Josh Lake is here to debunk the myth of elevated horror. You can keep your Jordan Peele and your CGI-generated nightmares: He’d rather have vintage scares in the form of retro movies, thanks very much.
“I’m really impressed by people doing a lot with less,” the programmer and creator of the new, bimonthly screening series Terror Vision begins, stacking evidence for The Thing by John Carpenter: “I mean, he made the movie with not a lot of money and it’s now regarded as maybe the best horror film of all time, arguably,” Lake says about the 1982 tale of an arctic exploration that finds an unwelcome guest come aboard.
Speaking with The Coast on speaker phone as he drives the NS-101, he tears down the scaffolding of good and bad taste in the genre in one swipe: “My mind went straight to people calling new or elevated horror—and I think that is total bullshit: ‘Elevated horror’? That’s just a term for film snobs to validate their love of horror. Like I said before, horror, historically, it’s been viewed by the general public I think as a genre that’s not as good, looked down upon, all of those things. So calling something ‘elevated’ is just a way for people to say: ‘OK, I like horror. And now it’s OK.’”
If you still need convincing (and tbh, even if you don’t), Lake’s ready to convert you with his new series of screenings, held at Cineplex’s Lower Sackville location that brings, as he puts it, “a cinematic experience” to OG thrillers and horrors that you didn’t know you needed to see—film snob or no. The first offering? The Thing, of course, showing June 14 at 7pm (doors at 6pm).
With upcoming events like a showing of 1976’s Carrie in August, Lake hopes this series will give people the sense of collective viewing that COVID has deprived us of. It’s also his gift to his neighbourhood: “I live in the Lower Sackville community of HRM. And there are other film series going on in downtown Halifax, but there’s nothing anywhere else. There’s nothing anywhere else for anybody else. If somebody works downtown, they’re not driving back downtown to go see a film after work,” he says. “I think it’s important to have something in my own community—for people in Bedford and Sackville—but also to get people out to Sackville, to experience a different part of HRM: See what Sackville’s all about, maybe visit some shops and local businesses and and discover things they’ve never discovered before.”
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2023.