Welcoming the spooky season

I love being scared, I love dressing up in costume, and I love taking candy from strangers (and babies), so it stands to reason that I also love Halloween.

It’s one of my life’s great disappointments (break out the violins) that most of the adults in my life do not share my affection for this holiday — truly one of the best, what with its unlimited candy and extremely limited fraught family dinners.

While the opportunity to gorge on Rockets and mini-Mars bars and even those weird molasses-flavoured, filling-remover toffees was obviously a highlight for me (a truly candy-deprived child, yet ANOTHER in my list of sufferings), the frisson of fear that came with wandering the dark streets filled with goblins and imps and skeletons and Greatest American Heros (my Grade 3 costume) was a also a delicious treat.

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No apples, or we'll TP your house: Jill (left) and her sister Claire circa 1977. (Jill Wilson / Winnipeg Free Press)

No apples, or we’ll TP your house: Jill (left) and her sister Claire circa 1977. (Jill Wilson / Winnipeg Free Press)

I’m not a slasher fan, but I enjoy most horror flicks (even though I often watch them through the holes of an afghan) for the way they deliver that queasy fight-or-flight jolt of dopamine from the safety of a sofa or a movie seat.

The Shining is probably the most-named No. 1 on scary-movie lists (while also being the source of what might be my favourite Simpsons’ spoof moment), producing indelible chills and psychological terror without cheap jump-scares. Why are British children so unsettling?

I saw the mockumentary Paranormal Activity at a midnight showing in an Ann Arbor, Mich., theatre filled with college kids; I enthusiastically glommed onto the ginned-up expectation of terror — the film’s grassroots campaign hinged on the fact people had reportedly been fainting and freaking out at screenings. It wasn’t until I got home and couldn’t sleep because there was an attic crawl-space door in my eyeline (that’s where the evil spirit lives!) that I realized how much it had affected me.

More recently, Alex Garland’s Men delivered some of the most harrowing onscreen moments I can remember, mostly because the unnatural goings-on are just heightened, frightened reality. It stars Jessie Buckley as Harper, a grieving woman who rents a house in the English countryside. Every man/boy in the village is played by the same actor, Rory Kinnear (so creepy!), and the film plays with all the ways men prey on women or make them feel unsafe. It escalates into an over-the-top conclusion, but a scene where Harper is walking alone through a tunnel and a lone man suddenly starts running toward her will make the blood of any woman who’s walked with her keys preventatively spiked out in her hand run cold.

As for novels, Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon — the book before Silence of the Lambs — literally made the hair on my arms stand up; the man really gets into the headspace of killer Francis Dolarhyde. (Watch Michael Mann’s 1986 adaptation, Manhunter, instead of Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon. Brian Cox is a low-key Hannibal Lecktor [sic] whose madness is all in his eyes, and Tom Noonan — always an interesting actor — gives a towering performance as the pitiable, monstrous Dolarhyde, known as the Tooth Fairy for his treatment of his victims.)

What are your favourite things that go bump in the night? Email me your recommendations for Halloween viewing/reading/experiencing and I’ll put together a newsletter of spooky suggestions for the season.

Jill Wilson

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Did you know we have many other free newsletters? You can gorge yourself on food and beverage news from my Arts & Life pals Eva Wasney and Ben Sigurdson, who write the bi-weekly Dish newsletter, or you can follow a weekly exploration of Indigenous voices, perspectives and experiences in Niigaan Sinclair’s Biidaajimowin | News from the Centre.

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What’s up this week

• The Arts & Life team has five suggestions for things to do this week, from museum exhibitions to mountaineering movies.

• Prairie Theatre Exchange kicks off its season with Feast, a new work by Canadian playwright Guillermo Verdecchia. It runs to Oct. 22 — checkout Saturday’s Weekend Review section for a review by Ben Waldman, who also penned the preview.

• MTYP’s Snow White starts its run Friday — the twisted take is the second adaptation of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale to hit local stages after Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s recent dark production. Read all about the show here.

• Local Ukrainian dance troupe Rusalka is celebrating 60 years with a gala anniversary concert at Club Regent Casino on Saturday at 7 p.m. VODA! A Rusalka Story includes guest performers Hoosli Ukrainian Male Chorus and Junior Rusalka; the show explores water’s integral role in Ukrainian culture and traditions. Limited tickets remain at ticketmaster.ca.

• Tyler Hubbard, songwriter and one-half of multi-platinum country duo Florida Georgia Line, is at the Burton Cummings Theatre on Tuesday, Oct. 17. With 21 No.1 singles on country radio, countless awards and sold-out tours, Hubbard has already had a successful group career; he has now stepped out on his own. Tickets at ticketmaster.ca.

• Also on Tuesday, Broadway hit Jagged Little Pill opens at the Centennial Concert Hall for its limited run. The musical based on the album by Canadian superstar Alanis Morissette is directed by Tony Award winner Diane Paulus (Waitress, Pippin) with a Tony-winning book by Diablo Cody (Juno) and Grammy-winning score. Tickets are at centennialconcerthall.com.

• The West End Cultural Centre pays homage to Paul Simon on his 82^nd birthday with Still Crazy, a powerhouse retrospective on his life, career, and music featuring nine local musicians performing arrangements by producer Aaron Shorr. The show, set for Friday, Oct. 13 at 8 p.m., draws heavily on the most acclaimed era of his career, from his self-titled album in 1972 through to 1990’s The Rhythm of the Saints, but it also includes fan favourites from his seminal work as a part of the Hall of Fame folk-duo Simon and Garfunkel. Tickets are $25 at wecc.ca.

• Humbly advertised as “very amateur theatre,” The Condo Down Under is an original musical radio play written by Stephen Gillies. The “Faustian homage, set in Winnipeg, with original music and song, bad jokes, and some trenchant social commentary” runs Tuesday, Oct. 17 and Wednesday, Oct. 18 at Gordie’s Coffee House, 127 Cobourg Ave. (in the Big Red Church). It’s free but food contributions for Harvest are welcome.

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