Good Love/Bad Love: Ten Horror Movies for Valentine's Day

What's more horrifying than being in love? Romance is a common theme in scary movies. Here are some horror films that explore all that is great & terrible about love.

First up - The Good:

The Signal

Sure, our couple is having an illicit affair, but we can all agree her husband is just awful. And that's before the strange signal starts to turn everyone into murderous psychopaths. Their love story forms the connective tissue of this anthology film.

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Spring

How do you trick someone like me into watching a romantic movie about straight white people? Make one half of the couple a literal monster. Spring manages to hit all the same beats as a normal romance while somehow feeling fresh & inventive.

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Let the Right One In

Two lonely kids find each other in the sweetest damn horror movie ever. I'm not crying, you're crying. SHUT UP.

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A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Vampires are always being all sexy, but usually it doesn't do anything for me. Maybe this one works because our vampire is so un-vampirey. She's just a girl who dances to records in her bedroom & happens to find the boy of her dreams. Le sigh.

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Dead Alive

Sure, it's super cheeseball, but Lionel & Pacquita are in love. His overbearing mum can't keep them apart, & neither can hoards of the undead. They're so in love they don't even mind that their triumphant kiss happens while they're both coated in blood & gore. Those crazy kids.

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And now - the not so good:

May

Poor May's only friend is a porcelain doll. She desperately wants to have a connection with a real person, but she's just so damn weird. When she can't seem to find that perfect person to love, she decides it might be better to assemble one herself.

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The Loved Ones

See that sweet looking little gal in the picture? That's Lola. You know how the song goes, right? If this little Lola decides she wants you, you're in very big trouble.

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Calvaire

Suave crooner Marc is used to attention from the mature ladies in his audience, but when he's stranded in the middle of nowhere he attracts a whole lot of attention from the locals. Especially Mr. Bartel, who decides Marc is his missing wife, come back to make everything right. Sometimes it's not so fun to be the object of people's desire.

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Bug

Sure, trust is essential in any relationship. But you've got to have limits, people! By all means listen sympathetically when your boyfriend complains about invisible bugs & shadowy army conspiracies. What you don't want to do is start thinking 'hey, this makes sense.' Because no.

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High Tension

What to do when you discover your best friend has a crush on you? It's a tricky situation, for sure. Here's something you shouldn't do - don't invite her to your family's secluded country home & then leave the tool shed unlocked. Not if your best friend's alter ego is a murderous psychopath, anyway.

Beyond NoSleep: Horror Fiction Podcasts You'll Love

If you, like so many of us, have gone through the entire NoSleep catalogue & now worry that your life will have no meaning - rejoice! For countless other horror fiction podcasts exist, & a couple of them are really, really good. To help you separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, here are my current faves. In order from 'yeah, this one's solid' to 'Jesus H that's scary.'

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Tales to Terrify

This show has been around since 2012, faithfully churning out weekly episodes, even after the death of host Lawrence Santoro. The classics are well represented here; Santoro's expert narration of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" is a particular standout.  While some listeners might find the excess host chatter off-putting, it came to feel like a weekly visit to a friend's house to hear stories told by the fire.

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Nightmare Magazine

This podcast, & the magazine that spawned it, has fast become my go-to for the more experimental side of horror fiction. The stories are expertly curated, the editors giving voice to some of the best international, queer & POC writers around. 

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Knifepoint Horror

You want to creep yourself out good? Sit down somewhere dark & quiet, preferably outdoors, & put on an episode of Knifepoint Horror. Any ol' episode will do - these stories are uniformly great. Perhaps that's because they're all written by the same person. While tragically not prolific, Soren Narnia crafts some of the most starkly chilling stories I've ever heard, & the narration feels like someone is whispering dark secrets into your ear. When the odd new episode is dropped it's like a national holiday at my house.

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Those are my faves, but there are lots of horror fiction podcasts worth your time -Pseudopod, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights & The Simply Scary Podcast, among many others. Like Levar Burton said, you don't have to take my word for it. Check them out yourself. And sleep tight...

Best Horror Movies of 2016: Amy's Picks

Are you sick of Best of the Year Lists yet? I hope not, because I've been putting mine off as long as possible. But for the best possible reason, I swear! There's no denying it has been a banner yeah for horror. In addition to being some of the highest-grossing films of the year, we saw a flood of critically acclaimed horror offerings stepping out of their midnight slots to become festival favorites. There have been so many flipping fantastic horror movies in 2016 that I've got a great list here for you even though I still haven't gotten to see Raw, Train to Busan or Demon. And I've probably missed a bunch of others. An embarrassment of riches, 2016. And since we know the greatest horror films are made during times of social upheaval, it looks like 2017 is going to produce even more riches. So, we've got that going for us. Anyway, here you go. And just to make it more difficult on myself, they're in order...

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10. The Monster

This was a late addition to the list, knocking Green Room out of my top ten. Why? On the surface it's a creature feature in the most traditional & satisfying sense. I'm sure you'll be as psyched as I was to find that the monster is an actual person in a costume. That alone would almost be enough to earn the movie a spot on my list, but the heartbreakingly realistic mother-daughter relationship that is revealed through well placed flashbacks gives it an added layer of pathos that elevates it to something really special.

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9. The Greasy Strangler

Bless this movie's weird little heart. I haven't seen anything this gleefully nutty in a long time. Never thought I would consider a movie filled with grease & penises to be refreshing, but here we are.

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8. The ABCs of Death 2.5

Another unexpected surprise, this anthology featured more new talent than a year's worth of horror convention screenings, all trying their very hardest & all seeming to have a blast doing so. Almost every short is a winner, which is more than can be said for the previous offerings in the series. 

Listen to our episode on The ABCs of Death 2.5

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7. The Invitation

The Invitation answers the age-old question "Could this party possibly get any worse?" Yes, my friends, it could. Great performances & expert direction put us on edge almost immediately, despite the deliberate pace & slow build. This is a great return to form for Karyn Kusama, whose last couple films were ruined by studio interference. I can't wait to see what she does next.

Listen to our episode on The Invitation

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6. Under the Shadow

Last year we had A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which explored the role of women in the middle east. This year we have a more straightforward but no less fascinating depiction of the same topic. Some of the special effects missed the mark, but Under the Shadow ultimately succeeds in using the supernatural to make us feel the real horrors of war & oppression.

Listen to our episode on Under the Shadow

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5. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House

This movie about a Shirley Jackson-esque author has the feel of one of her books. It's quiet, understated & eerie, & while not much happens, it casts a kind of spell on you. While admittedly not suited to everyone's taste, it worked for me like wow.

Listen to our episode on Pretty Thing

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4. Baskin

Not since Hellraiser & Event Horizon have we gotten such a visceral & horrifying glimpse into hell. You wouldn't think the humor or the sing along scene would work with that, but it totally does. If you haven't seen it I'm sure that sounds ridiculous, but you're just gonna have to trust me.

Listen to our episode on Baskin

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3. Darling 

If you're going to make an homage picture, you could certainly do worse than Repulsion. As uneven as Mickey Keating's other movies have been, this one feels like it popped out of his head fully-formed. Every sound, every flickering shot & every change in expression from the excellent Lauren Ashley Carter contributes to one unnerving little movie.

Listen to our episode on Darling

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2. The Eyes of My Mother

One of the coolest things about horror movies in 2016 is how many great first features we saw. Six out of the ten on this very list in fact, including the top two. Nicholas Pesce came seemingly out of nowhere & dropped this gorgeous movie on us, which gives us a look at the making of a psychopath from her own point of view. 

Listen to our episode on The Eyes of My Mother

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1. The Witch

What's left to say about The Witch? Praise has been heaped all over this movie like so much chopped wood falling on your dad's head. So allow me to remind you about the scene pictured here. Remember this part? How chillingly ambiguous it is about whether the boy is actually being delivered from suffering by God or is only mocking his family's piety? That's powerful stuff. What makes The Witch an instant classic is that nearly every scene in the movie is just as powerful as this one. 

Listen to our episode on The Witch