Thursday Movie Picks (Halloween Edition): Snow/Winter Horror

 

In the 42nd week of 2020 for Wandering Through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks as part of this month’s Halloween Edition. We go into the subject of winter/snow horror as it’s a simple subject of horror movies set in the snow or during the winter time. Here are my three picks:

1. Kwaidan

Masaki Kobayashi’s adaptation of folk tales by Lafcadio Hearn is a collection of ghost stories set in different periods in Japan. Kobayashi brings a rich presentation to these four different stories that include a man leaving his poor wife for a governor’s daughter, a woodcutter’s apprentice making a vow to a ghost who killed his master, a blind monk singing to ghosts about a great war, and the film’s narrator having an encounter with a samurai warrior and a ghost while writing these stories. It’s a film that more people need to see not just for its ghost stories but also because of Kobayashi who is known with such praise by film buffs but doesn’t get enough love in comparison to masters like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu.

2. The Thing

John Carpenter’s horror film set in Antarctica that is based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? is a film that remains probably one of the great horror films ever made. The setting itself is a character while it is all about this mysterious thing that arrives at this station that mutates and then kills everyone where no one knows who to trust. With an ensemble cast that includes Carpenter regulars Kurt Russell and Keith David as well as Wilford Brimley, the film is an intense and mysterious film where no one is sure who to trust and what to do. Especially as they have no idea what this mysterious thing really looks like.

3. Let the Right One In

Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel about a young boy who meets a vampire in early 1980s Sweden is definitely one of the best horror films of the 21st Century so far. Yet, it’s really a love story of sorts between this boy and a young vampire who protects him from his bullies but also has to feed herself. It’s an unconventional vampire movie yet its setting in the winter adds to the visual splendor of the film as well as some of the attacks that occur where there is this air of satisfaction that is needed in the film. It’s a film that anyone who loves vampires need to see.

© thevoid99 2020