Tag Archives: activity

Seeking the Thrill: My Top 3 Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween Season

By Jessica Lee

“Trick-or-treat!” 

A subtle suggestion that demands a treat – preferably candy – or else a trick will fall upon that individual. A simple, iconic phrase that is said that one special time of the year. Halloween. It’s almost that time of the year where people dress up in diverse costumes, devour candy, and watch scary movies. However, how do you know which movie is truly the most terrifying: the clown that lives in the sewers or the boy who is possessed by an unknown demon?

As fanatic of the horror and thriller movie genres, I have composed an updated top three scariest 2022 movies for you, friends, or family to get spooked beyond the mainstream titles that you’ve probably already heard of. 

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash
  • Smile (2022)

Released on September 29, 2022, with a current IMDb rating of 6.8, this film will take you on a journey of frightening jump scares and emotions contradictory to its innocent title. It revolves around Dr. Rose Cotter, who starts seeing unexplainable yet terrifying images after she witnesses a traumatic incident involving her patient. To face this trauma, she must reopen her past wounds and accept her new fate. This terrifying masterpiece directed and written by Parker Finn is by far the scariest, most unsettling horror/psychological thriller film that keeps your heart racing with thrill and excitement. I highly recommend this for those seeking a film that is cinematically alluring yet also filled with sudden jump-scares, but I would also recommend watching it in theaters or with a great stereo system as this film heavily relies on its sound design to keep you on your toes.

  • Incantation (2022)

Released on March 18, 2022, with a current IMDb rating of 6.2, this film is one of the most horrifying Taiwanese movies of all time. Perhaps it’s the incorporation of shaky, hand-held camera movements and unsettling vlog elements or maybe it’s the eerie incantation that is repeated throughout the film, but it is by far the most unpredictable and psychologically unnerving film I have ever seen. It follows the perspective of Li Ronan, a mother who is cursed after breaking a religious taboo. After being cursed, she must save her daughter from the same fate. Unlike the traditional horror film, Incantation is shot predominantly in found footage (FF), which is a cinematic technique where footage is presented through video recordings or discovered by the characters. By doing so, director Kevin Ko cleverly hides yet slowly reveals varied motifs and details for audiences to ultimately fully digest and reflect upon in their sleep. Furthermore, unlike Smile, this film does not rely on jump scares or sound design to haunt you. Rather, this film has a continued sense of fear beyond the screen. This film is available on Netflix in various languages and subtitles for you to conveniently enjoy at home.

Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash
  • The Black Phone (2022)

Released on June 24, 2022, with a current IMDb rating of 7, this film is based on “The Black Phone” by Joe Hill. While this story is not based on an actual occurrence, the fact that it is inspired from a combination of real serial killers during the late ‘70s is quite disturbing. The premise of this film involves a child killer who abducts and locks children in his soundproof basement. However, Finney Blake – a 13-year-old-boy – receives help from the voices of past victims through a disconnected black phone on the wall, ultimately determined to help him to break free. Director Scott Derrickson presents an emotionally riveting film that includes great character development and acting to the extent that makes you disgusted by such a sadistic, evil, and monstrous being. The Black Phone makes you wonder why such cruel beings exist and makes you empathize with the young victims. While this film follows more of a traditional horror film concept, it contains a solid premise around a black phone that is intense and creepy. I strongly recommend this film for those who enjoy performative and emotionally intense horror films.

2022 has been a solid year in the genres of thriller and horror with other honorable mentions such as Nope (2022) by Jordan Peele and Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) by Halina Reijn. While this list is subjective to my personal tastes and limited to the year of 2022, I strongly recommend these three films for those who seek a terrifying and heart-racing thrill in celebration of Halloween.

Featured Image by Felipe Bustillo on Unsplash

Jessica is a third-year student pursuing a double major in Cinema and Media Studies and Public Policy. As an aspiring filmmaker, writer, music producer, and director, she has been exploring her passion for the entertainment industry as a producer’s assistant for Palette Pictures and a member of Delta Kappa Alpha’s Professional Cinema Fraternity. At USC, she is the President of Taekwondo Club and Vice President of Public Relations of Trojan Steel. In her free time, she enjoys experimenting with sound design, filmmaking, playing the piano, drinking boba, writing, listening to music, and playing tennis.

My Last Day in New York

By Matthew Kim

“Wake Up Matthew, it’s time to go!” I slowly begin to open my eyes, still holding tight onto my blanket, as my friend Ryan tries to wake me up. The time is 8 am and it’s my last day in the state of New York. I was visiting for the very first time in my life and was having a great time. This past July, my friends and I stayed in Manhattan for four nights and spent the last night in Port Jefferson. We spent the majority of our last day trekking all the way to Newark International Airport, where we had a return flight to Los Angles to catch at 2:35 pm. Surely, we had enough time for one last eventful day in New York.

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We all rushed out of our hotel as soon as possible to grab bagels at a local spot, Fratelli’s Bagels, before heading to the train station back to the city. We all grabbed a generous extra amount of bagels to eat throughout the day and to take back to Los Angeles. The train ride took a while but it was fun being around good company, eating delicious bagels in a completely new environment. We only had one goal to accomplish in the city before hitting the airport, which was to get a very essential meal of Korean Barbeque.

When we arrived at Let’s Meat, the KBBQ restaurant we had been looking forward to eating at, they allowed us to leave our luggage in an open space near the front and told us they would look over it. Throughout the meal, the service kept getting better as our table always had meat and appetizers filling our plates as quickly as we could eat. The food tasted great, and it wasn’t served frozen as some KBBQ places serve it, which was a big plus. After only eating bagels up to this point in the day, we made sure to get our money’s worth before hopping back on the metro for Newark International. After eating, we checked the navigation to the airport and we were scheduled to arrive roughly 20-25 minutes before our flight. We weren’t too concerned but we knew that we had to move with urgency.

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The Magic of Sunflower Seeds

By Qianhui Ni

Edited by Natalie Grace Sipula

“Among all the foods in the world, only sunflower seeds can meet the conditions conducive to killing time. People who can snack on sunflower seeds are great and active implementers of leisure.” — Zikai Feng (1934), Essays in Yuan Yuan Tang

If you ask me what my most satisfying online order was last month, without a doubt my answer would be sunflower seeds. I have been a big fan of snacking on sunflower seeds since childhood. However, I hadn’t had them for a while since I moved to LA for my graduate studies. Finding packaged shelled sunflower seeds was a big surprise for me since I had only seen people here in the United States eating unshelled seeds as sides or as an ingredient to season food. As you may expect, I excitedly purchased six bags of sunflower seeds in different flavors. My most enjoyable time of day soon became the half-hour after dinner when I got to lie on the sofa, watch TV shows, and snack on sunflower seeds. 

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Eating sunflower seeds is a fairly simple process–you place one seed between your upper and lower incisors with its tip facing inward. Then, simply squeeze it between your teeth, and you will be able to hear a crisp cracking sound, indicating that the shell is open and what’s between your teeth is the seed inside. This sound is quite relaxing for me because is it clear, crisp, and seems to come from the inside of my own head. I guess it is the reason why eating sunflower seeds is also called “cracking” sunflower seeds. In Chinese, the verb for this action is pronounced as “ke”, which sounds almost identical to the sound when the shell cracks. After you crack the seed open, you can throw away the shell and enjoy the seed. With enough practice, the experienced sunflower seed eater (like me) can complete the above steps in one second without the shell touching their tongue or getting their hands dirty. 

After snacking on sunflower seeds for the whole week, I started wondering about the magic of these little seeds. Zikai Feng, the influential Chinese artist, summarized three advantages of eating sunflower seeds that make it the best activity for leisure and time killing. First, people never get tired of them because their flavor isn’t that strong. Imagine you are eating salty barbecue-flavored chips; you would get bored easily of the strong flavor after a while. Sunflower seeds taste like plant seeds with a very light smell. After being pan-fried, the bluntness caused by the soft textures disappears. The seeds become crispy and stiff with a light taste.

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The second reason is that sunflower seeds cannot provide a sense of satiety. Even after eating the whole bag of them, you will not feel full. They are too small to be a staple food. I find it hard to stop eating them once I start since my stomach never sends my brain a signal of being full.

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