Loving Beyond the Veil

Welcome to The Enthusiast, a newsletter thats all yum, no yuck! Every weekend, I'm sharing five things I'm loving right now. The challenge for me is keeping it to just five...

Happy Pre-Halloween and early blessed Samhain, my babes! I’m feeling deeply moved by the spooky spirit this week, so let's get right down to BOOs-ness. 👻 Feast your senses on this curated collection of creepy, crawly, ghoulish goodies I’ve been loving deep down in my rotten little shriveled heart of hearts. 🖤

Believe the Hype: Barbarian

I know, I’m like two months late here, but this movie is W😳I😳L😳D in the absolute best way. For movies like this, which I’d put in a category with Sunshine  and Hereditary (the scariest of all three), movies that go off the rails completely at some point and never look back. You’ll get no spoilers from me, and like both those movies, I highly recommend going in with little to no knowledge of it. I saw the Barbarian trailer before NOPE, and was immediately intrigued, and not just because big creepy but still pretty baby-man Bill Skarsgård is in it. However, I myself am also a huge baby, so I waited to stream it because I mostly prefer to watch horror movies in the warmth, comfort and pause-ability of my own home.

I will say that the first third of Barbarian is STRESSFUL with almost unbearable dread and suspense—so much that I almost quit watching 30 minutes in, but kept going, just like the heroine who keeps going through doors and down steps even though we all know she shouldn’t. Barbarian is also bizarrely and genuinely funny in many parts in the vein of Midsommar (Ari Aster, where you at bb?) and actually not all that gory or gross except for a few very specific parts. My imagination honestly scared me more with just the possibility of what could be down there in the darkness.

Even though it was written and directed by a man, there’s a subtle but extremely smart feminist angle that doesn’t feel as forced as it did in Alex Garland's Men earlier this year. Barbarian is also very self-aware, but again: not in an annoying or wink-wink-nudge kind of way. It’s a genuinely enjoyable, genuinely scary, and genuinely funny movie that was a complete surprise and an absolute delight—I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while.

The IP OGs: Horror Writer/Directors

Gird your loins for a multi-part list, my babes, because for me, no genre of film offers more originality and creative vision for writer/directors better than horror. I’m an immediate and absolute sucker for any horror movie written and directed by the same person (bonus points if they also act in the movie, compose the music, etc.) and Barbarian is one of these, written and directed by former comedian Zach Cregger. Horror has a long history of iconic films (of any genre) written and directed by the likes of Dario Argento (Suspiria), Clive Barker (Candyman), John Carpenter (The Thing), Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street), David Cronenberg (The Fly), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) and George Romero (Night of the Living Dead).

Recently, some more who aren’t particularly my personal faves have had blockbuster smash hits, silly series, and gross-out gore-fests like James Wan (Saw), Eli Roth (Hostel), and Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses), but even they helped boost horror's profile (and bottom line) over the years to pave the way for even more ambitious, creative, and terrifying visions from Ari Aster (Hereditary), Panos Cosmatos (Mandy), Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), David Gordon Green (Halloween [2018]), Jordan Peele (Get Out), and Ti West (House of the Devil).

My primary gripe with the above groups is the noticeable absence of women (and folks color besides Jordan Peele), but there have been some really great, buzzy breakthroughs both transcendent and slow-burning: Nia DaCosta's 2021 remake of Candyman, Julia Ducournau's oddly sexy Raw (it's French), Rose Glass's meditation on religious fanaticism Saint Maud, Jennifer Kent aggressively terrifying and culturally queer Babadook, and Alice Lowe's bizarre, unsettling and frequently hilarious Prevenge.

I still need to watch West’s follow up to his sexploitation-homage X, Pearl, along with several more movies by other writer/directors that dropped this year:

• Hellbender (Zelda Adams & Toby Poser)
• Master (Mariama Diallo)
• Watcher (Chloe Okuno)
• Piggy (Carlota Pereda)
• Medusa (Anita Rocha da Silveira)
• You Won’t Be Alone (Goran Stolevski)

There’s only a few days left before All Hallow’s Eve, ghoulies, but the great thing about horror is that the best movies are truly timeless.

Witchy Queens: Drag, Filth, Horror, Glamour

The Boulet Bros are back with a new season of Dragula with a twist: an all-star Titans edition! My favorite hairy babe Evah Destruction is back (and hopefully won’t let herself get in her own way this time), as are Kendra Onixx and Hoso Terra Toma, who I had the absolute delight of getting to see live this summer on the Dragula tour. It looks like a pretty excellent cast overall, but we're only one episode in and already there is some really confusing and convoluted drama among the monsters from before/after their respective seasons, which it seems like this show has been leaning on a lot harder in recently. I can't say I'm a huge fan of this kind of uncomfortably cringe on-camera drama, but if the monsters really do act like that without producer manipulation? 🙀🙀🙀

Bonus: Here’s a great piece by RuPaul's Drag Race Queen of Queens and practicing witch Jinkx Monsoon discussing how witchcraft helped her stay sober and centered during the filming of All-Stars Season 7.

Historical Horror: The Indifferent Stars Above

I’ve only recently gotten into *reading* horror lately, but I have to confess that the scariest book I’ve ever read is a nonfiction account of one of the most horrific events in US History: the Donner Party tragedy. The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride is gorgeously written by Daniel James Brown, the author of The Boys in the Boat, and is absolutely haunting–filled with a deep, lingering dread reminiscent of folk horror and terror more visceral and disturbing than any modern gore-fest. It was literally a page-turner for me, even though we all know how it ends, and probably one of the best historical nonfiction books I’ve ever read, even though I may never read it again. It was far more scary, to me, than an actual horror novel I read based on the same events (The Hunger by Alma Katsu), to be honest. The novel was too far-fetched and didn't get into the history of the people in the party, why they left home to head west, and everything they had to deal with before, during, and after that winter in the mountains. I highly recommend The Indifferent Stars Above, but maybe don't read it right before bedtime...

Cheering for Murder: Bad Sisters

If you’re not familiar with the work of showrunner & writer Sharon Horgan, this is now the perfect time to get into it, as her latest series Bad Sisters just wrapped up on AppleTV+. I fell in love with Horgan’s writing after nearly pissing myself multiple times watching her extremely dark early-Aught's dating series Pulling and her brilliant collaboration with Rob Delaney on Catastrophe. Bad Sisters is her newest, and for me, her most thrilling and ambitious. There are five sisters, one of whom has an absolute garbage person for a husband, affectionately called The Prick—honestly one of the least sympathetic characters with zero redeeming qualities I’ve ever experienced. Pennywise the Clown has more pathos than this shithead. There’s no way someone could be this much of an actual pile shit, you think, until you see how his actions impact the sisters' lives, most painfully his own wife Grace, the quietest, sweetest and plainest of the sisters.

When The Prick dies unexpectedly, two insurance company brothers look for foul play to avoid a large payout, and we’re deftly moved between the events leading up to the death and the investigation, and then many connections, coincidences, twists and turns in between. It’s definitely a drama, yes, but it’s also Horgan’s uncomfortably cheeky humor, the dynamic between the sisters individually and as a family unit, and some truly terrific tension-building and sneakily gutting unexpected events. It’s not horror, per se, but Bad Sisters will definitely leave you feeling creeped out in some cases, heartbroken and even furious in others, ridiculously excited to see who finally gets The Prick in the end, and laughing at things (like pre-meditated murder) that have no business being as funny as Horgan makes them.

All Treats, No Tricks

🩸 Bloody Beauty: I'm a lifelong skincare aficionado, but when I first about Vampire Facials, I recoiled in disgust (mainly at the price tag to pay someone smear your own blood all over your face). But now all the girls are Menstrual Masking and I'm kind of here for it? It feels feral and ceremonial and also happens to be a really cheap and easy to way to instantly gross out every cisgender man in your life so it's a win/win, right?

🎴 Tarot Time: Meg Jones Wall, one of my favorite tarot pros, wrote this fantastic essay on redefining femininity and gender along with the shitshow our reproductive rights have become in this country–all the through lens of iconic and seemingly inscrutable tarot archetypes.

👒 The Green Ribbon: Did you read inappropriately scary books by one Alvin Schwartz in elementary school, or are you normal? If you are in fact tainted for life by these unassuming-looking little books for elementary schoolers, you'll love this analysis of "The Green Ribbon," one of the most iconic stories in In a Dark, Dark Room, an early-reader edition of insane horror folktales that scarred elder Millennials for life.

🐁 Turning Down the Mouse: Tim Burton is done with Disney!! I honestly doubt  he'll return to his full former glory as everyone's favorite goth cousin with a camera. He's also apparently in no way involved with the extremely-cursed Beetlejuice 2 abomination that's currently in production, which gives me hope for his eternal soul. I will never get enough of PeeWee's Big Adventure (it's a holiday tradition to watch with my in-laws), the original and perfect Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton as Batman and more importantly Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, the screeching absurdist camp of Mars Attacks!, and the geniune creativity, emotion, and sweet humor of Big Fish. He's apparently had a long and tulmultuous relationship with Disney, and I just hope he's moving onto something more artistically fulfilling or even just taking it easy for a while. He's earned it!

One Last Thing...

While we might currently be at peak TV (and counting), I still firmly believe that there is no greater time than the present to get into The X-Files, if you’re not already a fan. It's one of my all-time favorite shows, and it inspired and influenced many programs and showrunners like Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan. This thread very helpfully breaks down episodes by type, topic, and horror themes. Have yourself a spooky little mini-binge (and do it soon before Twitter goes down in actual flames)!

That's all for this Halloweekend edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you for reading – if you're not already a subscriber, you can sign up here (it's free, and  subscriber-only content is in the near future, so sign up now and click the confirmation link in your email). And if you're not too creeped out by this newsletter (or if you are...?), share it with a friend!

Until next weekend, learn the correct way to pronounce Samhain, make a plan to vote on Tuesday, November 8th if you haven't already, and treat yo'self to every Halloween Heist episode of Brookyln 99.

Stay spooky, my sweets!
LKH