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  • Locked thread
McSpanky
Jan 16, 2005






DStecks posted:

Oh god a "pay 5bux to download this poo poo" button, they've found my Achilles' Heel :ohdear:

It's like Steam, but with a hilariously bad movie instead of a game I should really get around to playing at some point,

I strongly suggest you avoid I'm not Jesus mommy, which is free on Hulu and lurking innocently in the horror movie listings! It takes so long to get to the soulless-evils-of-science Chick Tract moralizing that you get lulled into a false sense of security that you're just watching a SyFy-level B-movie about cloning Christ gone awry. A subtle but distinct difference.

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I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Sushi in Yiddish posted:

Does this count? Redlettermedia found a Japanese video called S.O.S., which had been produced by The Family, a Christian cult who apparently was trying to get recruits in Japan before the Aum Shinrikyo attack happened and the authorities cracked down. The cult was originally known as the Children of God, where Joaquin Phoenix grew up in and was responsible for some pretty terrible poo poo before they cleaned up their image in the last few decades. Some standard stuff, like a video advocating against abortion, disparaging technology, the teaching of evolution and more extreme stuff like barcodes being a mechanism for the Antichrist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceUSZBMeREY
The discussion of the video starts at about 26 minutes in.

They produced a version in English and Spanish as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RfU5r63AXY

Cindy Don't Go is still stuck in my head, along with the Japanese version of that anti-computer song. That Fleetwood Mac guy has a lot to answer for if he's not already poor and locked in a basement somewhere.

DStecks
Feb 6, 2012

Just finished The Lock-In, definitely going to be doing a video review of it soon. Really really bad. Even at 88 minutes it drags like a motherfucker, probably since there's only four "real" scares in the movie, the rest is just people dicking around a church being afraid (except for the 30-minute setup, which almost had me thinking the movie was a spoof, it was that cornball).

Some highlights:

- The trailer spoils basically everything; and even if you haven't seen the trailer, literally the fifth line of the movie is "I now believe there is a correlation between pornography and demon activity".
- One of the first scenes is basically a recreation of the infamous Transformers "...were you masturbating?" scene, except imagine that Shia Labeouf's parents are both Ned Flanders and the scene is played deadly straight.
- The plot is set in motion by dumpster diving.
- The demon paranormal activity is caused by one kid bringing a girly mag to the lock-in as a prank, but one character (in a scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie) is a legitimate porn addict and experiences nothing worse than a vague feeling of unease.
- The movie ends with a character commanding the demon to leave in the name of Jesus, thereby defeating the entire message of the film by implying that you can look at all the porn you want, so long as you say a Hail Mary while you're wiping up your cum.
- It's also kinda sorta got an it was all just a dream ending, but with an implied Contact-style twist of the film being eventually found.

I mean, there are legitimate moral issues involved with pornography, and the only one that the movie (passingly) touches on is the addiction element. But the movie isn't about porn addiction, no named character in the film is shown to regularly use pornography! The movie's whole message is "Porn will make demons gently caress your poo poo up", but anybody who this message could be relevant to knows that it's bullshit!

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Death is nothing compared to vindication.
Buglord

Snapchat A Titty posted:

The music thing reminds me, I heard Pedro the Lion and P.O.D. for the first time about the same time more than ten years ago. I still listen to the former, because he says something important about life and truth regardless of your faith of lack thereof. P.O.D. was just some bullshit construct imo.

I think Pedro the Lion's album Control is not only one of the best concept/story albums out there, but it's an amazing commentary on White middle-class Christian families. I've often thought about writing some sort of essay breaking it down song by song, I've listened to it so many times.

But that's for a different subforum!

On film topic: I'm watching Hell House and it's... not quite as disturbing as Jesus Camp, but it's close.

Casimir Radon
Aug 2, 2008


QPZIL posted:

On film topic: I'm watching Hell House and it's... not quite as disturbing as Jesus Camp, but it's close.
The subjects are a hell of a lot more pathetic though.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
I really, really like Hell House.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

DStecks posted:

Some highlights:

- The trailer spoils basically everything; and even if you haven't seen the trailer, literally the fifth line of the movie is "I now believe there is a correlation between pornography and demon activity".
- One of the first scenes is basically a recreation of the infamous Transformers "...were you masturbating?" scene, except imagine that Shia Labeouf's parents are both Ned Flanders and the scene is played deadly straight.
- The plot is set in motion by dumpster diving.
- The demon paranormal activity is caused by one kid bringing a girly mag to the lock-in as a prank, but one character (in a scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie) is a legitimate porn addict and experiences nothing worse than a vague feeling of unease.
- The movie ends with a character commanding the demon to leave in the name of Jesus, thereby defeating the entire message of the film by implying that you can look at all the porn you want, so long as you say a Hail Mary while you're wiping up your cum.
- It's also kinda sorta got an it was all just a dream ending, but with an implied Contact-style twist of the film being eventually found.

I mean, there are legitimate moral issues involved with pornography, and the only one that the movie (passingly) touches on is the addiction element. But the movie isn't about porn addiction, no named character in the film is shown to regularly use pornography! The movie's whole message is "Porn will make demons gently caress your poo poo up", but anybody who this message could be relevant to knows that it's bullshit!

This is really sad even from the perspective of someone trying to convince people that the commoditization of sex is spiritual poison. There's actually a pretty sizable ex-porn Evangelical community, and they do a lot of good things to help people who tend to have either A) gone into the industry out of desperation, or B) gone into the industry relatively well-adjusted, but end up being chewed up and spit out by it.

Unfortunately, there's far more emphasis not only within Evangelism but within broader culture itself on passive judgment rather than active engagement. As you point out (and I'll trust your review, merely for the purposes of this argument), the movie isn't really about pornography as an industry, or even about pornography as a sin in and of itself. As the priest in the trailer says, porn is just another manifestation of 'The Devil,' who abstractly attempts to distract young people from the true path, but may be ostensibly done away with if you just 'put down the dirty book' and 'pick up the Good Book.'

There's an obvious Christian dilemma, here. Prostitution and pornography aren't bad because they can abstractly inculcate otherwise 'good' people into performing sin and damning themselves. It's that the culture of commoditization and exploitation that pornography embodies damns everyone implicitly; that the pornographic industry is incompatible with Christian morality.

Rather than fighting against it, exploitation is allowed to go on as a necessary weeding system, one that separates the ' True Christian World" from Pandemonium, the 'false' demon world that threatens the social stability of Christianity within capitalism at its apotheosis.

But that's where the interesting Catch 22 comes in with 'religious' filmmaking. If they had really wanted to make a visceral and potent rejection of pornography, they would have framed the film from the perspective of somebody working in porn. Imagine it: a Reality Kings-style gonzo porn team in a haunted house, but from the perspective of their cameras! By passively accepting their own exploitation, the cast and crew drat themselves. But by discovering Christ, they also discover the means by which they can fight their way out of exploitation.

But in order to represent that story, the one in which Christ can literally undo pornographic exploitation, you need to be able to grapple with and depict that exploitation. The creators of this film, on the other hand (if they're not just hucksters, which is absolutely a possibility), seem to copy the 'Hell House' model so literally that they also frame their unwitting protagonists as ostensibly innocent observers who get 'freaked out' by exploitation, but are essentially not confronted with it as the product of desire, which is the basis of sin. There's almost an acknowledgment that porn does not actually corrupt souls. It's just bad because 'we all know it,' rather than it being bad because it hurts human beings.

DStecks
Feb 6, 2012


While your heart's in the right place, I think you're severely overthinking it (I'd also recommend watching the movie before formulating an opinion on its worldview).

The film doesn't engage with the actual moral questions of porn at all, beyond throwing out some canned lines ("that's somebody's daughter"). There isn't any kind of discussion on the morality of it, because this video is coming from a worldview that doesn't tolerate discussion. It comes roaring out of the starting gate with the assumption that PORN IS THE DEVIL, and everything else exists to rationalize something they've already concluded.

That's the most important thing to keep in mind: these people did not arrive at the belief that porn is bad after weighing the moral issues surrounding it, they hate porn because it's a sex thing. And they know that in the age of the internet, they can do absolutely nothing about it. They've got endless methods to regulate dating, making sure that people don't so much as kiss before their wedding day, but what somebody does when they're alone at home is very hard to regulate, unless you're prepared to revoke any kind of privacy, and the vast majority of people just don't care enough to do that.

I'd like to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt in that they don't engage with the morality of porn production because the film isn't aimed at porn producers, it's aimed at porn consumers. I think it's legitimate to only deal with one of those things, in theory. But again, it's not even accurate to say that the film "deals with" anything, anymore than a DARE class "deals with" drug use. Actually, I'd say that's a pretty solid analogy; except where DARE would use exaggerated information with a kernel of truth, and present worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities, The Lock-In just threatens the audience with supernatural retribution.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

DStecks posted:

The film doesn't engage with the actual moral questions of porn at all, beyond throwing out some canned lines ("that's somebody's daughter"). There isn't any kind of discussion on the morality of it, because this video is coming from a worldview that doesn't tolerate discussion. It comes roaring out of the starting gate with the assumption that PORN IS THE DEVIL, and everything else exists to rationalize something they've already concluded.

That's the most important thing to keep in mind: these people did not arrive at the belief that porn is bad after weighing the moral issues surrounding it, they hate porn because it's a sex thing. And they know that in the age of the internet, they can do absolutely nothing about it. They've got endless methods to regulate dating, making sure that people don't so much as kiss before their wedding day, but what somebody does when they're alone at home is very hard to regulate, unless you're prepared to revoke any kind of privacy, and the vast majority of people just don't care enough to do that.

I'd like to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt in that they don't engage with the morality of porn production because the film isn't aimed at porn producers, it's aimed at porn consumers. I think it's legitimate to only deal with one of those things, in theory. But again, it's not even accurate to say that the film "deals with" anything, anymore than a DARE class "deals with" drug use. Actually, I'd say that's a pretty solid analogy; except where DARE would use exaggerated information with a kernel of truth, and present worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities, The Lock-In just threatens the audience with supernatural retribution.

I like the DARE analogy. Again, having not seen the film, I'm not going to speak anymore on its supposed themes or content. Instead I'd like to pursue the general ideas reflected in this kind of 'scare tactic' media, especially in regards to specifically religious media.

You note that the film isn't really engaged with porn production and exploitation, but is aimed at porn consumers. But there's really no contradiction between appealing to a consumer on the essential 'wrongness' of a product (porn is a "sex thing," and therefore bad) and the substantiation of that wrongness with extant exploitation and suffering. Even with the DARE analogy, why is the emphasis being placed upon scaring kids away from drugs and alcohol, rather than demonstrating the invisible consequences of complacently consuming narcotics which may hypothetically be funding violent criminal networks that destabilize low income communities / foreign countries?

To me, it seems, that the absence of a commentary on privilege and exploitation points up the disingenuousness of "canned lines." Whether it's porn demons or presenting "worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities," the emphasis on punishment/retribution in these scare tactic models obscures the greater moral question, of why these supposedly sinful products exist, where they come from, and how they are allowed to persist.

Thinking about it, I think you're correct in that there's no essential contradiction between the two and, in fact, one is probably taken as a given in regards to the other in a lot of cases. And, as you say, these sorts of media aren't about moral questions, but absolute moral answers. What I'm saying is that the ignorance of these scare tactic models -- empowering the spectator in not knowing and not wanting to know anything about 'the bad thing' -- goes beyond merely religious ignorance. Like your stereotype splatter film to its niche audience, the 'worst case scenario' is actually a catharsis. It legitimizes the punishment/repression of desire; the acceptance of a simplified moral order in which exploitation is allowed to persist.

The powerlessness that these scare tactic models express in the face of porn potentially supports this. Since porn can not be done away with, since exploitation persists, we should choose abstinence. Of course, there's nothing wrong with abstinence, implicitly, and there are probably a good many people for whom abstinence from whatever is probably the best option. But XXXchurch, whatever you think of the organization, provides an alternative model that is no less absolutist about the incompatibility between pornography and Christianity, but also importantly calls attention to exploitation and suffering, and teaches direct engagement with it, rather than encouraging people to simply ignore the problem lest they loose their souls.

It doesn't really matter whether the filmmakers came to their beliefs "after weighing the moral issues," or if they simply don't like 'sex things' because they're Christian. Personally, I think that's somewhat reductive and impertinent. I'm interested in how these explicitly religious works of media specifically engage with notions of moral order. I'm interested in what the Hell (pun dumbly intended) the difference is between a horror movie and a Christian horror movie.

...of SCIENCE!
Apr 26, 2008

by Fluffdaddy

DStecks posted:

"that's somebody's daughter"

This is a hilariously awful talking point because it shows that they only value a woman as another man's property. It's like the paternal equivalent of guys only backing off when a girl tells them she has a boyfriend, since they only respect other men.

DStecks
Feb 6, 2012

K. Waste posted:

It doesn't really matter whether the filmmakers came to their beliefs "after weighing the moral issues," or if they simply don't like 'sex things' because they're Christian. Personally, I think that's somewhat reductive and impertinent.

If you read a "lol christians" tone into my post, I did not intend that. I am a (fairly devout) Christian, and when I say that the movie's arguments are post-hoc rationalizations, I'm speaking from experience.

And it does matter, insofar as it shapes the direction the movie takes. Namely, if you wanted to make a movie that was about the reasons why porn is morally questionable, you wouldn't do it as a Paranormal Activity knock-off. That makes no sense whatsoever. Unless all you care about, morally, is the very act of looking at or possessing pornography.

Maybe I should have been clearer, but this movie has a 100% spiritual warfare worldview. There is nothing metaphoric about the demons in the film. The Lock-In is about how looking at porn literally opens you up to demon possession. Spiritual Warfare does not believe in morality the way that you and I do. In the Spiritual Warfare worldview, things aren't bad because of ethical reasons, they're bad because demons. I'm not joking or exaggerating. There is a list of Jesus Things and a list of Satan Things, and there's no discussing it because that's simply the way things are.

Lets! Get! Weird!
Aug 18, 2012

Black King Bazinga

Drunkboxer posted:

I remember turning off Jesus Camp half way through because I found it pretty unremarkable. I watched it around the same time as some mormon doc that was about how the LDS wasn't too keen on gay people which I also found pretty dull. I guess these are illuminating to people who grew up outside of the US?

Grew up outside of the US? If you don't live in flyover country that type of Christianity is really alien to your day to day life.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

It's like the paternal equivalent of guys only backing off when a girl tells them she has a boyfriend, since they only respect other men.

Or they know they don't have a shot with her since she's chosen someone else?

Lets! Get! Weird! fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jun 13, 2014

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

DStecks posted:

If you read a "lol christians" tone into my post, I did not intend that. I am a (fairly devout) Christian, and when I say that the movie's arguments are post-hoc rationalizations, I'm speaking from experience.

And it does matter, insofar as it shapes the direction the movie takes. Namely, if you wanted to make a movie that was about the reasons why porn is morally questionable, you wouldn't do it as a Paranormal Activity knock-off. That makes no sense whatsoever. Unless all you care about, morally, is the very act of looking at or possessing pornography.

Maybe I should have been clearer, but this movie has a 100% spiritual warfare worldview. There is nothing metaphoric about the demons in the film. The Lock-In is about how looking at porn literally opens you up to demon possession. Spiritual Warfare does not believe in morality the way that you and I do. In the Spiritual Warfare worldview, things aren't bad because of ethical reasons, they're bad because demons. I'm not joking or exaggerating. There is a list of Jesus Things and a list of Satan Things, and there's no discussing it because that's simply the way things are.

I certainly didn't want to give the impression that I thought you were taking the Mickey out of Christians/Christianity. I'm merely attempting to engage with the information you've given about the film / the context in which the film is produced.

I didn't grow up Evangelist, but I did come up Catholic, and there are definitely people within both sects that take spiritual warfare one-hundred percent seriously. I don't doubt at all that the film and similar scare tactic media are authentic representations of the sorts of post-hoc rationalizations you describe. But the ideological consequences of these rationalizations and the works that reflect them go beyond their face value representation.

That's why I described the 'how' of these beliefs as impertinent. I'm not saying it doesn't matter what people believe or how they came to believe it. That would be ignorant. I'm saying that these scare tactic media don't represent the how, either. They represent nothing short of the distilled ideological consequences of the how, that which goes beyond the self-representation of belief towards ideological instruction.

To go back to the hypothetical Paranormal Activity knockoff: I was actually using that as an example of how the concept of spiritual warfare could shape a film in such a way that it both frames pornography as literally the product of the Devil, but in which the solution isn't retribution/repression, but social activism on the side of the prostitutes and tax collectors and against a complacent society which has already signed its unspoken pact with the Evil One.

But, as you note, this isn't the point of these scare tactic media, because what they're concerned with isn't exploitation, but rather "the very act of looking at or possessing pornography." As ...of SCIENCE! points out, even when these "canned lines" and platitudes involving exploitation do come up, they are interpreted as wrong, not necessarily because of what that person has experienced, but because of how this disrupts models of patriarchal possession, which are absolutely related to the notion that God himself is waging a spiritual war against the Devil for our souls. This is reflected in Jesus Camp as well: Becky Fischer uses Hamas as a model for shaming America's complacency in the spiritual war. Exploitation, indoctrination, and possession are accepted as immutable realities of the spiritual war, things that need to persist until God's 'true' exploitation, indoctrination, and possession succeeds.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the plot of Spawn.

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend
I don't know why we can't just agree that pornography is harmful to both the performers and the consumers.

I think the nation's collective pornography addiction has done a lot more to make us equate sex with shame than Christianity ever could.

General Dog fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Jun 13, 2014

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Frackie Robinson posted:

I don't know why we can't just agree that pornography is harmful to both the performers and the consumers.

It's not pornography that we're debating. It's whether or not Christian horror is merely ignorant, or ignorant and hypocritical.

quote:

I think the nation's collective pornography addiction has done a lot more to make us equate sex with shame than Christianity ever could.

Addiction is a physical dependence and coping mechanism. What are we coping with?

DStecks
Feb 6, 2012

Another thing just occurred to me about this lovely movie: the framing device of the found footage establishes that the church decides to keep the film incredibly secret, despite it being irrefutable physical proof of Christianity, and not just Christianity, but their incredibly specific interpretation of Christianity. They should be running to CNN with this footage screaming "Look at this! We were right all along!"

I can maybe imagine the Vatican keeping something like this a secret for philosophical reasons, but not some American Baptist holy roller church. No way.

WickedHate
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax
Just dropping in to say that I watched that McGee and Me stuff that was mentioned a bit in the first few pages. Notable because it was shown in school, and this was around 2003 or so, but this is a small southern town so I guess that's how they managed it.

Robotnik Nudes
Jul 8, 2013

WickedHate posted:

Just dropping in to say that I watched that McGee and Me stuff that was mentioned a bit in the first few pages. Notable because it was shown in school, and this was around 2003 or so, but this is a small southern town so I guess that's how they managed it.

It was shown in Christian schools much earlier than that. I must have first seen it
in 93 or 94.

Detective No. 27
Jun 7, 2006

Yeah, I watched that in the mid 90s. The episode I remember the most was something to do with a tornado? I don't even think it had a Jesus message. A tornado came and they did not die.

WickedHate
Aug 1, 2013

by Lowtax

Detective No. 27 posted:

Yeah, I watched that in the mid 90s. The episode I remember the most was something to do with a tornado? I don't even think it had a Jesus message. A tornado came and they did not die.

I don't know, Wikipedia says "McGee and Me! deals with issues such as honesty (The Big Lie), bullying (Skate Expectations), and faith in God (Twister and Shout)."

But as a kid the Christian messages of it and VeggeTales too kind of flew over my head. Being a kid at the time I guess Christianity was just such a default, normal part of my universe that stuff never stood out.

Detective No. 27
Jun 7, 2006

Does anyone remember The Buttercream Gang? Midwestern kid goes to Chicago, comes back The Fonz, has conflict with his preteen old gang. I vaguely remember a shootout at a drug store? The Fonz goes back to Chicago a reformed man, starts a new gang there. They even made a sequel that completely ripped off The Goonies.

Edit: This was pretty light on the Jesus stuff. I haven't seen it in nearly twenty years, so I think it just came from a wholesome Christian production company.

Double Edit: Just rewatched the robbery scene. It's funnier than I remembered. He just can't comprehend good wholesome town values.

Detective No. 27 fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Jun 20, 2014

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Detective No. 27 posted:

Does anyone remember The Buttercream Gang? Midwestern kid goes to Chicago, comes back The Fonz, has conflict with his preteen old gang. I vaguely remember a shootout at a drug store? The Fonz goes back to Chicago a reformed man, starts a new gang there. They even made a sequel that completely ripped off The Goonies.

Edit: This was pretty light on the Jesus stuff. I haven't seen it in nearly twenty years, so I think it just came from a wholesome Christian production company.

Double Edit: Just rewatched the robbery scene. It's funnier than I remembered. He just can't comprehend good wholesome town values.

It looks like a shot-for-shot remake of a B-movie from 1932.

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


WickedHate posted:

I don't know, Wikipedia says "McGee and Me! deals with issues such as honesty (The Big Lie), bullying (Skate Expectations), and faith in God (Twister and Shout)."

But as a kid the Christian messages of it and VeggeTales too kind of flew over my head. Being a kid at the time I guess Christianity was just such a default, normal part of my universe that stuff never stood out.

Veggietales is pretty inoffensive as far as Christian stuff directed at kids goes. It's mostly your standard goofy kids' poo poo and general "don't be an rear end in a top hat" type moral stuff with the odd Christian reference snuck in here and there.

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010

raditts posted:

Veggietales is pretty inoffensive as far as Christian stuff directed at kids goes. It's mostly your standard goofy kids' poo poo and general "don't be an rear end in a top hat" type moral stuff with the odd Christian reference snuck in here and there.

I don't know how much there is to this but I have heard that fundementalists hate Veggietales because they think it's trivializing God and religion.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

El Gallinero Gros posted:

I don't know how much there is to this but I have heard that fundementalists hate Veggietales because they think it's trivializing God and religion.

I mean, it is. That's the point. It's rudimentary, naive constructions of God that are appropriate for an audience that are still only grasping the basics of morality.

But to criticize that is ignoring that Jesus literally loving said that this was the proper way to view God, as basically a naive father figure:

Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew, 19:14 posted:

Truly I tell you: unless you turn round and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself and becomes like this child in my name receives me.

Jesus isn't literally saying, "Be childish in your persistent belief that you'll somehow be spared God's judgment despite his omniscience and prophecy." He's telling them that the only way they can understand God is to basically suspend all of their assumptions and ideas about right and wrong and just listen to the parables, one of which even effectively teaches you, "A lot of you won't understand what I'm saying and never will. This will be your damnation."

So, really, the Christian religion as represented by adults is more appropriate as a trivialization of Christ's message then when it is represented for children.

Cool Cherry Cream
Jun 15, 2013
I was farting around Wal Mart's DVD section and found a Rich Mullins biopic. Some of you who have been regurgitated by Christianity might recall the name. I haven't seen it, but from what I know about him, it pisses me off that God's Not Dead gets the budget/promotion/attention over the more compelling subject that is Rich Mullins. Trailer seems earnest but it doesn't look well made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7qbCTFja0

sleepingbuddha
Nov 4, 2010

It's supposed to look like a smashed cinnamon roll

DStecks posted:

Just finished The Lock-In, definitely going to be doing a video review of it soon. Really really bad. Even at 88 minutes it drags like a motherfucker, probably since there's only four "real" scares in the movie, the rest is just people dicking around a church being afraid (except for the 30-minute setup, which almost had me thinking the movie was a spoof, it was that cornball).

Some highlights:

- The trailer spoils basically everything; and even if you haven't seen the trailer, literally the fifth line of the movie is "I now believe there is a correlation between pornography and demon activity".
- One of the first scenes is basically a recreation of the infamous Transformers "...were you masturbating?" scene, except imagine that Shia Labeouf's parents are both Ned Flanders and the scene is played deadly straight.
- The plot is set in motion by dumpster diving.
- The demon paranormal activity is caused by one kid bringing a girly mag to the lock-in as a prank, but one character (in a scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie) is a legitimate porn addict and experiences nothing worse than a vague feeling of unease.
- The movie ends with a character commanding the demon to leave in the name of Jesus, thereby defeating the entire message of the film by implying that you can look at all the porn you want, so long as you say a Hail Mary while you're wiping up your cum.
- It's also kinda sorta got an it was all just a dream ending, but with an implied Contact-style twist of the film being eventually found.

I mean, there are legitimate moral issues involved with pornography, and the only one that the movie (passingly) touches on is the addiction element. But the movie isn't about porn addiction, no named character in the film is shown to regularly use pornography! The movie's whole message is "Porn will make demons gently caress your poo poo up", but anybody who this message could be relevant to knows that it's bullshit!

This movie seems especially hilarious to me because my earliest sexual adventures occurred at church lock ins. Apparently we were poorly supervised. Youth group was always a funny collection of the true believer teens and the bad kids whose parents thought church youth group would help them.

ComposerGuy
Jul 28, 2007

Conspicuous Absinthe
edit: Wrong thread!

ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jul 17, 2014

Wild T
Dec 15, 2008

The point I'm trying to make is that the only way to come out on top is to kick the Air Force in the nuts, beart it savagely with a weight and take a dump on it's face.

sleepingbuddha posted:

This movie seems especially hilarious to me because my earliest sexual adventures occurred at church lock ins.

This wasn't Catholic church, was it? :ohdear:

DStecks
Feb 6, 2012

sleepingbuddha posted:

This movie seems especially hilarious to me because my earliest sexual adventures occurred at church lock ins. Apparently we were poorly supervised. Youth group was always a funny collection of the true believer teens and the bad kids whose parents thought church youth group would help them.

This is amusing to me, because one of the early scenes in the film is the youth pastor laying down ground rules for the lock-in, and literally all of them are NO SEX, NO PORN; and everybody I've shown the movie to has had the same reaction of "is this really a problem? And if so, why are they even having a lock-in at all?"

sleepingbuddha
Nov 4, 2010

It's supposed to look like a smashed cinnamon roll

Wild T posted:

This wasn't Catholic church, was it? :ohdear:

This is hilarious. No, I grew up going to a nondenominational speaking in tongues type of church.

DStecks posted:

This is amusing to me, because one of the early scenes in the film is the youth pastor laying down ground rules for the lock-in, and literally all of them are NO SEX, NO PORN; and everybody I've shown the movie to has had the same reaction of "is this really a problem? And if so, why are they even having a lock-in at all?"

I can only speak of my experience, but I have been at lock ins hosted by a few different churches, and we often ended up playing some pretty racy games of truth or dare. I think it's usually just that the youth pastors end up doing Bible discussions or watching the movies discussed in this thread with the devout kids while the bad kids sneak off for some debauchery.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

sleepingbuddha posted:

I can only speak of my experience, but I have been at lock ins hosted by a few different churches, and we often ended up playing some pretty racy games of truth or dare. I think it's usually just that the youth pastors end up doing Bible discussions or watching the movies discussed in this thread with the devout kids while the bad kids sneak off for some debauchery.

I can only speak from my experiences in Catholic private schools and one spiritual retreat, but, yeah, basically this.

I will add that, at least in my experience, there really wasn't that much of a difference between the 'devout kids' and the 'bad kids.' I mean, you always get your 'truly religious people,' but for the most part it seemed like the only difference between how the devout and bad kids behaved was that the devout kids were just better at disguising their activity because they had bigger social circles, while the 'bad kids' were often very seriously heavy-headed about spiritual morality but were just too depressed and cynical to behave any way that didn't come naturally to them.

For our senior prom we had a post-prom lock-in that was basically designed purely to keep people from having sex after prom. If you didn't go to post-prom, you effectively weren't allowed to go to prom. Even when we were on the verge of graduation, they saw it as necessary to assert this final, meaningless gesture of power over us and our bodies.

DStecks
Feb 6, 2012

All the kids in my church youth group were either related or had known each other from a young enough age for the Westermarck effect to kick in, so all of this is totally alien to me.

Mr Ice Cream Glove
Apr 22, 2007

So we are getting a christian 50 shades of grey movie
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/fifty-shades-challenge-faith-based-1201270675/

quote:

Freestyle Releasing, which generated strong grosses for “God’s Not Dead,” is offering up a challenge next Valentine’s Day to “Fifty Shades of Grey” with faith-based romance “Old Fashioned.”

“I wanted to tell a love story that takes the idea of Godly romance seriously,” said Rik Swartzwelder, writer-director and lead actor. “A story that, without apology, explores the possibility of a higher standard in relationships; yet, is also fully aware of just how fragile we all are and doesn’t seek to heap guilt upon those of us that have made mistakes.”

Swartzwelder plays a former frat boy and Elizabeth Ann Roberts will portray a free-spirited woman. The tagline is “Chivalry makes a comeback.”

“Opening the same weekend as ‘Fifty Shades,’ there’s definitely a David v. Goliath comparison,” Swartzwelder said. “They will have more screens, more money, more hype . . . but we’re hopeful that we are not alone in our belief that there are others out there who desire more from love–and the movies–than objectification or domination.”

“God’s Not Dead” topped $60 million earlier this year, representing by far the highest gross for any Freestyle release. Co-president Mark Borde asserted “Old Fashioned” is the first faith-based theatrical release to specifically target the “underserved” Christian singles audience.

Producers are Swartzwelder’s Skoche Films, Nathan Nazario of Motion Picture Pro Studios, Dave DeBorde and Nini Hadjis. The film also stars Dorothy Silver, Tyler Hollinger, Lejon Woods, Nini Hadjis, Maryann Nagel and Joseph Bonamico.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Gonna be funny how many people troll them with that unfortunate title.

I'm also a little afraid to guess what that description means by 'free-spirited woman', knowing these films....

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

FlamingLiberal posted:

Gonna be funny how many people troll them with that unfortunate title.

I'm also a little afraid to guess what that description means by 'free-spirited woman', knowing these films....

The bondage parts will be exactly the same, but just actual torture to burn out her whorish, satan-inspired independence and make her an obedient, satisfied wife. After enough time in Room 101, she will truly love God with all her heart.

Except that was already the plot of that anti-abortion movie with Robert Loggia as the torturer who was also an angel.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
If he's gonna be giving her corrective spankings that's gonna be great.

...of SCIENCE!
Apr 26, 2008

by Fluffdaddy

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

If he's gonna be giving her corrective spankings that's gonna be great.

Finally, the movie that the Christian Domestic Discipline movement has been waiting for!

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

...of SCIENCE! posted:

Finally, the movie that the Christian Domestic Discipline movement has been waiting for!

It's the first thing that came to mind, because otherwise, why would you counterprogram a typical "wholesome" romance film?

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DStecks
Feb 6, 2012

This Valentines Day, two assuredly lovely movies will do battle. 50 Shades VS. Old Fashioned: whoever wins, we lose.


Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

“A story that, without apology, explores the possibility of a higher standard in relationships; yet, is also fully aware of just how fragile we all are and doesn’t seek to heap guilt upon those of us that have made mistakes.”

Swartzwelder plays a former frat boy and Elizabeth Ann Roberts will portray a free-spirited woman.

Okay first, that's bullshit. Second of all, I'm willing to bet $100 American that despite being a "former frat boy" and a "free-spirited woman", both the leads will still be virginal 30-somethings.

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