#AScareADay - October Reading Challenge Days 30-31
The final two days - and my top 5 from the whole list!
You can find all the list and links on romancingthegothic.com and individual daily posts on my Ko-Fi and at cmrosens.com.
Get the OCCUPYING BODIES anthology, out now!
My top 5 #AScareADay stories:
October 27th – Helen Stubbs – ‘Uncontainable’ (2016) – Read it here
October 28th – Nibedita Sen – ‘Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnibar Island’ (2019) – Read it here
October 15th – Conrad Aiken – ‘The Vampire’ (1916) – Read it here or listen here
October 18th – Everill Worrell – ‘The Canal’ (1927) – Read and listen to it here
October 8th – Rhoda Broughton – ‘The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing but the Truth’ (1868) – Read it here
League of its own: October 24th – Lisa L Hannett – ‘Sweet Subtleties’ (2012) – Read it here
There are so many from this year's list that I loved.
I also go into my top 10 films for the #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge, which I've now completed!
Intro/Outro music credits: "Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Hello and welcome to the final two posts of A
Scare A Day. So this is day 30 and day 31. Happy
Halloween, everybody. Both of these stories can
be found online and the links are in my original
posts. They're also on the Romancing the Gothic
site for the A Scare a Day challenge list 2025.
So day 30, which was yesterday, Bleeding Hearts
by Suzan Palumbo. This one's not that scary.
It's not meant to be scary. I think it's just
like a very witchy. vibes kind of one I love
Suzan Palumbo's work I've interviewed her on
this podcast in fact for her release of Skin
Thief which was her collection of short stories
I really love this short story it was one I haven't
read before it's very appropriate for spooky
season and it's quite romantic it's got a little
bit of a sapphic romance subplot going on and
I love the way it's one of those stories where
she mixes in so many layers and weaves very human
dramas into so few words in such a short tight
space. I love that about Suzan's work. I really
like the idea of grief diffusing into something
that grows. So like the garden of grief, that's
beautiful imagery and a garden of other people's
pain where you put blood into the soil and tears
and then a plant will grow and that will diffuse
the pain that you're feeling and you'll feel
better. I loved the ex -girlfriend's misery.
Screw you, Rebecca. And I love how things develop
between Ashley and Claire and that relationship
sort of over the garden wall and that kind of
lovely persistence. that Claire has I also love
that with the garden you can't cure the heartbreak
but you can diffuse it and I love that then you
can do whatever you want to that plant so you
can just let it grow you can chop it down you
can take it repot it and put it somewhere else
because it's your grief to do with what you want
it's your pain to do with what you want and I
think that's also quite evocative and yeah I
really enjoyed that imagery. I've got a link
to the interview I did with Susan Palumbo in
my main post along with the transcript as well
so you can listen to that here or on your platform
of choice and you can read the transcript either
here or you can read it on my website. This one
reminded me of the folklore around plants springing
from people's graves and tales where these trees
or bushes then become home to the spirits of
the dead in the form of birds sometimes who sing
about their murder and the abuse they suffered
in life like the Germanic folktale The Juniper
Tree comes to mind here. So I thought about this
as an ending to my necromancy story which has
three parts so far written for a scare a day.
So this is the final part of my necromancy quartet
of stories, The Yew Tree, and you can catch up
with the other three parts on the podcast and
linked on my Ko -fi master list. The Yew Tree.
Forbear and Gordon stood in deep mutual sorrow
without words. What could they say? The dead
numbered in the hundreds. The destruction was
unimaginable, something that could only be seen,
and even then could not be fully understood.
Each person is a cosmos, a world, a thousand
ripples in a lake of dark stillness. How can
their loss be calculated? How can their absence
be weighed? And hundreds at once, the collective
horror upon the individual horror, the cumulative
as well as the singular grief, the tragedy building
like an unfathomable monster appearing from the
primordial abyss. What could they say? Isabeau
lay down in the grave they had dug for her. She
had told them where to dig, of course, and all
was done to her specifications. Even now, neither
of the two friends could have possibly done this
themselves. there was no question of breaking
their bond with isabeau she was their flesh their
very lives their greatest love isabeau had made
the choice herself and they had no choice as
ever but to fall into line now she lay down in
her chosen resting -place hands folded over her
bosom and lay looking upwards start with the
topsoil she said They sprinkled the layers of
soil in reverse, each layer with the life bled
from it, spoiled and sewn through with salt,
so that from it nothing could grow. Isabeau did
not cry out as it covered her beautiful face,
but Faubert thought he saw it begin to crumble
away into the soil it had once been, the soil
used to resurrect her bones. as the grave filled
and isabeau's remains fell back through time
buried once more under the weight of it a sapling
began to sprout from the place the headstone
would have been laid faubert felt isabeau's hold
on him lift with the rising of that impossible
tree Godin must have felt it too, for he began
to work with renewed vigour, backfilling the
grave with all the power he could muster after
the last layer of soil was sprinkled down, covering
her gradual disintegration. The sapling kept
pace with the backfill, pushing upwards as the
hollow in the earth levelled out once more. When
they stood back, it was a fully grown yew tree,
spreading a sombre canopy of darkness above them.
Godin looked at Forbear. But he said nothing.
Forbear could not muster anything other than
a long, slow blink of exhaustion. He had buried
his words, his thoughts, his very self with Isabeau.
It would take a long time for them to come back
to him, with the red berries of autumn, with
the slow ripening of harvest. When the seasons
rolled on, his self would return again. all things
healed changed found their way given time for
now there was no forbear no gordon without the
woman lost the soil nothing except the yew -tree
growing from the salted earth and that was the
necromancy story conclusion so That was kind
of following along from the World War One themes
that I was thinking about. And that was the themes
of a few of the poems that we had earlier in
the month. Well, day 31, which is today. Today's
story, the final story in the challenge is The
Path She Sings by Vanessa Fogg. I love this one.
This came out this year. It's really creepy,
very, very moving. It reminded me a bit of Kaaren
Warren's Eleanor Atkins is dead and her house
is boarded up, which we had for day 25. It's
very heart rending. So the premise here is that
there is a fog that. It tries to take living
people, that it fills your house, you lie down,
you have to pretend to be dead and the fog will
leave you alone. But it gets the wife of the
main character who then becomes this perambulating
corpse who says a lot of nonsense words and wanders
around the house or just lies down still for
periods of time. And just this idea of sharing
a house with a dead person that won't lie down
forever. And having to make a choice about what
you do. People treating you like a widow and
leaving you food. But then saying, you know,
you should really get this over with. You need
to decapitate the corpse. You need to put it
in the ground. And just not being able to do
that. Just wanting to follow your spouse into
the mist, into the strange changing fog and following
the path that the corpse sings for you to follow
and the strange rhymes and words that your dead
spouse is saying. And I thought that was really,
really beautiful. Very, very sad. And there's
just something gorgeous about the loss and emptiness,
the way that that's written. And stepping into
another state of being you cannot comprehend
from living outside it, which I think is what
this is really about. As much as it seems to
be about death and grief and loss, it's also
about... A fundamental misunderstanding or a
fear of what you cannot explain or what you don't
understand from living outside of a state of
being that somebody else is occupying and the
only way you can truly understand their perspective
and what they are trying to tell you, what they
are trying to communicate to you is by immersing
yourself in that state and in that perspective.
And it's all depicted really movingly within
such a short space because it is just a short
story. And I think it's really worth having a
read of. I've got so many authors now that I
want to read more from. I'm adding Vanessa Fogg
to that list for sure. Well, today is also the
release day for Occupying Bodies, which is a
body horror anthology that my sad revenant story
is in. This is from an Australian independent
press, Black Hair Press. Hair as in the animal.
The premise here is a revenant whose last imprinted
memory is of the long -distance partner they
never got to meet in real life after starting
a relationship online. And the revenant is now
dragging themselves along train tracks in a desert
on their way to where their partner used to live
and where they hope that their partner still
lives. That's my story. It's called Along the
Xylophone Road. The actual anthology itself is
called Occupying Bodies. It's compiled by Bernardo
Villela and edited by Dean Shawker. The blurb
reads as follows. You can escape your past, your
fears, even your mind, but never the body you
occupy. The body is the first prison, the final
battlefield, and the one thing we can never abandon.
Yet what happens when the flesh betrays us, when
consciousness claws against its cage, when skin,
bone, and blood twist into something unrecognizable?
Occupying Bodies is a visceral anthology of body
horror that explores the dread of living inside
fragile, treacherous vessels. Within these pages,
nightmares take the form of grotesque mutations,
psychological unravelings, everyday afflictions
magnified into... terrors and Cronenbergian transformations
that defy imagination. Each story forces us to
confront the inevitability of flesh, the aches,
the ruptures, the decay, and asks whether escape
is salvation or damnation. Curated by Bernardo
Vilella, this collection gathers diverse voices
united by one chilling truth. No monster is more
intimate, more inescapable than the body you
inhabit. So I can give you just a little quote
from my story, which is called Along the Xylophone
Road. This is from the middle of the story. It's
very short. It's not even 2000 words. So I can't
really quote very much of it. And I get the rights
back in about 12 months. And then I might do
something else with it or post it in its entirety.
But I would encourage you to buy the anthology
and to read the other stories in it as well.
So here's a little quote from Along the Xylophone
Road. There is something inside my brain. It
keeps me company as I move forwards under the
blanket of heat and light pressing down on my
broken back. It doesn't hurt. I can feel it moving
inside my skull, tickling parts of me into spasm
and sparking my emotions into life like light
hammers tapping on taut strings. I wonder if
that is why the morning looks different today.
There is something inside my throat. I'm not
sure if I want it there, and it stops me forming
sounds the way I want to. I could barely say
anything the first time we called, do you remember?
We had gone beyond small talk, and only the abyss
was left, and I was afraid of the depths you
wanted to plumb. I choked up words that I hadn't
told another soul, the way I choked up clots
when it all went wrong. Now I'm afraid I have
no more words for you, but you have the ones
I wrote down and the song I wrote for you. And
I am still choking, but I hope you'll forgive
me. I didn't mean to leave it so long to see
you, but I am coming now. I am coming. So there
we go, that's... A little quote for you from
Along the Xylophone Road. And that brings us
to the end of A Scarer Day. But what were my
top five stories and or poems from this month's
list? Well, that's exceptionally hard. Very,
very hard to work out. I think I've whittled
it down to my top five. I don't know if it's
going to be the five that... you expect it to
be. I have included the poems and short stories
together so that's made it even harder. Yeah
okay so my top five and you'll find the links
to these directly in the episode notes actually
as well but you can also go to my website cmrosens
.com and my Ko -fi and find the posts for yourselves
there where all the links and everything else
are as well. But actually, I'm starting off with
number one. Got to be October 27th, Helen Stubbs,
Uncontainable, published in 2016. I actually
really loved this. I loved the world building.
I think this is the most enjoyable one for me.
My criteria here was, what am I going to reread?
This is the one. Possibly a joint first, is that
cheating? Is Nibedita Sen's Ten Excerpts from
an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Woman
of Ratnibar Island, which was October 28th, published
2019. I loved this one too. I think it's so multi
-layered. I think this is definitely a joint
first place, so that's made it even harder for
me to work out what other stories and poems are
in my top five. However, I think the next one
I'm going to go with is Conrad Aiken's The Vampire,
the poem published in 1916. I think genuinely
this is one of my favourite World War I poems.
I think it's one of my favourite poems in general.
I loved the imagery of that. I really loved the
feelings that it gave me, the chill it left me
with. Overall, yeah, 10 out of 10, no notes.
Number four, this was quite hard. This was a
toss -up between The Canal by Everill Worrell,
which was published in 1927, and Hugh Walpole's
The Tarn, published in 1936. One of the things
that I really love about A Scare a Day is that
if you follow the hashtag, you can see everybody
else's interpretations and reactions to the stories.
And some of these really, like... maybe think
about them in completely different ways. I particularly
loved Julia O 'Connell's interpretations this
year. Thanks, Julia, for posting. And I say that
because some of Julia's interpretations of the
Tarn made me think about it differently and have
like a different appreciation of it. But that
said, I think for me, it's got to be the canal,
which was October 18th. So I'm going to go with
the canal, final answer. And that just leaves
our final story, number five. Going to go with
an older one. It's going to be October the 8th,
Rhoda Broughton, The Truth, The Whole Truth and
Nothing But The Truth, 1868. Final answer. That's
my number five. This was so hard to whittle down,
but okay, those are the five that really stood
out for me. Honourable mentions go to Robert
Herrick, The Hag, 1648 poem, really enjoyed that.
The Elopement, Johann Karl August Musaus, 1801,
really enjoyed that. I did like the Dinah Mullock
one. I did like the Madeleine Wynne one, which
is The Little Room, 1907. I like the Agatha Christie
one. I like the Clive Barker one. I like the
Flannery Bryan one. Sweet Subtleties by Lisa
Hannett was amazing. And that should have been
in my top five. But I think it didn't make it
because it also... I won't be reading that again,
like ever. And that is a compliment to Lisa L.
Hannett. That was phenomenal. But I'm not going
to put it in my top five. It's in a league of
its own. I think everyone should read that. It
was published in 2012. It's free to read online.
Just because it's not in my personal top five
does not mean that I didn't enjoy it. I mean,
I didn't enjoy it, but like... I didn't enjoy
it in such a way that it was so visceral. I genuinely
think that that one is like, there's my top five
and then there's sweet subtleties. Make of that
what you will. Susan Palumbo, I love Susan's
work and I love Vanessa Fogg, the last one today.
I also loved Karen Warren, which I've talked
about a lot as well. Eleanor Atkins is dead and
her house is boarded up. Again, that was another
one that I read first and was like, OK, yeah,
I've got some thoughts on that. And then I read
other people's thoughts on that story. And again,
I think it was Julia O 'Connell's interpretation
of it. And like, can evil be needy? And, you
know, like that sort of thing. Like, is it? Is
she an unreliable perspective? And that kind
of thing. And that really opened that story up
for me a little bit more. Yeah, I liked all of
them. I found something to really like about
all of them. But that was my top five. And then
a league of its own honourable mention for Sweet
Subtleties as like your bonus star kind of one.
Yeah, I'm going to have to go with those. Thank
you so much to Dr. Sam Hirst of romancingthegothic
.com for this challenge. They have handpicked
all of the stories. They do this every year.
You can catch up on all of the previous years.
It must be getting much harder and harder to
pick ones that everybody can read that are public
domain or have links or, you know, and... Yeah,
just really appreciate the amount of effort and
work that goes into a scare a day every single
year. Thank you so much. It is honestly a joy
to participate in. But a scare a day was not
the only challenge I have been doing. Oh no,
I've also been doing the 100 Horror Movies in
92 Days challenge in which you have to watch
as many new -to -you horror films as you can
between the 1st of August and the 31st of October.
I'm very pleased to say that I have completed
this challenge too. A big thank you to Sarah
Stubbs who formed this challenge on Letterboxd
and has been running it for several years. years
now and has a discord with watch alongs and group
watches and things like that. Really appreciate
all of the effort that Sarah puts into the different
movie challenges as well. By the way you can
find Sam Hurst on social media at RomGothSam
and you can find Sarah Stubbs at SpookySarahSays.
So I'm just going to give you a quick rundown
of my top picks from my 100 horror films in 92
days list. I really couldn't narrow this down
at first. I ended up with a long list of about
30 odd different films. I think actually 41 different
films because I just couldn't narrow it down.
In the end, I just went with the criteria of
what was most interesting to me. Which films
am I going to be thinking about for a really
long time? What had the combination of really
cool visuals that I thought were really cool?
what also made me think about things. So that
could be because they were very multi -layered
films, but it could also just be a couple of
images or like a single concept or something
like that, but something that stuck in my mind
and that I was thinking about a long time after
because I started watching these in August. It's
October now. My memory is shocking. So if it's
in my head still after all this time, I think
it deserves to be in my top 10. I did enjoy so
many off this list and I couldn't put them in
any kind of meaningful ranked order. So instead
of trying to do that, because for me, when I
am watching films, I tend to do that based on
how I feel. I tend to do that based on what I
need at the time. And so my preferences will
change. That is also true for stories. So again,
if I were to read all of the A Scare A Day stories
and poems again, when I was in a different mood,
or, you know, just... doing it again for fun
I might actually change what my top five would
be but that is my top five for the moment. So
for my top 10 films I decided not to try and
rank them. I decided what I would do was put
them in A to Z order by director's surname from
the most recent to come out so just by year not
by month to the oldest film to come out. I ended
up with quite an interesting list, so A to
Z by directors surname, 2025 down to 2021.
The top one is The Ugly Stepsister, directed
by Emily Christine Blichfeld. This is a Norwegian
film. I watched it in Norwegian, the original
Norwegian, without dubbing. And I don't know
if I enjoyed it in that kind of way. I mean...
I don't know, there's just a lot of really visceral
images that will stay with me for a really long
time. And I very much liked what it was trying
to say about beauty standards, about the way
that women do not help one another out. where
it comes to beauty standards a lot of the time.
I thought that was actually quite nuanced and
honest and the way that older women and younger
women interact, where it comes to beauty, where
it comes to passing on torches of standards that
are nothing to do with them and are all to do
with how attractive you are to men, but also
how attractive other women think you are and
those... really complex and quite judgmental
interactions you can have between old women younger
women and younger women with one another and
that competitive nature that exists in certain
spaces and dressing up not just to attract specific
men's attention but also so that you can have
the approval of women you look up to and I thought
all of that was just really interesting in the
way that they depicted it. It's one of those
that feels like it was based on a book, but I
actually don't think it was because the director
actually wrote it. That's what I've got on Letterboxd
anyway, because I had a little look to see if
it was, you know, is this one of those things
where I could follow up with something else?
And no, and I was like, oh, OK. And that makes
sense, actually, because it doesn't feel like
an adaptation. It does feel like a complete film.
So I was just curious. But yeah, oh my God, I
definitely agree with Sarah Stubbs' review where
she says, you know, this is gastro horror. And
it absolutely is gastro horror because a lot
of it is based on... weight as part of that so
you've got that fat phobic impossible beauty
standard of slimness and thinness and instant
thinness where you know if you don't have the
right body type that's okay because you can starve
yourself by swallowing a tapeworm on purpose
and giving yourself horrible parasite infested
bowels like what the fuck yeah oh my god i will
be thinking about that scene for the rest of
my natural life. Anyway, yeah, that was it. That
was a really good one for me. The next one, 2025,
directed by Ryan Coogler, was Sinners, of course.
I actually saw this when it was streaming on
the UK streaming services and it was £1 .99 temporarily
on Prime, so I snapped that up. I think I definitely
like this more than Ugly Stepsister in terms
of how much I enjoyed it. I don't know because
it's saying like such completely different things.
They are two completely different films. And
this is why I can't rank them, you know. In terms
of enjoyability or watchability, definitely Sinners.
You know, there were bits of that that just made
me laugh. There were bits that made me cry and
bits that were just really obviously multi -layered.
It felt very much like a cultural moment. not
just a film. And I think that that has been reflected
in a lot of the discourse around the film, a
lot of the reactions around the film, and I can
definitely see why. So yes, So Sinners is up
there for me. The next one, 2024, so we're going
back in time. This one, The Moogai by John Bell,
directed by John Bell. So this is quite a heavy
-handed script in parts. And it's talking about
postpartum depression, partly. It's also talking
about the lost generation, about mother -daughter
relationships and reconciliations, that part
of Australian history. It's talking about quite
a lot of stuff. I'm not sure that it would be
a film that I would re -watch in a hurry. I really
don't like bad things happening to babies. And
there is an awful lot of child endangerment.
yeah like actual harm that comes to the baby
at a couple of points and I was just like oh
my god and so it was quite a visceral watch for
me this one but I think I don't know there was
just bits of it that just really got to me and
bits that made me think more about different
things and again some images that will just stay
with me for a really long time so that's why
I think that's up there for me. I do think it's
quite a good film and so yeah it's in my personal
top 10 from my list. The next one is Rita 2024
again this one directed by Jayro Bustamante.
This is a Guatemalan film. I would argue it's
more magical realism than it is horror, but it's
classed on Letterboxd as horror drama fantasy.
So I think, yeah, it counts. I also watched La
Llorona by the same director and I loved that
one as well. But for me, I don't know. There's
just something about Rita that I just couldn't.
stop thinking about it's just so sad and it's
really powerful for me anyway and again I really
don't like things bad things happening to children
so I picked a really strange run of films where
that exact thing is one of the main themes but
It's about state corruption and it reminded me
a little bit of Tigers Are Not Afraid, the Mexican
film. It's the same way the sort of magical realism
was incorporated. So Rita, for me, I think, is
up there. My next one is In My Mother's Skin,
which came out in 2023, directed by Kenneth Dagatan.
This is a Filipino film. It's set in World War
II. It's going to stay with me forever. really
like this one it's got so many different parallels
between the young girl's confusion around who
to trust and the flesh -eating fairy who's offering
her all of this magical stuff and the way that
I think I think that I think the parallels are
being drawn here between the Japanese and the
Americans invading the Philippines and so you've
got like a lot of stuff in the adult world going
on that parallels the again I guess like magical
realism aspect of what's going on in the child's
world where she has real problems like she doesn't
have enough food her mother is dying her father
is absent and there's so many you know so many
adult problems that she cannot navigate and then
she finds this fairy in the woods that tells
her all of these things could go away if she
does xyz or if she gives her mother this fruit
to eat and you know bad things happen as a result
and she then has to navigate that and then decide
what she's going to do going forwards and you
know she's putting her brother in danger she's
putting her mother in danger it's she's putting
herself in danger you know like it's it's all
of these kind of decisions that a child shouldn't
have to make but has to because of the circumstances.
So this is another war film. It's definitely
up there. I think if I was ranking them, this
would be very, very high. Yeah, so In My Mother's
Skin. The next one I also really, really loved.
It was It Lives Inside, 2023, directed by Bishal
Dutta. And this is an American -US made film.
This is about an Indian -American family who
live in the US. And there is a demon or entity
that's traveled with one of the families in their
community over from India and is now affecting.
some of the high school students so it's kind
of like a young adult one but it's also about
identities and about communities and second generation
or first generation experiences so yeah I think
this is quite a good one I've put it on my emigration
horror list which is you know people going from
their own country to another country and then
finding horror where they end up. So I think
that qualifies as going on that list as well.
I really quite like this one. I liked what it
was trying to say I think. It reminded me of
Umma, which was 2022 directed by iris k shim
which is a similar premise um but a korean family
and sort of a mother -daughter and the daughter
doesn't speak korean and the mother has a lot
of complicated feelings about her own mother
and the abuse that her own mother put her through
and then her mother's ghost kind of haunts the
family because um of the mum's refusal to do
certain traditions and that kind of thing so
yeah it's about that balance uh it lives inside
also feels like is you know trying to be um one
thing trying to be another thing that kind of
immigrant dilemma the paradox the different identities
and different ways that those identities can
pull you in different directions Next on the
list is a Japanese film called Best Wishes to
All, which is based on a short film by the same
director. This came out in 2023. The director
is Yuta Shimotsu. I can see how this concept
might work better as a short film than a feature
-length film but at the same time I loved the
feature -length version and I thought it was
really well done and the concept will just haunt
me forever. It's about a young woman who visits
her grandparents and then discovers that the
family happiness comes from capturing another
person and draining them. of all of their happiness,
and they've just kept this person as a prisoner
in their house for this purpose. And then she
realises that that's how everybody does it, and
that everybody's happiness is dependent upon
draining somebody else who is an unwilling captive
in other people's homes. And it just leads her
on this journey of dissent. It just leads her
to question all of her choices, her reality,
her sanity, and whether or not she is going to
conform, whether or not she is going to go along
with this, and how can she fight something that
is so societally ingrained. And yeah, just the
ending is so, oh yeah, I just, yeah, this is
one that's going to stick with me again, I think,
for quite a long time. Nearly there now. The
next one is All the Moons, 2020, directed by
Igor Legorreta. This is a Basque film. It's set
during the final days of the last Carlist War,
where a little girl is rescued from an orphanage
and is turned into a vampire. It's about her
growing up as a vampire. and learning how to
walk in the sunlight again and just spending
all of this time in the dark not being able to
physically age but living for so long and then
how she tries to blend in again with society
the way that she can't really do that and then
the only way that she is able to to kind of have
her life back is for her sire to be destroyed
and so there's a bit of a sad kind of showdown
i guess with the woman who turned her it's not
even a showdown it's kind of more like getting
that woman to realize that she did it for selfish
reasons um and yeah just so that she can be really
and you know try to persuade her to release her
and that all happens I think in the Spanish Civil
War. It's a film that's bookended by war and
it felt to me almost like it's actually about
the impact of war trauma on children and maybe
how trauma like that just can stunt your growth
in various areas that you're just always carrying
it with you and carrying the impact with you
throughout your life and you have to find some
way of being released from that I don't know
I think there's lots of things going on in there
that's one of the things that I thought when
I was watching it so yeah so all the moons I
think is definitely up there for me it definitely
reminds me a bit of the way that Guillermo del
Toro treats children and childlike perspectives
in his films I was thinking about the devil's
backbone specifically. And the way he uses orphan
children perspectives, it also reminded me of
the film The Orphanage a little bit, and kind
of the ghosts of orphan children and the impact
and the long lasting impact that trauma and abuse
can have on a child. Yeah, it just made me think
of quite a lot of things. And so that one is
definitely going to be up there for me. It's
also beautifully shot. The cinematography in
that one is gorgeous. And I think it's one of
the better vampire films that I've seen. It has,
again, like I suppose with the child vampire,
kind of let the right one in vibes, but it also
reminded me of You Will Not Be Alone, which is
the Goran Stolevski film, which is a sort of
Macedonian -Australian film. And that, in fact,
is the very next one, number nine on my list.
Goran Stolevski's You Won't Be Alone came out
in 2022. It's set in an isolated mountain village
in 19th century Macedonia in which... A girl
basically gets turned into a witch and becomes
immortal that way. But she accidentally kills
a... peasant girl and then assumes that girl's
shape to see what life is like in her skin and
discovers that she's actually married to a really
abusive man. And people think that her attitude
changed the way that she suddenly can't communicate
and doesn't seem to understand basic things is
because she's just been beaten so badly that
it's turned her mind. And so she starts learning
from other people in the village. She starts
learning about patriarchal society. she starts
learning about men and women and their interactions
she starts learning about village culture and
then she changes her shape multiple times until
she ends up in the skin of a little girl and
this time grows up as that little girl and sort
of has a do -over in that way but all the way
through the film the witch that turned her comes
back constantly to remind her that nobody can
love her except the witch that only the witch
can really have her she can only fulfill her
potential while she's with the witch and the
witch thinks that she's useless and so you have
all of these like really dark whispering voices
I suppose And again, it's just one of those things
that just worked for me in a lot of ways. So
I think actually All the Moons and You Won't
Be Alone make a very good double bill in terms
of the way that they talk to each other and the
different themes that they have, sort of converging
and saying the same thing, but in maybe different
ways and having similar themes, but doing different
things with them. So, yeah, so I quite like those
two. The final one is a British film called The
Power that came out in 2021, directed by Corrina
Faith. This one is set in London in 1974 in a
hospital where the rolling blackouts in the 70s
are causing chaos. And it's also about fighting
corruption within the hospital itself. Specifically,
it's about sexual abuse and corruption, not just
in the hospital structure and in the children's
ward, and how the powerful people in that scenario
the doctors are protected by other doctors also
protected by nurses who don't want to say anything
and how all the structures are set up to disbelieve
women and girls and to neuter them and to minimize
their testimonies and push them aside but also
it's about how that happens through all levels
of society because Val the main character has
had a similar experience before in a different
context where it was her headmaster and she was
told to tell everyone that she was lying and
to retract her statement. So people now think
that she's lying about that. They don't believe
her when she discovers this other abuse that's
happening under her nose in the hospital where
she now works. And it's also about fighting that
power imbalance and finding your own voice and
finding your own means of empowerment. Yeah,
it's a ghost story, but it's also a multi -layered
ghost story. I'll just be thinking about that
one for quite some time as well. So that goes
on the list. And that is my top 10 films from
this year's 100 horror movies in 92 days. And
that's that for this miniseries. See you again
soon. Happy Halloween. Bye for now.