Hey! Sam Sanders here with newsletter edition three. 

For starters, I wanna make sure to mention this week’s episode of the show. It’s a good one with one of my favorite political comedians, Roy Wood Jr. I’ve had the honor and privilege of talking with him twice before, so this week’s chat really felt like two friends catching up over a beer.

We covered a lot: how to laugh at politics in this current politically fraught moment; what service job Donald Trump should have *actually* done last week (instead of slinging fries for 15 minutes at McDonald’s); and how social video and a fragmented media landscape are changing comedy a *lot* — for better and for worse. Be sure to check it out wherever you listen or watch (but know that the YouTube version is usually the LEAST PG-rated!). One little tidbit I got out of Roy that I think you’ll enjoy: the food at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? It’s actually really, really good.

Alright, with that, let’s go full spooky. If I haven’t told you already, I’m a big fan of horror movies and Halloween. I was raised strict Pentecostal, which meant that as a kid, I wasn’t allowed to take part in either of those things. So in adulthood, I’ve leaned very hard into all things scary. I love picking out a costume (this year I’m gonna be that local TV weatherman who danced in a pumpkin mask and black spandex bodysuit). I love Halloween parties (Are you going to KCRW’s Masquerade? I am!). And I absolutely LOVE horror movies. SO much so that it’s really hard for me to name a favorite. But I can definitively tell you the things I think make a horror film great. 

1. CONFOUND EXPECTATIONS. Horror movies work so well because, at their core, all horror films follow a pretty standard formula. All slasher films hit certain beats, otherwise they aren’t slashers! Same goes for every other type of horror film. Knowing this, when a horror film can see the formula of its genre, adhere to it enough to get viewers invested, but then turn that formula on its head — and truly surprise an audience! That’s not just a horror film; it’s a classic. The best example of that in recent history: Strange Darling, a film I raved about in an earlier edition of this newsletter.
    
2. BE FUNNY. There’s a reason movies like Shaun of the Dead and What We Do In the Shadows consistently end up on roundups of the best horror films of all time. They’re just as much comedies as they are horror films. 
   
   
3. BE CAMP. James Wan has kinda cornered this market in recent years. With truly absurd films like M3gan (murderous life-sized animatronic doll) and Cocaine Bear (exactly what the title implies), he’s proven that a good horror film doesn’t actually need to be that scary. If it’s completely ridiculous and absurd, it can still be a great experience. 
   
   
4. BE A SOCIAL COMMENTARY. If I absolutely *had* to pick a favorite horror film (and I don’t want to, so don’t make me!) it would probably be Jordan Peele’s Get Out. On top of being insanely frightening, the film also functions as a perfect time capsule of all the racial progress and anxiety on display during the Obama era. Better than any documentary of that time, Get Out spoke to the often ridiculous racial politics of pre-woke liberal America in a way only a scary movie could.
   
   
5. BE A TIGHT 90 MINUTES. This isn’t just for horror. It’s one of my golden rules for all films. Movies should be 90 minutes. No more! I stand by this belief. (I also believe that no album needs to be longer than 40 minutes and that maybe half of all nonfiction books could have just been a long-form magazine article.)

What do you think makes for a good horror film? And which ones are your faves? Reply to this e-mail and lemme know!

See you at Masquerade, 

Sam