The Halloween Edition!

A life-affirming horror show, classic Halloween movies, SNL, & Taylor Swift

Today we’re covering the horror show that made me cry and gave me a transcendent spiritual experience! Plus a few uplifting things for those who don’t like The Scaries.

Halloween Succession. (Photo by EIKE SCHROTER / Courtesy of Netflix)

Over the past two weeks, I watched three classic Halloween movies for the first time: Beetlejuice, Practical Magic, and Hocus Pocus. [More on my thoughts later!]

That’s right, I’d never seen any of them! As a child of a 1990s Christian home—which comedian Nate Bargatze calls “the most Christian you could ever get of the Christians”—we did not mess around with the occult. We were Presbyterians [soul status: signed, sealed, delivered!], so we didn’t think demons were coming through the cable wires like Pentecostals did, but we weren’t going to put out an open invite! Halloween is fun, but we drew the line at handing Satan the access codes to our hearts and minds. A good rule to live by!

However, despite a reasonable hesitation about the occult — and despite the fact that I did, of my own volition, spend one Halloween playing a repentant sinner in an interpretive performance of MercyMe’s hit song “I Can Only Imagine” [in which my sister played Satan! honestly, how occult is THAT!?] — we were a pretty normal Halloween family! We trick-or-treated! We watched non-occult scary movies like Jaws! We dressed up as playing cards or gift boxes or Disney Princesses!

We had a grand old time, and our childhood sleep was sweet and unbothered by squatters from the underworld.

Now I want to know: What are your memories of Halloween in childhood? Did you go trick-or-treating? Ever participated in one of those “judgment houses” I’m hearing about online? Drop a comment and share some tea!

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In the Pop Culture News

Saturday Night Live is back, and the Halloween episode was so good! I’ve recommended comedian Nate Bargatze [and quoted him above!] and was beside myself to see him as the host this week. He was great! My favorite skits, in order, were:

1. ”Washington’s Dream”

2. His opening monologue

3. “Lake Beach”

4. “Chef Show” (with Padma Lakshmi!)

The other hosts since the post-writer’s-strike return have been Pete Davidson and Bad Bunny. My favorite sketches from those were:

• Pete’s Cold Open

• “I’m Just Pete”

• “Protective Mom 2” (with Pedro Pascal and Bad Bunny)

• “Subway Platform”

Taylor Swift’s new 1989 re-record came out last week! I have been explicit in the past that the re-records aren’t my favorite. [Though I support them for the right reasons.]

1989 changed that! It sounds exactly like the original—but punched up. Plus, the bonus tracks are all bangers and probably all about Harry Styles. 💜 [Thanks to Melanie for insisting I listen to it.]

I love remembering where I was in life when a T Swift album first came out, and this one gives me glittery nostalgia vibes because it was 2014, my first full summer living in NYC, and the summer that [excruciating sappiness incoming!] ✨ I fell in love with Ben! ✨

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Watching: Halloween Classics

As I mentioned above, I’m now catching up on the occult movies I missed in the 1990s when my heart was too tender. They’re fabulous!

Name one thing that has more power than Sandra’s & Nicole’s hair in Practical Magic. (courtesy of Warner Bros)

Practical Magic

…was by far my favorite and will now be an annual Halloween Tradition. So much happens in this movie. It’s a rom-com—with exorcism! It’s a police procedural in the style of the Hallmark Channel! It’s Feminism Lite! It’s like if Fried Green Tomatoes was written by a third-grader who is obsessed with spaghetti straps and long hair and whose primary reference for adult relationships is the 1998 country song “This Kiss” by Faith Hill!

For what it is — which is a mess — it’s perfect. I even cried at length about the power of sisterhood.

Also, for about 1 hour and 20 minutes of the movie, I was like, “So glad Nicole Kidman is here, but they are really underusing her signature intensity.” Then, with just 20 minutes left, she got possessed by her evil dead ex-boyfriend, and things went absolutely bonkers from there. I know she got her Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf or whatever, but her exorcism scene in Practical Magic was clearly overlooked by the Academy, and that’s a stain on their reputation, not hers!

Hocus Pocus

…was cute? I thought it was going to be like The First Wives Club but with broomsticks. Turns out the Sanderson Sisters are not despondent divorcées seeking spells to get back at their exes, but rather villainous shrews trying to devour children!? Who knew we had such medieval sensibilities in 1993?! Cute, though. I guess! It did not quite sit right with my spirit! But I’m not here to yuck anyone’s Halloween candy yum.

Beetlejuice

…is the perfect movie for any time you think to yourself, “I would like to spend one hour and thirty-five minutes feeling no other emotion than ‘What The F*** Is Happening,’ and I would also like if Michael Keaton was there for part of it.”

(Beetlejuice’s elite nickname for Winona Ryder)

I laughed freely and copiously and also felt like I was on mushrooms, and I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, but honestly, the fact that the movie even got made at all is a little triumph of the human spirit.

Plus, launching Winona Ryder’s career!

[I almost titled this post “The Only One I Can Deal With is Edgar Allan Poe’s Daughter” because it really describes my psychological state right now as my life has been—as discussed—a lot of death and heaviness. Plus, the line makes me laugh!]

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Also Watching: The Fall of the House of Usher

[Warning 1: Light spoilers ahead, but like, we all read Poe, right?]

[Warning 2: This show is gruesome, and I realize I’m talking about it at a time when everything in the world also feels gruesome. It’s not for everyone! But, for the most part, it’s not scary the way other horror is. It’s just…grisly. If you watched Game of Thrones, you can handle this!]

Now THIS show is some Biblical sh*t. Plagues, death, sin, consequences, the ultimate question of what is eternal and who we are without love.

Incredible. I love a religious fable, y’all!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a fantastic modern reimagining of several of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories. It’s the latest installment in Mike Flanagan’s Netflix horror collection, which includes The Haunting of Hill House [best and scariest], The Haunting of Bly Manor [good], Midnight Mass [stunning if you’re a religious person], and The Midnight Club [meh].

Now, with The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan is back in his absolute best form, reshaping and refreshing Poe’s stories with deep resonance to the 21st century.

It’s horror for book nerds!

Me recognizing Poe references in Usher

In the story, Flanagan recasts the Usher clan as a pharmaceutical dynasty that spawns an opioid epidemic [a not-at-all veiled reference to the real-life Sackler family]. The story is ostensibly about a billionaire father and his rich, entitled progeny destroying themselves from within; teasing out how wealth and privilege are both a shield and a curse. Succession, but make it horror!

HOWEVER: It’s not just a finger pointed at the rich. In the end, I found it a stunningly well-wrought fable about human nature, human greed, and eternal consequence. After all, fables sketch the foggy realities of life into a stark clarity. In real life, there’s no actual “Deal with the Devil” [as far as I know, but I’m no billionaire!], no rendezvous out of time and space where you drink $100K cognac and trade your children’s lives for a fortune.

And yet. Real life is just so many small deals with ourselves, our consciences, our inner demons. Real life is to make choices every day that either enrich our true assets [love, people, family] or starve them. What do we value most? What do we strive for? What is eternal? That’s what this show is asking, in a most elegant, disturbing, artful, gruesome way. It has deep compassion for its deeply flawed characters — even as it saws them in half. [lol]

There’s this scene in the book Les Miserables where Jean Valjean drags a dying Marius through the sewers of Paris [he almost drowns in a literal cesspool because Victor Hugo is nothing if not a melodramatic queen!!]. He goes through literal sh*t and metaphorical death and hell, but eventually rises from it: “all dripping with slime, his soul filled with a strange light.”

That’s how I felt after spending an entire afternoon reading through Poe’s anthology at the age of 15. And it’s how I felt finishing Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

Thanks for reading this week, y’all! And Happy Halloween! I will be dressing up as a witch and giving out the ex$pensive chocolate bars because that’s what childless aunties do! See you next week. :) (Drop a heart or a comment to share some love!)