English teacher Joe Applebaum is an expert on horror–and not just because he taught at a middle school for years.
Applebaum studied film at UC Santa Barbara and has seen over 500 horror films. He has definite ideas about what makes for a great scary movie and a few suggestions for what to watch on Halloween. Below is a slightly edited version of our interview with him.
What makes a scary movie good?
The big thing for me is the atmosphere in building this sense of dread, a pervasive dread throughout the movie. And I think some people love horror for the jump scares, I just like to have this foreboding feeling throughout the film, and I think great movies do that. This year’s “Weapon” has some really intense sequences. There’s a movie that came out earlier this month called “Good Boy,” where the film is told from the perspective of a dog. And it’s because it’s a dog and you are worried about the dog’s safety, everything that happens in the movie is just really tense, because there’s no real humor to it.
Why do people like scary movies?
Um, So it’s an ability for us to confront difficult emotions or horrify emotions on our own terms rather than on, um, If we were to experience them in real life, we wouldn’t be able to, like, pull the emergency brake or remove ourselves from the situation.If there’s a scary movie or a scary book, scary video game, you could always put it down, return to it later, maybe not return to it at all, but you’re able to process and find catharsis, um, through these horrifying things. Whereas in life, they’re just kind of inundated with nothing but awfulness.
What is your favorite scary movie?
I would say my top five, ’cause I can’t really pick one. John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” which is science fiction horror, and has the best practical effects in any movie. They don’t do CGI, it’s all animatronic puppets, rubber, and lots of goopy mess. The original “Nightmare on Elm Street” just has this kind of weird dream quality to it. And another Wes Craven movie I loved is “Scream,” which is, like, the perfect deconstruction of the slasher genre, and it’s also very funny, while also the first film has an incredible opening. More recently, the movie “X,” which came out a couple of years ago by Ty West, is also kind of a deconstruction of the slasher genre. And one that I don’t think is talked about enough is “Candyman” from 1992, which is just this beautiful, kind of haunting story that has to deal with race in America and urban legends. The villain, Candyman, is played by Tony Todd, who passed away last year. It is just an incredible performance.
