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Roumba posted:What are peoples' opinions of The Ninth Gate? For sure, it has some cheesy parts Keypad: 6 - 6 - 6 but I felt the movie did a good job of letting you know just as much as Depp's character does, making you as curious as he is. It held a strange tension for me even though it's quite a slow movie and even has a number of humorous parts. I really like The Ninth Gate too and if you enjoyed it the first time it really benefits from repeated viewings because you start to pick up on little clues that all come together in the end that you might have missed the first time. It's always nice to see Depp play a pretty normal, if a bit bookish and dorky, guy instead of some wAcKy poo poo for a change too.
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Sep 2, 2013 20:45
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I'd like to bump this with a recommendation for two Japanese mockumentary indie-ish horror movies, both made by Koji Shiraishi: Noroi (2005) (also known as The Curse) and Occult (2009). Both are rather slow and feature the usual bleakness and unrelenting, implacable terror common to Japanese horror; both also have some Lovecraftian elements, Occult overtly so. Noroi or The Curse begins with the premise that Masafumi Kobayashi, a documentary filmmaker known for his work on the paranormal, has disappeared without a trace while working on a new project; the movie purportedly shows what he had filmed up until his disappearance. It's rather long and has a surprisingly complicated plot, but it's also well-crafted and easily one of the creepier horror movies I've seen; there are several downright terrifying scenes, including the filmed Kagutaba ritual, the baby ghosts at the shrine and the Kagutaba reveal at the end. Most of the characters are rather bland, unfortunately, with one notable (and obvious) exception: the crazy tinfoil wrapped guy. Occult initially documents the aftermath of a mysterious mass stabbing incident, then shifts to focus on one of the survivors, a man who claims that he has gained supernatural powers as a result of the attack. While atmospheric and with some genuinely creepy elements - like the segment near the start where the mother of a victim blithely talks about having dreams of her daughter returning as an obviously (to the audience) twisted monster - it's not very scary as such. It's also rather slow and was obviously filmed on a shoestring budget. Thankfully it usually manages to work around its budgetary limitations, but a couple of scenes are still ruined by the terrible special effects, most notably the ending, which is just... bafflingly bad. What really makes this movie stand out to me, however, is the main character (and actor); I might be giving him too much credit just because I didn't expect it from a movie like this, but he's definitely one of the most interesting and ambiguous characters I've ever seen in a horror movie. It's worth watching on that merit alone, even if you're not into Japanese horror or horror in general. Alekanderu fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 03:38
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Occult is a great companion for God Told Me To.
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Oct 1, 2013 06:02
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So I just watched Burnt Offerings which I'd basically just heard about in small mentions here and there, and I think it suits this thread well and hasn't, to my knowledge, been brought up. It's an incredibly unsettling film, almost indescribably so. The premise (a family becomes caretakers of a large mansion for the summer) is so blase that it seems like the movie barely has to even try, but it goes in none of the directions that someone, especially in the year 2013, could guess that it might. The "supernatural" element in the film is almost completely nonexistent. There are one or two scenes of unreal imagery, but other than that the frightening moments take place in otherwise bland settings. There's one shot where the kid goes into the pantry to get some dingdongs, and the camera is positioned in a sort of "hidden perceiver" corner. He moves toward the camera, off-screen. The music hums up tensely, and the camera moves to look at a light bulb in the high corner of the room, zooms in, and fades to white. That's it. But the notion that something is wrong with the house and the effect it has on the people inside grows to be overwhelming. It's sort of like that feeling you get when you turn the light out in a dark basement and you find yourself moving a little too quickly back up the stairs: By the end of it, your brain is screaming get out get out you have to get out for no appropriate reason. And then, BAM! The door shuts. And the movie ends in a similar way.
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Oct 1, 2013 06:17
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big business sloth posted:So I just watched Burnt Offerings which I'd basically just heard about in small mentions here and there, and I think it suits this thread well and hasn't, to my knowledge, been brought up. I was really not fond of this film when I saw it four years ago, but my tastes have changed a lot since then so maybe I should give it a second look. Shame I missed the showing at the Castro Theatre in SF earlier this month.
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Oct 1, 2013 06:30
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Nemesis Game 2003 A college student with few friends hangs out with a comic shop owner who shares her love of riddles. The riddles start to get stranger, more personal and dangerous, and she ends up pulled into a deeper mystery than she ever expected. I think the riddles are a bit weak and it's probably not as good as it wanted to be, but it maintains the creepy vibe pretty well. It does have some decent characters, and at least one good shiver-inducing moment of sudden realization. I first saw this around the same time as I saw I Heart Huckabees and it oddly enough has some things in common with that movie. Uncovered 1994  An art restorer working on a painting of a chess game discovers a clue to a centuries-old crime. As she unravels the mystery with the help of a chess expert, it turns out that some of the people who may hold the keys to the past are dying, and she needs to go to the chess board to solve the crime before it's too late. Based on the novel The Flanders Panel. This one isn't terribly psychologically tense but it has more thinking in it than, say, a Dan Brown movie. The mystery holds together fairly well although by the end it's easy enough to figure it out. There is also an unfortunate moment (taken from the book) that comes off as borderline offensive to homosexuals. One point to praise is that the chess in the movie is actually good. Especially compared to chess as typically shown in movies (the kind where saying 'check' in a self-satisfied manner indicates that you are a good player). Although I'm pretty much amateur-level at chess and it's not quite as hard as the supposed expert makes it out to be. Ignore if you don't care about chess: Interestingly, the movie changes the chess game from the book, and it's surprising that they'd go to that much effort. It still makes a mistake: The position actually involves retrograde analysis, where you determine the preceding sequence by the current position. While the book follows Smullyan's restriction that all moves must be the only possible move, the movie instead goes with the assumption that both players are playing 'best strategy' to get to the previous position. It allows the movie to construct a more interesting game, and I appreciated that. There is also a great chess-related moment that goes uncommented on and reveals a bit more about the past mystery. It's the sort of thing that's right in front of you but you can easily miss it until the closing shot, and if you don't know chess it might be missed entirely. [While searching for images of the poster, I used 'Beckinsale Uncovered' and now Google thinks I want to see her naked.] Kangra fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 20:59
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I have some suggestions you may enjoy. Bellflower is a 2011 indie film about two 20-something best friends who spend their days drinking beer and shooting guns at propane tanks, one of them falls in love with a girl and everything is just dandy for a while before things spiral way out of control. It's not really a horror or a thriller, it's just dark. It was also made for only $17000 and shot with a camera that the director made himself, and if nothing else it's just an absolutely gorgeous looking film.  Retreat is a 2009 British film about a couple who go to an Island retreat to get away from everything and repair their failing relationship, after a few days of bumming about doing Island stuff the wife sees what appears to be a dead body from the second floor window. When they find the body they see that he's still alive, and then things start getting bad for them. Hopefully these two are up to snuff.
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Oct 18, 2013 07:20
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Street Soldier posted:Hopefully these two are up to snuff. Bellflower can hang in any thread as far as I'm concerned, and I'll second the recommendation. Once you finish the movie be sure to read an article about this guy's homemade camera (and the Medusa, which you can see in the poster above) because it's really fascinating stuff.
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Oct 18, 2013 13:36
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Nothing has topped Kill List for me after I saw it nearly one year ago. Good god is it unsettling... I think it's still on Netflix. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqkqF--v1tg
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Oct 19, 2013 06:35
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xzoto1 posted:Nothing has topped Kill List for me after I saw it nearly one year ago. Good god is it unsettling... I think it's still on Netflix. Trailer: Kill List is legitimately like having a nightmare. I went into it thinking it would be about an assassin, and it sort of is... Check out Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. A film about serial murders not committed by the same person.
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Oct 19, 2013 19:44
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nocal posted:Kill List is legitimately like having a nightmare. I went into it thinking it would be about an assassin, and it sort of is... Exactly. It's a pretty haunting film... Been eyeing up Cure for awhile now. Will definitely check it out!
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Oct 19, 2013 23:57
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Street Soldier posted:
I really didn't enjoy this. It thought it was too smart for it's own good. It wasn't.
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Oct 21, 2013 03:10
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priznat posted:Also what was up with the darkened scene right at the end with a figure crouched with occasional flashes of light coming from offscreen? Was that part of the movie credits or was it some subtle promo for the production company? Anyway I didn't really get that Given how super-late it pops up, my out-of-universe take on it is that it's a promo for the production company. It's vaguely drawn, not a photo, if I remember correctly. In-universe, I took it as another example of Ghost Alice showing up where you'd least notice it. You're letting the movie run for a bit because you're focused on something else, and when you're about to close it because there's only a few seconds left in the runtime, and BAM, there's her again. I actually consider it one of the more disturbing moments of the film. Another credits-related thing about that scene that irked me somewhat was that if you went back and watched the movie over again, it seems like the Shocking Reveal That Ghost Alice Has Been There All Along photos are different than the ones used earlier in the film, in order to prevent people from figuring out the Shocking Reveal earlier. Ghost Alice bits are suddenly a bit more clear, a little bit more contrasted, than before. The weirdest thing about the threesome subplot (which I agree seemed a bit 'off' and didn't feel too connected to the plot) was that after talking about it very somberly, the next people interviewed were her teenage friends at a pool, wearing bikinis. Late edit: I've finally realized why a part of LM is so familiar to me. There was once a story on the SCP Foundation website that explained (within the confines of the story's universe), the boogiemen children see are actually the premonitional spirits of what they'll look like at the moment of their death, just like what happens to Alice. MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 07:14
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MisterBibs posted:Late edit: I've finally realized why a part of LM is so familiar to me. There was once a story on the SCP Foundation website that explained (within the confines of the story's universe), the boogiemen children see are actually the premonitional spirits of what they'll look like at the moment of their death, just like what happens to Alice. Right, just a modernized doppleganger. A doppleganger is always a premonition of death or disaster. MisterBibs posted:The weirdest thing about the threesome subplot (which I agree seemed a bit 'off' and didn't feel too connected to the plot) was that after talking about it very somberly, the next people interviewed were her teenage friends at a pool, wearing bikinis. I would argue it's the central event of the film.
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Oct 21, 2013 13:22
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For the longest time I thought that was the most unnecessary part of the film but it's just the opposite because it's the point where it comes to light that no one in the family knows Alice.
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Oct 21, 2013 15:51
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Part one of the film is "she's not who they think she is." Part two of the film, after that event, is "they liked not knowing who she was better".
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Oct 21, 2013 15:58
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Part one of the film is "she's not who they think she is." Part two of the film, after that event, is "they liked not knowing who she was better". That's... Yeah that's a way better way to put it. There's so something really heartbreaking about the quick interviews with the boyfriend. He's the best example of a character who understands he's giving a talking head interview about loving someone who only occasionally existed.
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Oct 21, 2013 17:09
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Part one of the film is "she's not who they think she is." Part two of the film, after that event, is "they liked not knowing who she was better".  That's an outstanding way of putting things, and might have single-handledly changed that entire scene for me.Another random thought, because I've been watching the movie a few times owing to the discussions going on: I think it was pretty interesting just how might weight the June (the mom) had on the family, and how those outside the family interacted with it. The mom didn't want to identify Alice's body. The spoken reason for the son faking pictures of Ghost Alice was to give his mom some hope. When talking about the footage Alice's friends took, the boyfriend defines it as "Telling June" about it. I wonder if June's admitted detachment from Alice informed her husband and her son's detachment. I got the impression that the father and the son wanted to know more about Alice in life, and felt more sympathetic towards her once they knew more about her. On the other side of things, I got the impression that June used what she learned about her daughter to justify how she already felt. Take the sex tape, for example. The Dad immediately sides with his daughter: "I think I'd choke him if he was here.". The mom says she felt sad, but I took it more as a judgement on Alice herself, and/or embarrassed about what Alice had done. In non-LM thoughts: Do you think we'll get to a point where even the shittiest of phones/commonly-used cameras are capable of the visual quality that ruins the found-footage concept entirely? One of the rare parts of LM that didn't work was just how badly the camera was. You could barely see some of the things you're supposed to.
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Oct 21, 2013 23:19
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MisterBibs posted:
Time to bring up Twin Peaks again. Maddy Ferguson, the long lost cousin is both a silly soap opera trope and an eerie David Lynch thing: she is a corporeal ghost. She is an identical twin who is also everything everyone wishes Laura was (aside from being a bit boring). June's consultation with the medium/psychiatrist who saw Alice in secret also parallels really well with the Laura Palmer tapes subplot with Russ Tamblyn: June is also a double of Alice - she is perhaps the one that understands her daughter best and is similarly impenetrable. Her reaction is perhaps the most inexplicable, the thing where she just wanders into people's homes in the middle of the night is something the film only briefly touches on. quote:Take the sex tape, for example. The Dad immediately sides with his daughter: "I think I'd choke him if he was here.". The mom says she felt sad, but I took it more as a judgement on Alice herself, and/or embarrassed about what Alice had done. She understands better than her son and husband, but won't let on. Said about Alice: "She kept the fact that she kept secrets a secret." June is distant and regrettably mum about her understanding but the actress conveys it well with her face. Even without the twinning/dream reading thing, you get the sense that she has a better understanding than Russell or her son. quote:In non-LM thoughts: Do you think we'll get to a point where even the shittiest of phones/commonly-used cameras are capable of the visual quality that ruins the found-footage concept entirely? One of the rare parts of LM that didn't work was just how badly the camera was. You could barely see some of the things you're supposed to. No, cause then movies will be 8K and cellphone cameras will still be 1080p or whatever they get up to now.
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Oct 22, 2013 01:02
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I'm not entirely sold on the concept that June knew more than she let on, with regards to Alice, but I can't back it up with anything other than what I've already said. I get that she understood being a quiet/private person, but I don't think she ever really wanted that sort of relationship with her daughter. I got the impression that her other family members would have.  In non-LM news, Mama was outstanding and terrifying. After watching found-footage movies lately, it was refreshing to legitimately see the antagonist on a regular, consistent basis. It's refreshing and draws me more into the film to actually see what's going on. None of this "it's scarier because you can't see it" claptrap. MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 03:10
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Glad you liked Mama. What I mean by that, not to put a button on it and kill it dead, that the film makes pretty abundantly clear that June is Alice. I'm not suggesting she is a future time traveler or something but that as a young woman, perhaps she embarrassed/disappointed her parents and withdrew from her friends, or something similar. This is part of the point of having the same dream independently. "Understanding" is probably not the word I'm thinking of, "empathy" probably is. Her sadness is empathy, she doesn't have a kneejerk reaction or express bafflement, nor does she speculate on Alice's motive (that I recall, could be wrong about that). I don't want to be pat about that because the film is about these complex and difficult to parse reactions to grief so it doesn't just boil down to one thing, but I think that's at the heart of June's reaction
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Oct 23, 2013 13:03
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I saw Last Days On Mars last night and it was better than I expected for yet another movie about space zombies. Liev Schriber does a good job anchoring the film and doesn't fall into cliches too much, and there's a decent supporting cast including Olivia Williams, who I've always liked. The space station and the planet itself are really nicely realized and the movie pops on a large screen (not sure if it's getting any sort of wide release) and the wide shots of Mars and the space station look suitably epic. The sound design really stood out for me with really good use of silence and music that recalled, to me at least, Mass Effect. It's no Event Horizon but it works better than you'd expect.
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Oct 23, 2013 15:19
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Just finished Kill List on this thread's recommendation... Can someone give their take on it? I mean, I get that it's essentially a hitman movie filmed like a horror movie. Very clever, very well made, very unsettling... Can someone walk me thru their interpretation of what the titular list was all about and what they think the ending meant? The film obviously dealt heavily with themes of religion and class, I sort of took the list to be an "initiation" of sorts. As in, the main character had to put a bullet in his country's Religion, in its Vices, in its Elite, and finally in his own family to be crowned some sort of Neitzchean ubermensch. I'm just curious as to what everyone else got out of it, besides it being just a very well crafted thriller.
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Oct 24, 2013 06:14
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Anal Surgery posted:Just finished Kill List on this thread's recommendation... "Well crafted thriller" pretty much sums up my take on it, but there's a few specific instances that really blew me away. The scene early on with the sword fight between the main character and his wife/son is just unbelievably perfect on the second watch. Also, the way the film essentially changes genres halfway through really sold me on Ben Wheatley's directing abilities. I got to meet him at Fantastic Fest a month ago and he was incredibly warm and receptive, more than happy to chat with a passing fan. I more or less fanboyed the heck out, but I could tell he really appreciated it. His new film, A Field in England is worth a watch as well, despite being quite a far toss from Kill List - denser dialogue, minimalistic plotting, more visually-engaging, but overall still an entertaining film.
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Oct 24, 2013 15:29
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I also just finished Kill List and holy poo poo is basically my two-word review. The entire second half of the film had a real Melancholia vibe to it that I loved.
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Oct 25, 2013 04:08
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I seriously can't wait to see what Wheatley does with Ballard's 'High Rise'. http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/ben-wheatley-direct-jg-ballards-high-rise/
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Oct 25, 2013 16:14
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High-Rise is one of my favorite novels and Wheatley is one of the more interesting directors working in horror today. Don't need much more to sell me there.
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Oct 25, 2013 16:22
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IMB posted:I also just finished Kill List and holy poo poo is basically my two-word review. The entire second half of the film had a real Melancholia vibe to it that I loved. This makes me less excited to see Melancholia. I didn't like the second half of Kill List. I guess I thought it was too inscrutable. But that being said, Wheatley doing High-Rise sounds like it could be fun, since it would give him a solid plot to follow and strong material to work with.
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Oct 25, 2013 23:39
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Servoret posted:This makes me less excited to see Melancholia. I didn't like the second half of Kill List. I guess I thought it was too inscrutable. But that being said, Wheatley doing High-Rise sounds like it could be fun, since it would give him a solid plot to follow and strong material to work with. Melancholia is definitely a love it or hate it film. It's as Lars von Trier-y as can be, if that helps. If it doesn't ... well, one of Roger Ebert's favorite quotes (that I can't remember the origin of) is that directors can be divided into two groups: those who like mankind, and those that don't. von Trier definitely falls into the second group. The movie is, at it's core, a study on depression. Not about depression, per se, but a movie that is depression.
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Oct 26, 2013 05:23
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If you've ever dealt with clinical depression, Melancholia could very easily be the scariest movie you've ever seen.
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Oct 26, 2013 05:50
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weekly font posted:If you've ever dealt with clinical depression, Melancholia could very easily be the scariest movie you've ever seen. Isn't it kind of the opposite, though? If you've dealt with depression you're on familiar territory, but if not you're being made to feel something new and terrifying. It's like how Justine is rendered totally helpless by her sever depression, until they all learn the world is ending and then she's the only one who can face it.
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Oct 26, 2013 06:20
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I love Melancholia, a lot.
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Oct 26, 2013 14:29
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Anal Surgery posted:Just finished Kill List on this thread's recommendation... I like your reading that each of the hits represented some element of society. and though my own take on it was more literal, I don't know that the two readings are necessarily exclusive. The way I took it was that Jay was chosen to play the role of sacred executioner in some larger ritual staged by the group that hired him, and each of the hits was a sacrifice necessary to complete the ritual (hence most of the targets thanking him or dying willingly). I'm assuming Jay was chosen because he was willing and able to take human life. Gal's girlfriend (who was only with Gal to get to Jay) marked him as the chosen one when she carved the symbol in their house during her visit there, and from there forward every assassination they did fed into the ritual. I'm not sure whether the intention of the ritual was for some faction within the cult who hired them to replace the existing leadership of the cult (they do refer toward the end to "a change in management", or for the cult to acquire more power over the world at large. Certainly, the idea that each of the hits - as sacrifices - represent some element of society might point toward the latter. I don't know that some of the distinctions really matter that much, because I think one of the movie's biggest strengths is that we don't get the whole story - we just glimpse suggestions of much bigger machinations and conspiracies to which Jay and Gal aren't ever really made privy, so neither are we. We are shown just enough to know that whatever's happening, it's really loving bad. It's easily one of my favorite horror movies of the last few years.
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Oct 26, 2013 15:32
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Lord Krangdar posted:Isn't it kind of the opposite, though? If you've dealt with depression you're on familiar territory, but if not you're being made to feel something new and terrifying. For me seeing scenes like her unable to chew food or get out of the bath hit way too close to home because you never see them from a state of mind or a perspective where you're aware of just how terrible they are.
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Oct 26, 2013 16:54
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Craig Spradlin posted:I like your reading that each of the hits represented some element of society I personally read it as the ritual is to kill elements of society or archetypes in a particular order in order, like in Cabin in the Woods. The ritual IS to get the cult some new management, but it ends up being Jay, or whatever they summoned into him. That's why at the end of the movie they put a (straw) crown on him and he's no longer trying to escape. He's their new leader.
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Oct 28, 2013 19:59
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Taking a look at the OP, have we ever had a thread discussing Valhalla Rising? It's a movie that really stuck with me, but I'd love to hear other opinions on the film and what it seeks to accomplish. I think it's definitely psychologically horrifying, though not in the traditional sense. Parts of it remind me quite a bit of Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
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Nov 9, 2013 02:21
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That film is basically about having gay desires
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Nov 9, 2013 15:31
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Maybe this is the wrong threa but does anyone have reccomendations for movies like 12 Monkeys? Sort of a scifi physch thriller with crazy people?
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Nov 9, 2013 16:16
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Try The Quiet Earth . http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/ edit : I'd avoid watching the trailer as it gives away 95% of the plot. rangi fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 18:37
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Xandoom posted:Maybe this is the wrong threa but does anyone have reccomendations for movies like 12 Monkeys? Sort of a scifi physch thriller with crazy people? Thread favourite Beyond the Black Rainbow, for sure!
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Nov 9, 2013 19:35
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