Halloween Movie Festival

Halloween is my favorite time of the year.

I like things that cause reactions in people, and one of the most primal, universal, and easiest ways to get people to react is to scare them. Everyone gets scared. There is at least one thing out there that frightens each and every one of us. The fun part is – what scares one person is usually different from what scares the next. One person might jump out of their own skin over spiders, while someone else might lose it over snakes, or heights, or zombies, or evil clowns, or who knows what. The list of things that scare people is as diverse as the people themselves. I think that’s awesome and fascinating.

Halloween taps into our fears in a big, big way. While children tend to view Halloween as an opportunity to play dress-up, to pretend to be a superhero or princess or some other relatively innocent character that they like, adults tend to embrace the scary aspect of Halloween. The holiday, at least for teenagers and older, is more a celebration of the things that disturb us. We dress up as scary clowns and zombies and vampires and try to frighten each other. We have fun with the idea of scaring each other and of having people try to scare us. It’s why haunted houses and horror movies are so popular around Halloween. We like being scared from time to time. It tests our fight-or-flight responses and appeals to the ancient, reptilian parts of our brains.

There is always a flood of horror films coming out during September and October that is geared to tap into that basic need to be scared. In fact, whole series of films live and die around an annual Halloween release. We’re coming up on Paranormal Activity 4, the third straight year of a Paranormal Activity film. Before that, we had seven Saw films released on Halloween weekend every year from 2004 – 2010. These films were, of course, insanely popular. All but one of the Saw films crossed the $100 million dollar mark, and none had a budget of over $20 million. All because we like to be scared, and all because Halloween is the time of year when we’re most in tune with those needs.

There are so many horror films produced each year that it’s often hard to keep track of what comes out. It’s almost impossible to think about other horror films from previous years or to remember which titles are classic and which are junk. People miss a lot of really good, seminal horror films due to the volume of films that are pumped out.

Here’s a fun thing I like to do every year. I strongly encourage you to do something similar, as it’s tons of fun!

Each week during October, I like to invite my friends over and watch a horror movie. I select a mix of classic and modern films from a variety of genres. I arrange the playlist in order from not-so-scary to guaranteed nightmares, ramping up the intensity each week. Each week I provide candy and treats, and my guests contribute whatever goodies they want. In the end, it's a fun way to spend time with your friends (Well, some of them. Not all will show up for the really scary stuff) and catch up on some great horror movies.

Here is an example playlist:

Week 1: Poltergeist

Week 2: The Exorcist

Week 3: Halloween (2007)

Week 4: The Human Centipede

Come up with your own list of movies you want to terrorize and traumatize your friends with and arrange your own mini-festival. If you really want to go all out, incorporate a costume contest the last night.

For the record, here are my selections for this year:

Week 1: Don’t be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Week 2: The Howling (1981)

Week 3: Fright Night (2011)

Week 4: The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Week 5: Zombie (1979)

Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter if you plan to do something like this. I want to hear your selections too!