September '25
Monthly design, film, and music roundup for September 2025.
Hello! I’m late writing this newsletter, usually I start these a week in advance so I have time to slack off. But I’m here just in time and that’s what matters. We’re approaching the best month of the year so I’m preparing to clear my schedule for the month and just focus on all things spooky and Halloween…. it’s best for me to start thinking of costume ideas now so I’m not trying to pull it together last minute, so we’ll see. I have a few things in mind!
DESIGN
Not a ton of design work to share this month as this half of the year has been pretty light on freelance work. The breathing room and rest period has been very much needed. A very special and fun project that landed in my inbox a month ago was designing merchandise for A Visit From Portlandia, a comedy show by Fred Armisen & Carrie Brownstein highlighting memories of Portlandia through storytelling, music, videos, and conversations between the two. Portlandia is a show that has been with me since the beginning of high school, it was very pivotal for me and a lot of core memories are tied with watching and rewatching the seasons through the years. I feel like I’m constantly referencing moments and jokes from the show, so getting to work with Fred & Carrie directly on this has been a dream and another full circle moment.
We ended up creating a 16x20 show poster for the two Wisconsin dates, and a “tour” t-shirt exclusive to Wisconsin. The designs themselves reference nothing directly from the show, which at first seemed like a challenge, but ultimately gave way for me to just do my thing and treat the event as if it were just a music concert. Given Fred & Carrie’s background in music, their desire to have that reflected in the final designs made this project feel very singular in their array of merchandise available for the show. I’m very pleased with how everything came out, it feels very authentic to my design voice so I’m stoked Fred & Carrie let me be myself. The t-shirts are printed on heavyweight Comfort Colors, with a huge front and back print emulating a vintage band tee from the 80s or 90s (the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland)...
If there’s leftover stock from the two shows, it will most likely go up on a webstore. So if you weren’t able to make the shows, keep an eye out for merch!
MOVIES
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) dir. Tobe Hooper ☆☆☆½
The first Texas Chainsaw is a classic to me although controversial among others?? Feels like I know a lot of people who absolutely hate it. While I completely understand; it’s overwhelming, loud, grimy grotesque…. it’s such a wild ride and completely unhinged. This was my first time seeing the second movie, and I had a fun time! It’s very similar to the first one, so if you hated the first one I can’t see you suddenly loving the second one, unless you want to see Dennis Hopper play an unhinged cop. Leatherface and his family are back again, this time targeting a DJ at a late night radio station. The rotten and isolated setting of the first movie is a memorable classic, but something about the locations in this one are so cool… the late night radio station with glowing lights, and the hidden liar of the cannibalistic family located in an abandoned amusement park decorated with multi colored lights, human bones, and carnival remnants.
Dangerous Animals (2025) dir. Sean Byrne ☆☆☆
A serial killer kidnaps tourists who come onto his boat and feeds them to sharks. Ever since seeing the poster with the tagline “You’re safer in the water”, I had to see this as soon as it was streaming on Shudder. Sean Byrne also made another movie I watched recently called The Loved Ones, which was crazy, so I knew I was in for something wild. The acting is pretty bad but the story was unique enough for me to enjoy, it’s rare that we get a good shark movie!
Pin (1988) dir. Sandor Stern ☆☆☆☆
Pin came up on a list of underrated weird movies that nobody seems to talk about it, and I finally got to watch it this month since I found an upload on Internet Archive. Pin is so weird… genuinely unnerving nightmare fuel, a mix of body horror and family drama. Long lost Goosebumps episode. When Leon and Ursula’s parents tragically die in a car accident, Leon becomes attached to the anatomical medical dummy left behind in his father’s doctor’s office. Their father was previously an aspiring ventriloquist, so he would use his talent to make Pin talk to the children. The movie was direct to video in the 80s so I’m not surprised I haven’t heard much about this, as it’s also never been on any streaming services. If you end up watching this please let me know, nobody I know has seen this one so I have nobody to talk about it with ha…
Apostle (2018) dir. Gareth Evans ☆☆☆☆½
Set in 1905, a man travels to a remote island in search for his missing sister who was kidnapped by a religious cult. I don’t gravitate towards folk horror or period piece horror, but Apostle had one of the highest ratings for a Netflix original horror movie. I really liked this movie and was surprised it received such mixed reviews, with many calling it boring or too slow…. I genuinely found it enthralling and visually stunning, I also loved Dan Stevens in The Guest so I was curious to see him here, and he was great. Some of the kill/torture scenes reminded me of the eeriness of Silent Hill. Not for everyone, but I love a good mystery and found this one to be pretty surprising!
Train to Busan (2016) dir. Yeon Sang-ho ☆☆☆☆☆
Might be the saddest horror movie I’ve ever seen. A long awaited watch and favorite of many, Train to Busan is a zombie movie about a virus spreading through Korea, trapping passengers on a train to Busan and forcing them into survival mode. We follow the story of a dad and his young daughter on the way to see her mom, and the journey is devastating. It’s a tense and frantic film, and even if you’re not usually a fan of zombie movies, this one is a cult favorite and feels scary and fresh.
Body Melt (1993) dir. Philip Brophy ☆☆☆
There’s no gif or image I can use that would be appropriate for this newsletter honestly…. as you can imagine with a movie title like this. It certainly lives up to it’s name! In the same vein as Brain Damage, From Beyond, and The Stuff, Body Melt is an overlooked 90s B-movie about the residents of a small town being used unknowingly as test experiments for a new body drug that causes melting skin and body decomposition. It’s yucky, it’s gooey, it’s unpredictable…. but the practical effects are so disgusting it’s impressive and fun. Brophy is also a sound designer and member of the Australian band Tsk Tsk Tsk, who composed the abrasive electronic score of the movie.
Caveat (2020) dir. Damian McCarthy ☆☆☆
A man suffering from partial memory loss accepts a job looking after a psychologically troubled woman in an abandoned house on a remote island. Upon arriving on the island and entering the house, he learns he must be chained in a harness that restricts him from accessing certain parts of the house. There’s also a creepy but mostly cute (taxidermedied?) rabbit that plays drums whenever danger is near. Although not my favorite watch of the month, it’s super spooky and definitely one of the scariest. There are some moments in this…. my skin was crawling… it’s the perfect haunted house movie if you want to feel claustrophobic and paranoid. Damian McCarthy also directed another haunted house film recently called Oddity, which was also super spooky!
The Exorcist III (1990) dir. Damian McCarthy ☆☆☆☆½
Please don’t look up anything about this movie and just watch it with no context besides knowing it’s part of the Exorcist series. I could’ve included a gif of one of the most iconic scenes in a horror movie ever, because it’s in this film, but I will not be sharing spoilers here!!!!! Experience it for yourself! I loved this Exorcist installment, maybe even more than the first one although that one is still hard to beat. The film follows a character from the original film who’s investigating demonic murders in Georgetown that have similar characteristics to the Gemini Killer, a deceased serial killer. We get the craziest monologue from Brad Dourif in this.
MUSIC
I’m light on music this month…. I’m still only listening to MCR.
Albums I listened to this month….
Cutthroat — Shame
Testpattern — Evelyne/Masao
Diamond Eyes — Deftones
INSPO
I’m currently writing a new Computer Love segment to send out very soon, so I’ll save most of my recent favorites for that! Keep an eye out… until then, here are some things I bookmarked recently.
So long and goodnight! Until next month :)
