It’s that time of year again, boils and ghouls. The spirits grow restless as we prepare the sacrificial altar for that most sinister of holidays—Easter. Wait wait wait, that doesn’t sound right. It’s March? I left clear instructions that I not be woken up until October. Well, I guess since I’m already up, I might as well make the best of it. I know, I’ll make my own Halloween cheer by taking a look at 10/31, an indie Halloween anthology flick by many of the same folks that brought us Volumes of Blood: Horror Stories, another anthology I had a look at recently. That one ended up being pretty fun, so will the trend continue, or is 10/31 a season best left forgotten?

“Malvolia’s Halloween Monster Marathon”

This is the framing device for the film, in which the segments that follow are an in-universe horror marathon hosted by Malvolia: The Queen of Screams ( Jennifer Nangle ). Not too much to say about this one given that it only comprises around 2 minutes of the film, but as a lover of all things horror host, I really appreciate the nostalgia of this approach. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded having her pop in and introduce every story, but they chose to only use her segments as bookends. Apparently, the character of Malvolia is based off a Youtube series with a similar structure. From what I’ve seen, the series looks well-produced and their channel is currently at a little under 400 subscribers, so why not show them some love? Tell ‘em HorrorBuzz sent you.

“The Old Hag”

Our first story follows a freelance 2-man film crew hired by a local businesswoman to promote her B&B. Once they get the job, they ask for time to prep before shooting the commercial, but desperate to prove themselves on their first job, they agree to stay late to finish the work that night. This is a fun start. There are a lot of familiar tropes used here and the atmosphere could be compared to an adult version of Goosebumps. The acting is a bit hokey, but it’s animated and the characters have defined personalities, with Kevin ( Mitchell Musolino ) being more practical and serious and Tyler ( Nickolaus Joshua ) being the more histrionic sort that begins to come unglued as what he’s seeing becomes increasingly difficult to rationalize. The effects are pretty decent, with the creature design looking costumey but also unnervingly wet and off-putting. The set itself is the Montgomery Mansion in Claysville, Pennsylvania, a Victorian manor with exaggerated features that looks more like a prototype for Disney’s Haunted Mansion than anything designed for actual use and lends itself perfectly to this classic creature feature.

“Trespassers”

What do you do if you go to see a horror movie and it’s not scary?

A. Ask for a refund
B. Go home and write a scathing review
C. Drive out to the woods to the site of an Amityville-style familicide

If you chose C, you just might be the thrill-seeking couple in this segment, who after seeing a groaner of a horror flick, decide to go out on the hunt for some real scares. This one’s full of surprises that will keep viewers in suspense throughout. The short starts off with a nice scary story as Stephanie ( Sable Griedel ) narrates the story in graphic detail to her unwitting date, Jeff ( Chad Bruns ), before taking on an exciting action-heavy supernatural horror vibe. The visuals are mixed, with some questionable design choices and low-budget CG, but the atmosphere captures the feeling of Halloween and the score has a chilling 70s slasher quality. Griedel does a lot of the heavy lifting playing Stephanie with a tinge of insanity that makes you question her intentions. Bruns’ portrayal doesn’t hold up quite as well, with the character being written with a snappy, sardonic flair that Bruns never quite captures.

“Killing the Dance”

Sometimes style is substance. This is a weird one, a sparse, slow burn of an experience that feels like it goes on forever, but not in the sense that it’s a chore to get through. Moreso that it feels like a trance, like your perception of the passing of time has become distorted. The narrative, what little of it that there is, follows Ashley ( Sable Griedel ), who works at a rollerskating rink and wants to tell her boyfriend she’s breaking up with him. There isn’t that much else going on for most of this segment, though once it finally picks up steam, it gets going pretty quickly to a wonderfully gory finish. Her boyfriend, Clint, stands out as a waifish coked-up Matthew McConaughey from Dazed and Confused, but the acting is otherwise unspectacular. Still, the combination of the visuals and the music make this a contender for the best segment of the film with a neon 80s aesthetic and surreal editing and compositional choices that leave a strong impression and help it stand out from the pack. The music compliments this with a very bouncy, retro chiptune aesthetic combined with heavy percussion that contrasts with the gore in the segments later scenes to create that surreal dissonant quality.

“The Halloween Blizzard of ’91”

It had to happen at some point. As with most anthologies, there are some segments that don’t quite pull their weight, and there is a reduction in quality in these last two segments, but even at its worst, 10/31 remains pretty watchable. Here two kids are playing the Volumes of Blood trading card game (have to get that cross-promotion in) when one of them starts to talk about how Halloween is canceled and Christmas is the better holiday. So the other kid stabs him repeatedly in the face. The end. Sorry, that’s just the scenario that plays out in my head whenever someone mentions Christmas before November. What actually happens is a group of trick-r-treaters show up during a most inhospitable of Halloween nights and set off a series of events that pits the two holidays against one another. It’s a good concept and there are some nice visuals here as well, with the trick-r-treaters in their homemade masks and winter coats possessing an eerie uncanniness, but it just never fully capitalizes on that concept and uses it to subvert our expectations.

“The Samhain Slasher”

Not too much to comment on with this one. It’s a decent teen slasher, but there isn’t much of a hook to elevate this beyond your standard slasher outside of an interesting use of color and some quick visual cuts. Girl goes to a party and a guy with a machete starts slashing people up, there’s your story. From an audio perspective, this is probably the most diverse segment, featuring mash-ups of gothic organs and synths with strings distorted guttural vocals, which makes sense given that this segment is directed by Rocky Gray in his directorial debut, who depressed 00’s teens might recognize as the drummer from Evanescence’s 2003 major label debut, Fallen. Solid debut and it’s nice that they gave Gray the opportunity to direct after working as a composer for both this film and Volumes of Blood, but not particularly noteworthy.

10/31 hooked me from the very beginning. To be fair, you could probably show me paint drying or a David Decoteau film if you cut it up into 15 minute segments and put a wisecracking horror host at each end and I would be on board, but even among anthologies, it manages to find its own voice, which isn’t easy in a world where both Trick ‘r Treat and Tales of Halloween exist and pursue much of the same structure and theming. It might not be the first film I’d pull off the shelf for my next Halloween horror marathon, but I’m always happy to see filmmakers drawing inspiration from the holiday to keep the celebration burning brightly throughout the season.