The chilling winds strip the trees of their red gold skins, baring their woodsy skeletons to the harvest moon. Mischievous tricks and sweet treats abound. The veil thins and by the silver light we can glimpse the fuzzy shapes of things and beings half remembered, from times when we were not so sure, not so safe in our definitions of the real. What is that crunch of leaves that turns our heads and raises the hairs on our arms?

Halloween season is upon us, so time to kick off my 31 days of first time horror movie watches!

Day# 1 – M3gan 2.0 – When a military android goes rogue, M3gan, the killer AI, manifests herself in her creator’s mainframe and offers to help take the robotic assassin offline before she destroys the world, ostensibly to protect her favorite little girl. I LOVED the first outing, but M3Gan is basically a killer doll, not Alita Battle Angel. She should be fighting Chucky not saving the world. All the fancy cyberpunk trappings and fight scenes can’t make this interesting. More sci fi action than horror. A disappointment after the charm of the original.

Day# 2  – The Woman In The Yard – A grieving widow and her two children encounter a strange black veiled figure in the yard of their remote farmhouse. The Babadook ushered in a bevvy of monsters as metaphor movies. I’m on record as not being a fan of those. This could have been a thirty minute short. You know right where it’s going (and if you are streaming it, the content rating in the upper corner spoils the ending).

Day #4 – Smile 2 – A pop star’s drug dealer commits suspiciously smiling suicide in front of her, kicking off a series of horrific hallucinations and events that strain her perception of reality. I wasn’t a fan of the first Smile movie and watched this against my better judgment, but this outing blew that one out of the water. Genuinely horrifying and grisly imagery propels this to a grotesque and satisfying ending.