An Origin Story as Told Through a Horror Watchlist
by Nikk Nelson, The Cinema Freak of Nature
“Why are you the way that you are?” -Michael Scott
Some of my earliest memories are horror movies. I was never really bothered by them. I didn’t know it wasn’t something everybody did until I started school. Kindergarten was weird. I suddenly felt very alone. As time went on, I found my people—thank you Joe Bob Briggs and Monstervision on TNT. By the time I was a teenager, I was known for being a walking encyclopedia for horror movies and movies in general. So, I thought it would be fun to reflect back on over three decades of horror movie obsession, roadmap my derangement, and have it be a fun watchlist at the same time. Note, installments in franchises were the ones I most often viewed, for better or worse. Some titles I list in the age I discovered them. It’s also very obvious that I more or less divorced horror during the aughts because horror (at least American horror) was pretty horrible at the time and I was taking myself very seriously. Enjoy!
Critters (1986)
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Tremors (1990)
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
IT (miniseries—1990)
John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)
Child’s Play (1988)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Maximum Overdrive (1986)
The Lost Boys (1987)
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
The Monster Squad (1987)
Fright Night (1985)
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
Brainscan (1994)
Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
Screamers (1995)
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Leprechaun 3 (1995)
The Faculty (1998)
John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Stir of Echoes (1999)
American Psycho-genre videostore chose (1999)
Evil Dead II (1987)
Scream 2 (1997)
Idle Hands (1999)
An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Funny Games (2007)
High Tension (2003)
1408 (2007)
28 Days Later (2002)
Friday the 13th (2009)
Hereditary (2018)
John Dies at the End (2012)
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Scare Me (2020)
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Get more spooktacular flick picks from Nikk Nelson in episode 024 of Moviejawn’s I Saw it in a Movie pod, an advice show that goes to the cinema for the answer. Download here or where ever you catch pods.