Editorials
A Halloween Survival Guide According to Horror
Horror has taught many valuable life lessons; never play with Ouija boards, don’t vacation at cabins in the woods, babysitting is hazardous to your health, never drop your weapon during an attack, and so much more. When it comes to survival skills, horror is often the best teacher. This also extends to Halloween, a holiday that horror has taught us can be quite difficult to survive if you don’t honor the rules and traditions meant to keep you safe. Which is why we’ve put together a guide for surviving the best holiday of the year:
Always check your treats
While most of the Halloween terror in Night of the Demons is centered at the Halloween party from hell in Hull House, the story is bookended by a grumpy old man that sets out to ruin trick or treaters’ fun by giving them razor blade stuffed apples. The tables are turned, though, when his wife bakes them into a pie, resulting in his bloody demise. Even if he deserved his fate, the lesson is still valuable- always check your Halloween treats before consuming.
Keep your Jack o’ Lanterns lit
Trick r’ Treat is comprised of Halloween traditions and rules, but perhaps the most important one is the necessity of a jack o’ lantern. On a holiday where dead roam the earth, the jack o’ lantern wards off evil spirits. If you keep it lit, that is. Its protective abilities are null and void the moment you blow out that candle. So don’t do it.
Choose your costume carefully
Each new year brings new trends in Halloween costumes. This year will likely see a surge of Strange Things costumes, and you can always count on tried-and-true staples like Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger. Putting more effort into your costume pays off, though. Having a unique costume can win costume contests, the appreciation of friends, and sometimes it can be the difference between life or death. Take poor Ben Tramer, for example. He threw on a jumpsuit and mask, not unlike a certain Haddonfield boogeyman, for some trick or treating fun in Halloween II only to find himself run down by a police vehicle thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Don’t be like Ben Tramer.
Not all Halloween parties are worth it
It’s easy to want to squeeze in every possible Halloween event that you can during October. It’s the best time of year, after all. Not all events are worth your time, though. At least, not every party. Beware random invitations from hosts that you don’t know. Lonely Christopher learned this the hard way. Finding an invitation on the street in Jeremy Saulnier’s Murder Party, he created a costume and traveled to a strange, empty part of town, much to the delight of the hosts, a group of art students looking to commit a brutal murder. As the bodies begin to pile up, poor Christopher wishes he stayed home instead.
Heed your local lore
Some urban legends and scary stories told during Halloween are widespread and well known. Bloody Mary or the tale of the hook-handed man, October is the peak season of spooking friends with stories. Sure, most of them sound too ridiculous to be true, but it’s best to take them as truth on Halloween night. In the segment “Grim Grinning Ghosts” in Tales of Halloween, Lynn leaves the party in shivers from all the scary stories told. One story, in particular, warns of a ghost that follows people home on Halloween night, and as long as you don’t turn around to look, you’ll be safe. Let’s just say not listening to this warning comes with dire consequences. On a night when spirits roam, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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