for, should you buy the game through that platform. 

So Terrortown has a bunch of new features, sure, but is it worth buying? I would say yes. If you enjoyed the original Haunt the House, I'm confident you'll like Terrortown. Even if you never played the 2010 browser version, there is a lot to love in its successor. The art style is the perfect combination of spooky and cute, the gameplay is simple but fun, and the jazzy soundtrack is worth the price of the game alone. That's not to say there aren't negatives of course: Terrortown is quite short, even with the new levels, and it will occasionally glitch in the most frustrating ways, like stopping your last guest from exiting the house no matter how much you scare them. It also doesn't offer huge amounts of replayability, unless you are strongly motivated to discover every possible type of object you can haunt. 

With all that said, Haunt the House: Terrortown offers enough charm and entertainment to be worth the purchase, especially this Halloween season. It's endearing, funny, and a nice spooky-themed alternative for those who don't like full-blown horror games but still want something Halloween-related to play this season. 

Film Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently on a binge of Halloween-related media to celebrate our now being in the spookiest month of the year, AKA October. After Netflix very helpfully notified me that Slaughterhouse Rulez had arrived on the streaming platform about a week or so ago, I decided that this was the perfect film to kick off this fear-stive (get it?) season. 

First released in cinemas around October of 2018 (for Halloween, of course), Slaughterhouse Rulez is a comedy-horror set at a prestigious English boarding school that comes under attack after mysterious demonic creatures are accidentally released from the ground by a fracking operation on school grounds. 

I remember watching the trailer for this movie when it first came out and being quite excited about it. It didn't look especially ground-breaking, unless you count the fracking, but it looked fun nonetheless. Unfortunately, as so often happens, the trailer proved to be a lot more fun than the film itself. 

My biggest gripe with the film is that it never quite seems to know what it's doing, going in several directions (comedy, horror, and even social commentary) at once, but never quite managing to succeed in any of them. The funniest moments in the film come from the performances of Michael Sheen and Asa Butterfield, who play the school's headmaster (known as "The Bat") and the protagonist's snarky roommate, respectively. Sheen is delightfully hammy, and the enjoyment he seems to be taking in playing the comically pretentious schoolmaster is contagious. Butterfield likewise is a pleasure to watch, bringing a level of dry cynicism and vulnerability to the character of Willoughby that almost makes up for his clumsily-handled backstory. 

The rest of the cast no doubt did their best with the scripts they were given, but in most cases the result is just... okay. Simon Pegg is under-utilised in his role as a housemaster who spends most of his time making emotional Skype calls to his evidently uninterested former lover (Margot Robbie), in a subplot that was perhaps intended to be humorous but gets boring around the third scene of Pegg crying and holding a phone. The two other main characters, middle-class new boy Don (Finn Cole) and upper-sixth "goddess" Clemsie (Hermione Corfield), are dull and forgettable. Don is cast as the status quo-challenging newcomer, who holds little charm outside of being the audience's surrogate, while Clemsie serves mainly as a love interest to Don and as fan service for the viewer (really, there didn't need to be that many shots of Corfield in a bra). Clemsie has a few token Strong Female Character scenes, such as her standing up to the headmaster and taking control of the car during a chase scene, but the film still ends with us having little conception of her character outside of being appealing to Don.

Like the main characters, the horror aspect of the film is similarly unmemorable. Balancing laughs and scares is an achievement most horror-comedies fail to reach, Slaughterhouse Rulez among them. The monsters unearthed by the fracking operation are your fairly average hellhound type of creatures, forgettable enough that even at this point I am struggling to recall what they looked like. There is some gore and a few jump scares, nothing terribly impressive but the sort of thing which might have been satisfactory had the comedy side of the film held up. Sadly, this wasn't the case.

As for the social commentary aspect of the film, the writers seemed to take the opportunity of a plot set at your classical, posh English boarding school to make some criticisms of British classism and public school culture. At times this went so far as to imply that the monsters themselves are in some way symbolic of the toxicity of the school itself. It's an intriguing idea, to be fair, and it's a shame that most of the film's allusions to the school's harmfulness comes across as so shallow. The more villainous of the school's students refer to others as "plebs" or use homophobic slurs that go unchallenged even by the heroic characters, but there is something of a disconnect between these moments and the times when pupils like Clemsie state that they hate the school for vague, undefined reasons. Granted, treating topics like bullying and classism with the seriousness they deserve might be too great of a challenge for a simple horror-comedy, but that didn't stop the writers from including a subplot in which an old pupil kills himself after being subjected to homophobic bullying, leaving his surviving boyfriend depressed and on the brink of suicide himself. On the other hand, scenes of a young pupil being bullied as part of various hazing rituals (such as being tarred and feathered or gagged and tied to a sink) are played for laughs. Bullying is the tragic cause of suicide in one scene and a source of humour in the other. Like the rest of the film, Slaughterhouse Rulez's handling of bullying is uneven and confusing to watch. 

While it is not among the best of horror comedy films, nor is Slaughterhouse Rulez among the worst of its kind. The humorous performances of Michael Sheen and Asa Butterfield provide some spots of light in a film that is otherwise mostly dull and thematically confusing - hardly good qualities for a film of any genre, much less one that depends on frights and laughs. If you are a particular fan of any of the creators involved, you might find it a justifiable watch. For everyone else, I'm sad to say that it is simply, tragically average.

Welcome to Spooky Season!

Despite the shadow of a global pandemic still looming over most of the world, personally I am still finding a level of excitement in the fact that we have now entered my favourite time of year (autumn) and are rapidly approaching my favourite holiday: Halloween! 

As someone who loves Halloween with the passion some feel for Christmas, I like to celebrate the holiday as more of a month-long affair than just a one-night event. Since COVID-19 (and my lack of friends, but let's pretend this is due to the virus) has made marking the occasion through parties next-to-impossible, I am celebrating by doing the next best thing: voraciously consuming as much spooky media as I can before the month ends. 

Fortunately for this blog, which has been left gathering dust for about two months now, this media binge means I will hopefully be getting plenty of fresh material to write about on here this October. Of course I can't guarantee that I won't suddenly lose all motivation and leave this blog unattended for weeks on end (again), but that is at least not my intention. 

So! If everything goes according to plan, you can expect some spooky posts arriving on this blog very soon. As always, I would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions for topics they'd like me to write about and especially recommendations for movies/books/tv series/etc that in some way capture the spirit of Halloween. Until then, happy Halloween month!