Scary Movie Month 2011 - Part 1

Well, while I haven't managed to stay on top of writing about Scary Movie Month, we've definitely been managing to stay on top of our viewing! (More impressively, I've managed to stay on top of baking for it, as we like our snacks for SMM, and I've been avoiding buying chocolate this year.)

Here's the first week's worth of movies.

The Frighteners
(1996 - directed by Peter Jackson, starring Michael J. Fox)
Enjoyed this while watching, but then five days later couldn't remember that I'd seen it. That either doesn't say good things about the movie, or should just be chalked up to late pregnancy. I'm inclined now to say the latter, as I've been talking about it with people about it since, and have found more and more that I enjoyed about it, though my main complaint remains the same (the romance is accelerated to an insane degree to forward the plot). Also an interesting movie to view given where it fits into the Peter Jackson catalog (between Heavenly Creatures and Lord of the Rings) - it's certainly more Hollywood and big budget than Heavenly Creatures but I never would have predicted his ability to do LOTR based on this movie.

Rear Window
(1954 - directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly)
Not really scary, but filled out our Hitchcock viewing. Most of our discussion afterwards (and during - this was the year we talked through every single movie we saw...) centered around changing experiences of neighborhoods and neighbors, and changing expectations of marriage. This really isn't one to critique - it is a classic, after all.

The Mist
(2007 - from a Stephen King novella, with a disturbing performance by Marcia Gay Harden)
Oh, scary, scary, and so sad. I get sad just thinking about it. I don't think we did much talking during this one, except maybe to make predictions about who was going to die next. I do remember a couple of breaks for extra snacks/bathroom - probably to break the tension of all that scary sadness.

I hope to get caught up by the end of the week! Only eight more to go before this last weekend's worth.