Top Halloween Movies: Insidious, Ouiji and Parasite in the #1 Spot

Coming in at number three is Insidious, a film released in 2010, directed by James Wan and Leigh Whannel, which clocks in at an hour 43 minutes and stars a quaint family who’s just moved into their new house. They’re a family of five, with two sons, one baby daughter, a mother, and a father. All seems normal (except for the main character’s useless husband) until one of their sons ventures into the attic of the house and soon falls ill.  From then on the plot progresses in theme with the name; slowly and subtly, but with harmful results. Until the second half of the movie. I’d give it a tentative 7/10.

I’m getting into real spoiler territory now, so if you’d like to avoid that, now is a good time to scroll onto the next movie.

As mentioned, at the beginning there is a slow onset of dread, you have this constant anticipation as you wait for something truly horrible to happen, but it seems the writing couldn’t live up to the expectations set by the first hour or so of the movie. The reveal comes when the family is informed of what is actually making their son ill and… it’s an astral projection. Yeah. It turns out their youngest son, Dalton Lambert, can astral project and has gotten lost in the astral plane. This is a real turn, as the movie has not alluded to anything like this previously, it truly comes out of left field. After that, “not good” goes to bad, as the father is forced to traverse the astral plane to retrieve the son. Oddly, this move forces his wife, our former main character, into the position of a stock photo supportive wife character. This feels very jarring and makes it difficult to enjoy the rest of the movie. I also feel as though the back end of the movie drags on longer than necessary. The cinematography is perfectly fine, the only undesirable effect is the strange desaturation over the entire film. For the first half of the movie, I’d rate it 8.5/10 and the second half 5/10- it’s not bad, just generic.

In the number 2 spot, I put Ouija: Origin of Evil, released in 2016 and directed by Mike Flanagan- I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to actually like it. A movie about a Oujia board? Prime hate-watch material. However, I was very pleasantly surprised to find a movie that was genuinely worth the one-hour and 39 minutes watch time. It recounts the story of a family of three, two girls and their mother, who live in the house once owned by their deceased father. The mother falsifies being a medium to support the family, and all is well until she purchases a Oujia board as a new prop in her seances. The setup is already interesting, as the majority of the characters involved have zero belief in ghosts, and the way they ramp up the stakes little by little is extremely compelling. I’d rate it a solid 9/10.

Another spoiler warning here, this is where I’ll tackle the meat of the plot, skip ahead to avoid that.

The movie handles a lot of well-worn tropes with a sort of fresh execution that makes them feel new all over again. You have the classic angry teen older sibling who gets into trouble, the basic teen love interest, the slightly unstable single parent, the priest, and the innocent younger child who gets possessed. You expect the mother to be the responsible party in this situation, the one with the most sense, but you’d be wrong! When the youngest sister, Doris, gains psychic powers and begins acting strangely, it’s her older sister Paulina who realizes something is wrong, while their mother instead begins believing entirely in ghosts and capitalizes on her daughter’s powers to give herself and their customers closure. Equally notable is how they handle the “possessed little girl” trope; typically I find this campy at worst and mildly amusing at best, but this movie actually pulls off making her genuinely unsettling. There’s one particular scene where Doris gives a vivid description of how it feels to be choked to death, and it’s extremely creepy, only helped by its lack of soundtrack. Equally satisfying is the use of the priest, or more so how he is not useful. The only true effect he makes on the plot is when he tests Doris’ psychic abilities, during which he looks completely freaked out; then he dies when the meat of the plot actually occurs and almost immediately dies. This is a refreshing departure from the usual role of priests in horror movies, which is almost always main character/unshakable badass who saves the day; it gets boring after the first three Conjuring movies. What I feel absolutely tops off the movie is the ending, which I won’t spoil here, but it is not happy. This movie is an unexpected gem, and if you have a thing for classic horror, I highly recommend Ouija: Origin of Evil.

And for my number one recommended horror movie for this season…. We have Parasite! Released in 2019 and directed by Bong Joon-ho, it won three golden globes and wears a watch time of 2 hours and 12 minutes. You’ve probably heard this a million times by now, but it is a truly haunting psychological thriller that beautifully takes down the elite and it is absolutely worth every single second of watch time. It starts off with the Parks, a poor family who are in desperate need of work. Through a series of hijinks and trickery, they all make their way into working for the same rich upper-class family, until something strange happens one rainy night that changes everything. A solid 10/10 movie, it’s got delightful symbolism and it blindsides you halfway through.

Now we delve into spoiler territory, press on if you dare!

The first thing I would like to cover is the expert tonal change that occurs when the Parks run into Moon-gwang, the former housekeeper, on the camping night. They do an amazing job of switching from the comedic romp of the early movie and pull a wonderful bait and switch. The atmosphere goes from carefree and joyous to ominous and even horrifying later on, and it does so smoothly. The complete discomfort and disgust that she and her husband keep well in the theme of low-income people being pushed to a breaking point and the story wouldn’t be the same without them. Another thing I’d like to mention is the amazing symbolism behind the rock. In the beginning of the movie, the Parks are gifted a rock by a family friend, which is meant to give them good luck and fortune if they take good care of it- and at the same time, the friend offers the main character a job with the rich Kim family. This in turn sets off the entire plot, which at first glance seems like a stroke of good luck, which comes back to bite them; the rock parallels this, as it is meant to bring them good fortune but is used against the main character as a weapon in the end. I cannot speak high enough praise for this movie, after I finished it I was left in a daze, please watch Parasite.

This concludes my top 3 horror movie reviews, I wish you all happy watching and very, very spooky Halloween!