It is the spookiest day of the year, and what’s a scarier way to spend it than discussing Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu? I will say, even as a card-carrying member of the Birdman and The Revenant fan clubs, I don’t have much love in my heart for 21 Grams, which is out on Blu-Ray this week from Universal. It has some really good performances (especially from Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro) and it looks good, but the chronology shuffling is completely arbitrary and the wallowing in human misery is tiresome. For a more potent statement on humanity, you’re better off turning to Blue Underground’s two “killer-elevator movie” releases this week.

Anyway, there’s some other spooky-scary options out this week, including Scream Factory releasing both Land of the Dead and the Dawn of the Dead remake, Lionsgate giving us the lesser Vestron picture Slaughter High, and Sony releasing The Dark Tower, which is so bad it’s scary, amirite? Seriously, I don’t know if I’m right, because I haven’t seen The Dark Tower and I’m sure as shit not jumping out of my seat to see it now. Moving post that, there’s some gems to be had, like the Warner Archive Collection’s Blu-Ray of Jerry Schatzberg’s Palme d’Or-winning road movie Scarecrow (Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography should translate very well to Blu-Ray), Olive’s release of Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker, Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry (with an early role for Arnold Schwarzenegger), and Nicolas Hytner’s The Madness of King George, and Kino hopefully not fucking up with Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner.

21 Grams (Universal)
The Dark Tower (Sony)
Dawn of the Dead (Shout Factory)
Down (Blue Underground)
I Called Him Morgan (FilmRise)
J.D.’s Revenge (Arrow)
Junior Bonner (Kino)
Kidnap (Universal)
Land of the Dead (Shout Factory)
The Lift (Blue Underground)
The Madness of King George (Olive)
The Miracle Worker (Olive)
Rock-a-Doodle (Olive)
Scarecrow (Warner Archive Collection)
Slaughter High (Lionsgate)
Stay Hungry (Olive)
Young Doctors in Love (Kino)
Zoology (Arrow Academy)