IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU: THE FINAL CHAPTER

Here we are, the big day! And the final scary movie recommendation for you this season is a beautifully dark fairy tale from South Korea, the 2003 movie A TALE OF TWO SISTERS.

The two sisters of the title, Su-mi and Su-yeon, have a fraught relationship with their stepmother, a battle of wills that turns into outright warfare. A frightening ghost seems to be lurking in the girls’ bedroom, and noises come from the armoire. What’s happening to this family?

TWO SISTERS is one of the best horror movies since 2000, damn well close to a masterpiece. The story’s twists and turns progress from eerie to wildly nightmarish, but as you put the pieces of the puzzle together the movie becomes a profound exploration of guilt, grief and the horrible things family members sometimes do to each other.

See this movie.

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IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU AND YOUR CRAZY TWIN SISTER

“It was all a ridiculous mistake. There was no body.”

Okay, if you’re still looking for the right movie to get you in the mood for Halloween, here’s an old favorite of mine from director Brian De Palma. You know his later movies: CARRIE, DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, SCARFACE, BODY DOUBLE, THE UNTOUCHABLES, MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE. He also directed THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, which I recommended a few days ago. SISTERS is one of his early films, a loving homage to Hitchcock psycho-thrillers. It’s wicked, sharp, suspenseful, funny, and, like the best of the De Palma thrillers, delicious enough for multiple screenings. De Palma is crafting his wonderful style here — inventive camera set-ups; split screen storytelling; murder and mirth in equal measures; women who are more compelling than the men; and a pointedly funny ending.

SISTERS boasts two fantastic performances: Margot Kidder as a formerly conjoined (“Siamese”) twin, and Jennifer Salt as a witness to a murder nobody else believes has occurred. And perhaps most importantly, the movie is enhanced by a frightening music score from Bernard Herrmann, the maestro behind Hitchcock’s classics. (And look for Olympia Dukakis in a very small, early role!)

SISTERS is a class act!

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IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU RISES FROM THE GRAVE

With only three days before Halloween, we’re getting down to the year’s final scary movie recommendations. Still looking for the right film to keep you company while the little ones are terrorizing the neighborhood? Here’s a chiller from 2009, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, a nifty little throwback to the horror movies of the late 1970s and early ’80s.

College student Samantha needs some extra money for the rent, so she takes a job babysitting an ailing old woman in, of course, an old, dark house. Bad idea? No. TERRIBLE idea.

Director Ti West shot in 16mm film to give the movie a ’70s vibe, and it works. If you’d stumbled across the movie while scanning channels on your TV, you might wonder how you’d missed it three decades ago.

Babysitters. Mysterious couple. Old woman locked away upstairs. Big dark house. “One Thing Leads to Another” from The Fixx playing on a Walkman. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Seen it all before!” But the filmmakers and the cast have taken quite a bit of care to create a genuinely scary movie, one that uses the clichés and devices of post-Watergate horror movies to actually be a better horror movie than most from that period … or any time since.

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IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU, PART 2

Today’s Halloween movie recommendation is a quieter brand of horror, a black-and-white supernatural and psychological thriller based on Henry James’ classic 1898 ghost story THE TURN OF THE SCREW. But before you yawn and write it off as potentially dull, there are some diabolic currents running through the 1961 adaptation THE INNOCENTS. No surprise, Truman Capote wrote the screenplay from the novel. This movie will creep up on you, wrap its cold arms around you like the chilliest mist, and you’ll find yourself thinking about it again days later. There were things you couldn’t talk about in polite society in 1898 — or even 1961, for that matter — but those things are here, just out of sight, registered in the expressions of the adult and children characters … deadly questions that are never completely asked.

IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU.

From now through Halloween, I’ll post a daily movie recommendation that’ll help get you in the mood, perhaps even inspire you before all the little goblins and gremlins arrive on your doorstep.

The night before labor is to be induced by her doctor, a woman goes home to rest. A stranger knocks at the door. She wants something inside. Something inside the house. Something inside the expecting mother.

INSIDE, a French movie released in the States in 2007, is the last movie that really scared the shit out of me. Everyone I’ve recommended it to has agreed. Don’t let the subtitles frighten you away … the film will take care of that. There isn’t much dialogue anyway, and you don’t need subtitles to translate screams. And there are a lot of screams. Mind the volume on your television … my neighbors looked at me very strangely for a couple days after I watched it.

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The Most Beautiful Fraud

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