October’s second-run screenings are always full of familiar slashers, but there’s more than a few moody, beautiful gems cast amongst the gore. Plucked from our repertory roster, we’d like to draw your attention to an easily-overlooked eco-fable of a dragon god in an angry pond and Robert Eggers’ obsession with period accuracy. Our what-to-watch suggestions this month roam toward the weird; Masahiro Shinoda’s visual excess, Puritan psychological dread, and the single best almost-silent vampire film show up. But perhaps the scariest foundation for a horror film is also the most mundane: David Cronenberg got divorced once, and he was pissed off about it. Different routes into the dark unfold below. Pick your poison, light your lantern. You will no doubt find yourself somewhere unsettling.
Faust on 16mm
For fans of Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (1929), Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (1967), bargain hunting.
F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926) came to define German Expressionist cinema. The director’s aesthetic decisions—painterly chiaroscuro, winged angels and cowering demons, slivers of light, gold and agony—reveal his persistence of vision, transforming Faust from moralistic cautionary tale into fascinating artwork.
You probably already know the story: Loosely adapted from Goethe’s 1790 tragedy, Faust follows a gentle, bearded alchemist (Gösta Ekman) whose village has been ravaged by plague. When Mephisto (Emil Jannings) offers him youth and passion in exchange for his soul, Faust accepts out of desperation—which wreaks havoc on his life and the person he loves…