The Halloween List: Thelma, Annihilation, and The Endless

Previously: Pyewacket, The Meg, and Hold the Dark.

Today I have three winners for you. Helping get the taste of Hold the Dark out of my mouth are three masterfully made movies, and two of the best Cosmic Horror films ever made. After years of people wishing for anything close to In the Mouth of Madness, we got both Annihilation and The Endless in the same year. And yet I'll come across as ungrateful and say that as much as I enjoyed them, it's Thelma that stuck with me the longest.

Thelma (2017) 

Somewhere between Carrie and The Omen lies Thelma. This Scandinavian movie follows a young woman who’s going off to university for the first time and discovering herself – and discovering that something is wrong with her. Over the course of a superb slow burn we learn about strange events that happened during her childhood, and how her parents insisted on quietly doing nothing about them. It seemed to work at the time; those events seemed to stop.

Those events aren’t repeating, and with them seemingly safely in her past, Thelma has a chance at a life. She goes out to party, meets a girl she immediately crushes on, and starts to become an independent person. There are hours of class, and she has to deal with jackasses for the first time, but she’s adapting. It’s the beginning of a promising life, one interrupted by sudden seizures and nightmarish delusions. These things are starkly different than what we learn happened in her childhood.

It's Incorporeal Vengeance Week!

Reminder: October 28-October 30th is an open “vengeance” period for all licensed incorporeal entities. Any human beings or related physical entities who have run afoul of the dead or generally incorporeal are advised to make good on all pacts and make reparations for all indiscretions by midnight of October 27th at the very latest.

Due to the sequester, local governments will not be providing any assistance or clean-up related to such massacres.

For non-physical entities who cannot rise from the crypt or claw their way into reality for vengeance by October 30th, there is an additional grace period extending to November 28th. Applicants must have at least two signed evaluations from the government-recognized Spiritualists and Theologians List in order to qualify for the grace period. The government apologizes for the grace period closing on November 28th, but we need those department stores unhaunted for Black Friday.

To our citizens of fleshy substance, remember:

• Practice respectful rites!
• Make good on your pacts!
• Avoid unnecessary transgressions against the memories of the arcane!
• Get a costume together for the Halloween Parade of Relief on the 31st! We sure hope to see you there!