Here are five horror films set in frozen landscapes that you may not have heard about—and that are all really worth watching. It’s a beyond-The- Shining-and-beyond-The-Thing list—for all those who love the harsh bleakness, the existential desolation, of those snow-blasted films.
Obsessions always have a beginning. If you rewind the clock 26 years, you would find hordes of kids crowding around the television at 9:30pm to catch Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon before being corralled and taken to bed. The series became the subject of nightmares and terrors and created a new generation obsession with horror. A combination of Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone, mixed with kid-friendly subject matter, Are You Afraid of the Dark? was always destined to be a hit. The success of the series helped green light Goosebumps and one episode even inspired M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), but unfortunately, the show now sits in relative and completely unwarranted obscurity.
Needless to say, this Canadian-American classic has a special place in my heart and, in honor of its 26th anniversary, what follows is a list of my top ten episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Now, I don’t claim to be a master of 90’s television and the list is very subjective, but know that I have ordered the episodes by least-to-most frightening. Moreover, every episode is a gem in its own way and a list of only ten episodes could never do justice to this amazing television horror.
So. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this article, The Top Ten Episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Sleep is becoming one of the crisis points of late modernity, as the steady encroachment of the “24/7” plugged-in world only intensifies sleep’s already uncanny nature.[i] To sleep is to slip into a realm of darkness, irrationality, and the supernatural. This realm is not only profoundly opposed to the contemporary illuminated world, but it has always lain uncomfortably close to death. Indeed, the Western way of sleeping has been described as a “lie down and die” model.[ii] To walk or talk while sleeping, moreover, is to act in ways divorced from the world of light and reason, to act without volition and the consent of the mind. The body that acts becomes something other than the person it appears to be; it generates uncanny doubles and evokes the profoundly uncanny uncertainty as to whether, as philosopher Dylan Trigg puts it, “‘I’ am truly identifiable with my body itself.”[iii] Horror films in the twenty-first century in particular have turned to sleep to exploit its inherently uncanny nature and the way it suggests that we are not always in control of who we are and what we do.
With pumpkins abounding and the bite of frost in the air, it’s time to take a look again at that classic horror series for kids from the 1990s, R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps. For generations of fans, Goosebumps was their first entry point into horror. With plots running the gamut from ghosts to monsters to possession, no horror trope was off the table, and the series remains an excellent example of how horror can be reconfigured for younger audiences in such a way that its bite stays firmly intact. Goosebumps is especially worth a watch for both its storytelling prowess and creepy atmosphere. So if you want to curl up at home with these oldies but goodies, here’s where to start. And you can find them all on Netflix.
Here’s my ranking for the top ten episodes of Goosebumps!
What follows is my list of films which reveal the horrors of caregiving. The role of caretaker requires you to give something of yourself, sometimes giving more than you have to offer. This is a precarious assignment that takes a toll on the physical as well as the psychological self. One must make moral decisions and selflessly sacrifice time, patience, and dreams. Ineffective caregivers sow the seeds of lasting consequences for themselves and others. Needless to say sometimes there is a backlash for giving so much of one’s self. (For the purposes of this list, I tried to stay away from using examples of parents as “caregivers”.)
taking horror seriously so you don't have to
