Apparently, January 15 is the second-spookiest day of the year, which is the only way to explain the domination of this week by horror titles. We have not one but two Halloween-themed new releases, the David Gordon Green Halloween and the Goosebumps sequel Haunted Halloween, plus a lavish Arrow special edition of Crimson Peak, Scream Factory’s reissuing of The Howling III and Brian De Palma’s Obsession (amusingly timed to coincide with Criterion’s reissue of Hitchcock’s Notorious; I wonder if De Palma ever watched that), and the prospect of Fox wringing yet more money out of Deadpool 2. But none of them compare to the sheer nerve-shredding of Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline, an assault on the senses, the idea of the mother-daughter bond, and the concept of art altogether. It’s a movie that will beat you into submission, and I mean that as an absolute compliment. And in case you need a chaser, Fox is releasing the wonderfully slight Old Man and the Gun this week. It’s as much a meditation on time and death as David Lowery’s last film, A Ghost Story, but it’s wrapped up in such sweet romance and shaggy charm that it goes down as easy as any of the entertainments Robert Redford starred in at his prime. And it has Tom Waits monologuing on why he hates Christmas, an easy pick for scene of the year.

Crimson Peak (Arrow)
The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Arrow)
The Glass Key (Shout Factory)
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (Sony)
Halloween (Universal)
Howling III: The Marsupials (Shout Factory)
Madeline’s Madeline (Oscilloscope)
Notorious (Criterion)
Obsession (Shout Factory)
The Old Man & the Gun (Fox)
Once Upon a Deadpool (Fox)
The Plague Dogs (Shout Factory)
The Prize (Warner Archive Collection)