#accioedits

As horrifying as it is mysterious, the show Twin Peaks revolves around the murder of Laura Palmer, and the prequel film Fire Walk With Me shows us Laura’s final week alive. Seedy, bizarre, and surrounded by darkness, Laura lives her short life stuck between worlds. She is the perfect homecoming queen, but she is also a drug addict and call girl. Lost in the wake of sexual abuse and psychological torture, Laura is tragic in that no one helped her when she needed it most, because most people weren’t able to see that she needed help at all. If you can stomach the weirdness that is David Lynch, Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me form a tapestry of a girl on the edge of destruction, and a town that facilitated her downfall.

What’s your favorite scary movie? In Wes Craven’s 1996 classic, the very meta slasher-killer Ghostface stalks Sidney Prescott and her friends, abiding by every horror rule in the book and killing anyone who dares be that stupid teenager in his horror movie. Courting a black comedy in how often it winks at the camera, Scream and its villain Ghostface have terrified and informed us of every scary film trope that there is, so hopefully by now we’re all expert enough to survive his twisted games. So, what is your favorite scary movie?

Nonsensical, confusing, and most of all, beautiful, the RCPD is a former museum that was repurposed into the Police Headquarters for Raccoon City in the Resident Evil games. And though it is gorgeous, we have spent many an hour gathering unicorn statues and card-themed keys trying to navigate our way around this maze, in the wake of zombies and everything else the world has to offer. From top to bottom, the RCPD is aggravating, but after a while it really starts to feel like home, especially when you get to that sweet, sweet safe room music.

First up, in honor of Stephen King confirming what we have known to be true since 1986: Richie Tozier & Eddie Kaspbrak. First meeting as children, these two had a special relationship with each other within the dynamics of their group, the Losers Club. Richie calls Eddie “Eds”, something Eddie considers special and secret, and they are constantly there for one another. The Seer and the Compass of the group, the two are antagonistic to each other, but only in play. Later, when they’re grown and back in Derry, Richie is extremely protective of Eddie, and their love is solidified in Eddie’s death, when Richie clings to him and begs they take him out of the dark. The love between these two is and always has been palpable, from 1986 to 2019 and all the adaptations in between, Reddie is in fact canon.

Leading us into Halloween I give Jack Torrance of The Shining. Now, for the sake of all I will simply be talking about the Jack portrayed in the 1980 film of the same name, rather than the one in Stephen King’s masterful novel. The two are completely different characters, simple as that. Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic, who brings his family up to the Overlook Hotel for a winter so that he can write his great novel and get his life back on track. As soon as they get up there, however, Jack finds himself being influenced by the hotel, slowly driven mad by the spirits and being driven to taking up an axe to try and kill his wife and young son. Jack Nicholson is spine-chilling in this horror classic, and if you haven’t given it a watch yet, I can’t recommend it enough.

On the more dysfunctional side, we bring you Annie and Peter Graham of Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Antagonistic mother and son, these two are constantly at odds, especially in the wake of unfathomable grief. The disparity between these two sets up the majority of the conflict in this satanic psychological horror, and the violence with which it plays out is repulsive. And yet, we watch nonetheless. For the sake of spoilers I won’t go into detail with the finer points, but suffice it to say, if you have a better relationship than these two, you’re probably moving in the right direction.

 In spite of their childhood, filled with grief at a young age, Luke and Nell are connected by a force greater than the both of them. Twins, they’re the last two out of 5 children, and they spend most of their time together. Later as adults, Luke is a drug addict and Nell is a widow, having not spoken in many years, but Luke is still able to feel her death as if it’s his own, and when he’s confronted with Hill House once more, he’s set and determined to destroy the place that took both his mother and his sister. Ultimately, it is his sister’s love for him that saves him from the house, and they remain bonded. After all, it’s a twin thing.

In the English countryside lies the gothic, gargantuan Allerdale Hall, where the Sharpe family harvests red clay from the ground beneath them. In the winters, the snow is reddened by the clay so that the locals call the black behemoth Crimson Peak. Edith Cushing knows none of this when she marries Thomas Sharpe, but when she arrives at the ancient, labyrinthine house, she begins to see more than just the ghosts of her youth. Allerdale Hall is wretched and beguiling, and if you aren’t careful you may be consumed in its halls. Personally, I find the whole thing dreadfully romantic, even if the house is succumbing to the land beneath it.