Where to start! Perhaps with the most seasonally appropriate. There’s plenty of those, from some of the year’s most talked-about indie horror, and a 10th-anniversary edition of maybe the last decade’s defining indie horror movie, to the first American release of the legendarily grim horror classic The Hitcher in high-def, let alone 4K, plus 4K upgrades of the first four Hellraisers (that includes the French Adam Scott one), one of Robert Zemeckis’s meanest concoctions (see Here in theaters November 1, you most likely won’t like it but I’ll eat it up), the Wolfman that nobody likes very much (see Wolf Man in theaters January 17, you won’t believe Christopher Abbott’s transformation into clean-shaven Christopher Abbott), and the most terrifying movie ever made about bathtub spaghetti (I don’t care if you see Baby Invasion or not, I still haven’t watched Aggro Dr1ft). There are probably no superlatives I can throw at Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo except “the best horror movie about a headphones lesbian since Gus Van Sant’s Psycho!”, which for some reason NEON wasn’t interested in as a pull quote. The headphones lesbian is played by Hunter Schafer, in her first lead role and her first time on a movie set, who does so much to lift up this very fun but slightly wobbly Argento riff with her wounded charisma and unbelievable coolness. You may or may not understand what the plot of it is (if anything, I thought it explained a tad too much but I’m clearly in the minority) but Schafer makes the emotional core loud and clear even when she’s being a hilarious brat. And it’s a must-watch for any lover of the fine art of Dan Stevens chewing scenery with a ridiculous voice.

But of course the horror I most want to talk about is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense and Signs on 4K, finally replacing their decades-old transfers that can only do so much for Shyamalan and Tak Fujimoto’s visual mastery. I used to ding Sixth Sense a little to raise up the Shyamalans that came right after it but it’s just about as good as any of them and still so potent as a mother-son story forgetting everything else about it; film culture, maybe culture in general, would be so much better off if Shyamalan’s narrative was the much more accurate “He’ll make you weep” than “He’ll shock you with his crazy twists”. Signs, meanwhile, has always been one of my favorites and is maybe the best (or at least most accurate) cross-section of its filmmaker’s strengths and peculiarities. It has the most undeniable suspense sequences, the mushiest sentiment, the most overwhelming “everything is a puzzle piece” structure (they even explain the water thing, you CinemaSins fucks), and the goofiest dad jokes to ever be part of a “serious” horror thriller. Now where the fuck is The Village in better-than-DVD quality, Disney?

Lastly, I want to spotlight the fifth of Sony’s lavish 4K box sets of the Columbia back catalog, which is as always is a somewhat “yeah, sure” collection of classics with a few big selling points. Maybe you’re not itching to see Tootsie in the best quality yet known to home video, but two titles make it worth at least asking someone to get it for you for the holidays: Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, maybe now finally beloved enough to get past being the Scorsese only brought up in contrast to his gangster movies, and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which really should have gotten this treatment, including a new Gerwig/Saoirse Ronan commentary, when it first came out on disc but better late and presumably Barbie-inspired than never (especially paired with one of its big influences). The total devastation of Age of Innocence‘s gossip and choking social hierarchy has stuck with me after one viewing nine years ago (all I need to do is remember one moment of the epilogue and it all comes flooding back just like it does for Daniel Day-Lewis), while Little Women cements its extraordinariness a little more with each watch. A work of adaptation that’s closer to the final and definitive revision on its source material, and a statement of creative autonomy (within limits) that’s shockingly complex and ambivalent considering how accessible and rousing Gerwig makes it. “Tell your story” ceases to be a vague aphorism with this depth of feeling behind it.

About Dry Grasses (Criterion)
The Babadook (RLJ)
Borderlands 4K (Lionsgate)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 4K (Kino)
Cheeky! 4K (Cult Epics)
Columbia Classics Collection: Volume 5 4K (All the King’s Men 4K / On the Waterfront 4K / A Man for All Seasons 4K / Tootsie 4K / The Age of Innocence 4K / Little Women 4K) (Sony)
Cuckoo (Decal)
Deadpool & Wolverine 4K (Disney)
Death Becomes Her 4K (Shout Factory)
Fluke (Kino)
Ghost 4K (Paramount)
Gummo 4K (Criterion)
Hellraiser: Quartet of Torment 4K (Hellraiser 4K / Hellbound: Hellraiser II 4K / Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth 4K / Hellraiser IV: Bloodline 4K) (Arrow)
The Hitcher 4K (Warner)
In a Violent Nature (RLJ)
The Intern 4K (Warner)
Oddity (RLJ)
Plenty (Kino)
Signs 4K (Disney)
The Sixth Sense 4K (Disney)
Tag 4K (Warner)
Twisters 4K (Universal)
Vacation 4K (Warner)
The Wolfman 4K (Shout Factory)