Editorials
Mainstream Media Makes A Big Deal Out Of “Millenials” Not Liking ‘Halloween’
John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of the best slashers ever made. You know it. I know it. Had the movie never been made… well you wouldn’t be reading this site. And the fact that you’re here indicates that you probably have a fairly deep understanding of the film. You know that, despite having very little blood, it’s a masterwork of suspense. You’re aware of the fact that it spawned not only its own franchise, but the Friday The 13th franchise as well. It paved the way for John Carpenter to make classics like The Thing, Big Trouble In Little China and Escape From New York. It’s pretty damn good.
The gentleman who wrote this piece for Yahoo understands that. Yet I’m dubious of the results of the poll they conducted in which they screened the film for 10 college students and found that it registered a 5.4 on a “1-10 scariness scale.” The thesis of the piece seems to be that the film has aged poorly. I disagree. But my biggest question is, “why are you asking THESE people?”
First of all, out of a random group of people – there’s going to be a few who don’t like the movie you’re screening for them. No matter what. If you showed Iron Man 3 – one of this summer’s biggest hits and a movie I really liked – to 10 people I would expect at least 4 of them to think that it’s dumb. But hey, I can kind of see their point (even if I personally love it). It’s not a classic, so let’s up the ante. If you showed Citizen Kane or Casablanca – two of the best films ever made – to a random group of 10 people, I imagine a lot of them would have problems with those films being shot in black and white. And I guarantee you at least one of those folks would think the Rosebud stuff was “LOL worthy.”
The question is – is it worth listening to those people? I mean, I guess everyone’s voice “counts” but why are we giving credence to the willfully ignorant? I chose the examples above specifically because they’re very mainstream. One of them was recently quite popular and the other two have withstood decades of conversation. When you get to horror, it gets even trickier. Some people flat out aren’t receptive to the genre.
And in the case of some of these folks, a lot of them are just flat out stupid. The piece cites an English Major at UCLA as saying “It was extremely corny. I found it immensely more comical than scary.” A business major declared, ““It was one of the LOL-worthiest movies I have seen in a while.” They find one guy who “definitely screamed more times than I’d like to admit“, only to neuter his opinion by revealing he also gets frightened while watching Lady In The Water.
Ultimately the thesis of the piece sort of unravels since a few of the test subjects admitted to liking, and being scared by, the film. But yes, if you give any movie to a bunch of people who have no predisposition towards enjoying it (and who seem to be tweeting while watching it) – then yeah, a few of them might not like it. We’re also talking about a sample group who found the 2006 version of The Omen to be “scarier.”
So what’s the takeaway here? As far as I can tell there isn’t one unless it’s to make us worry about the younger generation’s ability to absorb any sort of culture created before they were born.
But I don’t even think that’s true. I just think that a lot of the people who were willing to sign up for this were inherently ignorant. But I want to hear from millenials who actually like horror (if you’re here, I’m assuming you do). If you were born after 1990, tell me how you REALLY feel about Halloween.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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