I’ve never been great at the whole Halloween thing. By the time I remember it’s happening, all the good sweets are gone from grocery store shelves, so any visiting trick-or-treaters get butterscotch suckers, breath mints or candy corn. I don’t do costume parties. I never got the point of carving pumpkins.

But movie and TV marathons? Sign me up – along with a lot of other homebodies. The horror genre is bigger than ever, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report that says this year’s domestic box office reached nearly $1.3 billion as of the start of October.

Horror’s surge has also yielded more films designed to play with our perception as opposed to the “Saw”-style torture porn dominating years past. Think “Obsession” or “Backrooms,” both of which are among the 10 highest-earning movies of 2026 thus far. That’s good news for anyone who isn’t partial to splatter flicks or slashers but still enjoys a creep show that makes you think, especially ones that are more thoughtful than scary. If that’s your speed, the following options may be perfect for your reclusive Samhain.

 

 

(Manuela Hidalgo)

“Black Zombie”

I will bet good money the first bong-ripping undergrad to declare that all horror is metaphor cited George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” as a prime example. That’s not wrong; Romero’s 1968 benchmark established the modern cinematic zombie as a stand-in for mindless capitalist consumption. But “Black Zombie” rewinds to the monster’s Haitian roots to examine an even darker origin tied to that country’s shared history with ours.

You may be wondering why I’d recommend a documentary in a horror roundup, let alone one that explains how the modern movie flesh gobbler began as a manifestation of white fear. The answer is that Maya Annik Bedward’s film doubles as an impressive cinematic syllabus.

By braiding America’s media history with its national history, Bedward and her assemblage of academics, creatives, authors and Vodou practitioners invite us to think differently about the prejudices driving movies like, say, Victor Halperin’s 1932 effort “White Zombie,” or 1943’s “I Walked with a Zombie.”

“Black Zombie” opens with a truth that has long escaped those fascinated by the shambling undead. To some, they’re simply mindless hunters. But Haitians understand the horror of zombies to be one of dispossession, a curse enacted by enslavers that binds victims to mindless servitude, denying them liberation in the afterlife. But long after Romero transformed them from blank-eyed puppets to ravenous murder machines, Bedward’s film demonstrates how Hollywood’s version of the zombie impacts America’s perception of Vodou, Haitians and immigration.

“Black Zombie” not only asks us to think differently about an overexposed subgenre, but also thoughtfully examines Vodou’s central role in the revolution that drove out French colonizers, and France’s imposition of debt to punish Haitians for winning their freedom.

All of this informs the zombie’s continued proliferation across popular culture, in films like “World War Z” and shows such as “The Last of Us” and “The Walking Dead.” They’re terrific entertainment, certainly. But each is, in its own way, built upon decades’ worth of misrepresenting Haiti’s syncretic faith to the detriment and demonization of a people. At the same time, “Black Zombie” recognizes this subgenre’s cultural resilience, arguing that recognizing the zombie’s true roots broadens its narrative possibilities.

Proving that point, one of Bedward’s subjects, a Vodou priest, says he grew up loving Wes Craven’s “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” despite its message that visitors to his country risk having their nuts nailed to a chair.  “It’s a fantastical world to scare children,” he says, before adding that his main problem is its inaccurate messaging about his faith. “We say, ‘Wow – Haitians are devils.’ That’s what we’re taught.”

I’d nearly forgotten about that movie. Now I might rewatch it for the first time in decades and expect to be horrified for entirely different reasons.

Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango.

 

(© Amazon Content Services LLC)

“Carrie”

Stephen King’s classic may be more than half a century old and has undergone multiple adaptations, but it endures because its central moral that high school is hell never ages. Still, Mike Flanagan’s interpretation has divided the audience. Some, including King, appreciate Flanagan’s kinder portrait of Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) as an innocent unjustly sequestered from the world by fundamentalist parents who repudiate her extraordinary power. Others disagree with Flanagan’s alteration to the story’s climactic scene, which shifts culpability for the prom massacre from Carrie to a character created expressly for the series.

Pretty much everyone questions the season finale, which hints at taking an “X-Men”-style turn for its recently greenlit second season.

As someone who accepts nothing is sacrosanct now, not to mention a fan of the creator’s other adaptations, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” I appreciated Flanagan using Carrie’s story to critique ignorance, knowledge suppression, and the dehumanizing effect of social media.

Besides, nearly all the key elements of “Carrie” remain. The bullies are still awful, and the famous “plug it up” shower scene in Brian DePalma’s 1976 standard-setter is worsened by her tormentors posting Carrie’s frightened sobs on social media.

 

Some changes retain the spirit of past performances. Carrie’s mother Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) is still an abusive religious zealot fond of locking her daughter in a prayer closet, for instance. But after the law forces her homeschooled girl to join the festering sin den that is their local public school, Margaret throws herself into advocating for parents’ rights, entirely disregarding her teen’s desire for a “normal” adolescence.

Part of the additional fun Flanagan has with this marquee property is strewing cultural Easter Eggs throughout. Some nod to what’s happening in America, such as when Carrie discovers the school library and gravitates straight to books that have been banned from classrooms and community libraries across the country. Another winks at “Army of Darkness” fans; look for the logo on Margaret’s work uniform.

By the time we reach Carrie’s bloodbath, we may be left to question whether she’s simply a bullied victim pushed beyond her limit or some version of a Final Girl empowered to vanquish tormentors who earn their reckoning. Even if you don’t ultimately see Howell’s Carrie that way, it’s a fine dance with one of horror’s oldest friends.

“Carrie” is streaming on Prime Video.

(Crave and Christopher Lawrence)

“Yaga”

For adults, Halloween is an excuse to mingle sensuality with morbid themes. Why cosplay as a grizzled cop when you can be a flirty detective? Why settle for pretending to be a humpbacked wiccan when you can troll for hookups as a sexy witch?

“Yaga” has it all ways, resplendent with softcore interludes dangled between clue-finding excursions and unexpected chicken violence. The latest infatuation bait from Crave, the Canadian streamer that brought us “Heated Rivalry,” also gives us a new view of Hudson Williams and his naked hindquarters.

Only now, they’re humping away in a mystery taking place in a verdant seaside community called Whittock. There, dirtbag P.I. Charlie Rapp (Noah Reid) is drawn into a tense partnership with Carson (Clark Backo), a no-nonsense cop fatigued with her colleagues’ disrespect.

At first, Carson is repulsed by Rapp’s slimy overstepping, but she slowly learns not to loathe him. Implied in this, perhaps, is that a spell has ensnared the two as they probe the disappearance of rich playboy Henry Park (Williams). This pursuit leads them to encounter free-range poultry in odd places, along with strange symbols, a variety of nubile temptresses and a roommate, Logan (also Williams), who resembles Henry to an unsettling degree.

The show’s title has nothing to do with John Wick. It refers to the mythical Slavic crone, Baba Yaga, who either gives heroes a boon or lures wayward children to a forest hut that moves around on bird legs. Playwright Kat Chandler’s interpretation leaves open the question of whether our impressions of its witch are unwarranted or dead right, further muddling our judgment with the introduction of Carrie-Anne Moss’ university professor, Katherine Hargrove.

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Katherine announces herself by cozying up to Rapp over the manuscript for her new book titled “Sexy Bones,” thrilling him with her mature lady erotic energy. As she flirts with and antagonizes the private dick, along with other townies, it grows increasingly baffling as whether she’s friend or foe. Much like our titular enchantress.

This adaptation of Chandler’s play looks like a cop drama tangled with witchy murder, but from a longer TV perspective it’s really a haunting by the ghosts of erotic TV shows past. Remember “Red Shoe Diaries” and its moaning sax riffs? Like that anthology once did, “Yaga” banks on the power of smut to compel you. It’s a cheap indulgence, but what Halloween candy isn’t?

“Yaga” is streaming in the U.S. on AMC+.

 

 

The post It’s scary how watchable these stories are appeared first on Salon.com.

In the opening sequence of “Other Mommy,” Ursula (Jessica Chastain) is making lunch for her daughter, Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), when she asks if the girl would like to “come into her heart.”

It’s an odd request, but that’s because this version of Ursula is not actually Ursula. She is an entity that Bela calls Other Mommy — who looks exactly like her real mother, except that Other Mommy can contort her body into freaky spider-like shapes that scare the hell out of Bela and her stay-at-home father, Russ (Jay Duplass). Also, Other Mommy seems to want to kill or otherwise possess Bela, which is not exactly maternal. Other Mommy promises to nurture Bela, but clearly she represents the worst type of matriarch imaginable: one who is frightening, controlling and dangerous.

The scary mommy has been an archetype in storytelling for as long as stories have existed. We’ve seen it in fairy tales, animated films produced by studios ranging from Disney to Laika (in a way, “Other Mommy” is just “Coraline” in live-action form), multiple seasons of Ryan Murphy shows, and, of course, everywhere in the horror genre, from “Psycho” to  “Hereditary.” But the scary mommy is really having a moment this spooky season.

In addition to “Other Mommy,” Hulu is streaming a new series called “Phony” that has a similar premise: a kid — this time a teenage boy played by Sam Nivola — believes his mother (Connie Britton) has been replaced by an imposter who looks like the real thing but has sinister intentions. Two other streaming series, “Crystal Lake” on Peacock and “Carrie” on Prime Video, place two of the horror genre’s most famous scary mothers in new contexts. Even real life has given us a scary mommy for the ages: Donna Arthur. The estranged mother of Democratic Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton remained married to Cledith Arthur, who was charged with raping Acton as a child. Donna Arthur later criticized her daughter in a recent attack ad produced by Acton’s Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy. It should be no surprise that there has been intense backlash to that ad. Society and pop culture, not to mention basic decency, have taught us, over and over, to be horrified by a vicious mother.  

What’s notable about the latest batch of scary mommy releases is that, for the most part, they offer more nuance in their depictions of motherhood than previous examples of the trope often allow. The moms in these movies and shows are, generally, not entirely demonized even if they sometimes do monstrous things.

“Other Mommy” comes closest to outright blaming its central maternal figure for all the bad things that happen in her home. (Spoilers ahead.) The powers held by the bad version of Ursula seem to grow the more that Bela feels neglected by real-life Ursula, who works constantly and often gets home late. While she loves her daughter, Ursula ultimately admits that she hadn’t initially wanted kids. “I’m sorry for not being the kind of mother that you deserve,” she tells Bela in one of the film’s key moments.

Director Rob Savage and screenwriter Nathan Elston do not solely blame Ursula for the problems within her family unit. Her husband is a bit of a slacker who gets high in the middle of the day, and the Other Mommy, a shapeshifter, assumes other forms aside from that of Ursula, including Bela’s babysitter. But the movie strongly suggests that Other Mommy would not have shown up at all if Ursula had simply given her daughter more attention, which is more of a tradwife-adjacent take than I expected walking into the theater. Oddly enough, “Verity,” released in theaters a week before “Other Mommy,” has a lot more fun slyly toying with and ultimately negating the idea that a professionally successful mother (Anne Hathaway’s best-selling author Verity Crawford) must secretly resent her children.

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The three aforementioned scary mommy streaming series go much farther out of their way to depict their respective parents as flawed individuals who do care about their kids. In much of the first season of “Phony,” Connie Britton’s Ellen comes across as a totally caring and attentive mom to her boy Sonny. His suspicions about her arise after he’s injured in a car accident and becomes convinced that she looks slightly different post-crash. (CGI alters Britton’s features just enough to make her appear noticeably off.) But she has a very close relationship with him and, even after her supposed heel turn, makes a sincere effort to get him treatment when he begins to struggle emotionally. Her biggest sin is perhaps being too protective of him and overly involved in his life. The only reason she is scary is that Sonny thinks she might be and we’re not sure whether to believe him.

“Crystal Lake” and “Carrie” have the unenviable task of taking scary mommies we already know and helping us understand their motivations in new contexts. “Crystal Lake,” an eight-episode prequel to the original “Friday the 13th,” delves into much — perhaps too much? — more detail about how and why Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini in this version) descended into grief and homicidal madness following the drowning death of her son, Jason, at Camp Crystal Lake. In the 1980 “Friday the 13th” the identity of the murderer of all those horny young counselors isn’t revealed until late in the movie, when we realize Pamela, bitter that the camp has reopened, is the perpetrator. Reminder: the homicidal, goalie-masked version of Jason Voorhees doesn’t appear onscreen until “Friday the 13th Part III.” So even though we all think of Jason as the villain of the franchise, one could reasonably argue that the OG baddie is Pamela, the person responsible for most of the kills in the first film and, arguably, for influencing Jason to keep on killing. Jason Voorhees is, according to previous lore, a literal son of a bit*h.

In “Crystal Lake,” the Linda Cardellini version of Pamela Voorhees still slaughters numerous people, but she’s more than just a one-dimensional crazy bit*h. She’s complicated and more capable of selflessness than the first movie takes the time to suggest when it’s not busy knifing poor Kevin Bacon in the chest. The series, by contrast, invites us to feel empathy toward her, or at least acknowledge the suffering she endured in her life even before losing her son.

“Carrie,” developed by Mike Flanagan, the streaming world’s master of horror, attempts something similar but even more extreme. It moves the familiar story about a bullied, sheltered teenage girl to the present. The plot points that are key in Stephen King’s novel and its subsequent adaptations remain. Carrie (Summer H. Howell) is still taunted in the girls’ locker room after she panics over getting her period, and she still loses it in a way that turns the senior prom into a massive, telekinetically-generated disaster. But all of this happens in a world where social media exists, and some of the mean girls at Carrie’s high school wield it like a bucket of pig’s blood that can be dropped on anyone, at any time. The bullying is both more insidious and more soberingly recognizable.

As in the original, Carrie’s mother, Margaret, is a conservative Christian who wants to shelter her daughter from the outside world as much as possible. But unlike the most well-known version of that character, portrayed by Piper Laurie in Brian DePalma’s 1976 adaptation, Margaret is not a melodramatic, over-the-top, completely irrational zealot. 

As portrayed by an excellent Samantha Sloyan, Margaret still punishes Carrie by frequently shoving her into a prayer closet, but she’s also more grounded in her humanity. She’s conservative in a more modern sense: she’s driven by conspiracy theories, overly protective of her daughter, mistrustful of the government, and deeply Christian even though she does not always act like it. There are also times when Margaret’s opinions are actually correct, as in the first episode when Carrie starts going to public school and must participate in a shooter drill for the first time. Margaret confronts the principal and tells him that Carrie was rattled by the drill and that the whole exercise is traumatizing to students. I never thought I would watch any adaptation of “Carrie” and say to myself, “You know, Margaret White makes a good point.” But there I was, saying exactly that.

Not every element in these films and shows works, nor do any of them completely whitewash their characters’ more deplorable tendencies. But as a collective, they signal that it’s important to look beyond our culture’s tendency to demonize mothers and women in general. Simply being a good mom or a terrible one (within, you know, non-murderous reason) is not the only thing that defines a woman. Weirdly, this fact is also made clear in the most talked-about film of the moment, “You Can See Everything,” in which Elizabeth Holmes, who genuinely seems to love her children, also uses them as a shield in the documentary.

In the very first scene, we see and hear her partner, Billy Evans, talking on the phone about his hopes that directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim will show a more relatable, likable side of Holmes and prove she is not a monster. As the camera pans out, we eventually see that Holmes is sitting in the room with him. She is holding a baby, the youngest of her two kids, and gently snuggling with the child.

“Look at this nice mom taking care of an infant; surely she’s a nice lady who would never defraud anyone or even tell a single, small lie,” the image desperately wants to tell us. But in the end, even being a good mom isn’t enough, on its own, to persuade most rational viewers that Elizabeth Holmes is completely innocent of everything of which she’s been accused. Because just as a scary mommy may have some valid reasons that explain some of her behavior, a seemingly caring mommy can also be kind of scary.

The post Scary mommies are everywhere, but this time with more nuance appeared first on Salon.com.

On October 24, the legendary actress Amy Irving made an appearance at the revered Jacob Burns Film Center in celebration of the iconic horror movie Carrie‘s 50th birthday. The special event came as part of an ongoing retrospective dubbed “Starring Amy Irving.” Throughout the evening at the Burns, Irving couldn’t have been more lovely: Not only did she speak beautifully and answer every question as informatively as possible, but she kindly signed and posed for fans. Located in Pleasantville, NY, the Burns has been championed by everyone from Ron Howard to the late Jonathan Demme, so it was great that this fine institution was able to welcome Irving back. Irving’s husband, Kenneth Bowser, actually sits on the Board of Directors.

The Burns’ screening of Carrie gave viewers an opportunity to appreciate Irving’s mastery of her craft, as she triumphed in the role of Sue Snell. In addition, attendees were moved by the remarkable performances of Irving’s co-stars, as Sissy Spacek, who will forever be remembered for playing the lead. With its outstanding cinematography, artful lighting, and dazzling colors, Carrie, which many of us have seen only at home, was a joy to behold on the big screen. The film remains refreshing in its charm, which is of a rare, human breed that has since become more or less extinct. Of course, this artistic yet organic milestone proves as relevant as ever in its exploration of bullying and overall themes.

‘Carrie’ Star Amy Irving Reveals the Surprising Story Behind the Movie’s Iconic Ending

After the screening, rock-star writer and curator Eric Hynes joined Irving for a fantastic Q&A. As always, Mr. Hynes served as the ideal moderator, steering the conversation in all the right directions and later kindly opening the door to audience questions when the time came. Upon taking the stage, Irving, who looked gorgeous, revealed that seeing her very own mother, Priscilla Pointer, who played her parent in Carrie and five other films, brought her to tears. Pointer passed away in 2025, and Irving broke hearts when saying, “I just miss her so much.”

De Palma had wanted Pointer for the part; Irving emphasized that the director really took her under his wing. Although she was clearly born into an incredible acting family, made her stage debut as a baby, and studied the art form, Irving stated that De Palma taught her all she needed to know to move forward in the business while collaborating on Carrie and The Fury (1978) — her first and second motion pictures. She reflected, “He’s a real teddy bear, so he was really sweet with all of us. He held our hands.” De Palma actually volunteered himself to coach Irving for a Star Wars (1977) screen test, despite her initial objection that she had already committed to Carrie — auditions for Carrie and Star Wars had been held together, as De Palma and George Lucas are famously friends. While Irving wasn’t cast in Star Wars, she was the Princess Leia actress Carrie Fisher’s “date for the first time she ever saw Star Wars.” Irving continued, “She nearly broke my hand she was holding it so tight.” Star Wars wasn’t the first time that De Palma tried to help Irving win over his friends — Irving amusingly described how he set her up with her now-ex-husband Steven Spielberg twice.

In an ultra-cute anecdote about Spielberg and Lucas, Irving shared how the pair coped with the stress of releases, as box office numbers were important to both men, “Every time Steven’s or George’s movies opened, we would have to go to Hawaii so they weren’t there for the opening, and they would build sandcastles, and that was their way of avoiding it.” When speaking about the camaraderie between these revolutionary filmmakers, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, it became apparent that the old canonical works were great due to the genuine spirits of those involved; authentically fabulous people like Irving made Carrie the classic it is.

In regard to the grave scene toward the very end of Carrie, Irving, who became irradiant and angelic in her white dress, recalls De Palma having her walk backwards down the street to achieve a subtly otherworldly quality and adds, “And then, he said I had to walk into this pit of rocks, and they were very sharp… He goes, ‘Amy, you have to glide. This is a dream.’ And I’m like, ‘But it really hurts.’ So, I’m pretending it doesn’t hurt as I walk out of there. And then, Sissy insisted on it being her arm [that reaches up from the ground]. She has very specific arms. And she had us bury her alive, literally. The thing about that ending is it wasn’t written in the film; we had no ending… They hadn’t decided who was going to survive, so everybody wanted to survive. I remember Betty Buckley campaigning like crazy. She actually told Brian, ‘I’m the more expressive actress. I should live.’ It was crazy.” Surprisingly, Irving harbored some doubt as to whether the killer scene worked until she saw the amazing crowd reaction once it hit theaters.

As one audience member at the Burns pointed out, the complexity of Carrie‘s characters really enriches the film. Irving commented, “I’m the nice girl. Some people didn’t get that, because I’m not very nice in the beginning. That was a really ugly moment in all of our lives, but then she’s the one that has a conscience and does right by it all.”

The post 50 Years Later, Amy Irving Reveals the Untold Stories Behind Horror Classic ‘Carrie’ appeared first on vice.