Horror

Started by TenseAndSober, April 22, 2003, 05:01:56 PM

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polkablues

Cooties


Boilerplate horror comedy. A good cast, and some funny jokes, but it doesn't take itself seriously enough to demand any investment in the characters or story. Shot with a complete absence of style, and lit like a sitcom.
C
My house, my rules, my coffee

modage



Quote from: BB on October 01, 2015, 05:18:00 PM
Dude, The Vanishing (1988 version, please) is sooo, soooo, so0o0o0o0o, SOOOOOOOOOOO, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (so) good.

I have heard this for years and finally got around to watching this last night but was pretty disappointed. It's not really a horror film, as its goal isn't really to scare you, it's more of a dual character study of two men driven by obsession.

HUGE SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE AND THE ENDING FOLLOW
I actually thought the movie was pretty great up until the kidnapping. Every time they leave each others sight I'm thinking "this is it, she's not coming back" and every time she comes back it's a huge sigh of relief. When he takes the Polaroid you can kinda imagine him going on this massive hunt for her, putting together the clues, etc. and maybe that would be a more conventional film but it might've been more satisfying. Instead the film takes the left turn of switching to the killer's POV and showing us his daily routine, the banality of evil. He's a family man, he's extremely careful and meticulous. He chooses her for no reason other than she got into his car alone. We're given no reason as to why he would want to torture the husband by sending him postcards other than for the thrill of doing so. And I understand that the 'not knowing' is supposed to be worse than just knowing that she's dead but the man's impotence in the situation, not to seek revenge, to submit to taking fucking sleeping pills and being murdered himself is just fucking stupid. In horror movies it's usually the stupid characters who get what's coming to them, but rarely are they the central characters. It's cool that Kill Bill: Vol. 2 ripped off the buried alive scene but otherwise  :sleeping:
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

jenkins

felt this coming, i recommend The Fan

polkablues

I am deeply saddened that I can no longer trust mod's opinion about anything ever.
My house, my rules, my coffee

polkablues

Unfriended


I'll give it this much -- it was better than I expected it to be. Keeping it focused on a single group chat in real time almost gives it the feel of a parlor mystery, which is an interesting artistic choice. That said, the characters are too obnoxious to care about, the backstory that drives the entire plot is overly simplistic, and the handful of "twists" throughout the movie are telegraphed in bold long before paying off. There are seeds of a good story peeking out above the surface, but it has the sloppiness of a first draft.
C

For a stronger take on the same general conceit, I recommend...

The Den


Another film that is presented entirely on computer screens, this came out a year or two before Unfriended, and while not necessarily a great movie itself, it gets right a lot of what Unfriended got wrong. The characters are universally more empathetic than Unfriended's dickish teenagers, the mystery of the situation is actually gripping and interesting and remains mysterious up to the ultimate revelation, and I just flat out like it better.
B-
My house, my rules, my coffee

RegularKarate

How does it compare to Open Windows?

polkablues

It's way less goofy than Open Windows, much more a true horror movie, and better at creating willing suspension of disbelief. There was a lot of Open Windows that I enjoyed on a moment to moment basis, but overall it was just too dumb to care about.
My house, my rules, my coffee

modage



Paul Schrader's Cat People (1982) remake is as stylish as it is silly but still worthwhile for Nastassja Kinski, the David Bowie title song and the countless surely-incredibly-dangerous scenes featuring live panthers.



Hollow Man (2000), a.k.a. the movie that sunk Paul Verhoeven's career is almost as bad as its reputation (and could never be released in today's thinkpiece culture). Kevin Bacon plays an insane dickhead pretty much from frame one, who despite being a brilliant scientist, just wants to oogle (and rape?) girls and start murdering his colleagues as soon as he's granted invisibility. Funny to see how poorly the film has aged after only 15 years (my wife thought it was from the 80s), Elizabeth Shue has the Meg Ryan haircut, Josh Brolin is in his career low and the CGI looks flat and unshaded. Still, Verhoeven knows how to move the camera like a motherfucker and it's a shame Hollywood lost an auteur as talented as him because of a few misfires. 



The Final Girls (2015) is a horror/comedy that aims to be a Cabin In The Woods-style deconstruction of 80s slasher movies but fails at being a horror film or a comedy or properly establishing the rules of its own meta-universe. The film aspires to be about 'more' than just the meta aspects, and spends a great deal of the screen time on the lead character dealing with her grief over her dead mother but drops the ball on pretty much everything else. It also looks flat and digital which is extra disappointing because if they wanted to go all in on their concept of being in an 80s slasher movie they could've paid closer attention to the way those movies looked.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

jenkins

Quote from: jenkins<3 on October 04, 2015, 12:16:15 PM
why have i seen Miike movies? what do his movies do to me? i always think they're weird different from how other movies are weird and i always think they're a bit nonsense. this one is about high school nonsense and it's cheap, maybe i should visit Miike again
the least surprising conclusion is i went with the cheap and weird option.

the bummer is -- listen, i was misled by Crows being in the title. it turns out this is not a horror movie and it's more like


still looking forward to it but that's off topic now

Reel

I've watched "Audition" and "Ichi The Killer" and I don't like Miike either. It's an impressive aesthetic, but does nothing for me emotionally.

jenkins

somehow Crows Zero was released 27 October 2007 (Japan) and Sukiyaki Western Django was released 15 September 2007 (Japan).

that's wildly impressive, similar to Johnnie To releasing Drug War and Romancing in Thin Air the same year. that's how fast the fastest run. these productions would easily consume a USA creative team for a full year.

i saw Sukiyaki Western Django in a theater and i'd never heard of Crows Zero. how had i never heard of Crows Zero?? it's slick, it's great, i'm glad it was cheap. again, Crows Zero isn't a horror movie in terms of it eliciting the dark parts of your soul while you watch it, i'm driving reckless. in terms of genre it's a conglomeration, which type of movie i adore and has some speed in the West. it's like The Warriors, except it's better. Sam Raimi's Crimewave, written by the Coens, is such a movie. Scott Pilgrim vs the World is such a movie. but to paraphrase the Notorious B.I.G., it's like the more genres we come across, the more problems we see.

an adaptation of a manga, it plays so many notes, honestly it does. a comic book movie without superheroes. teenager heroes, and their powers are emotions, and also being great at fighting.


modage

This weekend my dad and I did our annual Halloween Horror Marathon Weekend and watched a coma-inducing 14 films in 2.5 days. (Though somehow Ghostboy, who did his own marathon this weekend, hit the same number in 24 hours with so damn.) 4 were films I've already seen, 10 were new to me, 3 in theatres and the rest at home. Here's a quick rundown.





Dolls (1987)
Fun creepy dolls movie from the Re-Animator crew.

Crimson Peak (2015)
Loved it. With this and Pacific Rim, I'm really on whatever wavelength Del Toro is on recently.

The Beyond (1981)
Of Fulci's films I'd only previously seen Zombi 2 (a.k.a. the movie where a zombie fights a shark) and heard that this was supposed to be his masterpiece. I really want to be on board but compared to Argento or Bava, Fulci's films are ugly and artless (maybe that's what people love about them). The gore is good and the ending was effective but there just wasn't enough here to hang a movie on.

Planet Of The Vampires (1965)
One of the influences for Ridley Scott's Alien, it is insane that this film came out just 13 years before that and feels like it could've been 30 years earlier. It's basically a stylish but cheap-as-hell riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers when a crew answer a distress signal on another planet (sound familiar?) and get stranded there. There are some really cool looking alien skeletons but unfortunately no aliens (or vampires, despite the title). 

Kiss Of The Vampire (1963)
Solid Hammer film features neither Lee or Cushing but instead an actor who appears to be a perfect synthesis of the two. A little slow going with not enough vampire mayhem but looks gorgeously Hammer and the finale is different.

Halloween 6: The Curse Of Michael Myers (1995)
The past few years we've been charging through the Halloween series of which I had previously only seen Halloween 1, 2, H20 and Rob Zombie's horrendous remake so this year we arrived at the nadir, Halloween 6 introducing Paul Stephen Rudd! Like the Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th series, each sequel gets worse until you find yourself longing for the badness of just a few installments ago. It would be nearly impossible for me to describe the plot to you as the film jumps around different threads and can't even seem to decide on who the main character is. The film is actually filmed competently though and the director went onto do a half dozen episodes of The Wire.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
One of the post-Scream horror films, this one holds up pretty well by streamlining all the bullshit of the series and basically pretending 3-6 don't exist. Nothing groundbreaking but it does its job and Jamie Lee Curtis gives a nice performance returning to the series as Laurie Strode, realistically dealing with the trauma of the events 20 years prior.

Mockingbird (2014)
From the writer/director of the simple but truly scary The Strangers comes the long-awaited, then delayed, then dumped on Netflix Instant follow-up with nary a single interview with the director or single showing at a genre-friendly fest like SXSW or Fantastic Fest. So what happened? There's a great premise here but you can see where it's going from about 10 minutes in and then the film treads water for an hour waiting to get there. The opening scene is a shocker (and buys the film a lot of time to establish where it's going) but unfortunately squanders that goodwill at about the halfway mark. Seems like the director knew he fucked up and didn't quite have a film (would've worked fine cut down to 15 minutes in a V/H/S anthology though) so hopefully better things to come next time.

Re-Animator (1985)
A classic, still great. Probably the closest film I can think of to the Evil Dead sensibility of comedy/horror/over-the-top entertaining. Fun fact: I think I've seen it more than Citizen Kane, Casablanca or The Godfather.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)
I'm not sure I had ever seen a Jekyll & Hyde film and assumed he turns into a monster/killer like The Wolfman or something when really it's more like the Nutty Professor (precursor obviously) where he just kinda turns into a dickhead who does and says whatever he wants. He isn't a tragic figure like Dr. Frankenstein who creates a monster without realizing what damage he will cause, he quite intentionally takes the potion he develops specifically to sleep with a local whore without getting caught by his fiance! Things the movie had going for it (other than the Best Actor Oscar winning performance by Frederich March) is the opening POV shot which predates the one in Being John Malkovich by almost 70 years.

The Brood (1979)
This is now the earliest Cronenberg film I've seen (though Rabid and Shivers are still on my list). It's basically a slow burn with awesome finale that elevates the entire film and makes you think you enjoyed watching it more than you actually did. Also the brand-new Criterion Blu looks like a million bucks.

Tales Of Halloween (2015)
While not as polished as the V/H/S anthology films, this is a fun grab-bag of horror shorts with none of the troubling misogyny of the either. The Halloween setting helps a ton and the fact that all 10 shorts run around 10 minutes, it feels like a breeze. It's no Trick R Treat but with the callbacks and cameos, is a genuine love letter to Halloween. Only thing that really bothers me is the obviously digital look of most of the shorts. It's low-budget times like these that really make me miss film.

The Frighteners (1996)
Maybe still my favorite Peter Jackson film? Or at least the one I've seen the most times, The Frighteners is still an underrated 90s gem. Feels like a mix of producer Zemeckis' sensibilities with Jackson's own for a great comedy horror mystery. Michael J. Fox is great in his last leading role in a film as is Jeffrey Combs. There are a handful of fun reversals and I still love the way they cut together the finale flashing between the 60s massacre and the present.

The Invisible Man (1933)
Still great, even moreso considering the fx they acheived at the time and how inferior attemps to remake it (its many sequels, Verhoeven's Hollow Man, Carpenter's Memoirs Of An Invisible Man) have been. Arguably one of the best Universal Horror films though it doesn't get the love of the Big 5.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Reel

I noticed you left off "Deep Red" and "Near Dark" from that Marathon, highly suggest you catch those before the big day!! I watched Near Dark again a few weeks back and it's definitely my favorite vampire movie. Such a cool noir look and rustic feel to it, and the gore is done so well it's kind of unsettling. Really an impressive feat, what they did with the special effects in that movie. The script by Kathryn Bigelow is very quotable and darkly funny, too. It's unfortunate it doesn't get the credit it's due after being outshined by the much inferior "Lost Boys" that was released the same year.

Another that I've added to the registry is "Don't Look Now" (1973)





I've seen this once and what's stuck with me the most outside of the surprise ending is how expertly they used the city of Venice to capture the mood of these grieving parents and the mystery they're involved in. Probably the most rewarding of all the "slow burn" horror movies, it really takes you down a dark road where you feel like you have less answers in the end than you started out with! At least that's how I remember it... One of the best examples in the trend of what I'll call 'serious horror' from the early 70's, where everything about the production is staged like a drama but they're actively trying to SCARE THE FUCK OUT OF YOU!!


Personally, I haven't had much luck in my horror quest this month in terms of knocking things off the list. I started Texas Chainsaw waaay too late one night and fell asleep, and regrettably watched some movies much less deserving of my time like "Dumb and Dumber Too"(ughck) and "Back To The Future 2" for that nice little ironic celebration. Tonight, I'll be going to that Friday The 13th marathon I mentioned before and that should give me my fill for the whole month. There's one other movie that'll be showing I forgot about:


"Hack O' Lantern" (1988)




all I know is that it's a super trashy 'Halloween' ripoff (with a terrible VHS cover)

modage

Quote from: Reelist on October 23, 2015, 09:24:36 AM
I noticed you left off "Deep Red" and "Near Dark" from that Marathon, highly suggest you catch those before the big day!!

That is so funny you say that because I actually just watched Near Dark last night! My wife had never seen it and I hadn't seen it in a few years. And Deep Red I've never seen but have tickets to see on Sunday at the Nitehawk in BK. Can't wait.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

modage

This is late but I had started writing a comprehensive version of this post only to have the browser crap out so this will be the quick recap because I can't bring myself to write and format the whole thing again. So I ended the month with a record 40 horror films. The last batch included new viewings of:

Deep Red
Reminded me of a sleazy late period Hitchcock like Frenzy. A few spectacularly creepy images and all the suspense sequences scored with spectacularly funky Goblin score.

Hotel Transylvania
I needed something that would introduce my 5 year old niece to monsters without scaring the shit out of her and I thank this film for doing that.

The Entity
One of Scorsese's faves. If you wanted to see a movie where Barbara Hershey is repeatedly and brutally raped by a ghost, this is the film for you. Other than the finale, it's not what I would call "fun."

Ravenous
The beginning of my at-first accidental 4 movie cannibal mini-marathon. A real undiscovered gem that seems to be having a resurgence. Funny, weird, great Guy Pearce vs. Robert Carlyle.

Bone Tomahawk
The From Dusk Till Dawn of cannibal westerns. Starring Kurt Russell. Better than you would ever expect it to be, it's like 85% straight ahead western and 15% cannibal movie, if they had upped it to 70%/30%, it'd be perfect.

We Are What We Are (2013)
A step forward from Stakeland (which I was not a fan of) but this didn't do too much for me either, honestly.

Trouble Every Day
Arty weirdness with Vincent Gallo featuring two really gruesome cannibal sequences. Mostly gets by on moodiness. (This was my first Claire Denis.)

The Hidden
A young Kyle MacLachlan plays a quirky FBI agent forced to pair with a local police officer to catch a murderer who is not what he seems. It's not Twin Peaks but instead a New Line late 80s action/sci-fi film that feels like a mix of The Thing and They Live (though not as good as those obvs).

Dracula (1974)
Jack Palance as Dracula in this Dan Curtis/Richard Matheson made-for-TV joint. I've seen probably a dozen different Dracula's and I'm always fascinated to see more.

The Devil's Candy
Really good follow-up to The Loved Ones, totally different. More later.

And repeat viewings of: Near Dark, Diabolique, It Follows and Day Of The Dead, the latter I'd maybe only seen once in high school but all were still great.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.