A Quiet Place

(2018, 2020, 2024)

The third movie in the Quiet Place universe, A Quiet Place: Day One, began streaming on Paramount+ at the end of summer, which meant I got to watch all three for the first time this year. I’m a latecomer to the party—if too many people start to tell me I must see something, suddenly it’s homework and I’m not doing it—but I’m a total convert. The people were right, it’s really really good. And especially terrifying as a new parent—imagine your lives depended on your toddler being quiet. 

The first movie in the series has filming locations all over Upstate. Without giving spoilers, something terrible happens on a prominently displayed bridge (it’s seen in the first two movies). That’s the Springtown Bridge a.k.a. Wallkill Valley Rail Trail bridge, just off Springtown Road in New Paltz, NY. 

You may also recognize exterior scenes filmed in Little Falls, Pawling and Beacon. 

Things Heard & Seen

(2021)

This movie is so relevant to this area, it’s spooky. A Manhattan couple moves to a beautiful historic hamlet in the Hudson Valley (sound familiar?) and horror ensues. It takes place in the 1980s and is based on a novel by an author who made the same move in the ’90s but it was released on Netflix during the pandemic, so I have to believe they were picking up on a trend and serving a bit of classic new-house horror perfect for the wave of people who were doing the same thing in real life. 

It’s fun to watch because it has so many recognizable filming locations. If you’re in Millerton, you may recognize the farmhouse the couple moves into as a home on Skunks Misery Road. The historical society that Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) visits to learn more about her new home’s history is noticeably the Red Church in Tivoli. The fictional Saginaw College where her husband George (James Norton) starts his new job as a college professor is the Holy Cross Monastery in West Park. 

You’ll also recognize Kaaterskill Falls and the Red Hook Public Library (masked as the Chosen Public Library), and probably more—these guys really got around.

Sleepaway Camp

(1983)

This summer camp slasher is such a cult classic amongst horror movie aficionados at this point, I’m more shocked when people don’t recognize Angela’s screaming face than I ever was at the ending.

But what I didn’t know until recently was that it was filmed at the site of the former Camp Algonquin in Argyle, NY where filmmaker Robert Hiltzik attended camp as a child. The camp where quiet Angela (Felissa Rose) and her boisterous cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) encountered murder and misfortune was located on the eastern side of Summit Lake. The lake is, of course, still there, though last we heard, the camp is no longer. 

An important film in LGBTQ+ horror history, it doesn’t exactly serve as an anthem—it gets as much wrong as it does right, but horror scholars will forgive its blind spots and celebrate it for pushing boundaries in the early ’80s.