It’s 2023! Well, the end of it. Let’s take a look back at the year.
First, let’s talk movies. With big budgets and even bigger fan service, we have Scream 6 (and announcement for Scream 7), The Exorcist: Believer, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Evil Dead Rise, Talk to Me, and an announcement for Terrifier 3. I have been a little out of sorts with seeing new (theater) movies, instead opting for indie and digital releases. For example, Mike Kuciak’s Death Metal graced fans with devilish music and grotesque gore — a fun time and great watch! Then we have Ricky Glore and Nick Hiance’s Sweet Meats, which made enough hubbub to not only be funded way over their original budget, but be picked up by Troma! We’ll be sure to follow up with that upon next year’s release — more soon!
Still on the movie track, Fangoria’s 2023 Chainsaw Awards saw winners of all types, with a sweeping win streak from my favorite: Terrifier 2. Pearl, Nope, Prey, Watcher, and The Black Phone were also among the winners in various categories.
Television-wise, I’d like to point out a once hotly-debated show in recent years: Halloween Wars. During the pandemic, well-loved host Jonathan Bennett and the guest judges were replaced with Ghost Adventures‘ Zak Bagans and judges Aarti Sequeira and Eddie Jackson (along with Halloween Wars OG Shinmin Li). The pumpkin carving disappeared for a year due to Covid filming restrictions, as well as the “Small Scare” segment of the show — basically, it was just another cake show. But this year, we had the return of not only the Small Scare and pumpkin carving, but beloved Jonathan Bennett — no Bagans to be found either. Sighs of relief all around!
Speaking of Zak Bagans, two new specials of Ghost Adventures (“Lake of Death” and “Devil Island”) have arisen on Discovery and Discovery+. While promising new proof of ancient evils and poltergeist activity, it’s still the same ol’ Ghost Adventures. Good time, just not a new time.
In the gaming world, Silent Hill: Ascension released on Halloween to astonishingly abysmal reviews, mainly about the rushed storyline, crappy character development, and use of microtransactions. More widely, games have been taken over by liminal spaces; uncanny backrooms, too dim or too bright spaces, places that seem familiar but definitely aren’t real — games featuring these locations are the talk of the town as of late. Though The Backrooms is not a new game, with the return to liminal spaces comes a series of funny and slightly scary situational videos stemming from the series. Releasing late 2023, Subliminal takes those spaces that we all know and love and makes them absolutely terrifying.
Jumping from gaming to the Haunt world, Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights — a 2-month long Haunt celebration in the various Universal theme parks is adding a year-round venue in none other than Las Vegas! No news on opening dates or star attractions yet, but we can only imagine how well this will turn out. In the “amateur” world, there has been some uproar recently on the infamous McKamey Manor; Content Creator Reckless Ben set out to see if the rumors were true — torture, 10-hour time limits, a $20k prize for surviving — and is now pulling the plug on the whole operation by proving the haunt is actually a hoax. I’m utterly shaking at the drama with this one!
Overall, 2023 has seen some big news and set the stage for exciting things to come; in particular, I’m really liking the shift in “Nostalgia Horror” (focusing themes on nostalgic scenes and circumstances from a particular generation in time) — more on that in the 2024 New Year New Me post (coming in January).
And with that, a loving goodbye to 2023 — how can we miss you if you don’t leave?!
How did your 2023 go? Let us know in the comments!
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