Even though I failed horribly at my book-buying ban set at the beginning of the year, I have stayed true to my goal of watching more movies! There was a long period (probably a good ten years, honestly) when I gave up watching movies. When I say “gave up”, I mean I went from watching a few movies a month to a few a year. For someone who grew up watching horror movies and clung to them because they have always been soothing and the community welcoming, to suddenly give up not only that genre but all genres? WTF?

Depression is a bitch.

If my memory is being kind to me today, I have watched right around 10 movies this year so far. Only four of them were re-watches! I think seven new movies in January and February is pretty damn good since I think I may have watched that many from 2023-2025! I’m proud of me even if you’re not! You’re not my real mom, anyway. You can’t tell me what to do.

I wanted to take a moment to highlight three movies that stood out among the ten!

Train to Busan (2016)

I absolutely loved this film. First, the dubbed version is decidedly NOT the way to go on this one. I made the mistake of playing that version first. Awful. Subtitled is definitely the way to go here. In short, this is about a child celebrating her birthday, and all she wants is to go see her mother. We get the impression that mom and dad are having a hard time in their marriage. Dad also works quite a lot, which is why his daughter wants to see her mother as badly as she does. However, Dad takes some time away from work to board a train so his daughter can celebrate her birthday with Mom. Then zombies. Infected? I’m not sure what the appropriate word is for them. When I think of zombies, I think of George Romero, brains, and shopping malls. This is more infection-based than corpses being raised from their graves. Fabulous movie! 8.5/10

Sinners (2025)

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this movie. To be fair, I wasn’t sure what to expect because I’ve been staying away from horror movie trailers, websites, etc., so nothing gets spoiled for me. Even though I wasn’t watching many movies over the last ten years, a part of me knew I would eventually come back to them. I was not disappointed by this film! There are a few things I wanted the writer(s) to expand on, which, as a reader, I know is much harder to do in a film than in a book. I wanted to know more about the relationships among the characters, the town’s history (though I can fill in some horrific details), and…the origin. I’m going to be vague on “the origin” just in case someone somewhere down the line who hasn’t seen Sinners (and knows nothing about it) comes across this post. Those aspects aside, it’s visually very beautiful, well-acted, and that soundtrack. That soundtrack! My goodness, so good! 7.5/10

Creep (2014)

I would like to start off by saying, “Fuck that guy.” Fuck that guy and fuck this movie. Listen, I am not one to scare easily when it comes to horror movies. I’ve been watching Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky, and so on since I was about 4 years old. The Exorcist? Disturbing, yes. Scary to me? No. So why did I pause multiple times, trying to “hide” from this movie? This was effective. In short, Aaron answers an online ad that sends him into the middle of nowhere to meet up with Josef to complete a job for him. The problem clearly started when Aaron accepted this job because A) dude, you’re about to go out into the middle of nowhere (have you never seen The Evil Dead?) and B) you don’t know what the job entails, dude. And it was a job to film something for him? Seriously? No, really, you thought this was a good idea? No self-preservation! You can’t be part of my apocalypse survival team if you’re the person who agrees to this. You’d get my ass killed. Can’t have that! 8/10

Stay tuned for future movie stand-outs!

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