The Big Picture · Discussion · Draft

The Horror Movie Draft

October 14, 2022/ 127 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan · Alex Ross Perry

A three-way horror snake draft for Halloween season: Sean and Chris Ryan bring in six-time returning champion Alex Ross Perry to fill six categories, Amanda watching from the sidelines with veto power on Twitter.

32 films across 2 segments.

AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.

Before the draftchildhood scares, and what even counts as horror

Arachnophobia 1990

Alex's first scary movie, watched at a friend's house at six; he hid behind the couch and slept with a trash can by his bed for years after.

Shocker 1989

Chris snuck into it at 12; rewatched it recently and found Wes Craven's psychic-killer movie 'hysterical,' Pete Berg and Timothy Leary and all.

Candyman 1992

Sean's gateway, seen on cable, tangled up with the schoolyard mirror-chant myth before he understood it was any good.

Gremlins 1984

Amanda's benchmark for how far she'll go with a horror movie: turn it off once Gizmo's dry and it's just a Christmas movie about a family and a pet.

The Omen 1976

Amanda can handle the stately ambassador setup but checks out once the gross-out kills start; the group can't agree on whether it's the nanny or the priest who gets impaled.

Alien 1979

The episode's longest-running argument: Alex says it's not a horror movie because Amanda's seen and liked it, Sean insists it belongs given the tagline alone.

Predator 1987

Floated as horror-adjacent to Alien and waved off as an action movie.

The Silence of the Lambs 1991

Debated as both a sequel (to Manhunter) and a horror movie; the table lands on neither, which is why nobody drafts it.

Se7en 1995

Cited alongside Silence of the Lambs as a thriller that borrows horror's tonality without qualifying as one.

Barbarian 2022

Amanda's crash course in the genre via the guys walking her through it scene by scene.

Speak No Evil 2022

Amanda was hooked by the Airbnb-vacation-friends setup until the plot description turned dark.

The Strangers 2008

Chris's masked-strangers-on-the-porch classic; Amanda now pictures it every time she hears something outside at night.

Pearl 2022

Named with Barbarian as evidence horror's had an unusually healthy run the last six weeks.

The Night House 2020

Alex's pick for one of the best horror movies of the 2020s so far.

The teams drafting horror movies

Chris Ryan

Slasher

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974

First overall pick. Chris first saw it at 1 a.m. in a beat-up group house in Boston and stayed up all night afterward; still 'the apex of horror' to him.

Sequel

Scream 2 1997

Picked for variety over a movie he'd rate higher; likes the meta college-set sequel talk and Timothy Olyphant's masquerading villain.

Blockbuster

The Blair Witch Project 1999

His favorite theater experience ever, from a sold-out Ritz East show at 15; rewatched last year with a group of 12-to-14-year-olds who got fully swept up.

Classical Era

Night of the Living Dead 1968

A Philly rep-house and midnight-movie staple growing up; taken over his real favorite, Dawn of the Dead, already spent in Sequel.

Foreign Language or British

[Rec] 2007

The Spanish found-footage outbreak movie he and his wife have rewatched three times and chased through every sequel; the late blackout stretch is the highlight.

Wildcard

The Thing 1982

Argued it's a monster movie, not sci-fi ('it wouldn't rent in sci-fi'); one of four films he'd locked into Wildcard along with Hellraiser, The Shining, and The Fly.

Sean Fennessey

Slasher

Halloween 1978

Sat at No. 1 on his list; John Carpenter's original, taken with visible relief that it survived to his pick.

Sequel

Evil Dead II 1987

Argued it splits the atom on horror comedy, being a horror movie and a comedy at once rather than one dressed as the other; Amanda calls it not her thing.

Blockbuster

The Exorcist 1973

The genre's highest-grossing film and one of the most frenzied moviegoing events in American history; Sean keeps a Pazuzu statue in his backyard.

Classical Era

Rosemary's Baby 1968

Made $33.4 million unadjusted, short of the $75 million Blockbuster line, which is why it fell to him here.

Foreign Language or British

Deep Red 1975

Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso, the movie that opened Sean up to horror past Scream and Blair Witch, via a VHS-collecting older friend named Ben.

Wildcard

The Shining 1980

Doesn't fit Slasher, Blockbuster (it underperformed for a Kubrick/Nicholson film), Classical, or Foreign, so Wildcard is the only place it could go.

Alex Ross Perry

Slasher

Psycho 1960

His No. 2 pick overall after losing Texas Chain Saw; first saw it as a kid at Philadelphia's Prince Theatre, driven in by his dad, going in blind.

Sequel

Dawn of the Dead 1978

Romero's zombie-mall movie, his No. 1 in the category over Day of the Dead, which he says he actually prefers on any given day.

Blockbuster

The Amityville Horror 1979

Alex grew up 25-30 minutes from the real house; calls the original underrated and the Italian-made sequel, Amityville II: The Possession, nearly as good.

Classical Era

Freaks 1932

Tod Browning's carnival film, intermittently banned for decades; Alex noticed its Toy Story homage while sitting in a doctor's office with his daughter.