Dusk Till Dawn: Life Cycle
Horror marathons with a theme.
Welcome to a new month of our (fictional) horror movie marathons. Inspired by the Life Cycle episode of the Pure Cinema Podcast and Edgar Wright's own fictional 24-hour marathon that he offered up over at the A/V Club, this month's theme is the Life Cycle.
Wright's piece took inspiration from Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man presented in As You Like It, covering life in the stages of “the infant, the whining schoolboy, the lover (or teenager), the soldier (and I’m going to interpret that as soldier/young professional), the justice (or the man/adult), the age shifts (becoming old), and the end of this strange eventful history (death).”
Seven movies is perfect for a 12-hour overnight marathon, so let's do the same thing. (Though valuable research for this piece, Brian and Elric at Pure Cinema only had five stages of one's life. )
7:00p-8:30p: Eraserhead (1977)
Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
trailers: Prevenge (2016), Immaculate (2024)
Though not exactly a horror movie, I think this will be an excellent warmup to our festivities. This story is all about the anxieties of having a child and as I reach child-bearing age, I have to tell you that I think about Eraserhead...well...all the freaking time. Those irrational fears you have like "What if the baby turns out to be an alien?" or "What if it comes out with three heads?" or, God forbid, "What if I don't love the baby?" all come screeching into this black and white nightmare. It's about the anxieties of life and I think that's a great place to kick us off, whether you want to consider it gross body horror or just a twisted dark comedy.
8:35p-10:10p: The Pit (1981)
Twelve year-old Jamie Benjamin is a solitary misunderstood boy in his preteens. His classmates pick on him, his neighbors think he’s weird and his parents ignore him. But now Jamie has a secret weapon: deep in the woods he has discovered a deep pit full of man-eating creatures he calls Trogs… and it isn’t long before he gets an idea for getting revenge and feeding the Trogs in the process!
trailers: The Gate (1987), Cobweb (2023)
The Pit is about a young boy, bullied and friendless, who becomes obsessed with a giant pit in the woods. No false advertising here. But the best part is the fact that the pit is filled with little creatures who, Audrey II-style, need human blood for nourishment. So if you pick on Jamie, you're going in the pit.
I don't know about you, but I could have probably been considered a lonely kid. I played by myself a lot, running through the woods behind my Grandma's. But I never found a pit. If I did, that dickhead Justin would have absolutely been tossed in there.
As you can tell, it's a very silly movie, but I think it would play great with a crowd that's still fresh and lively. We don't need to turn up the horror all the way just yet.
10:15p-12:25a: Bones and All (2022)
Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.
trailers: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Suspiria (2018)
I typically think of this third slot as our primetime feature, the last time we will have everybody present and awake - I think it needs to be the most crowd-pleasing of the bunch. And it works well for our "young lovers" slot, as it's a film about two young cannibals who have to run away from the rest of the world. It's Bonnie and Clyde but instead of holding up banks, they're eating people. We all know Timothée Chalamet's deal now and Taylor Russell gives another great performance after Waves...
...but Mark Rylance (who plays an older stalker cannibal) is one of the best on the planet and steals the whole thing. I did an impression of his line, "I could smell you from the yard" for like two months after this movie came out. He's haunting.
12:30a-2:00a: The Sentinel (1977)
When a beautiful model, Alison Parker, rents an apartment in a gloomy New York brownstone, little does she realize that an unspeakable horror awaits her behind its doors…a mysterious gateway to hell.
trailers: Paranormal Activity (2007), Sex and the City (2008)
Reader, I cannot explain to you the chill that ran through my body when I re-read Wright's piece before sitting down to write this and saw that he also chose The Sentinel. Perhaps I subconsciously tucked it away without realizing, but I think it's just a rotten coincidence.
However, I'm still including it because he chose the film for his "death" slot, largely because of the film's bonkers ending. That makes sense to me, but I'm going to pick it for my "young professional" slot because the last 15 minutes are only 15 minutes of the movie. The rest of it, to me, is about how weird it is to be in your 20s. You don't know who you want to be as a person, the neighbors in your apartment building are weird and annoying, you're finding things out about your parents that you didn't want to know, crap like that. It's a weird and confusing time portrayed in this oddly sexual but totally creepy metaphor.
2:05a-3:35a: Death Game (1977)
George Manning is a well-to-do businessman, husband, and father. While his family is away on his birthday, he invites a pair of rain-soaked young women into his house to wait out an evening thunderstorm. The two girls seduce Manning and ultimately kidnap and torture him in his own home.
trailers: The Last House on the Left (1972), Knock Knock (2015)
I've never seen Death Game, I've only seen the 2015 remake Knock Knock starring Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, and Ana de Armas. Everyone says this version is better and I'd like the excuse to watch it - especially with a crowd. I think that I'll agree with the consensus because director Eli Roth's sexual politics are iffy at best, even if he does wrap it up in a Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas package.
In the Keanu version, two stranded young ladies knock knock on the door of a middle-aged man in the middle of the night, seduce him, and use this night together to blackmail him and ruin his life. Family, reputation, his whole life - gone before his eyes because of one mistake. It's kinda like The Strangers when they're asked, "Why are you doing this to us?" and they respond, "Because you were home." Wrong place, wrong time - terrible decision-making. It works because Keanu Reeves is Keanu Reeves and Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas are Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas. Will this version work better? Let's find out.
3:40a-5:30a: Old (2021)
A family on a tropical holiday discovers that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives into a single day.
trailers: The Visit (2015), Split (2016)
We are being blessed with not one but TWO movies from the Shyamalan family this summer. M. Night has a new movie called Trap and his daughter Ishana will make her directorial debut with The Watchers. It's going to be a Summer of Shyamalan! I don't know why I'm becoming increasingly interested in this, especially because I've only half-liked like two of M. Night's movies, but I am.
Let's use this excuse to rewatch this wacky movie about the fear of growing old. Plus, we can throw in a little daylight horror as we prepare for the sun to rise. We're almost there!
5:35a-7:20a: The Crow (1994)
Exactly one year after young rock guitarist Eric Draven and his fiancée are brutally killed by a ruthless gang of criminals, Draven – watched over by a hypnotic crow – returns from the grave to exact revenge.
trailers: Knowing (2009), The Crow (2024)
This might feel like an obvious pick for our "Death" slot, but I think it works great for Shakespeare's line about "the end of this strange eventful history." It's also pretty meta considering the tragic events surrounding the film, but there's really no other way to view The Crow.
I saw this at a repertory screening recently and it was a full house of people so in love with the movie's bullshit that it played really well for me. I think the same thing would happen after staying up all night and watching six other movies. Plus, we need a refresher before the remake hits theaters.
Thanks for coming, folks! Don’t forget - people who show their wristbands at the box office get $5 off next month’s marathon! See you then!
Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.