Letter from the Editor: The monsters are dudes on Maple Street
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
Greetings dearest reader,
Welcome to the October print issue of The Pitch magazine. I’m your haunted host, Brock Wilbur, and on behalf of every spirit on staff, I’d just like to say:
loud clattering sounds, a chain rattles, something awful awakens, a door creaks open, followed by assorted shrieks and moans
Yeah, spooky season shit. Real nightmare mode hours around here.
I’m writing this just after leaving a screening of the new Resident Evil film. It’s also my birthday. I guess I just got everything I could hope for, because—and I say this as a huge fan of everything Resident Evil right down to the Japanese stage-musical—finally, a good Resident Evil. Phew. I was gettin’ worried there, those last three decades…
This flick rounds out a real three-peat from director Zach Cregger, who also brought us Barbarian and Weapons.
My favorite cinema-going experience from the last few years was thanks to Weapons—or more accurately, it was thanks to AMC Ward Parkway. The film opens with a little girl’s voiceover letting the audience know that this is a true story. I am not worried about spoiling Weapons at this point, but dearest reader, it is not based on a true story. A random guy sitting next to me at AMC Ward Parkway was on the fence about this… far, far too long into the movie. It was during the final, overwhelmingly violent and chaotic scene, that he leaned over to his date and said, “This can’t be a real story. It’s just too many children. We would’ve heard about it.”
I think about Mr. Weapons a lot these days. I want to watch movies next to someone who, right up until the credits roll, is still not fully convinced that this all isn’t A Real Thing We Would’ve Heard About. I wish I’d gotten his number that day, because I would’ve gladly paid for his ticket to Resident Evil. I’d pay for his ticket to sit next to me in theaters for the rest of my life. I just want to watch him as he watches movies. Sir, I hope you’re still out there, searching for truth in the darkness.
A neat trademark that director Zach Cregger has nailed across all of his horror films so far is a preternatural mastery of The Ominous Front Door. All three flicks prominently feature more than one sequence where a front door, once open, reveals a deep well of darkness—an infinite inky void of nothing beyond. And yet, everyone watching knows that darkness will eventually move. Moments spent fixated on the point just beyond what we can see are moments sacrificed to being defenseless against the inevitable Very Bad that’s coming next.
When The Pitch sat down to build this month’s print issue, the concept top of mind was “monsters.” Definitionally, monsters can be anything from cruel to simply unknown, or maybe just unusual in size. They don’t always carry the burden of evil, and sometimes a monster looks like one thing but catches you off guard with behavior that upends your expectations. That flicker of shock, that blindside, makes all the difference.
Monsters live in the dark. But they invite you to join them. Monsters don’t have to come to you. Maybe you’ll just come to them.
That’s what makes trick-or-treating so disorienting. It’s what made me terrified as a kid. Not only did I not know what would be waiting for me on the other side of a front door, but I also knew that I’d knocked on the door of a Bad House—I’d chosen to be here. Despite the yard full of skeletons and the speakers playing rattling chains and shrieks, I chose to ask whatever lived inside to open the door and reward me. If anything terrible happened, well, it was my own fault. I could’ve left at any time. But instead, here I stand, peering into the inky blackness and hoping for the best.
Journalism feels a lot like trick-or-treating. We knock on a lot of doors, and we look into a lot of darkness. Often there are pleasant surprises. Sometimes there are monsters. And sometimes it is just fine when you find a monster, because you have trick-or-treating allies to help you drag it into the light.
Our October mag features Sarah Sipple teaching a crash course on defense against the dark arts in the service industry, River Louraine following a century of magical escape acts, Alex Omorodion devouring a monster made out of meat, Abby Olcese getting caught in a web of spider sightings, and Maisie VanSlander tracking the trial of innocent people caught up against a beast with no name. All this, and so much more…
Teddy Rosen drew our cover this month, showing a group of kids who get more than they bargained for when the door opens at their weird neighbor’s house. He captured the feeling perfectly. Not just the monster that might emerge, but also the kids’ sense that the situation might still be salvageable. After all, if anything was truly this bad, we would’ve heard about it. Right?
We hope you enjoy the issue, and may your own monster-hunting serve you well this October—whatever door you choose.
Pitch in and we’ll make it through,
