Another Halloween came and rotted, and streaming services continued to be the home of the most horror movie premieres. Grumpire has been unscientifically tracking this trend for a few years, and 2024 was no different. While the fanfare surrounding new spooky exclusives has seemed to wane, 2024 had some rough gems rise from the bog. Perhaps even a true classic or two.
Hulu delivered a double shot of popcorn-throwing plasticity which mime a distinct cheeseball moment in horror exemplified by standouts like The Barn (2016), Slotherhouse (2023), and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (2024). These films feel like the modern equivalent of a Vestron release putting gore and schlock at the service of a Halloween costume shop aesthetic. Honestly, for Hulu to take this approach with their originals this year was refreshing. While Carved (2024) is a bit disposable, its pitch-perfect festiveness and rubber monsters make it an easy one to revisit any October. Mr. Crocket (2024) on the other hand, dips a toe into genius.
Hosting a children’s show is an inherently creepy profession: to hold a child’s attention while also trying to convey something educational or covertly illustrating an important life lesson takes a certain kind of individual. One thinks perhaps that individual is driven, loves children, is happy-go-lucky, and has a nurturing manner. One expects the wholesomeness of Mr. Rogers but too often households are delivered darker characters the likes of Jimmy Savile and Bill Cosby. Mr. Crocket is a nightmare conglomerate of children’s shows, pulling mainly from Cosby’s Picture Pages (1978-1984) but mixing in a bit from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (1986-1990) and Reading Rainbow (1983-2006). Mr. Crocket himself is vaguely Cosby-like but the resemblance to a demented Steve Harvey is undeniable. Harvey’s demeanor on Little Big Shots (2016-2020) always seemed like he needed a drink between takes, but even then, that’s taking a cue from Cosby on Kids Say the Darndest Things, which he hosted from 1997-2000.
The question is raised of who parents trust to leave their children with, not only physically but mentally. So when adults find out the gross misconduct and abuse involved in the personal lives of these creators it is shocking and heartbreaking that these people who more or less were authorities in their young lives turn out to be so evil. If the creators are not to be trusted, does that mean the lessons they taught have lost legitimacy? Mr. Crocket touches on that bad parenting angle, with Crocket seemingly coming to the rescue of kids who are living in abusive households, crawling out of their TVs and VCRs to take them away to his paradise of a children’s show set like a pied piper. The messaging is mixed because of course kids should not be living in conditions of verbal abuse or with a junkie dad, and therefore Crocket initially comes off as a very messed up type of hero. It is Crocket’s own history of being abused that has led him to this sort of vengeance, but he is also blinded by it. One mother isn’t a bad parent at all; her husband has just passed away and she’s dealing the best she can with an obvious problem child. But, to show how limited and incorrect perceptions can be, Crocket snatches her son anyway and blames her for an emotional breakdown in which she has been put to the limit of her son’s misbehavior. “I quit being your mother” is said, but definitely not meant. No questions about it, Crocket is evil. Poignant, vile child endangerment horror for a noble purpose. You love to see it.
With its constant and exclusively horror-driven programming, it is hard to say that Shudder offers special releases come October. Still, one in particular would be a crime not to mention for accomplishing something truly rare at this point. Leave it to the French to develop a truly fresh take on the zombie genre. Harkening back to the “French Extreme” horror movement, MadS (2024) is as ballsy as it is gory. Set around a bunch of young people partying, this film comes out the gate swinging and doesn’t let up until the very end. Imagine Gaspar Noe’s Climax (2018) but instead of a punch bowl spiked with LSD, it’s a kid spreading a new designer drug around to his friends; after leaving his dealer’s place he stops to help an injured woman on the side of the road. Unbeknownst to him the woman seems to have escaped from a kind of secret lab situation. She’s bleeding all over the place, and some of her blood mixes with the drugs he’s just bought. From there, this woman’s infection is spread amongst the partiers, turning them all into flesh-eating lunatics. The gimmick of this movie is that it is “all one shot,” which some film critics consider less engaging due to the focus on style rather than an immersive experience. Still, MadS can rise above that criticism because of its cohesiveness. The runtime of the film becomes a rhythm, with steady action that, although shocking at times, never overwhelms the senses too much. Add to that a curveball ending that subverts some expectations. Zombie movies really need a lot to be anywhere near impressive these days, and MadS does a great job of achieving that.
Netflix, unsurprisingly, had both the most spooky season exclusives and, of course, served up the most mixed bowl of candy. Outside (2024) treaded boring well traveled domestic family zombie drama seen by most a thousand times in the late aughts. Absolutely a sin when compared to MadS. Time Cut (2024) was perhaps released just days before Halloween because they knew they had a dud on their hands. But between It’s What’s Inside (2024) and Woman of the Hour (2024) some truly unforgettable movie magic happened. Both lack in any sense of spookiness but are undeniably horror. It’s What’s Inside reinvents the single-location murder mystery in such a spectacular and imaginative way that it gets away with the murder itself not arriving till the end of the 2nd act and still feels true to the sub-genre. While the ensemble casts of such movies typically are used to play with an audience’s idea of who one can trust based on shallow appearances, here the gathering of characters is used to dive into a much more existential notion of who one is in relationship to how one looks. Yet, it doesn’t matter if you care about this philosophical pondering, because the device is used to be utterly frightening. This is a rollercoaster at its core and for those who want more, go ahead and take it. Strangely enough, Woman of the Hour is also a horror of appearances, or, perhaps, the lack of them. Loosely based on a real-life serial killer who made an appearance on The Dating Game (1965-2021) where the eligible bachelors are unseen by their potential date, the film masterfully navigates many instances of looks being deceiving; often murderous. You might need to listen to a true crime podcast to chill out afterward.
Salem’s Lot (2024) is the most prestige streaming exclusive from this past Halloween, and it easily clears the high bar set for it. Feeling much like a golden era Blumhouse film ala The Conjuring (2013) or Insidious (2010), it basks in autumnal atmosphere and impressive cinematography. Perhaps not as scary as some may hope, it is never a bore and simply a new spooky season comfort movie. Also of note is Caddo Lake (2024). Literally anything could be lurking in the swamps along the Texas Gulf Coast. Among the enormous gators and the very likely possibility of dead bodies, the darkness and sludginess of the swamp provide a perfect home for the supernatural. Caddo Lake starts tediously with a meandering look at family drama through a cliched indie filmmaking lens, but when it eventually creeps into the mysterious forces present within the bayou the story starts to come alive. “Produced by M. Night Shyamalan” is honestly a red flag these days, with more and more of his own films deteriorating into easily digestible slop. But fortunately for Caddo Lake the producer credit steps to the side of some first-rate filmmaking. Yes, there are twists, but thankfully they feel much more thrilling than expected, giving viewers an opportunity to “figure it out” rather than spoon-feeding them everything. Directors Celine Held and Logan George successfully crafted Caddo Lake to engage the audience in a way that it makes them feel smart instead of late Shyamalan fare that blatantly asks them if they are stupid. That’s not to say M. Night should stick to producing, but if we get more Caddo Lakes out of that, so be it.
But where MAX cleaned house this year is with their Uzumaki (2024) series. Preceded with even more expectations than a new Salem’s Lot installment, the budget constraints have made a lot of nerds angry, but they can’t see the haunted forest for the spiraling branches of the trees. Here is the apogee of fetishizing order above all, manifesting in the simple and singular form of a spiral, revealing the inherent chaos and nightmare of such conservative and cowardly desires. In the end, this ultimate resistance to flowing with the messiness and uncategorizable nature of human existence leads to a singularity in which there is no humanity left at all.
For 80’s kids, animation was the true medium of the Halloween classic, with Garfield, Charlie Brown, and The Headless Horseman locked as seasonal institutions. MAX didn’t just continue this tradition with Uzumaki, but with Velma: “This Halloween Needs to Be More Special” (2024) as well. For all the hype and anti-hype Velma received when it premiered, the show itself lives up to neither but somehow transcends both. Velma was predicted to be a woke catastrophe by some internet users, boasting a race-swapped portrayal of most of the Scooby gang and headed by Millennial comedy star Mindy Kaling. It was the Scooby-Doo retelling feminists dreamed of: Velma is the unattractive and undesirable main character everyone is supposed to relate to, Daphne is the vapid prom queen mean girl, Fred is the rich little white boy who cannot function on his own, and Shaggy (his real name Norville is used) is the Ducky to Velma’s Andie from Pretty in Pink (1986). Scooby, at the time, was nowhere to be found. But surprisingly the show didn’t suffer from “woke humor” as many of those internet users had feared. In reality, if you squint hard enough, the show potentially seems like a Trojan Horse making fun of woke humor. With that interpretation, Velma turns into a satire of that self-deprecating style of Millennial comedy mixed with a perhaps accidental lampooning of the ridiculousness given by certain aspects of modern feminism.
The Velma “Halloween Special” isn’t exactly a “special” but just a regular season episode that takes place on Halloween. In The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972) style, there is a guest star (Saweetie), although she doesn’t do much to help solve the mystery (but when did Don Knotts ever do that either?). There’s a murderous ghost on the loose who always attacks someone at the high school kids’ annual Sexy Halloween Party in the graveyard. Without giving away too much plot, just know that Velma herself is a ghost at this time in the storyline, and according to some mumbo jumbo in a spooky old book of curses, the kids have to face their fears for her to regain her corporeal body. So there’s kind of a lesson about how what you think your fear is may not actually be your fear, or that you have to face what you think your fear is before finding out your real fear, or oh honestly it doesn’t matter. The reason you tune into the Velma Halloween Special isn’t to learn lessons about fear, it’s to be angry that woke writers have made Velma and Daphne a lesbian couple, and they’re both “twofers.” Or maybe that’s a lesson about internet users’ fears, too.
Paramount+ followed animated suit as well with SpongeBob SquarePants: Kreepaway Kamp (2024). The subversive, abstract legacy of SpongeBob SquarePants starts in the show’s influences. The hyper-absurdism of all those adventures in Bikini Bottom undoubtedly took root in early Nicktoons, evidenced most plainly by showrunners who had been staffed at Ren & Stimpy‘s animation studio Spumco, not to mention SpongeBob creator Vincent Waller having worked on the first iteration of Rocko’s Modern Life. Twenty years ago SpongeBob seemed like a dream continuation of the tradition of weird little cartoons that could be enjoyed by kids and brilliant outsider college students. Unfortunately, SpongeBob‘s twisted roots aren’t on display here. Any hope for something that could feel like a continuation of the sort of groundwork Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (1985) laid down, via a Ren & Stimpy stepping stone, should be tossed aside before watching this disappointing offering. Instead of a Carpenter-esque The Fog (1980) atmosphere, what one gets is a low-stakes, “safe” serial kidnapping story culminating in tepid wackiness and lame resolution. Perhaps SpongeBob himself died years ago in some sterile Hot Topic and this should be expected anyway.
The deluge of spooky streamers included much more of course. While Don’t Move (2024), Family Pack (2024), and Hold Your Breath (2024) all instill various degrees of dissatisfaction, there are some other notables. For any Hallmark movie fan, Haunted Wedding (2024) is a rare treat including both a specific Halloween setting and a supernatural element. Both are not places Hallmark usually treads. Otherwise though, one knows what to expect from a movie on this platform. Tubi’s Killer Nurses (2024) runs laps around Lifetime at their own game and The Platform 2 (2024) is just as much of a disgusting heartbreaker as the first. Surely there is even more that Grumpire missed, but like literally every human says, “Every day is Halloween.”
★★★ Honorable (and noteworthy) mention: Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) ★★★
While Grumpire likes to focus on the subscription streaming offerings this time of year, one VOD release stands out so much that it must be mentioned. There are two types of Hellboy purists: fans of Mike Mignola and fans of Guillermo Del Toro. The dichotomy is not without some overlap, but it’s probably safe to say Del Toro’s interpretation of Mignola’s comic is more Guillermo’s baby than Mike’s. But as half the Hellboy cinematic universe has been divorced from Del Toro’s auteurist touches fans are given more varied takes on the character, jumping from unashamedly cartoony (Hellboy [2019]) to pretty damn serious. Hellboy: The Crooked Man is the Logan (2017) of the franchise, giving us a more down-to-earth version of the character. That doesn’t mean he is cool and chill, it means he’s portrayed as a real salt-of-the-earth kind of intuitive blue-collar guy, doing his job as best he can because he has to. He’s reserved, but dammit, he’s getting shit done. Hellboy is a huge character for any actor to take on, namely because Ron Perlman did such an iconic job bringing him to life twenty years ago. So not only is any other actor doing their own version of Hellboy, they’re doing their own version of Ron Perlman’s Hellboy. Jack Kesy tackles the task extremely well, giving us a Hellboy who is both aloof and attentive, a seasoned vet of B.P.R.D. who actually seems trustworthy. Whereas past iterations of Hellboy have been characterized by a sort of teenage hissy fit incarnate, this Hellboy is more like a Hellman.
Brian Taylor of Crank (2006) fame is at the helm of this Hellboy, taking his turn from Del Toro and Neil Marshall. Taylor has crafted something unique in the franchise, a film that is engaging and no-nonsense. In addition to that, the spooky Appalachian setting is perfect for Halloween, post-Halloween, or anytime. Everybody knows them mountains is evil. Don’t go whistling at night, and all that. ★
