by Justin Query

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When it comes to the holidays, one generally associates family & friends with those wintertime festivities and the passage of the new year. But the Yuletide holidays have much in common with autumn’s Halloween: bright, vibrant colors; deliciously sweet candies; and other traditions meant to stave off evil spirits.

This week, Front Center Seat collects five more fiendish films devoted to family — perhaps the most inviting subject imaginable and possessed with the most potential to betray you, serving up an additional midnight feature meant to inspire fright and delight.

Your seat at the grown-up table is now ready …

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10/6 … Scream (1996)

When it comes to examining the traditional structure of slasher films, there’s none other than this one from Dimension Films & director Wes Craven, in which a teen (Neve Campbell) is terrorized by a masked killer on the anniversary of her mother’s murder. The film represents a successful new entry in a franchise of fear that thoughtfully endures where many of the others lost the plot long ago.

Available on Amazon Prime, Hulu, Max, and more.

10/7 … Let the Right One In (2008)

Few horror films can humanize the character of vampirism better, where a young boy befriends a young girl(?) who we can only call a vampire, despite the production’s reluctance to use that word from start to finish. Instead, the filmmakers opt to craft a narrative that is at all times human, at all times charming, and at all times wonderfully alarming.
Available on Amazon Prime, Peacock, and more.

10/8 … Stir of Echoes (1999)

Screenwriter-director Ted Koepp bypassed a Gothic haunted house and selectes the Chicago suburbs to tell the story of a working class family man (Kevin Bacon) haunted by a spirit in his home. This Artisan film was overlooked by many because its theatrical release coincided with that of Shyamalan’s box office behemoth The Sixth Sense, but Stir of Echoes invites multiple viewings without fear that you’ve already seen the ending coming.
Available on Amazon Prime.

10/9 … Train to Busan (2016)

No other piece of filmmaking captures the heartbreaking, personal, and existential dread of a zombie apocalypse more than Yeong San-Ho’s 2016 South Korean swath of the running dead. The picture envisions not only the frenetic attack of zombies but also the fatalistic nature of a father-daughter relationship that still manages to give the viewer hope, even when all hope seems to be lost.
Available on Amazon Prime, Peacock, and more.

10/10 … Cloverfield (2008)

Kaiju – a Japanese word meaning “strange creature” and in English has come to mean “monster” or “giant monster” – have always made Asian cities the target of their heavy-hoofed horrors. But when a skyscraper-tall creature attacks NYC in this Bad Robot found footage film, a group of friends will have to do whatever they can in order to survive, even when their survival depends upon the longevity of their relationships.
Available on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, and more.

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This week’s Family & Friends Midnight Feature …
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)

When a neglected lesbian daughter (Jane Widdop) thwarts a local serial killer on Christmas Eve yet wishes that she was never born, she awakens to a world where she never existed. The killer was never defeated by her, slaughtering many of her loved ones. She must now return her reality to the one she once recognized by killing the slasher once more in this heartwarming horror story from RLJ Entertainment.
Available on AMC+, Amazon Prime, and more.

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Next week’s theme: Scary Places

A haunted house appears to invite an eclectic group of investigators to determine its evil nature; a summertime campground becomes the hunting ground for a vengeful killer; and more …