Before I went to college, I bummed around for a few years as a gas station attendant. I spent my days pumping gas, selling cigarettes and beer to the folks who lived across the street, and learning about the human condition through observation and conversation. Every day I walked past the video store on my way to and from work, and I knew most of the people who worked there. I constantly stopped by to talk about movies and rent giant stacks of VHS titles.
As a compulsive completionist, I would print out lists or filmographies before going to the store and try to watch as many things as I could. Sometimes I had a theme “Oscar Nominees”, a genre “Body Horror”, an actor “Luke Wilson”, or a director “John Carpenter”. Given that this was the early 2000s, it was often difficult to complete an entire filmography or list. I was bound by the limited selection of my local video store.
Flash forward a few years to me in college. Netflix came out with DVD rentals. I dropped my cable subscription and began binging TV series I had never seen. I also began diving deep into the world of Asian horror films. This broadened my ability to watch all the things, but there were still always titles missing from the Netflix library.
In this modern era, watching all of the things has become much easier. With streaming services like Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Plex, Tubi, YouTube, DailyMotion, and the Internet Archive, much more of the world of cinema is on demand. Over the last few years, I have been gradually watching all of the things. Typically, I’ve binged horror film series like Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Puppet Master, Hellraiser, Phantasm, etc.
In summer 2021, I was hospitalized while I was pregnant. I was constantly hooked up to machines for monitoring, so I needed to find something to do to pass the time that didn’t require much effort. I remembered my quest to watch all the things. Even though I had seen them, I went back and rewatched all of the Return of the Living Dead and The Purge films. Then I went down the rabbit hole of all of the Children of the Corn movies. This hobby kept me going throughout my pregnancy when I was essentially on bed rest.
With a baby at home and a need for some kind of creative outlet, I decided to take on a bigger quest and keep my writing skills sharp. This is a challenge much larger than a few films in a series. I am going deep into the world of actors and directors that have always fascinated me. My better half is also indulging me and joins me on this quest when he’s not working. Together, we discuss movies, rank them, and have a whole lot of fun even when the movies are bad. I hope you enjoy reading about my quest to watch all the things.
