Musical interval used to convey sadness / TUE 10-31-23 / 2011 dark-comedy slasher film that takes place during a family reunion / Upper Manhattan neighborhood also known as El Barrio / Catchy-yet-quirky music genre / 2018 slasher film set at a remote lake house

Constructor: Kathy Lowden and Erik Piepenburg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (**for a Tuesday**) 

THEME: horror films — I think maybe, collectively, they're supposed to be telling some kind of story, or issuing some kind of warning (???), but basically it's just a bunch of horror films:

Theme answers:

• HALLOWEEN (17A: Horror film franchise named after a holiday)
• HE'S OUT THERE (24A: 2018 slasher film set at a remote lake house)
• SCREAM (34A: Horror franchise with the antagonist Ghostface)
• GET OUT (41A: 2017 horror film that won Best Original Screenplay)
• DON'T LOOK NOW (47A: 1973 horror film starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland)
• YOU'RE NEXT (60A: 2011 dark-comedy slasher film that takes place during a family reunion)

Word of the Day: MINOR THIRD (30D: Musical interval used to convey sadness) —

In classical music, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions (see Interval number for more details), and the major third [...] is a third spanning four semitones. Along with the minor third, the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the larger of the two: the major third spans four semitones; the minor third, three. [...] The minor third is commonly used to express sadness in music, and research shows that this mirrors its use in speech, as a tone similar to a minor third is produced during sad speech. (wikipedia)

• • •

Coincidentally, I watched a horror movie last night. It was called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006), and actually it was more meta-horror than real horror—a horror movie posing as a documentary about horror movies, wherein a film crew follows a Michael Myers / Freddie Kruger wannabe around as he prepares for a big night of slashing. It was clever and kinda funny and not at all horrifying. It featured direct references to HALLOWEEN and clearly owed a lot to SCREAM's knowing use of horror movie conventions. Anyway, horror films were on my mind. And then I solved this puzzle, and ... here are some more of them. I don't really get the concept here, beyond merely listing horror films. I guess if I squint and am generous, I can see the titles, collectively and sequentially, as a kind of spooky story, especially those last two ("Don't look now ... you're next!"). Weirdly, SCREAM kind of interrupts the flow, as the other titles (following HALLOWEEN) are all complete sentences and/or commands. Maybe SCREAM is a sound effect. I don't know. I also don't know what the hell HE'S OUT THERE and YOU'RE NEXT are. Literally the first I'm hearing of them, right now, right this second. YOU'RE NEXT has a "cult following" (acc. to wikipedia). It made money and got reasonable reviews. But it's not in the league of these other movies, fame-wise or any-wise ... except for HE'S OUT THERE. YOU'RE NEXT looks like HALLOWEEN next to HE'S OUT THERE. I see that HE'S OUT THERE ... came out. I recognize none of the names associated with it. There's no box office information on its wikipedia page. The shoehorning of this obscurity into a theme with such otherwise well-established horror movies is jarring. Bizarre. 

Also, great as DON'T LOOK NOW is, it feels like an outlier in this set. Not part of the modern horror-verse the way these other films are. It's generally described as a thriller. It's set in Venice. There's a serial killer subplot, but it's mainly a film about profound grief (with one very famous sex scene thrown in for good measure). In so many ways, this movie is not like the others. But then I love it so much that I don't mind its standing out a bit. It's the mere listiness of the theme, and the dubious fame of two of the themers, that are the real problem here. I thought last Tuesday's Halloween-themed puzzle was the stronger effort.

Three OUTs is a lot of OUTs. I'll give you two of those OUTs because they're actually in the titles of your theme answers, but you cannot have any more OUTs. ASKS OUT? Bzzzt! No. Violation. Also a violation? A lot of the fill in this grid. There's just no reason for stuff like ACHT and NRA and ANAL in those relatively undemanding corners. Hey, wanna see a trick? Watch me make an NRA disappear!

And holy cow, AMAH!?!!? (51A: Asian nursemaid). There's a blast from the past. Crosswordese of the highest order. Hasn't appeared in the NYTXW in four years. I see AMAH brought fellow old-timer ELOI along as a date, nice. Then there's ATS and ATAN ... in addition to being gunky, these answers conspicuously duplicate "AT." I still don't believe ALT POP is a thing (Indie Pop yes, ALT POP meh) (33D: Catchy-yet-quirky music genre). The fill really suffered all over today. The longer Downs are at least interesting. I found both of them kinda hard. Didn't know EAST HARLEM was a discrete place (distinct from, say, other parts of Harlem) (10D: Upper Manhattan neighborhood also known as El Barrio) and my knowledge of music theory is limited, so MINOR THIRD, while a term I've heard, didn't come quickly (30D: Musical interval used to convey sadness). I wanted MINOR CHORD, I think. But my ignorance doesn't matter here—what matters is that those longer answers are unusual and interesting, and they give the grid a much-needed boost.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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