Watchcast Schedule for October 2023: International Horror!

Greetings, Nextlanders! And a happy October to each and every one of you. I'm sure I've said this many times over the years, but it always bears repeating that this is far and away my favorite month of the year. Autumn is in full swing here in the northern hemisphere, and the spooky flavorings start wafting through the air. And of course, as is tradition, we always book ourselves a slate of horror films to watch to get ourselves in the right mindset.

This year is certainly no different, but with the WGA strike just recently resolved and the SAG-AFTRA strike still going, we're sticking by our plan to keep digging into stuff outside the realm of the AMPTP, and will be Watchcasting a quintet of horror films from across the globe! Here's what we've got on tap for the month.

Monday, October 2nd: Ghostwatch (1992)

Our first pick comes from the United Kingdom and the BBC. Aired a single, solitary Halloween night in 1992, Ghostwatch is a mock-documentary (they call it a mockumentary, but Christopher Guest kind of reshaped what that term means over here) that purports to visit a profoundly haunted council house occupied by a terrified single mother and her two daughters. Throughout the special, real life news presenters talk the audience through the proceedings as if it were a real live ghost hunt. Though billed as a drama by the BBC, the use of well-known presenters and the documentary presentation sent a gaggle of Brits to the phones after the fact, demanding to know if what they saw was real. It caused quite the stir at the time, and while the staginess of the production definitely comes across three decades later, it's easy to see how someone not otherwise informed might have been confused by what they were seeing at the time. It's a wild thing, and I'm anxious to see how everyone out there in Nextlander, uh, land, respond to it.

Where to Watch

Monday, October 9th: The Babadook (2014)

This is a late pick-up thanks to our own Bradley Shoemaker, who said he just watched this for the first time. And it's a great pick that I probably wouldn't have thought of (on account I forgot this movie is Australian). If you've never seen it, it's an incredibly effective ghost/monster story about a widow and her only son managing their grief while also fending off an imaginary creature that might not be so imaginary. This is one of those movies that gets wrapped up in that whole "elevated" horror discussion a lot, and while I find those discussions useless (horror is horror, and horror can be great cinema, elevated or not), the fact remains that whatever its role in the pantheon, it's a supremely creepy film that stuck with me long after I first watched it.

Where to Watch

Monday, October 16th: Suspiria (1977)

As part of my ongoing penance to the Italian community, I thought we should include one of the movies from the country's most famous horror genre and one of its most famous directors in Dario Argento's Suspiria. If you don't know much about Argento or the Giallo subgenre, don't worry, you're in good company. I had to explain it to Vinny and Brad, and my short explanation to you is this: giallo movies are usually murder mystery slasher type deals that only occasionally veer into the supernatural. Suspiria is one of the most well-known films of the genre, telling the story of a ballet dancer who arrives at a prestigious German school of dance, which would be great except that a bunch of people start getting murdered. You may have seen the 2018 remake, which is well-regarded (I haven't seen it), but also I'm told fairly different from the original. Maybe seeing this one again will finally inspire me to check out the remake.

Where to Watch

Monday, October 23rd: Hausu (1977)

We're finally going to do it! We're finally going to get Vinny to watch Hausu! If you've been following us over the years at Giant Bomb East, you probably heard us at one point or another discuss how Vinny has always gotten Hausu and the US horror film series House mixed up, and how he's only seen the latter. Now Vinny can safely say he's seen all the horror houses. And this is one messed up horror house. This is one of those movies that gets wrapped up in a lot of "so bad it's good" talk, and I'll freely admit that talk is what got me to watch it in the first place. But the thing is, Hausu isn't a bad movie. It's certainly a frenetic and deeply strange one, but Nobuhiko Obayashi demonstrates a singular kind of vision in his first feature film, and it's a raucously entertaining one. I think we might break Vinny's brain with this one, and I can't wait to do it.

Where to Watch

Monday, October 30th: Train to Busan (2016)

Look, I know we've all seen enough zombie movies at this point that we're all probably wondering if the genre itself isn't The Real Walking Dead, but I still have a lot of affection for a good old zomb-romp, and Train to Busan is hands down one of my favorites of the last decade. A frantic and action heavy push through an ongoing zombie apocalypse, the movie follows a group of commuters essentially trapped on a train as they try to survive a spreading infection. It's a hoot and a half, and while it's more action-y than anything else we're watching this week, it more than delivers on the zombie violence (if you're into that sort of thing [I am]). Vinny also suggested Oldboy for this, and I had to gently explain to him that while that movie certainly is a kind of horror, I'm not sure it's really the Halloween-y horror we're looking for this month. Just imagine me doing a nervous collar pull on a video call for like five straight minutes.

Where to Watch

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And that's the October schedule! We certainly hope you enjoy this slate of spooks and scares, and thank you kindly for continuing to watch and listen along with us. We'll see you at the movies!

--Alex