A Decade Later...

Hello everyone! It's been over a decade since the last review. I wonder how many horror films I've watched since then? Many thousands for sure. Almost all I watch are horror films punctuated with youtube vids, documentaries, and the occasional TV series, and they are usually dark subject matter. I have a couple more hobbies I'm obsessesd with, I'm married, I have a graduate degree and two professional licenses, I quit smoking, and I'm 16 years sober. I rarely consume physical media. It's been years since I bought or even rented a DVD. Instead, I subscribe to streaming services or if I'm looking for something specific I dig around the web until I find it. The digital age is upon us. I want to give a shoutout to Blumhouse Productions. I went to elementary school with their head, Couper Samuelson. We were the two tallest kids in school. He was great at basketball. This was in a suburb of Boston, MA and I guess at some point he moved across the country to LA and got into the movie biz. That company cranked out some of my favorite horror films of the decade and that's how I found out about Couper's company. They put out some serious winners like Halloween (2018), Split, Truth or Dare, and the Paranormal Activity, Conjuring, Insidious, Annabelle, and The Purge franchises. My favorite films of the past decade are Mandy (2018), The Void (2016), and Halloween (2018). The Void is like an old school vibe combo of John Carpenter moviess and the Hellraiser films. Mandy is a film I could start a religion based around. It's a spiritual experience and a mythical hero story. Starring Nicholas Cage. And of course Halloween is a sequel worthy of association with the original. Also, what's up with sequels nowadays having the same title as the original. Halloween is not a remake, it's a direct sequel to the original 1978 film. Another good example of this phenomenon is The Grudge (2018?) which is a sequel to the 2004 film of the same name, not a reboot or remake. Also worth watching, btw. Much love, Charlie