Today marks the beginning of Halloween weekend, a time of year when students freely engage in a variety of indulgent activities. So while you're busy rocking out at the Lifehouse show and enjoying other sinful pleasures at Freakfeast this weekend, remember you don't have to commit every sin yourself. Save time to take in one of these sinfully scary movies.'
LUST
Phantom of the Opera""
In addition to being a fantastic musical, ""The Phantom of the Opera"" is actually one sinful movie. Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum), a gifted theater performer in 19th century France, is under the power of the mysterious Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler) until her childhood sweetheart, Raoul (Patrick Wilson), suddenly appears. The love triangle escalates to a deadly struggle for Christine's heart. This is not a typical story of lust, and the subtlety of ""The Phantom of the Opera"" combines both love and lust to make an excellent film.
- Erin Schmidtke
ANGER/WRATH
""28 Days Later"" & ""28 Weeks Later""
Danny Boyle's reinvention of zombie culture is the best take on zombies and modern culture to date. His films ""28 Days Later"" and ""28 Weeks Later"" brought back a tired and repetitive genre that has been on the skids recently. Boyle's new twist on the zombie genre is simple. What if the zombies were not just listless killers? What if they were infected by this strange source of uncontrollable anger or wrath?
By definition, wrath is an outburst of violent anger, and this is exactly what the zombies (the ""infected"") exhibit in both the apocalyptic madness of ""28 Days Later"" and its incredibly satisfying sequel, ""28 Weeks Later."" Comparatively, the infected are much stronger and faster than their predecessors, not to mention a lot angrier and more determined to feed on flesh.
- Anthony Cefali
ENVY
""Mean Girls""
""Mean Girls"" begins when new girl Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) gets swept up into the glamorous lives of the Plastics, the clique of girls that dominate her high school's social scene. Cady initially befriends these girls as a means of taking them down from the inside out but soon finds herself wanting to become the next member of the Plastics. ""Mean Girls"" is essentially about the brutal life of a high school girl: a life filled with rumors, deceit and, most importantly, envy.
""Mean Girls"" is a must-see for anyone who went to high school in the last 100 years or so. Everyone has known a Plastic, and whether or not you wanted to be one, the movie is a guaranteed good time.
- Meg Anderson
GLUTTONY
""Super Size Me""
As the golden arches loom ominously, the smell of old grease and fried hamburgers surrounds you, drawing you against your will up to the grimy counter where the fluorescent lights cast an eerie glow as the monster behind the register growls, ""Would you like to supersize that?"" Documenting the horrific effects of eating only McDonald's for 30 days, Morgan Spurlock's ""Super Size Me"" offers a different way to scare your pants off this Halloween. Watching Spurlock painfully transform from a healthy, fit man into an emotional and physical wreck within the span of a month is frightening enough to make you think again about eating that 3 a.m. Big Mac.
- Kate Manegold
SLOTH
""Office Space""
Few fears can twitch the nerves, chill the veins and swirl the very bowels of human terror like a case of the Mondays.
""Office Space"" - that white-collar, horror masterpiece - is the nightmarish tale of one man's dreadful discovery of another man's sloth.
Milton Waddams could have been anyone. He fancied birthday cake, took pleasure in mumbling and treasured his red stapler like a final Horcrux.
Then, one day, Milton began to suspect something awful was happening outside his claustrophobic cubicle. His coworker, Peter Gibbons, was... changing. Lately, Peter had been lacking ambition, preferred Tetris to paperwork and sauntered about with a plastered grin reserved for beauty queens. Could Peter be a zombie as well?
When a psychiatrist dies attempting to access Peter's brain, Milton is mysterious relocated to the lonely, office basement. Coincidence?
Can Milton survive Peter's lukewarm attitude, or be driven to pyrotechnical insanity by the mundane Mondays?
- Ryan Hebel
GREED
""Wall Street""
Oliver Stone's ""Wall Street"" does more than praise the seven deadly sins; it makes them virtues. ""Greed,"" as slimy 1980s stock mogul Gordon Gekko explains, ""for lack of a better word, is good.""
""Wall Street"" explains, through the eyes of a naive trader played by Charlie Sheen, that American business runs on greed and competitiveness, traits embodied by Michael Douglas' Gekko. It's through these ""sins"" that businesses thrive and prosper. Although the film never debates the benefits of that greed, it questions whether the average person has the stomach to do what it takes to secure that obscene wealth.
Although it may eventually be deadly, greed has never felt so good.
- Brad Boron
VANITY/PRIDE
""The Prestige""
In ""The Prestige,"" Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale's characters both fall prey to the deadly sin of vanity, as what begins as revenge for a trick gone wrong spirals into a magical arms race. Both men are stage magicians who seek glory. When Bale creates a new trick, one that no one can discover the secret behind, Jackman, who blames the other magician for his wife's death, is driven to find out his method and overtake his reputation. He goes to extreme lengths to recreate the trick and become the greatest magician ever. This leads him into a shaky realm of mad science and murder, twisting him and causing him to suspend his morals in favor of his fame.
- Carissa Carroll
Most sinful film that isn't ""Se7en""
""The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover""
Peter Greenaway's film, ""The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,"" revolves around restaurant owner/criminal Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), his wife Georgina (Helen Mirren) and a fellow patron with whom she begins an affair. When her husband finds out, the consequences are shocking. The film deftly incorporates all the deadly sins, with murder and cannibalism to boot. While the film isn't for every taste (so to speak), it's worth a look for its gorgeous sets and cinematography.
- Kate Marcus
