This past week was my 7th entry in my tournament series. You can find all of my future tournaments as they are happening over on my Instagram page. Since the 6th one in September (the Tim Burton one) I have left it to all of you to decide the winners of each matchup. That way, I don’t have to hear how I am an idiot for my winner choices (ha). It is all your faults now if things go sideways, even if things are more fun that way.

For this 7th tournament, I went with the obvious theme, Horror Movies. It’s October. Sometimes the themes pick themselves. How the 16 films were seeded this time was through Rotton Tomato scores. We are dealing with a 87 year timespan between Dracula and Hereditary, so box office number are pointless due to inflation. So, what does the bracket look like this time.

A couple things stand out when you first look at the matchups. Get Out is not in a safe spot as the top seed this time, and the winner of the whole thing could come out of the 2 vs 15 matchup. So enough of the preamble. Let’s take a look at how things shook out.

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First Round

(Winners in BOLD)

¹ Get Out vs. ¹⁶ The Exorcist

⁸ Alien vs. ⁹ Dawn of the Dead (1978)

⁵ Dracula vs. ¹² The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

⁴ Rosemary’s Baby vs. ¹³ The Blair Witch Project

⁶ Frankenstein vs ¹¹ An American Werewolf in London

³ Halloween (1978) vs ¹⁴ The Thing

⁷ The Fly vs ¹⁰ Hereditary

² Psycho vs ¹⁵ The Shining

Eventful first round. The two most recent films on the bracket are bounced in matchups that weren’t even close. We also lose the oldest two films, as the classic Universal monsters are apparently not loved as much as they used to be by all of you. Biggest blowout was Exorcist upsetting Get Out by 10 votes, and the closest matchups were American Werewolf in London over Frankenstein and The Shining over Psycho. Both of those matchups were only decided by a 2 vote difference. In that Psycho/Shining matchup, the deciding factor was Shining getting 7 of the last 9 votes to come back from a big deficit.

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Quarterfinals

¹⁶ The Exorcist vs. ⁸ Alien

¹² The Texas Chainsaw Massacre vs. ⁴ Rosemary’s Baby

¹¹ An American Werewolf in London vs. ³ Halloween (1978)

⁷ The Fly vs. ¹⁵ The Shining

Round almost was a complete runaway. Chainsaw won by 7, Shining won by 9, and Halloween won by 13. It was the 4th matchup that was the great one. Neither led by more than 3, and as soon as one took a lead, the other would make a run to tie. This match was locked up until the final 15 minutes of the round. That was when Alien’s winning vote came in. Exorcist ran out of time to respond one last time in the round.

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Semifinals

⁸ Alien vs. ¹² The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

³ Halloween vs. ¹⁵ The Shining

Both matchups opened up to quick 4-0 leads for Chainsaw and Halloween. However, only Halloween kept it’s lead until the end, finishing with a 6 vote win. In the other matchup though, Alien made it’s comeback, and it was tied halfway though the round. For the second half, both traded leads until the round ended in a tie. Die to that, I broke the tie in my first vote in a tournament since they became “everyone votes” tournaments. Moving on to face Myers are the Xenomorphs. This is the only round so far that had all the higher seeds winning their matchups, so that is something.

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Finals

⁸ Alien vs. ³ Halloween

Alien took a rare early lead and held it for quite a while. However, 8 straight votes for Halloween changed the match and Alien couldn’t catch up to The Shape. Halloween is the Champ!

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Going in to this tournament, I had a feeling it was going to end with Halloween beating Exorcist. I got half of the finals correct at least. This tournament was fun, but if we know anything about horror movies, there is always a sequel on the horizon. That is no different here. Next year at this time will be the Horror Movie Tournament 2. The competing films in that one will only be horror sequels, so it should be a little more interesting. The number of good sequels is rather small in that genre. Our next tournament here will be in December, and it the theme will be 1993. That year is a year I will argue is one of the best years in film. The bracket is loaded, and it will be up to you to not let me down by eliminating my favorite movie, which will be the top seed.