Thursday Movie Picks - Halloween Edition: Folk or Urban Legend

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is Halloween Edition: Folk or Urban Legend.

The Blair Witch Project

Found video footage tells the tale of three film studentswho've documenting footage about the Blair Witch, a legendary local murderer and lose their way in the woods.

I had no idea mazephobia (getting lost on a trip) is a real thing but it's something I've always had and learned about this year. It was probably never smart for me to watch this years ago, but yeah, it scared the bejesus out of me. That ending will haunt me for ever. I can see why people think it's more corny than scary though.

The Mothman Prophecies

A journalist whose wife experienced a strange moth-like vision immediately before she was killed in a car accident. Two years later, driving to an interview, he suddenly finds himself hundreds of miles out of his way in the remote town of Point Pleasant, where there has been a proliferation of `mothman' sightings leading him to research similar experiences to his late wife.

We don't ever explicitly see the Mothman except in sketches/newspaper archives, which is something a lot of critics and audiences didn't enjoy. But I thought the word-of-mouth aspect of different characters' experiences and premonitions offered enough intrigue. It gives enough fictional and factual details that make me want to look into what really happened.

Candyman

Skeptical graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) befriends Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams) while researching superstitions in a housing project on Chicago's Near North Side. From Anne-Marie, Helen learns about the Candyman (Tony Todd), a knife-wielding figure of urban legend that may be all too real.

I was so excited for the reboot...however, the follow-up takes a stronger direct interpretation of the original's themes that feels dumbed down. I was surprised since it had Nia DaCosta's direction and Jordan Peele as producer on its side. But perhaps it's a result of too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. Looking back, I'm not sure a reboot could've ever lived up to the original.