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Mr Ice Cream Glove
Apr 22, 2007

More Florence is good

https://mobile.twitter.com/Marvel/status/1152752497255157760

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Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

More Florence is good

If anyone hasn’t seen Lady Macbeth she is very very good in it

Rick
Feb 23, 2004
When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

K. Waste posted:

Well, Hostel is more or less about the exact same things as Cannibal Holocaust, just with post-Cold War eastern europeans instead of Amazonian indigenes.

But, yes, CH is actually a very critical film to keep in mind when watching Midsommar, and it's particularly relevant when considering the whole controversy over the rape of Christian.

Like, in one sense, the feminist critique is absolutely correct. Christian is literally a victim of coercion, which is not just spelled out in this specific scene, but, like, in terms of the basic plot of the film: That a bunch of millennial graduate students have been roped into a pagan sacrifice. All of the characters are such victims, it's just that in Christian's case, this sacrifice is more explicitly sexualized... Even though the cult also uses sex to entice Mark, in which case it's left completely ambiguous as to whether or not he was subjected to a similar sexual rite, or if they simply kill him.

But in another way, we are compelled to consider Christian as not simply this person who is duped into being made sacrifice. Like, a huge part of the movie is that when he first witnesses the Ättestupa, his impulsive reaction is moral relativism: Oh, you can't judge these people, this is how they've found a way to make their society have meaning. And not only that, he's like, "Okay, I'm gonna stick around and see more, this is my thesis." This is clearly not just an academic interest for Christian and, no, this is not just about him being a stereotypical scumbag slasher film boyfriend. The Ättestupa resonates deeply with him, he wants to bare witness to as much of this queer pseudo-antiquated society as he can because its sensationalism in itself is attractive to him - Baring witness to it gives his life meaning, too, as an outsider moving amongst them.

This is obviously a dominating theme of the film, which is what renders it significantly different from The Wicker Man: That a dramatic through-line for both Christian and Dani is the attractiveness of the cult as a utopia, as an alternative life to the one at "home," where they're both kind of just drifting without being "held" by a society or family. It is crucial to emphasize that Christian is not immediately repulsed, as Dani is. He grows more fearful over the course of the film, but his growing feelings of repulsion are matched only by his continued investment in looking. Preceding the very rape scene is one where Christian comes upon a posed, dead body. Rather than escaping, he actually gets closer to it, getting under it, looking up into its eyes. Yes, he's on mushrooms, but the psychedelics are not what's making him go further in staring into this embalmed face. What's driving him is the same thing that is slowly working on Dani - who, let's be real, is far more often being just swept along by other characters, like literally being led around in circles to the point of passive exhaustion. It's the creeping attraction to being apart of this society where so much is shared, even blood itself, where absolutely nobody seems lonely, or fearful of death.

Again, the rape scene is necessarily so because that's the plot of the film, the coercion in what the cult is doing is endemic or, rather, hegemonic. But Christian himself is not being taken along by the hand to impregnate someone, his mind is not being controlled by black magic, he's going into the dark cave, into this private in one way but totally public in another, sexual ritual, taking off his clothes, "going native." Discomfort and repulsion are just one aspect of what the scene is doing, which is partially fulfilling Christian's coercion fantasy. I don't think it works functionally to write off the absurdism of the scene as choreographed, with particular focus on Christian's wide, beaming, always absorbed gaze at what is being done to him... as not being farcical and, in fact, meaningfully so. Again, Christian is not being "punished" for his misdeeds against Dani, or whatever: He's interpreting the situation through the mentality of someone who says, "This old lady is pushing on my rear end because she's trying to help me! This maternal figure is singing to me because she's trying to make my cum strong! You can't judge these people!"

This relates exactly to the scene in Cannibal Holocaust where Professor Monroe is bathing in the river, and suddenly some indigenous women run naked into the water with him and start splashing him giddily and even groping/ridiculing his genitals. On the one hand, yes, these women are assaulting Monroe. On the other hand, the presentation of the actual scene itself makes it clear that this is in some way's Monroe's fantasy, his reward for eating the raw pig's heart and swallowing. These fantasies of transgression, of "going native," are coded as sexual fantasy.

Where Midsommar goes further is by having this moment be the ironic turning point for Christian, where he goes from open-mindedness to pure revulsion and intuition of what the cult is actually doing, which is, of course, not just coercing him, but coercing everybody. It's not "You can't judge these people!" but, "Oh, you absolutely can, because nobody here is actually free. I've been made into breeding stock, honey, we've got to get the gently caress out of here!" But then Dani is like, "The moon goddess brought me a dream that you would betray me" or something. It's all terribly, wickedly funny.

Good post, I'm glad I went back four pages instead of three to see it. I like that you wrote out the differences between Wickerman and the film, which I was still thinking of how to explain to people.

Eat My Ghastly Ass
Jul 24, 2007

Calico Heart posted:

The horror in Hereditary works great - perfectly, actually - it just didn't actually need a boring rear end cult demon reveal at the end for any of it to be impactful, and absolutely does detract from what was most enjoyable about the film.#

The mother/son dynamic in Hereditary is fabulous, and the horror for most of the film is derived from it; the mother's internal fear that she is "passing on" mental illness to her children, the mixed feelings of intense hate, love and blame towards her son, the son's feeling of pressure to move on coupled with equl parts gult and blame, the seething tension between them, the unwillingness of either to acknowledge the problem or move on

and then the kid bangs his head on the table and the mother saws her loving head off, and the last conversation these two characters who previously the entire film had been about their relationship is completely inconsequential. I LIKE the horror in Hereditary a lot - the slow build, the horrific dreams, the creepy atmosphere is all on point - it's just that in the final act the literal horror in the film supersedes the emotional/psychological horror and the film is definitely worse off for it.

Though I think Midsommar is a worse film, at the very least I can say that the main character's final decision is at least influenced by her personal trauma at the start of the film

VVVVVV: I mean, it's just nowhere near as interesting as anything that had come before. It's cool if you don't agree with me on that but I don't know what to tell ya if you can't understand that viewpoint

I thought the end was great, after all the tension between Annie and Peter poo poo goes totally loving insane with actual demonic possession. The cult using such a horrible tragedy to their advantage and destroying the family in the process was pretty horrific. It reminded me a lot of the VVitch.

Midsommar was fantastic, it totally nailed the feeling of a bad trip and the associated panic attacks.

Elderbean
Jun 10, 2013


I never found Herditary's "it was a cult" ending to be out of place. The supernatural element heightens all the themes around mental illness and fate throughout the movie. The family is literally cursed, and it was a curse handed down to them by the grandmother.

Olympic Mathlete
Feb 25, 2011

:h:


Hereditary owns, the ending just ramps up in wildness... Super good movie.

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


People who didn't like that Hereditary actually panned out to be a demonic horror movie drive me nuts.

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


The fact that they call it a boring cult "reveal" at that end says a lot. Everything about the movie would indicate it's about ghosts, supernatural forces, demons or whatever. But the people that hate the ending all thought they were really smart for ignoring all of that and going "this is actually about grief! This is about mental illness!" and then were mad when the movie was actually what it presented itself to be. It is about those things, but it's also about demons. The hypothetical smart guy ending about "mankind's psyche being the real horror" or whatever would have sucked dog dick and ruined the movie. That's the way some crappy 90's Ashley Judd thriller would end, not Hereditary.

Donovan Trip
Jan 6, 2007
Hereditary is in a special top ten list of absolutely phenomenal movies I never, ever want to watch again. Shits burned in my brain.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Donovan Trip posted:

Hereditary is in a special top ten list of absolutely phenomenal movies I never, ever want to watch again. Shits burned in my brain.

O-o-o-o-h YEAH! I remember feeling like I was going to be sick watching that movie.

porfiria
Dec 10, 2008

by Modern Video Games

veni veni veni posted:

The fact that they call it a boring cult "reveal" at that end says a lot. Everything about the movie would indicate it's about ghosts, supernatural forces, demons or whatever. But the people that hate the ending all thought they were really smart for ignoring all of that and going "this is actually about grief! This is about mental illness!" and then were mad when the movie was actually what it presented itself to be. It is about those things, but it's also about demons. The hypothetical smart guy ending about "mankind's psyche being the real horror" or whatever would have sucked dog dick and ruined the movie. That's the way some crappy 90's Ashley Judd thriller would end, not Hereditary.

I think the objection is really that cults and magic and Paimons aren't as scary as your mom.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

porfiria posted:

I think the objection is really that cults and magic and Paimons aren't as scary as your mom.

Certainly not as scary as your Mom! Heyooooo!

Origami Dali
Jan 7, 2005

Get ready to fuck!
You fucker's fucker!
You fucker!
Hereditary reveals that it's about a cult within the first 10 minutes of the movie because that isn't the point of why we're watching or what we're supposed to care about, so I dunno why anyone would be surprised or upset. It would be like watching Midsommar and being surprised and upset that the people in the Hårga ended up being not so nice.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

I mean they were "nice" at all times, even the killings were done with respect, care and a kind of affection. They were dangerous but not malicious. Well, maybe the "fool" was treated differently.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


Hereditary was so incredibly boring though. Up until that last section rocketed past horror and into humor it was just a slog of gorgeous family drama.

I went based off all the trailers that made it out to be a traditional horror movie the whole way through and did not get that.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Len posted:

Hereditary was so incredibly boring though. Up until that last section rocketed past horror and into humor it was just a slog of gorgeous family drama.

I went based off all the trailers that made it out to be a traditional horror movie the whole way through and did not get that.

Yowza-bo-bowza, that's certainly an adjective.

Thom and the Heads
Oct 27, 2010

Farscape is actually pretty cool.
not just boring - INCREDIBLY boring lmao

JonathonSpectre
Jul 23, 2003

I replaced the Shermatar and text with this because I don't wanna see racial slurs every time you post what the fuck

Soiled Meat
So I just saw this last night. I have been religiously avoiding this thread and rushed back home to read it and discovered there are 900 responses. So before I try to read all 900 here's a weird theory I thought of on the way home.

The cult is a hive mind. The intelligence of the hive mind can only run a dozen or so people at 100%, which is why a lot of the other people in the backgrounds are doing very simple, repetitive things, and very few of them are talking. When Dani dances with them she begins to become part of the hive mind. She and another girl begin speaking Swedish to each other, and the girl says something like, "We aren't even speaking, it's the dance."

When the women share in her grief they sort of uncertainly cry at first, and then as Dani looks up at them they begin to sync up perfectly with her grief, and some of them seem to be smiling and almost happy at all this screaming and crying. IIRC (I might not) even Dani looks kind of happy when she realizes this. Here at last are people (or something) that will feel with her. She's not a lovely burden to them, she is the May Queen.

The hive mind does the same thing in the ritual orgy. All the women are synced up, all moaning and swaying and helping the two copulate. They don't pay a bit of attention to Christian after he's finished because he's completely irrelevant now. He's done what he needed to do. I also speculated that Christian was allowed to live and breed with them because he is the weakest, least proactive, biggest doormat of all the men. His cowardice in just going along and getting along makes him a perfect set of genes to make more weak men who have no drive besides what they are conditioned and told to do.

Who runs a hive? The females. Who gets to mate with the queen? A single drone. The other drones are cast out to die. The selected male is allowed to mate, and then it is cast out to die. And who's in charge of the village? Grandmother Siv. Again IIRC we never see a male villager ever make any sort of decision or command.

One last thing: At the end, when the commune seems to be experiencing the pain of the burning villagers, some of them are smiling and looking excited and happy while screaming. Perhaps this is the only time some of the "worker bees" get to experience full human sensation and even though it's pain it's still something. Or perhaps they have some sort of near-field telepathy. I got no idea. But this is the strange theory I worked out on the way home while trying to figure out this wonderful, beautiful, dreadful movie.


I can't wait to see this again.

Oh BTW this was the second movie of a Crawl/Midsommar double feature I went to. Crawl was first, thank God. I'll leave you a one-sentence spoiler review below.

Crawl: An immortal woman whose injuries instantly heal is bitten over and over again by 7+foot long alligators while showing no signs outside those particular moments that her arm, leg, and torso have been crushed by alligators.

Olympic Mathlete
Feb 25, 2011

:h:


Thom and the Heads posted:

not just boring - INCREDIBLY boring lmao

...sayeth the guy who calls himself Len online.

SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...

JonathonSpectre posted:

So I just saw this last night. I have been religiously avoiding this thread and rushed back home to read it and discovered there are 900 responses. So before I try to read all 900 here's a weird theory I thought of on the way home.

The cult is a hive mind.

I can't wait to see this again.

I mean sure, why not.

RCarr
Dec 24, 2007

SidneyIsTheKiller posted:

I mean sure, why not.

Hahaha, my thoughts exactly.

Segue
May 23, 2007

Well, I hated this movie, but I wasn't that much of a fan of Hereditary either. This was definitely a step down though because Hereditary at least had some interesting themes.

The feeling I got watching it was the same one I got watching Hateful Eight: a director with nothing interesting to say hiding behind an overlong, stylish movie. It just feels very hollow, dressed up empty nihilism played for laughs, reveling in cruelty.

All the imagery was a sideshow, either for gross-out or shock impact. The complete lack of suspense leaves the audience just like the characters, only along for the unenjoyable, meandering ride to the inevitable end.

I usually like digging into movies for subtext and symbolism but this just felt like Aster throwing up a bunch of things he thought looked cool to spruce up a bland story about a lovely relationship with some dime store psychologizing around grief.

I mean yes visually it's interesting, well directed, if bloated, but it's not nearly as clever as it thinks it is and just feels obnoxious, unsubtle, and insulting to the audience. I was bored and angry throughout. I don't like when a director shoves an audience up his own rear end with him.

Rick
Feb 23, 2004
When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

RCarr posted:

Hahaha, my thoughts exactly.

Yeah it's as valid as anything.

SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...

Segue posted:

it's not nearly as clever as it thinks it is

How clever does the movie think it is?

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


Olympic Mathlete posted:

...sayeth the guy who calls himself Len online.

BYOB namechange thread like a decade ago

But yeah I wanted to like Hereditary and maybe if I'd gone in knowing the types of movies A24 makes instead of going in thinking the trailers were accurate I would have liked it more.

With this I'd seen exactly one trailer the day we went and knew more about what to expect from A24 and really liked it.

I keep saying I'll give Hereditary another shot but I don't want to waste my time a second time if it still falls flat.

Zwabu
Aug 7, 2006

veni veni veni posted:

The fact that they call it a boring cult "reveal" at that end says a lot. Everything about the movie would indicate it's about ghosts, supernatural forces, demons or whatever. But the people that hate the ending all thought they were really smart for ignoring all of that and going "this is actually about grief! This is about mental illness!" and then were mad when the movie was actually what it presented itself to be. It is about those things, but it's also about demons. The hypothetical smart guy ending about "mankind's psyche being the real horror" or whatever would have sucked dog dick and ruined the movie. That's the way some crappy 90's Ashley Judd thriller would end, not Hereditary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMVrMHQk95s&t=418s

Doc Fission
Sep 11, 2011



Saw this for the second time and absolutely loved it. Not being in suspense or prolonged dread over what happens really highlights the inherent humor in the movie. It felt like an elegant homage to campy slashers: friends go mysteriously missing one by one with the flimsiest explanations for their absence! Everyone has too much petty internal poo poo going on to pay attention to ill omens, AND they're just unlikable enough that you don't care if they die! Every death is blatantly telegraphed in in-universe visuals! A dude is bludgeoned to death with a hammer by three people who take turns! The cult sex! THERE'S A FOOT STICKING OUT OF THE GROUND! The movie has tremendous aesthetic currency that serves as beautiful window dressing to some really madcap comedy. I appreciate it as a thriller and as #art but I think it’s undeniably very, like, 1980s slasher. It’s delightful.

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

When Christian eats the pube, one of his friends say "hair pie" and I couldn't stop thinking about Revenge of the Nerds for the rest of the movie.

Unkempt
May 24, 2003

...perfect spiral, scientists are still figuring it out...
Does this guy know he's making hilarious films? Would he be angry that I laughed a lot during this and so did most of the rest of the audience?

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Unkempt posted:

Does this guy know he's making hilarious films? Would he be angry that I laughed a lot during this and so did most of the rest of the audience?

Probably not.

Paragon8
Feb 19, 2007

Unkempt posted:

Does this guy know he's making hilarious films? Would he be angry that I laughed a lot during this and so did most of the rest of the audience?

yeah he's said multiple times that he likes laughter as a reaction and the humour is very intentional.

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

are people just not familiar with horror comedies?

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


i think the only time the audience laughed in my showing was the mpreg scene.

Calico Heart
Mar 22, 2012

"wich the worst part was what troll face did to sonic's corpse after words wich was rape it. at that point i looked away"



I think whether or not it's "supposed" to be funny doesn't really make it a good choice. People can laugh at a scene in the wrong way if they the comedy is super lame/inappropriate.

veni veni veni posted:

The fact that they call it a boring cult "reveal" at that end says a lot. Everything about the movie would indicate it's about ghosts, supernatural forces, demons or whatever. But the people that hate the ending all thought they were really smart for ignoring all of that and going "this is actually about grief! This is about mental illness!" and then were mad when the movie was actually what it presented itself to be. It is about those things, but it's also about demons. The hypothetical smart guy ending about "mankind's psyche being the real horror" or whatever would have sucked dog dick and ruined the movie. That's the way some crappy 90's Ashley Judd thriller would end, not Hereditary.

You're kind of intentionally missing the point. The movie obviously has supernatural poo poo going on from the get-go, and they work well heightening the psychological aspects of the rest of the movie. They key point being "working together"" - by the ending we are, sorry, watching a boring cult do boring cult poo poo.

When people say "the movie is about grief" they're saying that's what the movie does well. It's what it spends a huge amount of it's screentime on and what it revels in. The supernatural stuff at the end is the culmination of what's come before but considering the buildup it's a wet fart. No one on earth said the movie should be free of supernatural elements or that it should completely be a psychological horror, just that the cult poo poo is boring and presented in a boring way, which it is, sorry. By the end of Hereditary how are you meant to feel besides shrugging and saying "so?"

Which is also what a lot of folks have been saying about the ending of Midsommar.

Calico Heart fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jul 26, 2019

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

Can you explain what you wanted from the ending of Hereditary? The finale, which involves a rapidly deteriorating Peter being stalked by his grief-addled mother and the toxic cult enabling her, is a lot of things but I wouldn’t call it dull.

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

Paragon8 posted:

yeah he's said multiple times that he likes laughter as a reaction and the humour is very intentional.

Yeah he’s talked about it in most interviews I’ve heard. There’s literally a comic relief character in the movie so it’s not even exactly subtle.

Calico Heart posted:

I think whether or not it's "supposed" to be funny doesn't really make it a good choice. People can laugh at a scene in the wrong way if they the comedy is super lame/inappropriate.


You're kind of intentionally missing the point. The movie obviously has supernatural poo poo going on from the get-go, and they work well heightening the psychological aspects of the rest of the movie. They key point being "working together"" - by the ending we are, sorry, watching a boring cult do boring cult poo poo.

When people say "the movie is about grief" they're saying that's what the movie does well. It's what it spends a huge amount of it's screentime on and what it revels in. The supernatural stuff at the end is the culmination of what's come before but considering the buildup it's a wet fart. No one on earth said the movie should be free of supernatural elements or that it should completely be a psychological horror, just that the cult poo poo is boring and presented in a boring way, which it is, sorry. By the end of Hereditary how are you meant to feel besides shrugging and saying "so?"

Which is also what a lot of folks have been saying about the ending of Midsommar.

I don’t know if cults are as universally perceived as boring as you think they are, and the cult in Hereditary has very little screen time “doing cult things” so I imagine a lot of people itt just legitimately have no idea what you’re talking about.

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


it's weird to call the cult poo poo boring when i found it the most effective part. i said it in the hereditary thread but the movie was so effective the scariest thing to me was a photo album of the cult having normal party devoted to something monstrously horrific.

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

Groovelord Neato posted:

it's weird to call the cult poo poo boring when i found it the most effective part. i said it in the hereditary thread but the movie was so effective the scariest thing to me was a photo album of the cult having normal party devoted to something monstrously horrific.

this was my reaction as well. the cult is scary because of the mundane ways in which it exerts its influence. they aren’t black-clad figures who keep to the shadows but smiling “normal people” who infiltrate your life and pervert all of the social structures you might have turned to. you can’t trust your friends. you can’t trust your family. you can’t trust your support group.

midsommar relies on the same kind of daylight horror. the tension comes from the audience slowly realizing the extent of the cult’s power over those trapped in its clutches.

QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jul 26, 2019

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
I found both this and Hereditary to be more foreboding-funny than scary, particularly with the ironically-jubilant endings and the giddy violence. The moments of horror are almost more like gleeful twists in a soap opera where you’re like “ohhhhh poo poo lmao”. I spent a lot of this movie grinning because it’s just fun to see things like the attestupa or the murder suicide done so fearlessly, and it’s kind of hard for me to imagine someone reeling with terror from those scenes (though, much like comedy, horror is different for everyone).

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sponges
Sep 15, 2011

The ‘cult poo poo’ was the best part of the movie.

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