Your Halloween spookiness prep starts early this year, with Prime Video creeeeeaking open the door of the Blumhouse once more.
On October 1, two feature-length horror stories are being released as a new edition of Welcome to the Blumhouse, with a further two terrors arriving on October 8. *deranged cackling* *bats squeaking* *’The Monster Mash’ blasting from a gramophone*
We were impressed with the consistency of Welcome to the Blumhouse back in October 2020, the first time producer Jason Blum’s Hollywood mid-budget horror company made the clever decision to stack a few of its releases together in the form of a Prime Video movie marathon. In his review, Luke Buckmaster called the first two instalments “lean, thoroughly decent thrillers”: hopefully we can expect the same of this new batch.
The first feature is titled Bingo Hell, a darkly comedic tale of a diabolical force set loose in a low-income community—in particular, this entity loves killing off elderly bingo players. Adriana Barraza stars as our 60-something neighbourhood hero, and it looks like we’re in for some blackly funny good times with a social message to boot, as we watch her battle both gentrification and a malevolent ageist demon.
Black as Night has a similar social conscience to go with its action-horror, this time starring Asjha Cooper as a New Orleans teen taking down vampires. Fans of Buffy will appreciate the movie’s squad of killer youths and “biting sense of humour”. But I’m also keen to watch Black as Night for its fictionalisation of Hurricane Katrina history, focusing on how supernatural addiction and corruption threatens the city’s displaced population—sounds like a complex balancing act of scary fun and fact.
On October 8, the remaining double-feature of Welcome To The Blumhouse arrives on Prime Video, starting with Madres. Tenoch Huerta and Ariana Guerra play a Mexican-American couple trying to set up a life for themselves in 1970s California, only for grisly discoveries and confusing nightmares to signal that all is not well in the migrant farming community they now call home.
The series will conclude with The Manor, a gothic tale of terror starring Barbara Hershey. As with Bingo Hell, this final instalment sees an elderly community getting gruesomely picked off one-by-one: but this time, our hero and her grandson have to distinguish between the ravages of dementia and an actual demonic presence.
Each of these movies sounds uniquely spooky in their own way, it’d be a shame to have to pick just one. Luckily for you, dear Prime Video subscriber, you don’t have to: all four feature-length episodes of Welcome to the Blumhouse will be available this October, the perfect Halloween double-double-feature (quadruple-feature?).
