Wag’s newsletter picks (spooky and otherwise) for Halloween Week:
What is Dune about? A desert planet, some kind of trippy spice called “melange” and gigantic, creepy worms. It’s escapist fun, beautifully rendered (even if you don’t like worms).
What on earth does Issa Rae have to be Insecure about? She’s got her own show! But this is the last season, and we still don’t know if she’ll patch things up with her BFF Molly, the high-powered lawyer. Also, we get to go to her Stanford reunion …
OK, why won’t Michael Myers stay dead? It’s exhausting. Thank goodness Jamie Lee Curtis keeps on trying. Anyhow, Halloween Kills is fun for those who like this sort of mayhem (and many people do — it’s made like, more than $50 million at the actual box office… but you can also stream it on Peacock safely inside your house (but as you know, he’s already inside the house, so you aren’t safe at all).
Childhood has been ruined by technology, duh. But then again, a spiffy tech-saturated movie about how childhood has been ruined by technology is …odd. And yet, Ron’s Gone Wrong is charming, and you can’t say it’s heart isn’t the right place.
Books, on the other hand, are technology nobody is mad at. And Anthony Doerr makes an imaginative case for them in this millennium-sprawling work about how three very different people—One’s in the Byzantine Empire! One’s in twentieth century Idaho! One’s on a spaceship!—find something like salvation in an ancient piece of literature.
Talk about spooky. In the 1980s, otherwise sensible people were panicked into believing that Satanic cults were on the loose across North America … and snatching kids. This resulted in some serious miscarriage of justice. The CBC takes you back—and makes you wonder what this would be like in the age of social media. Answer: terrifying.
What can we say? Adele is the Queen of Earworms (as opposed to the giant worms on the planet Arrakis in Dune… those worms are just gross). Resistance to Easy on Me is futile. Give up already. Also, check out Virginia Beach, a gritty little duet from Hamilton Leithauser and Kevin Morby, and 2023, a slick little pop tune from newcomer Lila Rose.
We recommended everybody eat pie this week, because pie makes people very, very happy. And we especially love Winston Pies in Los Angeles (don’t worry, they ship nationwide).
Our FYC column finishes up with Suspiria, a seriously creepy Dario Argento classic that is fascinating, even if you aren’t a horror buff. Still scary! Also, Jessica Harper has enormous eyes! Which look very scared in this movie!
Halloween Week Recs on Audio!