Boy Movies #50

Happy Halloweenie

You’re reading Boy Movies, a newsletter. This is somehow the 50th issue! Cool!

I wanna see you be brave

If I’m being transparent, this year’s brave era was a flop. I blame, in part, this Halloween season’s extremely dour vibe. Sure, I rewatched Interview with the Vampire (slay, greatest first season of anything ever, was it raining Louis, etc.), which is a very festive series, but 1. I’d already seen it, and 2. This isn’t Boy TV Shows. Unfortunately, going all around town bragging about being brave meant that I then had to follow through on being brave. By my estimation, I watched a mere eight “scary” movies this October, and that’s only if we’re being generous with our definition of “scary.” Sorry for going to see Dicks: The Musical three times rather than sitting down to watch, like, Saw or some shit equivalent.

Still, I can’t let Halloween go by without acknowledgement. I am on my hands and knees offering you this ranking of everything I watched in Brave Era 2023, from least to most boy. This is one of my famous “stupid issues,” if you couldn’t tell.

What a beautiful day for an exorcism

8. The Exorcist

More than anything else, this was the unconquerable mountain of my brave era. It was my Everest, intimidating and impossible. I put off watching it last year due to being a pussy and was planning on just doing that forever, until beloved reader Puck suggested it when I asked for horror recommendations a few issues ago. [Amy Dunne voice] Everyone told me, and told me, and told me The Exorcist is scary as shit. And they were right! Even (especially?) when nothing is happening, The Exorcist is so scary. It’s also, like many horror movies, so very sad, due to the fact that it’s about — again, like many horror movies — the unimaginable pain of being a woman. I didn’t know that going in; I had no idea much of the first hour would be spent watching Ellen Burstyn scream and curse in mounting frustration as she searches for a doctor to tell her what’s wrong with her daughter. I’m obsessed with the one who diagnoses that tween with hysterical woman disease. Come on, Betty Draper!

Men love to exalt this movie, and I get why (it’s really well made, has anyone ever said that), but years of absorbing male commentary meant that I was blindsided by the actual content of the film. Men will not prepare you for Ellen Burstyn despondently crying on a priest’s shoulder! Men will not prepare you for that priest being haunted by his own disappointed dead mother! Men will not prepare you for Regan screaming for her mom after the devil leaves her body! And at the risk of sounding reductive, possession is obviously for girls (me on my period, am I right). Relatedly, I know nothing of this year’s The Exorcist: Believer, aside from the following, which is all the information I need:

7. Malignant 

The brains of James Wan and Akela Cooper should be preserved by science. Possession is for girls, especially if a girl is being possessed by her demon brother. He’s jealous!

6. Drag Me to Hell

A movie about trying and failing to be a girlboss. Justin Long is a scream queen.

5. Evil Dead (2013)

I wrote about The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi’s 1981 gorefest that kicked off this franchise, for the second issue of the newsletter, and the 2013 Evil Dead is pretty much the same thing, except made by people who are actually trying to elicit fear. “What if camp was serious” is a very male sentiment, but this movie swaps Bruce Campbell’s final boy for a final girl, played by Jane Levy, who I mostly know from the first season of Shameless (I’d say never forget but I already know you have). I’m of two minds about final girls: Go girl go, of course, I’m a feminist, but final girls only earn the moniker of final girl after being fucked with beyond comprehension. This is a tough one to rank, but it feels right to stick it in the middle.

4. Shaun of the Dead

“You know that specific type of guy who has galactic meltdowns over Michael Mann’s oeuvre? Edgar Wright guys are comedy’s answer to that whole group.” -me, Boy Movies #48

3. The Cabin in the Woods

A tad too smug a parody to be anything other than a boy movie. And I don’t think so honey Joss Whedon. That said, Fran Kranz — such a good name — should be a bigger deal.

2. From Dusk Till Dawn

BOY MOVIE! BOY MOVIE! BOY MOVIE! George Clooney’s character’s name is Seth, which I guess isn’t really relevant, but who made that decision? Seth? Him? SETH? From Dusk Till Dawn delights in bloody violence in the way only boy movies can and Quentin Tarantino plays a sexual predator who puts Salma Hayek’s foot in his mouth. BOY MOVIE!

1. Donnie Darko

Is there anything harder than being a teenage boy? Unequivocally, but not in Donnie Darko.

• A few more scattered thoughts about The Exorcist: the most favorable press the Catholic church has ever gotten, First Reformed’s tethered, need Ellen Burstyn’s entire wardrobe, this shot:

• I’m taking next week off, so I won’t be back in your inbox until mid-November (?!). In the meantime, be good and feel free to ring the Boy Movies hotline (the comments section) with any relevant news, questions, or comments.