Halloween At Home
Is that chill in the air the coming of autumn, or something more sinister? Either way, it’s the perfect time to hole up inside and scare yourself silly with this selection of frightful films, handpicked to help spread the holiday fear. Whether you like the blood to flow, thick and gloriously ketchup-y, as in the Dario Argento classics "Inferno" (1980) and "The Stendhal Syndrome" (1996), or you prefer your thrills more on the cerebral side, as in Jessica Hausner’s "Hotel" (2004) or Lukas Feigelfeld’s "Hagazussa" (2017), both icy Austrian tales of female isolation; whether you want to dabble in the dark arts (see: "Daughters of Darkness", 1971) or just get down to brutal business (see "Invader", 2024)—Metrograph At Home has you covered. Flick or treat!
-
Daughters of Darkness
Directed by Harry Kümel | 87 mins | 1971
Profoundly inspired by the spirit of Belgian Surrealist and Symbolist painting, Kümel’s darkly poetic horror film begins with a young newlywed couple waylaid at a grand hotel en route to England, where they fall under the spell of the elegant Hungarian Cou... -
Inferno
Directed by Dario Argento | 106 mins | 1980
Showing Argento’s doubling down on visual logic of dreams, this mystical yarn of alchemy and witchcraft unfolds as a series of lurid setpieces and cryptic clue-drops, largely in a New York apartment building. Resisting explication, the story erupts with... -
The Reflecting Skin
Directed by Philip Ridley | 96 mins | 1990
A word-of-mouth sensation at Cannes, Philip Ridley’s debut feature is a macabre, magic hour-tinted work of Prairie Gothic—a Lynchian riff on “Days of Heaven,” spiked with intimations of the supernatural. Eight-year-old Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) becomes c... -
The Stendhal Syndrome
Directed by Dario Argento | 119 mins | 1996
Asia Argento, the director’s daughter and a future star in her own right, plays a detective on the trail of a serial killer, who takes advantage of her condition: entering an unconscious or fugue state upon encountering certain artwork. Infusing giallo ... -
Hotel
Directed by Jessica Hausner | 77 mins | 2004
Jessica Hausner’s eerily enigmatic second feature is suffused with the crystalline chill of its remote alpine setting. It follows Irene, newly employed as a receptionist at Waldhaus, a stately hotel in the woods: The young woman is unsettled to learn t... -
Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal
Directed by Boris Rodriguez | 83 mins | 2012
Suffering from a dearth of painterly inspiration, fading art star Lars (Thure Lindhardt, fresh from Ira Sachs’ troubled 2012 romance "Keep the Lights On") takes on a teaching gig in a small, snow-blanketed town. There he finds an unlikely muse in Eddie... -
100 Bloody Acres
Directed by Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes | 90 mins | 2013
Soylent Green is people and, sometimes, so is the fertilizer purveyed by brothers Reg and Lindsay Morgan (Damon Herriman and Angus Sampson) in this pungent Aussie horror-comedy, the directorial debut of Cameron and Colin Cairnes ("Lat... -
Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse
Directed by Lukas Feigelfeld | 102 mins | 2017
In conversation with both "The Witch" (2015) and "Antichrist" (2009) but infused with a creeping hallucinogenic quality all its own, Lukas Feigelfeld’s debut feature is a scorcher of a slowburn pagan fable. Shunned by the townsfolk as witches, young ... -
Rounding
Directed by Alex Thompson | 90 mins | 2022
A hospital is a place where science reigns over religion—but maybe not in the rural town of Greenville, where medical student James (Namir Smallwood) has just been transferred, intending to finish his residency while still recovering from a breakdown at ... -
You Are Not Me
Directed by Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera | 99 mins | 2023
The holiday period can be an alienating one, especially if you’re queer, and/or if a surprise visit to your family home yields the unsettling discovery that a stranger is sleeping in your old room, wearing your clothes, and being doted ... -
Invader
Directed by Mickey Keating | 70 mins | 2024
Clocking in at a taut 70 minutes, horror maverick Mickey Keating’s ("Darling", 2015) home invasion story is lean, mean, and brutally immersive. Ana (Vero Maynez) travels by bus to the suburb outside of Chicago where her cousin Camila lives, arriving lat... -
Animale
Directed by Emma Benestan | 98 mins | 2024
Cattle outnumber people in the Camargue, a coastal region in France’s south, nearly two to one. Nejma (Oulaya Amamra) is determined to master the local, male-dominated bullfighting tradition—but after a night of partying, she begins to experience disturb...
