Whenever I come across a low budget horror flick to review, I’m generally rooting for it to succeed. Sometimes, that faith even pays off.
I’m a big fan of horror movies set on Halloween. There is something about the costumes and the set decoration that makes them seem more fun and can even get you excited for your own Halloween festivities. I’m also a fan of independent horror. When it’s bad, it can be really bad, but there is a delightful “let’s put on a show” spirit to a lot of indie horror that has me rooting for the filmmakers just based on the gumption it must have taken to pull it all together. So 10/31 had two marks in its favor before I even clicked “Play”. Fortunately, it did not squander that goodwill, and I ended up really enjoying my time with this scrappy little anthology film.
The movie wisely starts things off with what is probably it’s most well constructed tale. It is a story about a couple of would-be filmmakers shooting a commercial for a historic hotel that turns out to be haunted. While the story doesn’t give you anything particularly inventive or unexpected, it follows through on its premise in satisfying fashion. It’s obvious that the actors and director are still honing their craft, but for as unpolished as it might be, you can detect some real, raw talent peeking through. I found it to be a lot of fun. The second story is even more raw, shot more cheaply, and with less skill on display. But… I thought it was a lot of fun, too. Some of it is the writing, which tags stinger after stinger onto the end of the story. The plot is simple enough – a couple on a Halloween date decide to drive out into a field and check out a scarecrow that has a spooky legend attached. The filmmakers have fun bringing the elements of the legend into the play at different times, and I enjoyed the twisty ending.
The fourth and fifth entries are solid, but the film seems to run out of steam a little bit by then. The third story, “Killing the Dance”, however, is my favorite part of the film and one of my favorite parts of the scary season so far. To be clear, “Killing the Dance” grapples with the same budgetary and talent-based constraints as the rest of the stories. The pacing is wildly off – it feels like 70% of the run time is dedicated to watching costumed roller-skaters groove to synth music as they cruise around the rink. Yet, I found it to be a psychedelic, impressionistic fever dream and I kind of loved it. It helps that the moments where the plot kicked in were outrageous enough to distract from the fact that they happened pretty infrequently. The director of the segment, John William Holt, does not yet have his own wiki page (unlike some of the other featured directors), but I hope that he keeps working on his craft. I would love to see a feature film from that mind when he has a few more resources to draw from.
I often find myself in the situation writing for this blog where I enjoyed a movie but have my doubts whether it will be worth anyone else’s time. Sometimes I worry that my unqualified recommendations (X, The Black Phone, Nope) will get drowned out by all the oddball stuff that I like because its October and I am an easily-pleased horror nerd. So, take this recommendation with a grain of salt, but if you take a chance you might find 10/31 to be a creepy Halloween delight.
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