Welcome to another year of Hooptober. Once again the criteria has been announced and the films assembled. Last year, I started my first full Hooptober wondering if I was going to complete 31 films. I ended it having seen 50 films from September 15th to October 31st. I started with a double feature of Pearl and X, and ended with Dario Argento’s latest Dark Glasses. It was the most writing I’ve done and the most movies I’ve watched in the span of a month. Doing a movie challenge with someone like Chris makes it easy to finish. I highly recommend having a buddy to complete any challenge.
Now I enter my second Hooptober wondering less if I’ll complete but if I’ll rein it in this time. Completing it won’t be an issue, barring anything life throws at me, but the urge to bit add more movies as I go along? It’s very easy to go overboard on challenges like these. Who doesn’t like watching movies? Will I go overboard, try to beat my record and write even more essays? Probably? I look forward to seeing what the next 45 days bring.
Setting up my list, I wanted to challenge myself. I tried to assemble a list of mostly new to me films. Some categories meant rewatches but even then I decided to go with movies I’ve not revisited in awhile. I also made two rules for myself. The first to find films that fit the criteria from countries with less heralded horror film histories like say Japan, or Italy . Rule number two was was to make an effort to try to include more queer and female filmmakers on this list. It can become really easy to go back to the usual circle of male filmmakers. The goal as always is to push myself out of my cinematic comfort zone and expand my film tastes.
In the end though, it comes down to the criteria for those 31 films. Chris has been helpful enough to include the criteria for this year in his introduction. Here are the films I selected. They are subject to change at any point in the next 45 days provided they still meet the criteria. Godspeed and good reading everyone.
Cinema Dual 
Leave a comment