Countdown to Halloween: Special anniversary edition

I’ll be honest with you — Needful Things is not a scary movie.

Sure, it’s based on a Stephen King story about the Devil himself coming to a small New England town, offering people what they want and exacting a little murder and mayhem as the price of doing business. There are some “Boo!” type jumps here and there, and Max von Sydow delivers a cheeky performance as an appropriately devil-may-care Satan. For the most part, though, there isn’t much scare there.

But I will always have a soft and treasured spot in my heart for this film because it was the first movie I went to see with my then-future wife. Today is our 16th wedding anniversary, and those years together have been anything but a horror movie.