Leaves are falling, pies are baking, and kids will soon be trick o'treating. With Halloween right around the corner, Champaign Central High School is buzzing with fall festivity, and we picked one spooky movie that should be on your autumn watchlist.

The autopsy of Jane Doe, directed by André Øvredal, is a 2016 horror film following the story of a father, a son, and a mysterious, unidentified corpse. The father-son duo work at their family owned morgue and crematorium where they are told to investigate the cause of death and identity of Jane Doe. After uncovering seemingly impossible evidence on and in the body, the two risk their lives to solve her mystery. Part of the chill sent down your spine is due to the movie coming to a full circle ending, the knowledge that their story hasn't ended, and the insane amount of questions left unresolved. Spoilers ahead.

Eventually coming to a full circle ending, the film leaves many questions unanswered. We learn why Jane Doe died and what each character values most, but we aren't given any clues as to what may happen to the remaining characters in the future. Conflict between the father and son is never resolved and what happens to Doe is left unclear, except that a new character drives her body to another morgue, where we hear the grave bell on her foot ring, signaling that her body -and maybe spirit- are re-animated.

The movie consists of very little cheap horror, and the recurring themes certainly added to it´s fear factor. There was a degree of psychological fear too, which amplified the curiosity as to what would happen next. Starring Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch, the Autopsy of Jane Doe is the perfect first horror movie to watch if you're just starting out, as it's a great watch, but only slightly disturbing and not intensely scary. The movie was ranked 6.8 stars out of 10 on IMBD, while we both gave it 4/10 stars, with a low fear factor but highly advanced visuals.

This report contains spoilers for the 2021 thriller, "Halloween Kills." Proceed at your own risk.

The movie Halloween Kills is the latest of a 12 part movie series with the main character being Michael Myers played by James Jude Courtney. The movie includes gory kills, terrifying jump scares, and suspension that will make your skin crawl. Although Rotten Tomatoes rated this movie 39%, audiences gave it a 68%. The Halloween franchise started in 1978, with the 12th movie coming out October 15th, 2021. Another movie called Halloween Ends is already in the works and is set to premiere on October 14th, 2022.

Halloween Kills is about a serial killer named Michael Myers, who apparently can't be killed by brutal force. He has proven this by surviving burning houses, being shot by a gun, and being beaten. The movie is about Michael Myers going on another killing spree with a total body count of 34 kills, all taking place in the small town of Haddonfield Illinois. In previous movies, a young babysitter named Laurie Strodes, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, survived multiple of his attacks and wants to put him 6 feet under.

The Halloween 2018 movie ends with Jamie Lee Curtis burning Michael Myers alive, only for him to survive. He comes out of the burning house and kills all the first responders. The word gets out to the town and Micheal goes on another killing spree. Throughout all the Halloween movies, nobody really knows why Michael kills. Maybe it could be an obsession or maybe he was possessed.

Halloween Kills contains characters who survived Michael in the earlier movies and they want revenge, but can’t exactly get it. They don’t know how to kill him and try various methods to put an end to his bloodthirsty ways, but it doesn’t work and they end up falling to Michael.

In conclusion, nobody knows how to kill Michael Myers. He is inhuman and gets stronger after each kill. At the end of the movie, everyone thinks he's dead after brutally beating and shooting him, but he stands up and kills them all. He shows his dominance as he walks into the shadows, setting up a cliffhanger for the next movie.

What did you think of the movie? Was it a hit or a flop? Let us know on our Instagram page or email us at TheChampaignCentralChronicle@gmail.com

October 31st 1996

I was sitting in my room. In my family, we weren’t allowed to celebrate Halloween because my mom said it was “unsafe”. It was so stupid, all my friends had to sneak me candy every year.

“Josie, come down! Dinners ready.” My mom screams. I hated family dinners, she would do it just to make me mad I just knew it. I walk down the stairs and see my mom's “signature” meal, baked mac and cheese. She could not cook for the life of her.

“Thank you for dinner Mom, I’m going to go do homework now.” I say. She nods and I walk away. I look outside, the two lights of my friend Diana’s car shine through my window. I get into costume and slip out my window.

“I can’t believe this is your first time celebrating.” she says. I laugh and nod. We headed to go get Sarah and then we were ready. We were all witches. After a good 15 minutes of us planning on what we were going to do once we got to the party, we get to her house.

“Oh my gosh this is so exciting.” Sarah says. “Do you have any idea on why you can never celebrate?”

“Something to do with her past and like I don’t know she said something about demons and witches coming together to get me.”

“That's uh, ironic considering we are all dressed as witches.” Diana says. I laugh as Sarah and I realize we are at the party. Breathe Josie breathe. We walk in and everyone is either dressed as something scary or something just boring.

After hours of dancing, screaming and seeing a lot of couples kissing each other, 10:00 had hit.

“Hey Diana I think we should leave soon, my mom has probably found out by now.” I say. She nods and we go find Sarah.

“Sarah, come on we’re leaving.” Diana says. We start heading towards the door when I start to feel this weird feeling in my stomach. Josieeee we are comingggg. I start to shake, I fall to the ground and I look up and Sarah and Diana aren’t there.

“Josie, where did you go?” Diana says, I turn around and she makes a weird face.

“God Josie what happened to you?” Sarah says, I start to stand, except... I’m not controlling my body.

“Guys you need to leave, I’m not sure what's happening to me but you guys need to be safe.” I say, those were the last words I said all night. As they run away I feel something take over my body. Hello Josie, I’m Allison, I’m what stupid people call a demon but I’m really not. I am a witch. Now I’m here because you let me out of that horrible place called witch hell. Now I’m going to use your body all night for the next 12 hours, unless you can stop me… all of a sudden I start running in the same direction that Diana and Sarah ran in. We can’t go this way, Diana and Sarah. I think. Well now I wanna go this way more. We started sprinting, I probably looked crazy.

“Josie? What are you doing here? What happened to you?”

“Josie isn’t here right now…”

“Sarah, run. Try and find someone.” Diana said. Sarah ran and started screaming.

“Ok listen not Josie, I don’t know what you did with my best friend but I need you to listen. She is a good person and you need to leave her alone-”

As she was speaking, Allison grabbed Diana by her shirt and started to choke her. Stop, stop! No! No! Allison grabs Diana and we start flying, Allison put her down. Don’t kill her, kill me.

“Josie!!” I hear, I look down and it’s my mom. I see her take a big breath. Then, all of a sudden, she comes flying up. Can you see why I didn’t want you to celebrate Halloween? She started screaming this weird chant in what seemed like a foreign language, and all of a sudden I felt Allison start to leave me. I cannot believe you went soft after all these years. Oh give me a break, you just tried to kill our own daughter. I couldn’t believe it, Allison was my… mother? Before we hit the ground my mom caught Diana and I, I made sure she was okay and from that halloween on I stayed inside.

Linda rose to her feet and walked up the hallway to her bedroom. When she opened the door to the enormous chamber, her eyes immediately caught the movement of a spider in a corner near her bed. Her stomach dropped and her heart began to race upon seeing the thing. It was big and it's body was black, unlike the garden spiders which are often brown or gray and have some patterning. It had a menacing body shape and long spindly legs which had strips of white running horizontally. She yelped for her mother who came in presently.

“What is it?” Linda's mother asked

“Spider. Can you kill it?” replied Linda

“I don't want to kill. You kill it.”

“Please? I am not killing it.”

“Fine. You have to kill the next one though.”

Linda's mother walked forward with a tissue in hand. When she came close to it, however, Linda turned off the lights quickly and screamed, turning them back on just as fast. She didn't know what had come over her. Why had she turned off the lights just when her mother needed them to see the spider? The spider at this point, had got the idea and scampered away under the bed.

Linda's mother turned to her “Why did you do that?"

“I don't know”

“Ok, well you’re the one that has to sleep there.” she said, and left the room.

The idea of the spider didn't really bother Linda. In fact, she mostly forgot about it, until that night.

Linda was putting on her pajamas and exited the room to go wash her face and brush her teeth. When she came back into the room, she saw the spider again, near her bed, where it was the first time. And again, Linda called for her mother.

“Mom! The spider's back!”

“Okay, then kill it.”

Her mother came into the room with a boot, and walked away after handing it to Linda. She got up all her courage, walked straight to the spider, and smashed it. Its body lay there, crippled on the wall. It's legs bent and it's pale intestines were in stark contrast to it's black exoskeleton. Neglecting to clean it up, Linda put down the boot and fell asleep.

She turned over and over in her sleep, finally waking facing the spider corpse. In the dim light, she squinted, peering over at what seemed to be moving now. Another spider, identical to the first, was pulling and tugging at the body of the dead one. It lifted it onto it's back and scuttled up the wall, across the ceiling, and out the door. Linda lay shocked and her heart stopped cold. Could spider’s possibly be intelligent enough to form relationships with each other? Could there possibly be an astute colony of spiders hiding behind the wall? Her mind full of such thoughts, Linda rolled over and tried to fall asleep, but she dreamed only of the spiders and what they were doing.

Watching the spiders, Linda realized, in her dream, that she was a spider. She was in fact following the spider she had just seen carrying it's dead friend out of her room. She followed them all the way down to the basement and into a hole in the wall. When she entered, there was a huge pocket carved out of the insulation filled with spiders. When they saw their dead companion, they began to whisper.

“Who killed him? Who killed him? Did you bring the killer? Who killed him?”

“The killer is here!” screamed the spider who was carrying the dead one. It pointed at Linda while putting down the body of the other spider.

The other spiders whipped around, each of their eight eyes glaring at her. “You killed him. You took his life. We can't fight you as a human, but now you're the same as us!” They clicked their mouthparts and hissed.

Linda hadn't known they knew she was a spider, but once she realized, she tried to run. The rest of the spiders lunged at her and began pulling her back, stopping her from escaping. They tore her legs off so she was just a head and torso. Then they bit away her exoskeleton and pulled out her intestines, replacing them with those of the spider she had killed. They cut off her head and replaced it with the other spider's head and they shoved the legs they had just ripped off, back on her body. The colony took their silk and began stitching everything back together.

The Frankenstein's monster spider twitched once and Linda woke up, back in her own body and covered in cold sweat. She looked down, but it wasn't sweat, it was blood. The syrupy substance coated her bed and pillow. The blood came from her hands which were now scarred and stitched at each knuckle, as if they had been torn off and sewn back on.

A few years ago I was at the Virginia Theater. Now to really encompass the story, you have to know what the theater looks like. It’s a pretty old building with a statue of Roger Ebert outside giving a thumbs up to passers-by. If you walk by late at night, the statue looks like a real person. Creepy right? Well the inside is worse. They’ve renovated it multiple times and the ceiling looks like it could come out of one of those summoning rituals with the amount of patterns surrounding a big white hole. The stage is painted black and when you are in there alone, all the empty seats make it feel abandoned. But this little story starts when all those seats were full.

All of what I have described to you has been the visible part of the Virginia. Downstairs in the basement is where all the dressing rooms are. There are two big ones and I am going to talk to you about the second. You see, the second dressing room has brown carpeting, a couch, and a mini-fridge along with the rest of what you’d expect a dressing room to hold. Normally you would want this room except it has another feature. It expresses a side room (“never a good thing to have”.) This little door leads to a dark room with pipes that honestly looks like a murder room if you know what I mean.

Now one day, I hurt my ankle and this is my dressing room, so I go there to sit on the couch and rest for a bit. While I’m sitting there, the lights go out and this little side door opens and there is this blinking red light. Then the lights turn back on and there is no red light. So I am like “that’s freaky” and continue sitting there. The lights go out again and that red light turns on again. At which point I get up, the lights turn back on and I leave the room. When I walk out I find that someone in that time period has hit their head and it started to bleed. They were rushed to the hospital where they had to get stitches. So whatever you do, do not go to the Virginia and go downstairs into the second dressing room alone.