I will be honest, Dear Reader, I wasn’t sure I would have any movies to report on this week. It’s not that my watching habits have diminished – on the contrary, I’ve been in the middle of a tv binge that is long overdue. I’m deep in the middle of a serious Twin Peaks rewatch. Can you keep a secret? This is my first time making it past the first season. You can imagine the shock and heartbreak I felt when I learned of David Lynch’s passing yesterday. I’d just finished watching S2 E11 – The Masked Ball. Lynch has intrigued me ever since my high school days. I was of an age where I was finally allowing myself to engage with counterculture, which is famously off-limits to virtuous, churchgoing youth like me. Lynch was far beyond what I was ready to understand, but something about the unsettling, buzzing atmosphere he cultivated in his works resonated with a feeling I wouldn’t put a name to for almost a decade to come. If you haven’t already read Kyle McLaughlin’s tribute to him on Instagram, I suggest you go do so. It is beautiful.
This week’s watches, in order of date and time watched:
#Alive – It is always refreshing to stumble upon a zombie movie that feels original. This movie brings the modern, contagion-borne zombie into a setting so evocative of the 2020 COVID-19 shut down that you’d think it was a thoughtful response to the horrors of the pandemic. Come to find out, #Alive was produced in 2019 and released the following June! I wonder if this movie would have been dismissed as just another zombie movie if it hadn’t had such darkly serendipitous timing. All the same, I found myself swept up in its compelling emotional journey. If the isolation, insecurity, or paranoia of 2020 still hits a nerve, be warned that this movie will be a stark reminder of where we were five years ago.
Horror in the High Desert – Well darn if this isn’t a difficult movie to review. On the one hand, and I say this with a lot of love and respect for the production team, it just isn’t very good. But I’d like to defend this film anyway, because regardless of my qualms with elements of production, those ills really boil down to this being an independently-produced project filmed during… Surprise, surprise!! The COVID-19 pandemic! I didn’t intend for this to be a theme. Quite a bit of this film was captured via Zoom, and no two characters are ever seen on screen together. But here is why this film is so divisive, both among its critics and in my own heart: the last 20 minutes of Horror in the High Desert contain one of the scariest horror sequences I’ve ever seen. Shot in infrared, the payoff to the preceding hour-long mockumentary is breath-haltingly tense punctuated by a handful of unexpected scares that shook me to my core. I won’t give too much away, but I seriously considered sleeping with my lights on that night.
And in the eleventh hour (I watched while typing the above):
Cuckoo – You may have noticed that I follow up any films with intense upsetting themes by warning to watch safely. Let this week be a lesson, because I did not follow my own advice. In my family, we warn about triggers to the point of spoiling stories to one another. Just because wounds are healing doesn’t mean it feels good for them to be poked. While I’m quick to check others’ triggers before starting a movie, I often neglect to check my own. I really wish I had this time! I had to watch Cuckoo in two sittings after it bit me the first time with some viscerally unpleasant sense memories. I decided to pick it back up today, however. This movie unveils layers upon layers of statements about how young girls are groomed to become breeding stock… and it is not lost to me that the protagonist, a young queer woman played by trans actress Hunter Schafer, is blamed for every threat or stressor that comes upon her younger sister. Cuckoo deserves a re-watch now that I know the context and outcome of those triggers. Watch safely, Dear Reader.
49% watched (219/451). Last updated 1/17/2025.
This Week’s Sunday Scratch-Off Is…
American Psycho! It has been well over a decade since I’ve watched this movie. Exciting! For those just joining me on my horror watching journey, once a week I watch a random horror movie assigned to me by a Merakio scratch-off poster of 100 horror movies. Whether it’s a re-watch, a new film, beloved, or loathed, I’ll watch it over the weekend and share my thoughts with you on Sunday.
What should I watch next? What movies do you find so scary that they defy production quality? What is your favorite of David Lynch’s works? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on Bluesky!
As always, Dear Reader, the horrors may persist, but this whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.
The Horrors Persist 
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