It’s Back to School for After Dark: Midnight Movies to Watch This September

Welcome to IndieWire After Dark, where we pick a new theme for our midnight movie programming every month!

Join us Friday nights at 9:30 p.m. ET to explore the best in fringe films — available at any hour in the streaming age.

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Kick up your feet and get ready to take note. This September, we’re celebrating Back to School Night.

IndieWire After Dark is practicing the fundamentals over the next four weeks, kicking off a fall semester of midnight movies that’s all about students, teachers, parents, and the lethal side of learning. Yes, the following recommendations are education-themed — but they’re also great building blocks for any new students in this school of cinema.

Not unlike Harvard, Yale, or the elite university in “Halloween H20,” the admissions rate for titles featured in our weekly watch-and-rewatch club is competitive. We want to see every Tubi, Freevee, and fringe Shudder effort out there. Unfortunately, if our past year-plus in the streaming trenches taught us anything, it’s that that is damn-near impossible.

We’ve explored 67 (!!) After Dark movies to date, and you can trust us when we say, these days, we aren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel so much as regularly killing our darlings. For the most ambitious students to excel, some stragglers must be set aside. Still, we’re committed to presenting a diverse class with varied talents, and we’ve found something for every cinephile this September.

We’ll start the month with “The ABCs of Death,” an extreme horror anthology that checks every box in the midnight movie rubric. Then it’s onto the kid-friendly B-movie “Saturday the 14th,” which, much like a fussy toddler, is so bad it’s cute. Midterms mean an outing with Robert Rodriguez‘s “The Faculty,” a star-studded sci-fi effort about an alien invasion that also features 20-year-old Josh Hartnett. We’ll end our themed syllabus by watching Sean Byrne’s “The Loved Ones.” With some extreme violence and gore, it’s the hardest endurance test we’ve assigned ever — but brave genre fans won’t want to miss this very After Dark spin on the traditional homecoming dance.

Teacher revenge flicks would have been fun to get into; Kevin Reynold’s “187,” Barbara Peeters‘ “Summer School Teachers,” and several “The Substitute” sequels were in the running. And yet, none felt right for our freshman programming block. There are plenty of midnight movie classics not about school that people need educating on — but we want a better reason to go long on “Eraserhead.” Sure, “Slaughter High” would be a fun slasher to choose. We just did that already.

We know we’re only scratching the surface and just getting started. Halloween help us when we graduate to October. IndieWire After Dark publishes new midnight movie recommendations (that’s THE BAIT)…and our spoiler-filled reactions to them (that’s THE BITE)…every Friday at 9:30 p.m. ET.

Here’s what’s coming in September 2024:

“The ABCs of Death” (2013)

Story by: Ant Timpson
After Dark on Friday, September 6

Premiered at TIFF’s Midnight Madness in 2012, this extreme horror anthology saw 26 wildly different genre filmmakers explore the murderous and the macabre — as guided by their assigned letters of the English alphabet. Read our interview with producer Ant Timpson.

“Saturday the 14th” (1981)

Directed by: Howard R. Cohen
After Dark on Friday, September 13

New World Pictures is known for making scads of so-bad-they’re-good treats, but it’s not every day you get a such an excellent excuse to watch Howard R. Cohen’s “Saturday the 14th.” Call it crunchy or uneven. Either way, this ridiculous genre spoof is a kid-friendly caper loaded with nostalgia that ta special type of ’80s cinephile is sure to remember.

“The Faculty” (1998)

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
After Dark on Friday, September 20

“Trap” heartthrob Josh Hartnett isn’t the only reason to revisit 1998’s “The Faculty,” but its all-around bonkers cast is a great one. Buckle up: Has extraterrestrial life already unleashed itself on Herrington High? Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, Salma Hayek, and more appear in this “Body Snatchers” redux from the tail-end of the 20th century.

“The Loved Ones” (2009)

Directed by: Sean Byrne
After Dark on Friday, September 27

Frog dissections and “The Loved Ones” have a surprising amount in common, but the main lesson: They’re not for the faint of heart. Australian filmmaker Sean Byrne takes us to hell and back in this literal brain teaser about a hunky sad boy (Xavier Samuel), who is kidnapped by his demented crush (Robin McLeavy) and her dad (John Brumpton) after he rejects the girl’s invitation to a school dance.

Read more of our deranged suggestions…

• Revisit Midnight Masterpiece ‘Holy Motors’: French Arthouse Ponders Cinema and the Self

• Kate Winslet Burns It Down in Australian Haute Couture Revenge Movie ‘The Dressmaker’

• Karate and Vomit Make ‘Little Manhattan’ a Midnight Movie for Kids — and Basically ‘Sex and the City’ for Boys

• The Best of IndieWire After Dark: Our Top 13 Picks

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