Last year, actually right around New Year’s, I was searching Discord for a nice horror book community. I started checking out the public servers and peeped into Dreadcord, the Discord server attached to r/horror. While it’s very much movie focused and not book focused (still looking for that book community, most of mine are fantasy-focused), I found it a fun place to be and surprising myself, became quite active in there for a time.

In here, I learned about Letterboxd, which is basically Goodreads for movies, and the HORRORx52 yearly challenge. I basically became a horror-focused cinephile out of the blue. Previous to this point, I was always that person who hadn’t seen so many of the “must see” movies, much to the frustration of at least one friend! So suddenly catching up on the most popular and highest rated horror movies, plus some obscure little things, it was super strange. I still haven’t seen Groundhog Day or Back to the Future though, just… haven’t been in the mood, so there.

However, the point of this post is to talk about movie watching challenges. Letterboxd is full of them! Some are focused on a whole year, some are monthly based, while others are fairly open. The world is your proverbial oyster, as they say.

In 2023, I signed up for two annual challenges: HORRORx52, and Honey I Shrunk the Watchlist! Both of which have prompts that you must fit a movie to to come up with your list. The first, of course, is for the horror genre, and I magically managed to complete that one. The second is purely focused on watching the movies you add to your watchlist, which I find super handy because I have a tendency to add movies so I don’t forget about them, and never go in to watch through stuff. While I didn’t complete the challenge, I did watch a few films through it that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, it helps me to watch outside of my usual box, even if the movies are all things I added myself.

I also discovered the Scavenger Hunts, monthly challenges with prompts for each day of the month. These are more intense but still very fun. I think I managed to complete September but not so much the others I signed up for. And the super popular HOOPtober (named for the famed Tobe Hooper, creator of classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre), an October-based challenge with prompts to watch all sorts of horror movies, and really get outside of your comfort zone. I found this one a lot more difficult as it had me watching things that I find a little spoon-intensive, but it was a great community and felt very rewarding. I certainly discovered some greats during it. Still undecided if I’ll join that one this year, we shall see.

I looked through a few of the annual challenges this year, but ultimately settled on the same two. I also started a Birth Year challenge that isn’t time limited and made my own challenge for the fantasy genre, that also isn’t time limited because I made it and I said so. And yes, anybody can join at any time. I haven’t been as heavy on the movie watching this year so I haven’t thus far taken part in any monthly challenges.

Until now that is. For August, I saw one of my Letterboxd friends had joined in the Daily Horror Hunt for August. This is basically a Scavenger Hunt, but horror focused, where the Scavenger Hunts are genre-neutral. Sounds perhaps a little tougher but you must understand, there is a lot of horror movies out there and being released all the time, and horror cinephiles go hard.

August’s prompts were put together by Alicja and if you want to have a look at them, I will just urge you to pop over to Letterboxd because there are 31 of them and that’s not going to embed in a blog post very well. But I had a lot of fun gathering my set of movies for this challenge and while I haven’t started watching yet because I’ve been so busy with all the Blaugust stuff (and the very almost nasty migraine I staved off on Thursday and awful sleep yesterday), I am excited to dive in!

Again, for further details, hop over to my list on Letterboxd! And, of course, my list is subject to change if I find I’m not in the mood for some movie or another but something else fits just as well. This is just what I’m starting with.

Overall, I love these challenges. I don’t force myself to complete them if I’m not feeling up to it, but if I do I feel pretty good about it. And regardless, with all of the prompts, they are a wonderful way to get me watching things I may have been putting off watching for whatever reason and discover some incredible stuff.

But I would love to know, have you watched any of these movies? Any you love? Do you ever take part in movie challenges? Would you?