Halloween on the Silver Screen

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is one of the most inexplicable movies ever made. Schizophrenic, psychiatric patient Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is lured outside in his sleep and informed by Frank, a blue, man-sized demon bunny, that the world will end on Halloween.

You actually have to watch the DVD extras to understand the whole plot, which not only involves satanic bunnies, but a mélange of time travel, predestination, subversive school teachers and teenaged angst. Strung together in an engrossing, if incomprehensible tale, these elements are sufficiently captivating that the absence of reason only adds to the film's creepy, otherworldly atmosphere.

Frank the bunny may not sound like a frightening character, but the chilling music and old-fashioned science fiction effects, like fog and mood lighting, that accompany his persistent encounters with Donnie are enough to give you the shivers. He tells Donnie to commit acts of violence and vandalism, so each of his visits is accompanied by an increased sense of dread as to what Donnie will have to do next.

Donnie Darko expertly builds anticipation to an exciting climax, all the while shrouded in mystery and science fiction vibes. Random and unique, this movie will have you scratching your head at the end, but the trip itself is an unforgettable experience.

Donnie Darko (2001) is rated R for language, some drug use and violence.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Because Christmas needed a face-lift and Halloween just wasn't weird enough, Tim Burton, Hollywood's reigning king of the Gothic and bizarre, gives us The Nightmare Before Christmas, a visually and technically stunning voyage into the dark, cobwebbed corners of the imagination.

Jack Skellington (the voice of Chris Sarandon), the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, stumbles into the merry Christmastown, where the cheerfully twinkling lights and bubbly elves are a stark and eye-opening contrast to Halloweentown's twisted architecture and malformed denizens. Jack joyously returns to Halloweentown, determined to use its ghoulish resources to bring a memorable Christmas to the inhabitants of Christmastown.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, released in 1993, used stop-motion animation to a fuller extent than any movie in history at that time. This style is perfect to convey Burton's macabre vision. Sweeping camera pans and zooms as well as a full 360-degree view of Burton's animated world transport you away from the mundane and into the insane.

A morbid humor infuses The Nightmare Before Christmas with extra energy, often conveyed in songs, rather than dialogue. In a great musical moment, Jack introduces his plan to use Halloweentown to prepare for Christmas, and the citizens immediately start "improving" on his idea, making the presents more horrifying and warping the spirit of the holiday. After all, Burton seems to ask, who doesn't love a rubber ducky with bleeding bullet wounds?

Dead ducks and all, you will love The Nightmare Before Christmas, whether for the original story, fantastic animation, murky atmosphere or just the whole, surreal package.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is rated PG for some animated horror and fantasy violence.

The Blair Witch Project

"I don't want anything hokey in this; the woods at Halloween are creepy enough," Heather, the neurotic protagonist of The Blair Witch Project, tells her camera crew early on. Seems she's channeling Daniel Merick and Eduardo Sanchéz, the maverick filmmakers behind this genuinely spooky endeavor: The less we see, the more we think; the more we think, the worse the images we conjure up are. That, in a nutshell, is the real magic of the Blair Witch.

The film takes place in Burkittsville, a Maryland town which professes to be the only recoverable footage of a disastrous 1994 expedition made by Montgomery College film students Heather (Heather Donahue), Mike (Michael Williams) and Josh (Joshua Leonard) in an effort to chronicle the legend of the Blair Witch. The three students were never seen again, and their record is presented intact, jerky camera flights and all, a memorial to the psychological disintegration wrought by a week in the woods.

And the three main actors give dead-on portrayals of human beings confronted with the increasingly portentous symbols etched in trees, rocks and dead leaves around their campsite. The characters' increasingly panicked interactions are even more impressive five years after the fact, when shows like Survivor have branded themselves into our collective consciousness and proven to us that yes, this is what people turn into under enough pressure.

The Blair Witch Project turns out to be a horror movie sans gore, bloodshed, scary music and inane clichés. Go rent it, if only because one of the extras mentions Blair High School. Sticks and stones may not break any bones, but they make for some decidedly terrifying symbols to mysteriously appear outside a tent, and that—the potency of leaving things to the imagination—in turn, makes for a decidedly terrifying movie.

The Blair Witch Project (2001) is rated R for language.