Let's watch some horror movies
Drew and I drafted 31 horror movies to watch this October. Plus, has Phoebe Bridgers seen Obsession?
Hello. My brother Drew and I picked 31 movies to watch and discuss during the month of October. We're calling it The 31 of October. If you would like to hear the conversation where we decided what movies we would watch, you can do that by clicking these hyperlinked words or using the embedded episode player down toward the bottom of this post.
If you could do without the conversation but would like to know what the list is so that you can watch along, open up this Letterboxd list:
This is not a ranking of the best horror movies. It is not a ranking of our favorite horror movies. It is a ranking of the 31 horror movies we wanted to watch this October. Even so, I'm already looking over the list and ruing missed opportunities to fill in blind spots or revisit classics.
If you've got an idea for what we should include next time, let us know!
Has Phoebe Bridgers seen Obsession?
One of the frustrating things about getting old is that they just keep making new people. Every single day, more and more new people. Sometimes one of these recently-created people will produce a work of art so beautiful that it makes you angry. Angry that someone born during the baseball players' strike of 1994 has observed your life so keenly. Angry that, despite your eight-year head start in life, it was they, not you, who cultivated the talent to express this feeling so beautifully.
Phoebe Bridgers is one of the people who frequently produces this feeling in me. For the past month, I have been listening to her new release, Lost Weekend, and little else. In some of my recent listenings, a few lyrics have jumped out at me and made me wonder if Bridgers has seen or was inspired by Curry Barker's film Obsession (2026).
The widely-publicized album narrative tracks Bridgers' grief at the death of her father, the dissolution of her engagement to Paul Mescal, and the infatuation period of her new relationship with Bo Burnham. Given that mix of ingredients in the emotional stew, it's not surprising that you'd get an album painting with similar brush strokes as Barker, where the lines between love, grief, and obsession begin to blur.
Bridgers struggles to regulate the influx of new emotions on "Kill Me" and rushes headlong into them on "The Governor's Waltz." By the time you hit the next track, "Bobby," we're in full-on Inde Navarette mode.
[Verse 2]
So you followed me home, like you'd done it before
And you had to bend over to get through the door
And if you didn't like either one of my friends
I’d kill them, I'd kill them
[Chorus]
Bobby
This could be the end of wanting
(Ah)
[Verse 3]
Now I sleep in your shirts and you live in my house
You sing in the shower, I talk to myself
We've got stars on the ceiling and clothes on the floor
And a thing in a box I don't touch anymore
[Chorus]
Bobby
This could be the end of wanting (Bobby)
I exist only if you're watching
And then there's the chorus in "Haunted," which would have been considered too on-the-nose if it had in fact been written as the official theme song of Obsession.
[Chorus]
So I'm puttin' on my makeup
While they're lighting the stage up
Just like candles in a cake
If you're gonna make a wish
Then you better be specific
You're gonna have to live it every day
I don't know what the kanban boards look like when you're producing a Phoebe Bridgers album. But I'm assuming that a movie released in May is unlikely to meaningfully influence themes and lyrical content of an album released that August. What we're left to wonder, then, is what it says about the world that two of this generation's brightest auteurs are circling the same idea: that romantic infatuation can make people become very intense, and this can read like horror just as easily as it can read like a rom-com.
Nothing good, I fear.
