Illinois Entertainer 2014 Haunted House and Halloween Party Guide | Page 4

TIS' THE SCARY SEASON

Halloween movie month begins October
3 with Annabelle, the prequel/spin-off of the
surprisingly creepy hit The Conjuring (Hide &
Clap!). Dracula Untold follows on October 10
with a sweeping, Lord of the Rings-style story
that combines vampire mythology with the
historical origins of Vlad the Impaler. The
Book of Life (Oct. 17), a 3-D computer-animated adventure comedy, looks to be a more
exuberant spook-fest in the vein of The
Nightmare Before Christmas, but with a
refreshing, Mexican vibrancy. All Hallows'
Eve (Oct. 31) brings us Horns, the latest stop
on Daniel Radcliffe’s journey to distance
himself from Harry Potter while still
embracing his bewitching roots.

By Rob Fagin

Luke Evans in Dracula Untold, out October 10th

All of these seem at least a little bit interesting, but it's strange to me that this fantastically atmospheric season doesn’t harvest
more intoxicatingly ghoulish tales. In fact,
this month's most thrillingly dark releases
don’t have a thing to do with the holiday:
Gone Girl (Oct. 3) - Directed by the current
master of rivetingly bleak sagas, David
Fincher, this looks like it could offer
macabre satisfaction to the legions of fans of
this chilling international bestseller.
Fury (Oct. 17), wrritten and directed by
David Ayers (whose End of Watch was a
swaggering adrenaline rush) stars Brad Pitt
as the sergeant of a platoon gunning their
tank into the heart of Nazi Germany.

Festival hit Birdman (Oct. 17), directed by
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel, Amorres
Perros) starring the great, under-appreciated
Michael Keaton, looks like it could be a jawdropping, rip-tide mixture of dangerous
comedy and otherworldly hallucination.
Finally, the Halloween night alternative
will be Jake Gyllenhaal’s descent from a
low-life opportunist to a grotesque crime
reporter in writer-director Dan Gilroy's
Nightcrawler.
It's possible, actually, that these flicks
might be far better suited for the horror season than most of the releases that are traditionally tailored to the genre…which
inspires this month's Double Feature.
First Up:
There Will Be Blood (158 min.)
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007
Availability: DVD/Blu-ray; Netflix
In one of this movie's most memorably
hellish scenes, the ground spews forth violently pressured gas, lumber shreds to splinters and a boy's eardrums burst to deafening
panic. Daniel Plainview - played by Daniel
Day-Lewis in a performance that needs no
further exclamation, the self-made "oil man"
and monster of this particular horror story is helpless to do anything for his son as he
watches a pillar of fire and smoke turn the
sky to black. You can see him changing, see
him becoming; something ghastly is blossoming inside.
He seems to have been borne from the
blistering, barren rocks where we meet him
in the beginning - alone, wordless, mining a
desolate wasteland for gold and ferociously
willing himself to fortune. He terrifies with
his inhuman rage and dominance. But we
are in awe of his relentless determination,
and we can see behind his demonic eyes a
desperate yearning for something to soothe

IE HAUNTED HOUSE GUIDE 2014 • PAGE 4

his lizard soul.
Some who are critical of this - possibly
the best movie of this century so far - argue
that it is a flawed Citizen Kane wannabe. But,
while it is certainly another scathing chronicle of 20th Century capitalism, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (with the
invaluable help of Radiohead brainiac Jonny
Greenwood, creating a wholly idiosyncratic,
rattling and mesmerizing score) is much
closer to Stanley Kubrick than Orson
Welles in this nightmarish meditation on
Greed - a word that has lost a lot of power in
recent times, but here is shown to be packed
with a disturbing load.

Next:
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (90 min.)
Dir. Tim Burton, 1985
Availability: DVD/Blu-ray
"On this very night, ten years ago, along this
same stretch of road, in a dense fog just like
this…" These gleefully ghoulish words are
spoken unsolicited by a truck driver named
Large Marge and lead to a scare gag of such
gruesome shock and giggling fits that it
quickly became one of the most iconic film
moments for anyone who grew up in the
80’s. At once terrifying and silly, it boldly
embodied the polar extremes of our obsession with monsters.
With many other moments of euphoric
oddities and squeamish daydreams (including Danny Elfman's first original movie
score), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is not only
Tim Burton’s best movie, but a masterpiece
of unhinged, lunatic imagination that easily
plays to kids’ delight, while also tripping on
a heavy dose of midnight freak show. What
could be more perfect for your Halloween
fright-fest?