6:30 a.m., I am watching Evil Dead

The roommates and I have a pre-Halloween horror movie watching contest in progress. The winner gets to choose a DVD set for the others to buy. The loser has to wear a costume of everyone else's choosing Saturday night.

The contest ends at midnight Thursday, which means right now is crunch time. Yesterday I watched Nightmare on Elm Street 7 and Cloverfield before work.

Part of the rules are no one is allowed to watch anything but horror movies until the contest ends, which - for me - really takes the joy out of watching. When you watch horror movies back-to-back they all start to feel the same - very predictable.

Plus, for competitive purposes, it's better to watch 90-minute movies than a good two-hour movie. Thus, I'm almost completely through the Elm Street series, and only got around to watching The Shining over the weekend.

Monday night we watched Misery, which I think I might actually like better than The Shining. I also saw Paranormal Activity for the first time, and that's the first new movie to genuinely scare me in quite awhile. The Friday the 13th remake, 30 Days of Night sequel, and this Hong Kong film called Womb Ghosts were all pretty awful, while Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood was surprisingly entertaining.

So far I'm behind in the contest, but I'm taking this afternoon off from work since I worked on a Sunday this month and plan to knock out six movies between 3pm and midnight.