Horror

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

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polkablues

Just mentioning Timecrimes alongside it is a massive spoiler for Triangle, but yeah, I love Timecrimes.  The thing that pushes Triangle over the top for me is how philosophical it ultimately is, and how it gives an almost mythical treatment to a familiar plot device (lots of allusions to Greek myth in the film, actually).  Christopher Smith doesn't get a lot of mention (probably the boring name), but he's one of the finest horror/suspense filmmakers out there right now, and every movie he makes is completely different from the others.  Black Death is non-essential, but Triangle, Severance, and Creep are all great.

I want to see Sightseers so bad.  Kill List was definitely a top-five film for me last year.
My house, my rules, my coffee

RegularKarate

Quote from: polkablues on October 03, 2012, 03:44:41 PM
Just mentioning Timecrimes alongside it is a massive spoiler for Triangle, but yeah, I love Timecrimes.

I'll SPOILER TAG MY RESPONSE AND MY ORIGINAL POST:
SPOILER!

Honestly, it's like a Catch 22. If you've seen Timecrimes then the moment you see the hooded attacker in Triangle, you kind of assume all the spoilers that associating the two come along with. If you HAVEN'T seen Timecrimes, you don't get the reference and it's not a spoiler.

Anyway, I enjoyed Triangle because it was better than most low-budget movies like it, but it's still really just 'okay'. I really didn't like Severance. Where does Creep rank between the two?

polkablues

Actually, Creep is my least favorite of the three, so I guess your mileage may vary. What didn't you like about Severance? I thought it was one of the most fun horror flicks in years.
My house, my rules, my coffee

RegularKarate

Quote from: polkablues on October 03, 2012, 05:05:23 PM
What didn't you like about Severance? I thought it was one of the most fun horror flicks in years.

I haven't seen it since it came out in theaters, so maybe I should give it another shot, but I remember thinking it was trying way too hard to be funny and just felt stale. It's been a while though.

modage

I've been doing pretty good this year rewatching some favorites (Attack The Block, Evil Dead, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn, Scream, Psycho) but haven't seen anything new yet. But something I discovered over the weekend was this:

After you rewatch "Psycho" put on "Psycho" (1998). It's on Netflix Instant and it is such an incredible time-capsule of that year. Directed by Gus Van Sant (as we all know, duh), script is the original, score has been re-recorded by Danny Elfman, cinematographer is Christopher Doyle (who apparently had never seen the original), and the cast is one that could have only been assembled in 1998: a post-"Boogie Nights"/pre-"Magnolia" Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall as well as Anne Heche, Viggo Mortensen, Robert Forster, James LeGros, James Remar & Vince Vaughn back when he was an actor (though not a great one).

If you put it on directly after you finish the original (even if it's in the background and you're kinda half paying attention) it's pretty amazing. Not good, but a nuts crazy experiment that if they hadn't done it with this movie they would've probably tried it with some other classic. It's like this had to be made in order to stop future "Casablanca," "Citizen Kane," "Lawrence of Arabia" shot-by-shot remakes. The worst parts are obviously the new additions (Vaughn jerkin' it, shots of sky and dead cows during the murders) but the rest is like just so bizarre it's hard to believe anybody thought this was a good idea other than as some limited-time exhibit that should've been at the MoMA or something.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

polkablues

I've watched a few horror films lately, and these are them:


Rovdyr (Manhunt)
A Norwegian sexy-kids-being-hunted-in-the-woods film.  Well made, well acted, largely forgettable.  If you've never seen a movie of its type before, this would be a fine one to start with, but if you have, it holds no surprises.
B


Frontier(s)
A French riff on Texas Chainsaw Massacre tropes with a Nazi twist.  It's basically the movie that Eli Roth would make if he was French.
C+


The Cottage
One of the most schizophrenic horror films I've ever seen.  It veers wildly from tone to tone, with each actor seemingly in a different movie from every other actor.  There is some enjoyable comedy, though, and Andy Serkis is fun as a gruff criminal whose plan goes horribly awry.
C


Wreckage
PASS.  I watched this because Aaron Paul was in it, and sure enough, Aaron Paul is in it.  That's pretty much the best thing that can be said about it.  Though I'll admit, Scoot McNairy's performance was fun, in that I'm pretty sure he was trying to go as terrible and over the top as he could, to find out if the director would ever call him out on it.  Spoiler alert: he didn't.
D-


Martyrs
Finally.  This is the sort of movie that makes sitting through all the shitty horror movies worth it.  It's a bold, fearless, totally uncompromising film, with so much more going on than mere "torture porn".  I can't even come up with words to encapsulate this movie, except that I watched it two weeks ago and it still haunts me.
A+


Mientras Duermes (Sleep Tight)
An impeccably-crafted, deliberately-paced thriller that lives and dies by its lead performance.  The film gets the audience colluding with a terrible person as he does terrible things to people, and there's not a moment along the way that you realize that you shouldn't be.  As much as I like the [REC] films, this is the movie that Jaume Balaguero should be known for.
A



Next on the docket: Borderland, Excision, Detention, Lovely Molly, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and The Hills Run Red.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Pwaybloe

I think you and RK just make these movies up.

polkablues

I can neither confirm nor deny that it's all an elaborate prank we're playing on Reelist.
My house, my rules, my coffee

polkablues


Excision
This is a tricky one to recommend, because AnnaLynne McCord (yes, the chick from the 90210 reboot) is, shockingly, SO GOOD, but the movie does nothing to deserve her performance in it.  She plays a truly weird character, a socially artless high school senior with bizarre psycho-sexual fantasies and a vague dream of becoming a surgeon.  The story is constantly interspersed with these little ten to thirty second dream sequences that resemble what you might get if you tried describing a Matthew Barney film to a first-year film student, and the rest of the film is like if Chasing Amy-era Kevin Smith directed Donnie Darko.  It's aimless, it tries too hard to be casually shocking (at one point, she sniffs her bloody tampon just because, you know, why not), and the ending comes straight out of nowhere.  But the cast is interesting (everyone from Traci Lords as the strict, fanatical mom to Malcolm McDowell as the frustrated science teacher), there are a handful of good scenes, and mostly the lead performance is really, really good.  I doubt I'll ever bother watching it again, but I can't say I regretted watching it the first time.
C-ish
My house, my rules, my coffee

polkablues


The Tall Man
The most recent film from Pascal Laugier, writer/director of the astounding "Martyrs".  At first blush, the films don't seem to share a lot in common; Martyrs was a bloody, unrelenting punch to the gut, while The Tall Man is a moody psychological thriller.  But as the film goes on, you realize that they share a thematic interest in looking beyond the horror to the hidden agencies (literally or otherwise) behind it.  Laugier also applies a similar structure to both films, where plot twists throughout the story serve not only to send it in a different direction, but to force us to rethink what we thought we knew about what already happened.  As opposed to Martyrs, which owns its themes completely, The Tall Man ends a little muddily; it's not clear how Laugier as a storyteller actually feels about the story he's just told.  The film is clearly aware of this ambiguity, but it has a subtle stink of cop-out to it nonetheless.  But Martyrs is a high bar to reach twice in a row, so there's no shame in this film not quite hitting it, especially compared to so many other horror films that don't even attempt to be about anything.  Oh, and Jessica Biel was passable.
B+
My house, my rules, my coffee

squints

Finally watched Triangle.

SPOILER for the love of christ if you haven't seen it don't read any further





I really dug this movie. Glad i had no idea what to expect going in, here's what bothered me about the logic of the flick though:
The seagulls. First of all the cgi on these ominous creatures was BAD, and their foreboding presence was so obvious it was distracting. But what bothered me the most was the one she hit with her car towards the end.
So she jumps off the ship, washes ashore and is some how several hours or even a day behind the point where she initially boards the sailboat. If this time warp exists in the "triangle" off the coast of florida then why were there piles of dead seagulls? I could buy into the idea that there's this timewarp that exists but if they're on land away from this magical wormhole then why would there be piles of seagulls? Is this a stretch? Am i reading too much into this (YES)?
Small nitpick but a really really well executed movie, the acting (aside from Melissa George) was bad. But the production design, cinematography, music, editing, all pretty top notch. How come xixax (specifically polka) is the only place I've heard of this?


So many questions.

I'd also like to take this moment to thank polka for all these damned wonderful recommendations. Kill List has been the best one yet and I'm slowly crawling through your B - A+ reviewed scary flicks.
Severance and Creep are next.
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

RegularKarate

Quote from: RegularKarate on October 01, 2012, 06:16:33 PM

American Scream: This comes from the director of "Best Worst Movie" which I loved. This time, the Chiller Network actually came to him and asked him to make a run-of-the-mill "Top Ten Haunted Houses In America" type show and this is what he went with instead. It's a documentary about Home-Haunters. People who turn their backyards into haunted houses that kids from the neighborhood and their families can walk through on Halloween night while trick-or-treating. It focuses specifically on three haunters from the same neighborhood whose effort ranges from insanely detailed and meticulously crafted to lazily thrown together. Of course, it's the characters that make this. I won't go into too much detail and I don't know when this is supposed to actually air, but fuck, it is definitely in the top three movies I saw at Fantastic Fest (that includes Looper).

So, they added this to Netflix instant yesterday. If you want a tad-late-for-Halloween documentary to watch tonight, this is really great!

polkablues

MASSIVE TRIANGLE SPOILERS

Quote from: squints on November 01, 2012, 03:21:48 AM
Finally watched Triangle.

SPOILER for the love of christ if you haven't seen it don't read any further


The seagulls. First of all the cgi on these ominous creatures was BAD, and their foreboding presence was so obvious it was distracting. But what bothered me the most was the one she hit with her car towards the end.
So she jumps off the ship, washes ashore and is some how several hours or even a day behind the point where she initially boards the sailboat. If this time warp exists in the "triangle" off the coast of florida then why were there piles of dead seagulls? I could buy into the idea that there's this timewarp that exists but if they're on land away from this magical wormhole then why would there be piles of seagulls? Is this a stretch? Am i reading too much into this (YES)?

My interpretation of what was going on is less sci-fi and more metaphysical.  It's not that they found some magical wormhole that sent them back through time over and over, but that she personally is stuck in this looping reality, this limbo state, that compounds on itself each time through to further remind her of the futility of her efforts.  There's a lot of reference to Greek myth in the film, and the one that's especially pertinent is the myth of Sisyphus, who was forced to push a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down before he reached the top.  In Triangle, the main character was responsible for her son's death, and the timeloop is her eternal punishment: each time through she thinks she's going to able to save him, only to end up killing him over and over again.

The pile of seagulls basically signifies that even though she thinks she's doing things differently this time, that she'll finally break the loop and save her son, she's actually gone through the same motions countless times already.  It's crazy bleak, and I love it for that.
My house, my rules, my coffee

squints

Well, i guess that makes more sense....
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

Fernando

SPOILS FOR KILL LIST

Quote from: polkablues on February 11, 2012, 12:41:18 AM
Also watched Kill List, which will be on my Xixax Awards ballot for the year.  It's interesting reading the mixed critical reaction to it, because it's an aggressively ambiguous film, and some people seem to be experiencing some powerful knee-jerking against that, but the movie is so rich and densely layered that I've spent the whole week since I watched it puzzling out theories in my mind.  It's not a particularly "horrific" film, for the most part, but similar to Drive, it's peppered with moments of violence that catch you entirely off-guard.  It's a film that doesn't let the audience off the hook by cutting away when it's expected to.  Also, the score is absolutely bonkers, in the best possible way.

saw Kill List yesterday. this movie is kind of insane, specially the last 10-15 minutes, I love the kind of movie that sticks with you and this one did, from that moment where crazy looking Fiona scratches the back of the mirror knew nothing good could come from that, and never imagined the outcome.....

so thank you xixax, last three films ive seen have been praised here and all of them are great.

the other two were Young Adult and Chronicle.