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Kvlt! posted:Houses that October Built any good? Seems good, but I don't want a Blair-Witch-Esque "all filler with a big payoff at the end" type movie. There are a couple scenes during the "documentary" portions that capture how tense the ridiculous scenarios in actual haunted houses can be when you're there in the moment. The protagonists aren't unbearable. If you have any fond memories of being a teenager and going to/working at a Jaycees haunted house or freaking out at one of those huge ones that pop up around Halloween, it'll be fun.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:54
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Kvlt! posted:Houses that October Built any good? Seems good, but I don't want a Blair-Witch-Esque "all filler with a big payoff at the end" type movie. It's not Blair Witch, and it's also not good.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:58
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Yeah, it's no Blair Witch. If you don't have any nostalgic connection to the subject there isn't much else to recommend.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:03
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Found footage film by duplass sounds amazing. If it's anything like his other "horror film" Baghead (which is great) I wouldn't really expect a traditional horror movie.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:45
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Hey, to anyone who's seen Frailty, would you qualify it as a horror film? I thought I would've considering the axe murders, but it's listed pretty solidly as a thriller/drama/crime movie by every source I can find. It's not an important distinction I suppose but I'd like to hear thoughts on it for Personal Reasons. What I can say for certain is that it's a drat fine film.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:55
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Lurdiak posted:Hey, to anyone who's seen Frailty, would you qualify it as a horror film? I thought I would've considering the axe murders, but it's listed pretty solidly as a thriller/drama/crime movie by every source I can find. It's not an important distinction I suppose but I'd like to hear thoughts on it for Personal Reasons. i'd file it under horror. great movie.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:36
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Lost River is pretty solid. Gosling doesn't hide his affection for Refn but that's not a bad thing. It's a very tonally and thematically consistent film as well. Which doesn't sound like high praise but a lot of people seem to think it's just one random disconnected scene after another. The nightmarish atmosphere disguises the fact that it's essentially an anti-capitalist film. Good poo poo. It's going to be the first blu-ray I've purchased in awhile.
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Apr 15, 2015 03:30
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I mean, didn't Gosling straight up say in the leadup to it coming out that he was super heavily inspired by working with Refn? Doesn't seem like a huge shock.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:43
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Starry Eyes. Hey what happens if you suck maybe the devil's cock at a job interview? Bad things? No way! When your lady parts fall off and you puke up a pint of live worms, maybe that gives you some perspective. But then you wouldn't have a film... There were some really nice touches, but it just felt like a mess of cliche. The producer's speech about ambition telegraphed the remaining 60% of the movie. Riding it out felt like a chore and it went more-or-less exactly where he said it would. It wasn't terrible, but everything after that feels like re-watching a movie you already saw.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:44
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That just loving sounds awful.
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Apr 15, 2015 06:21
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Just watched Occulus and I really liked it a lot. It really felt similar to The Dark in tone, and I always enjoy some bleak rear end movies.
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Apr 15, 2015 07:24
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:i'd file it under horror.
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Apr 15, 2015 09:38
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Unfriended has an 85% on RT. It looks so stupid. It's gonna be awesome.
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Apr 15, 2015 11:36
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Ehud posted:Unfriended has an 85% on RT. I keep hearing that, as stupid as it sounds, it's actually not terrible, and that rating seems to vaguely support that notion
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Apr 15, 2015 12:28
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Lurdiak posted:Hey, to anyone who's seen Frailty, would you qualify it as a horror film? I thought I would've considering the axe murders, but it's listed pretty solidly as a thriller/drama/crime movie by every source I can find. It's not an important distinction I suppose but I'd like to hear thoughts on it for Personal Reasons. It's been mentioned before in this thread, but Fraility is a great companion piece to The Exorcist; both of these films back to back with a discussion afterwards about how they compare and contrast thematically would make for a great movie night.
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Apr 15, 2015 12:33
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resurgam40 posted:It's been mentioned before in this thread, but Fraility is a great companion piece to The Exorcist; both of these films back to back with a discussion afterwards about how they compare and contrast thematically would make for a great movie night. I haven't seen Frailty in a long time, but from what I remember you're right, they both deal with the issue if faith but in contrasting ways. Frailty is about the bad poo poo people get up to in the name of faith, and The Exorcist is about being saved by the power of faith.
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Apr 15, 2015 14:05
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Quote-Unquote posted:So Housebound is bloody great. Possibly my favourite horror comedy in years. Just got through seeing this, and loved it. The way it uses ordinary household objects is wonderful; I've never seen a haunted house movie with such a strong grasp of the familiar, and how it can scare you and then make you feel like an idiot for being scared a moment later (but you're still not going to hang around in that creepy-rear end basement at night.)
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Apr 15, 2015 15:32
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Someone spoiled all of Unfriended a few pages back. I'm not sure what tricks they could pull with Skype footage that could save that plot.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:32
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Horror movies don't generally live and die off their plot, to be fair. If the kills are good it'll probably be worthwhile.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:15
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LORD OF BUTT posted:Horror movies don't generally live and die off their plot, to be fair. If the kills are good it'll probably be worthwhile. The spoilers included some details on the kills and they sound pretty bland.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:21
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LORD OF BUTT posted:Horror movies don't generally live and die off their plot, to be fair. If the kills are good it'll probably be worthwhile. Plot isn't the most important thing in a horror movie, but unless your 14 years old there's a lot more that goes into a good one than the kills.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:28
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resurgam40 posted:It's been mentioned before in this thread, but Fraility is a great companion piece to The Exorcist; both of these films back to back with a discussion afterwards about how they compare and contrast thematically would make for a great movie night. Frailty and Take Shelter would also dovetail extremely well together; they're very nearly the same plot, but from the perspective of different characters.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:05
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Basebf555 posted:Plot isn't the most important thing in a horror movie, but unless your 14 years old there's a lot more that goes into a good one than the kills. I don't mean just the moment where the killer leaps out and stabs the person or whatever, but also the buildup to it: Freddy advancing towards Tina with freakishly stretched arms, Kirk wandering around the seemingly abandoned house before Leatherface springs out with a sledgehammer, Pat running away from the killer in Suspiria. These scenes, moreso than the actual gore, are what a slasher lives and dies by.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:52
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LORD OF BUTT posted:I don't mean just the moment where the killer leaps out and stabs the person or whatever, but also the buildup to it: Freddy advancing towards Tina with freakishly stretched arms, Kirk wandering around the seemingly abandoned house before Leatherface springs out with a sledgehammer, Pat running away from the killer in Suspiria. These scenes, moreso than the actual gore, are what a slasher lives and dies by. Fair point, although in your original post you didn't say slasher, you said horror. There's a shitload of films I'd call horror that don't depend on a killer stalking victims.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:23
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Maybe my expectations were lowered by this thread or other reviews but I enjoyed Honeymoon a lot more than I expected.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:34
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moths posted:Starry Eyes. Hey what happens if you suck maybe the devil's cock at a job interview? Bad things? No way! When your lady parts fall off and you puke up a pint of live worms, maybe that gives you some perspective. But then you wouldn't have a film... I don't know, I think it was pretty good and the ending is pretty brutal which is always a plus. But being from California and knowing plenty of actors who are trying to make it made the film a bit more interesting.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:55
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Basebf555 posted:Fair point, although in your original post you didn't say slasher, you said horror. There's a shitload of films I'd call horror that don't depend on a killer stalking victims. I mean I was speaking to slashers specifically because, y'know, Unfriended is a slasher. It also fits for basically any horror movie where people die: the buildup of tension before the sudden release of the kill is HUGELY important and if Unfriended nails that, we good.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:05
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moths posted:Starry Eyes. Hey what happens if you suck maybe the devil's cock at a job interview? Bad things? No way! When your lady parts fall off and you puke up a pint of live worms, maybe that gives you some perspective. But then you wouldn't have a film... I mean, it was no Thanatomorphose, but it's still head and shoulders above Contracted.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:20
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Public service announcement: If you have never seen BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, you need to see BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeWCydvgNtY  This is prime giallo, made in quick response to Argento's BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, while incorporating many of Bava's influences as well (which are clear to see in the trailer -- mannequins, etc.). Hitchcock's influence is also plundered, sometimes directly. Music by Ennio Morricone. Three (count 'em!) Bond girls appearing in the same film as well. Also easily spotted in the trailer: some glorious cheese as well. InfiniteZero fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 20:21
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I don't think I've seen that one but I should...giallo stuff is some of my favorite horror material.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:18
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InfiniteZero posted:Public service announcement: That cut at the end had me LOL'ing.
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Apr 16, 2015 01:26
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MacheteZombie posted:The spoilers included some details on the kills and they sound pretty bland. They did, except for the curling iron in the throat thing. Anything involving trauma to the throat makes me cringe. So I haven't seen It Follows yet, but I have two friends who have. One had a generally very good review of it, and the most glowing review I've ever heard from him was "This soup was nice. I did not mind it." Another loves horror but hated it, although I think she's more into I've Seen The Devil type levels of violence and gore. I want it to hit VOD already.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:52
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TheJoker138 posted:Gorgeous Vortex is beautifully shot, but yes, it's the most pretentious thing I've ever seen and me and my friend spent half the run time joking about how the reason it wasn't included with the actual movie is super obvious after having seen it. Just imagining the director turning his finished short into the producer and such. There was an interview with the director posted several pages back that was absolutely insufferable. He's as pretentious as the short. K. Waste posted:Viral is so concerned about the Internet rotting peoples minds and turning them insane and consuming them, it's just that "Bonestorm" suggests, "You know what, maybe the supernatural editor of this video explicitly depicted the triumph of basic moral decency," and is thus implicitly, in some sense, just. One thing I immediately caught in the rooftop segment right in the beginning of Bonestorm: The cameraman is hoping under his breath that the kids will die as they attempt their stunts, presumably so he'll have a death video to send to the trading ring hinted at in the first two. It subtly ties into 2's wraparound. 2 seemed the most clear at telling its arching story, which is why I wish they had followed up on that instead of making it about social media infamy. The idea of people desperate for fame by any means necessary is cool subject matter for a horror film, but the point of the first two films in the series always seemed to be about being underground, not being famous.
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Apr 16, 2015 10:33
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sticklefifer posted:One thing I immediately caught in the rooftop segment right in the beginning of Bonestorm: The cameraman is hoping under his breath that the kids will die as they attempt their stunts, presumably so he'll have a death video to send to the trading ring hinted at in the first two. It subtly ties into 2's wraparound. 2 seemed the most clear at telling its arching story, which is why I wish they had followed up on that instead of making it about social media infamy. The idea of people desperate for fame by any means necessary is cool subject matter for a horror film, but the point of the first two films in the series always seemed to be about being underground, not being famous. Essentially, what Viral is depicting is the crisis of meaning that occurs when the 'underground' is commoditized by the mainstream and trivialized by random access as opposed to ritual. It's now no longer possible for an aging new media artist (V/H/S) or an intrepid independent filmmaker (V/H/S/2) to 'lash out' at society through reactionary art and deliberate obscenity, because the V/H/S franchise and its fraternal sibling The ABCs of Death already embody the reduction of para-cinema to a sanitized, niche demographic of impetuous, socially cynical white males. What are the 'installations' of the first two V/H/S films, if not post-modern, temporary autonomous zones, in which the basic esoteric framework of dominant ideology and capitalism (criminal pornographers in the first, blackmailing 'private detectives' in the second) are refuted; such that old media and technology are effectively recycled, and the constant scrambling for life and the power structures this hegemonically reinforces are replaced with a mentality that says "death is good"*? This is where V/H/S/2 succeeds in particular, as an incitement of the idea that para-cinema and exploitation films and the ritualization of hunting down and privately watching these 'obscene' and 'forbidden' works actualizes one's fundamental identification with the Other, the zombie from the opening of Day of the Dead turned into a hoodie-wearing indie filmmaker. (There's even a whole segment devoted to seeing the world through the eyes of a zombie.) The problem implicit in this, however, is the same one that you get with actual exploitation films, and that which you see satirized in Fight Club. The superficial identification with the Other is desirable to anybody who feels in one sense or another dissatisfied with the dominant ideological order. This is everyone. Everyone has this existential crisis, because there is no True Human with which to contrast a True Other. So, inevitably, 'outsider' or 'underground' culture finds unique expression within the dominant ideological order, creating regressive, over-lapping sub- and so-called countercultures that essentially depend upon and mirror this oppressive characteristics of the dominant ideological order. People are attracted to Tyler Durden, and thus are confused when you say he's not a good guy. "All these corporations and New Age psycho-babble are just trying to castrate and feminize men, man!" "You are literally a terrorist." It turns out the post-modern autonomous zone was supposed to be temporary for a reason - it allows the ritual and its innate, spiritual truth to sustain meaning without succumbing to puerile and easily exploited cynicism. Viral - or the extent of the film that we can blame on Marcel Sarmiento - does a very poor job of handling this contradiction, by instead projecting the insecurity of the horror fanboy onto the society that is constantly proving that his attempts to sustain a permanent autonomous zone is mute. (This permanent autonomous zone is the hegemony of the dominant ideological order.) It turns the 'curse' of the underground videos into a metaphor for our narcissistic, competitive culture, essentially indistinguishable from a couple's naval-gazing selfies, and yet still fundamentally blaming those who are 'outside' of this niche for 'feeding the beast.' A new Other is constructed out of the cynical alienation from contemporary social values, cultural forms, and technological means of self-expression. New media has democratized and trivialized the potential for temporary autonomous zones, and this democratic public is most vividly represented by racist stereotypes of recidivist So-Cal Latino gangstas. The tired, the hungry, the poor... They are now throwing up portraits of horror from the American landscape faster than the horror genre and consumer market can interpret and judge them. It becomes necessary to condemn this 'narcissistic culture' that leech hits from 'the real thing.' *Everything goes back to Val Lewton eventually, who apocryphally used these terms to explain the pessimism of his film Isle of the Dead to distraught RKO executives concerned that they couldn't turn a profit on horror without emulating Universal's kiddie fanfare model.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:21
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flashy_mcflash posted:Maybe my expectations were lowered by this thread or other reviews but I enjoyed Honeymoon a lot more than I expected. I enjoy that goons find a fairly realistic interpretation of a newlywed couple to be annoying. Honeymoon was good.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:41
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sticklefifer posted:There was an interview with the director posted several pages back that was absolutely insufferable. He's as pretentious as the short. "Gorgeous Vortex" is a hilarious title and what I would choose if I wanted to make a pretentious art film. It's as if somebody sat down and tried to come up with a title that sounded over the top artsy. It sounds like something from a Kids in the Hall sketch. I look forward to his future work: "Triple Face Kick Spin Puncher" - an incredibly serious entry into martial arts films, calling back to classic Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest films. "Sword Dragon" - the definitive fantasy tale. "Exploding Laser Beams of the Universe" - hard sci-fi, re-imagined by the man who brought you Gorgeous Vortex. All of these titles are films I would actually see too, but not if the director constantly wanted to compare himself to Lynch and Kubrick while making them.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:52
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K. Waste posted:Essentially, Did someone buy SuperMechaGodzilla a name change?
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Apr 16, 2015 15:14
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Jedit posted:Did someone buy SuperMechaGodzilla a name change? No, there are just other people who talk real smart about them movies 'round these parts.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:47
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The Babadook is on Netlix now. I thought it was good but not great. I've developed a real appreciation for this type of slow-burn horror movie, so I definitely enjoyed it, but it could have been better. I feel like the Babadook being a manifestation of the mother's traumatic experience was almost too heavy-handed, I would have like that aspect to be less obvious towards the end. I felt like at the climax of the movie I knew exactly what was happening at all times, it would have been scarier if everything was more mysterious. Then of course there's the issue of pretty much every scene having a child actor in it. The kid doesn't do a bad job, but he can be annoying at times and I guess I just have a hard time with kid actors no matter what.
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Apr 16, 2015 16:40
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Basebf555 posted:The Babadook is on Netlix now. The biggest issue for me is that the emotional climax of the movie, and its scariest scene in my opinion, comes well before the end: it's the second appearance of the book and it pretty much gives away the game that the Babadook is the mother's own madness and grief. I really felt the film didn't have anywhere to go, really, after this. So I thought the actual ending was anticlimactic although I thought it was okay. I agree with the assessment of good but not great. I also kind of wanted to strangle the little boy myself early in the film, but I felt much more sympathy towards his character by the end.
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Apr 16, 2015 17:21
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