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Hell yes! I'm going for 31 with no other criteria, but it'll overlap with the rest of hooptober so that'll add some, and of course I'm looking forward to the challenges! edit: snipe
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Oct 1, 2022 20:57
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 1. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) (dir. Nicolas Gessner) Shudder A very young Jodie Foster plays Rynn, a 13 year old girl who lives with her father in a rented house outside a small town - except her father is nowhere to be seen, and she must fend off her landlady, the police, and a local creep (Martin Sheen) to maintain the lie that she isn't alone. She is hiding a mysterious secret, as well as something terrible in the basement... Jodie Foster (who was 12 when filming started and turned 13 during production) is by far the highlight of this - I'm not sure there has ever been another child actor at her level. Her performance is realistic and complex. Much of the supporting cast is excellent too - the banter between Rynn and her friend/boyfriend Mario (Scott Jacoby) feels natural, and Martin Sheen plays a convincing and incredibly slimy pervert. Unfortunately the plot and structure of the film are kind of weak. It's an adaptation of a novel, and it suffers from a common problem I see with adaptations where it feels like a series of important scenes from the book presented without much thought to the pacing of the film. The central mystery also isn't as interesting as it first appears, and the events of the film unfold in a way that feels awkward at best. Plus the music has mostly aged poorly and is totally inappropriate to what's happening on screen, it sounds like the soundtrack to a '70s porno. I'd say this may be worth a watch for Jodie Foster's performance, but beyond that it didn't do a ton for me. 3 almond cookies out of 5 Total: 1 Watched: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
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Oct 1, 2022 21:24
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3. Relic (2020) Natalie Erika James "I'm glad you're moving in, Sammy"  If you love or even like your parents, you probably dread the idea of their eventual death and its aftermath. Sometimes, their personality slowly slips away and when they do eventually pass, it's like you're losing them for a second time. Then, while you're still mourning, you have to deal with everything they accumulated during their lives. Relic is a pretty great metaphor for the cycle of grief and loss. 👻👻👻👻/5 October Challenge 3/31 1. Blood Feast (1963), 2. Sunshine (2007), 3. Relic (2020)
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Oct 1, 2022 21:37
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3. Amsterdamned Where to watch it ? Tubi for free! https://tubitv.com/movies/534183/amsterdamned?start=true&utm_source=google-feed&tracking=google-feed  Weapons : Divers knife and a speargun This is probably one of the better slashers you've never heard of. Filmed entirely on location in the Netherlands but not actually in Amsterdam. I forget where was actually filmed. This is a dutch? Giallo, you got a really great premise of some guy climbing out of the water in a full divers suit and murdering people. You have a cool as hell cop trying to catch him. There are multiple red herrings and the mystery is part of the fun. Also it has a loving great boat chase through the city which is just excellent. It doesn't have to much in the way of gore so don't expect a gory film. Its got some gore though with decapitations etc.. Finally the main reason you should watch it is because its a great film , filmed on location, great story, really good acting and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKXeLnjvUNY Yes it has a band called Lois Lane sing a song titled Amsterdamned in all its 80s loving glory.
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Oct 1, 2022 21:49
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I might've lost already on the first day because i'm not sure if this counts as horror or not... 1. The Bird with the Crystal Plummage I've been watching Oz for the first time lately and didn't realize Tony Musante was in this also. So that might've jaded my opinion of this film because I just loved it. It's certainly up there with Suspiria as probably my favorite Argento so far (although to be fair i've only seen Suspiria, half of Phenomena & Deep Red lol). Anyways, what this movie lacked in "style" it made up with in acting and just intrigue and I did not see the twist coming. I think like most people I was really amazed at that scene in the beginning where Musante is trapped in the entrance way, that was really well done and just plain cool. Anyways I don't have too much more to say about it other than it was good and that it's only short coming was a surprisingly poor and unremarkable soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. This definitely seemed like a instance where a GOBLIN soundtrack would've elevated this movie way up. 👻👻👻👻 /5 I hope I didn't break the challenge  . Next Up: One of the following: Ravenous Tenebrae Grimm Prairie Tales Evil Toon Suspiria Remake
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Oct 1, 2022 22:18
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 1. The Empty Man (2020) Written and directed by David Prior Watched on HBOMax I loved this. Totally my kind of horror. Moody and deeply engrossing. You could call it slow but I don’t think its a case of nothing happening for a long time to build anticipation. A lot happens. Its mysterious and unexplained and freaky but its just an escalating pattern of things happening to make a very confusing puzzle of fear and paranoia. I was super invested in the main character’s journey as he just falls deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. I can see this being frustrating for the viewer in the same way its frustrating for the main character but I think that’s really its strength. What seems to him at first to be a matter of troubled kids quickly starts to take a more sinister tone as stores of a classic Candyman-esque boogeyman come out. And as we expect that story to unravel we start unraveling this cult conspiracy that is so much weirder. And then it just gets weirder and weirder still. Now if you’re one of those people who needs to be able to solve the mystery this is gonna frustrate the gently caress out of you. The answer is teased and foreshadowed but I’m honestly not even 100% sure I understand it once its over. Its very, very trippy. So if you wanted to be able to say “I called it” then this is gonna annoy you. Also if you wanted a straightforward spooky boogeyman story this might frustrate you too. I know I spent the first hour of the film with the opening line of my review saying “A modern day Candyman…” but then by the second half that was gone as it became something else. But I don’t mind any of that because I was fully and deeply engaged in it. I don’t really mind that I don’t fully understand what the gently caress happened because I’m fully engaged in the hosed up nature of it. Its very “Lovecraftian” or “cosmic” in that regard. The evil at the center of this story is very hard to understand and we only really get glimpses of it and other’s beliefs. And the way the resolution comes out even trusting that stuff is a little hard to do. But I really enjoy that kind of “Old Ones” stare into the abyss madness kind of horror. And it works here for me because of all the time spent with the character and world. Could a skilled editor trim 15 minutes or so off this and make it a little tighter? Yeah, probably. But I don’t think anything is wasted. The time we spend is all time with purpose in getting us pulled deeper and deeper in. And it worked for me entirely. I don’t think its perfect. And like I said I can see multiple reasons why it would annoy or frustrate viewers. Its not straight forward, its not goopy and gory, its not risky and fast. Its slow, moody, methodical, and mind loving. And I loved it. An absolutely killer way to start my October… even if I cheated a little and watched it before it dropped off HBO Max in October. Class3KillStorm posted:I also don't feel like the twist ending - that our wounded ex-cop main character is actually a construct meant to be a new vessel for the Empty Man creature of the title - works, or is well established as being a possibility. It also seems to fly in the face of how the Empty Man is presented to this point - like, it's a nightmare shadow skeleton monster who does a "Bloody Mary"/Candyman-style "I'll come for you when you summon me" bit, and murders you in 3 days in a way designed to look like suicide. Why does he need a human body? What does he have to gain from this? And why would you form a cult to worship a giant unknowable death skeleton if all he ever does is sit around and then eventually murder anyone that tries to talk to him? I can understand the temptation to leave a lot of dangling threads and seemingly unknowable answers, to heighten the mystery angle, but tying it so directly to a spooky monstah angle leaves the film feeling like an odd mish-mash of ideas at times. And the added run time just leaves too much time for that incongruous pairing to stop working properly and eventually turn grating. I don't think the resolution so much contradicts the spooky folklore stuff so much as it... retcons it? The entire Empty Man folklore is itself part of the false reality the cult created to manifest our main character. He is after all the Empty Man. And to that end the point as we understand it from the cult is that the "monster" isn't really some kind of monster or boogeyman at all. He's some kind of old, inhuman thing that the Empty Man serves as a conduit for them to reach and get visions from. All that stuff about bottles and 3 days are either just more lies created by the cult to pull our main guy into his mystery or twists on their own beliefs and rituals. Its all done to conjure this person out of their minds by making him real through an engaging mystery full of sorrow and danger and guilt and temptation. All these intense human emotions that make him "real" and which they after 13 tries determined "fear" is one of the keys. As I said in my review I can appreciate that all being very frustrating and too esoteric and cosmic, especially since the film starts off feeling like a more straight forward boogeyman story. But I got sucked in and dug it.  2. Little Evil (2017) Written and directed by Eli Craig Watched on Netflix That was alright. It was a perfectly fun little light horror comedy to start the season. The problem is it never really broke beyond the basic premise of an Omen parody that it has going in. It does some solid jokes and ideas in there and does a good job with that premise. But it just never really kicks into second gear. Every time there’s a really funny idea or element introduced and you think “I wanna see how this plays out” it kind of just doesn’t. Like I really enjoyed the idea of the Step Dad support club backing up the guy who’s kid is the actual antichrist and not just a kid rejecting his new dad. And its a really fun group of actors in the group… and an unfortunate pedophile. Like I actively cheered when I saw Donald Faison and was excited to see Turk in a horror comedy. But then he and the group just kind of disappear for awhile and it doesn’t really feel like a big part of the movie after all. Similarly I enjoyed seeing Tyler Labine, Clancy Brown, and Sally Field but they all just kind of do a scene and then disappear from the film. Most of these elements come back in play by the end and I did enjoy the last act a bit more, but the first hour of the film really does lean really heavily on the charm of Adam Scott. And I like Scott but… he’s really more of a straight man than an especially funny dude. So like while he has a bunch of funny scenes with funny people/characters none of it really feels like it goes anywhere special since its just to another Scott interaction with someone else. Even Evangeline Lilly feels really underused in a film that she should be a main character in. And Lucas himself is kind of more of a prop joke than an actual character until the last act. Its all bit off. But again, this wasn’t bad by any means. I had an easy fun time and got quite a few laughs. There’s a ton of talented and funny people in here and they all get some laughs. There just doesn’t feel like we got much beyond the elevator pitch for this movie. We wrote a lot of funny jokes and scenes based on that premise but the actual story never really came together. We could have zeroed in on a lot of elements and characters and made a more compelling plot and story. Still a comedy of course, but one with some real drive and direction. But what we get is something somewhere between a fully formed movie and an extended comedy special. Its funny and solid but never really feels like they figured out how to turn it into a full story.  3. The Mortuary (2005) Directed by Tobe Hooper; Written by Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch Watched on Amazon Prime ”Together we can stop graveyard babies.” That could have been a lot worse but it also could have been a lot better. Its kind of what you expect from an early 2000s horror at the tail end of a legendary career once the director seems to be struggling to keep up and left behind by the industry. Its cheap and the CGI is that bad early 2000s CGi and the while the cast isn't all amateurs no one's really at the top of their game here. Still, this isn't a film that needed a lot of CGI or amazing actors. Its a pretty easy and familiar story of weird towns people getting monsterfied and getting even weirder. It reminded me at different times of a number of films and stories including the Pet Cematary films... which I think has more to do with Denise Crosby being here. But its a simple enough formula. Put some actors in creepy makeup and have them act over the top. And that part of the film works. The problem is it takes a loving hour to get there. And that just feels like a complete failure in execution and writing. I'm all for slow builds and time spent with characters and the world to help establish them and engage you... but there's no way we needed to spend an hour watching a disaffected teenager bounce around town. We easily could have done most of what we need to establish things in half an hour and then kicked off the weird zombie/evil stuff in earnest for the second act as we do other stuff like the love interest. But this film doesn't really have a second act. It spends an hour setting up the evil poo poo and then speedruns into the last act finale of all the evil. Its just a waste really and it sucks because Hooper in his prime was amazingly talented at making a good film out of nearly anything. Any style or sub genre he could pull it off. And there's hints of him pulling it off here. I really did like the last act of this movie. Its cheap and cheesy and over the top, but its fun. But the first hour is just such a drag of nothing and there was no reason not to pace this stuff out better and make a more compelling movie. And more wacky evil zombie people. I mean, why wouldn't you do more wacky evil zombie people?
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Oct 1, 2022 22:38
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October 1 - Malignant I'm always so behind on these things. Inevitably I'm watching what people were checking out last year. At this point I was well aware of the twist and how controversial(?) it was, but a lot of people liked it so I'm giving it a shot.  Madison is a woman with a shitbag husband who beats her and a troubled past, and she thinks having a baby will fix these problems. But one night her husband is murdered and after that she's stalked by an evil force that's killing a bunch of people who were tied to a medical research institution that she has her own links with. The cops think she's involved and her adoptive sister is trying to figure out what's really going on. So, yeah, this was a great way to start the month. The twist was goofy, but who cares because the movie was leaning into that kind of 80's style horror film absurdity already. When it comes, it's a "Ha ha! This is getting crazy now!" moment instead of a "Wow, this is so stupid it's a mood killer" moment. Of course the film is amazingly shot. Lots of weird angled tracking shots and complicated CGI driven transitions between visions of murder and reality. While these are so hyper-stylized that they draw attention to them, that's not a bad thing. It feels like a successor to Sam Raimi's style of shooting horror, only a lot more expensive to do. It makes Malignant a cool film to just watch for those moments. I do have one significant problem with the movie and that's the very end. How the villain is dealt with feels so pat and perfunctory, it comes across to me like they decided the original ending they shot didn't work and so made something up with no money in the reshoots. It needed a bit more to that final confrontation. But still, Malignant was a lot of fun. It's absurd, over the top, and stylish and that's a good way to get things started. Chris James 2 posted:Fantastic Fest 2022 @Home I wish I had known about this before your post. You can't buy a "ticket" now and it would have been nice to check out some things that people will be talking about.
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Oct 1, 2022 23:20
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 #9.) Sushi Girl (2012; Blu-ray) After a six-year prison sentence, a man named Fish is released and then escorted to a reunion with the other men involved in the robbery that landed him in jail. That reunion takes place at a private sushi bar, with the dinner served on a nude woman's body, while she tries to avoid reacting to their crime talk, plus a bit of torture. OK, so the big thing about this movie is the cast. We've got Tony Todd, Mark Hamill, James Duval, and over in flashbacks, Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, and Michael Biehn,as well as a cameo from Sonny Chiba. So if you've been hungering to see any of those first three names in leading roles outside of what they're usually known for, you may want to check this out. Then again, maybe not, because this film is almost desperately reaching for gritty credibility, so you get five slurs to a scene. Especially unnecessary, since the film already has ribs getting snapped, teeth getting ripped out, cheeks slashed with broken glass, chopsticks hammered into knees, and a hand chopped off, in addition to plenty of gunplay. Played with less abandon, it could have achieved a memorable level of cool. As it is, it feels like a throwback to the days of Tarantino imitations, just with more grime than gloss. “Everything is imported.”  Rating: 6/10
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Oct 2, 2022 00:09
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2. A Lizard in a Woman's Skin 1972 "Not guilty by reason of... TOO HORNY!"  I'd been meaning to watch more gialli this October, and I scrolled past this one this afternoon. This is a deeply, deeply horny film with all of the great hallmarks of 1970s giallo -- inexplicable nudity, vibrant colors, LSD, and a murder mystery where there's about 30 fake leads during the runtime. There's an absolute banger of an out-of-nowhere scene about 2/3 of the way into the movie involving lab dogs, which looks goofy now but probably was shocking in the early 70s, and I really appreciate that. Additional shout-out to the only example of a literal wild goose chase I can think of in a horror movie, which, just, lol. Not too bad! Rating: 6.4/10 Sexy Stabbings
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Oct 2, 2022 00:20
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Last year I went with films that were all new to me, but this year I think I'm going to go for a mix of new film and rewatches. I'd like to get the 31 but I'm not sure if I will, so lets see how far I get. 1) Ring(u) (1998) Rewatch Obviously the thing everyone remembers about Ring is the ultimate scene with Sadako (for a good reason - it's amazing), but I think it's worth highlighting how good the rest of the film is too. There's a unique tension to Ring, created by the combination of the one-week deadline and a very slow, purposeful pacing. Instead of playing on the ticking timebomb there is instead just a general feeling of dread across the whole film. I love it. The sound design is amazing*, really effective use of total silence to make normal sounds (like a phone ringing). I love Ring. I love Sadako. I love the guy with the towel on his head. I love the music that plays over the end credits that's completely in contrast with the mood of the film. It's all good. 9/10 *Apart from that one sound effect YOU KNOW THE ONE AGH GOD DAMNIT 2) Ring(u) 2 (1999) Rewatch It's weird that this film came out so soon after the first one, and yet it's not even the first sequel to Ring (I have watched Rasen in the past and thought it was pretty bad!). Ring 2 is... also not great. All of the interesting ideas were used up in the first one, it seems, and so now we just have the leftovers. The characters are just side-characters from Ring who are now the protagonists for some reason. There's no tension created by any sort of countdown, so now the slow pacing is just... slow. The characters spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the characters from the first film did, which is annoying because we the audience already know! Most of the extra information we get about Sadako just makes her character less interesting. There are some good ideas in here, but none of them really get used to it's full potential. I do like the weird experiment in the swimming pool at the end (although maybe that's just because I find swimming pools in the dark inherently creepy) and I like the final scene in the well but otherwise the film is just too unfocused. The end credits music is also totally wild for how this film ends, which again I appreciate. 6/10 Tomtrek fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Oct 2, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 00:23
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 4) The Munsters - 2022 - Netflix From the moment this was announced, I've bounced between not sure and cautious optimism. I've said it before that I've loved the Munsters since I first saw the reruns on TV. Yeah, I like the Addams Family too, but I connected more with the Munsters. I could relate to them better. That Rob Zombie was directing, that made me genuinely hopeful. He's a Monster Kid like me, so I had faith that he'd understand the source material. Seeing the pictures on the work in progress, that was just adding to my optimism. Then the trailer hit and I felt mixed. While it was hitting the right beats, I was iffy about some of the stylistic choices. Still, test was going to be with the viewing. I was a bit disappointed with it being Netflix only since I was ready to see it on the big screen, but oh well. Now having sat through it, I'm left with an observation I've had with some films before. Did we all sit through the same film because I loved the hell out of this. There were plenty of Easter eggs for longtime Munster fans, and where I wasn't completely sold on things such as a non-bat Igor, I was totally sold by the end of it. Even the choice of going vibrant color ended up working for me considering how vibrant things had to be for when they'd be broadcast in black & white. This was leaps and bounds better than that Mockingbird Lane reboot attempt. This was total fun from beginning to end. I laughed hard at the joke on how Herman got his last name because little me wanted to try muenster cheese just because the name was similar to The Munsters. Still is one of my favorite cheeses. The actors did a great job. Even for the flack Sherri Moon-Zombie gets, she got the Lily-isms right. Baby Spot was adorable. Orlok showing off his ratties was cute. God, I could just go on about all the bits I loved. More than anything I wish I could be neighbors with the Munsters. I want to see a sequel where we get Eddy and Marilyn's addition to the family. Soon as a few things clear, I'm picking up a blu-ray copy.
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Oct 2, 2022 00:48
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I'm in for 31 new-to-me spooks this year. 1. Lifeforce  Astronauts visit Haley's comet... with spooky results. I'm torn on this one. There's some really great stuff here. The special effects are really great. Not just 1985 great, genuinely really good practical effects. All the anti-gravity shots look really convincing. The scale of the movie is enormous. The craziest poo poo comes right out of nowhere. But the story. It's just not good. And it's poorly told on top of that. Characters just know things and exposition dump them on you. It's the kind of sci-fi that thinks it's smart and interesting but is just dumb. It's real slow a lot of the time too. I really wish it had been successful though. You can see that Tobe Hooper can do great things with a big budget. If he had the chance to improve his storytelling we could have got some really good movies. 3/5
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Oct 2, 2022 01:36
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 #10.) Amityville Death House (2015; Tubi) On the way back from helping with hurricane relief, a young woman and her friends decide to stop and visit her grandmother, who lives in Amityville. But wouldn't you know it, the whole town is under the curse of a witch from long ago. It's a Polonia Brothers production, and it's also one of the most cheaply-made entries in the sprawling Amityville exploitation pool of films that I've seen. They use a copy of that special edition release of Evil Dead, the rubber Necronomicon version, as a prop in the opening sequence, but held upside down to make it slightly less obvious. The pages of an ancient grimoire use college-ruled notebook paper. The grandmother's house is a CGI drop-in. And Eric Roberts appears in cut-in scenes, wearing a mask from Wal-Mart. Low-budget doesn't automatically mean low-quality, of course. But this movie is both lazy and boring, on top of the budget constraints. People sit around, and sit around, and sit around. Stock sound effects are used for jump scares, attacks on people happen without much build-up (and cut away just as abruptly), and flashbacks to the instigation of the curse are done in a flickery turn-of-the-century style, despite taking place a few hundred years ago. Things do pick up somewhat in the last quarter of the movie, if you're still awake at that point, but there's very little to this haunting that hasn't been done to a far better degree elsewhere. “Shut it off. I've seen enough.” Rating: 4/10
Darthemed fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Oct 3, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 01:50
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 2.) Near Dark Kathryn Bigelow | 1987 | Criterion Channel I had wanted to watch this back in May for the May Challenge but it left Shudder (I think?) before I could, so I’m glad I got to see it for this thread because I enjoyed it a lot! It reminded me of The Lost Boys, but where that was about the allure of the freedom you get as both a vampire and being part of a group, here you're stuck with a group of weirdoes who view you as a liability and would happily end you the first chance they get. It was kind of interesting see how unglamorous it is to be a vampire, especially how they're constantly on fire. I also really dug the Western vibes. The shootout in the bungalow was very inventive in how it incorporated Western and vampire aspects to really make it tense. I’m really glad I finally got a chance to see this movie. Thanks, thread.  Rating: Total: 2/13 New: 2 Rewatches: 0 My Letterboxd list (in progress)
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Oct 2, 2022 01:52
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I'm in for 31. I'm including rewatches though, there's some movies I just feel like watching again this year. I might also do bingo depending on when it is posted and what the challenges are I started last night and I'm on my fourth movie right now, (I'll post reviews later) which is a first time watch of the Ghoulies and I will just say this movie, so far, is NOT delivering on Ghoulies being on screen.
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Oct 2, 2022 01:53
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Ghoulies is a overrated series.
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Oct 2, 2022 02:21
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2.) Deep Red (1975) | Shudder First time giallo watcher. I’m not sure if Argento’s intentions were to scare, but it’s impossible to be scared when that bitchin’ Goblin music starts drowning out the soundtrack. It has me conflicted, because it’s undeniably great music but it couldn’t have any less to do with what’s happening in the movie. The whole thing is carried hard by some brilliant and stylistic direction; it looks gorgeous and interesting the whole way through. I only realize now after finishing that the opening section threw in a psychic for no reason, much like the random killer doll later on. Not a great movie for fans of things making sense, but the plot was fun enough. While it’s unfortunate to have the gay villain be accidentally lynched, it was a bizarrely hilarious sequence that took me completely off guard. He and his mom both got stellar proto-Final Destination sendoffs. 3.5/5
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Oct 2, 2022 02:27
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 2. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) A serial killer investigation story told with an unnerving, subjective point of view, shrouded in dead ends and dreamlike ambiance, given a tinkling score by Ennio Morricone with breathy "la la la" singing and bells and plucked guitar strings. It's really hard to put into words why The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is so engrossing when its plot synopsis is so higgledy-piggledy. But if you put it on long enough to see the inciting incident you'll know: an assaulted woman bleeding on the floor of an art gallery made of white marble, Tony Musante rushing to help but trapped behind a wall of glass from her, both exposed and helpless and flooded with light. You can feel why the puzzle keeps on preying on his mind in abrupt intercuts. Deep eerie vibes, and a great indulgence in using shots of driving gloves and a looming silhouette at the edge of the frame to build the creepy anticipation.  / 5.jpg)
Vanilla Bison fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 02:35
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I don't know that I'm going to do 31, but we've already gone through a few, because like most other horror fans we got started early. The Entity Sidney J. Furie, 1982, Starz A lurid movie about a poltergeist rapist, with obvious metaphorical stuff about how hard it is for a woman to escape trauma in a world run by men. Martin Scorsese called this one of the scariest ever. I don't know that it's that good, but Barbara Hershey is excellent in it and it's well-written, if filmed exploitatively against the subject matter.  Frailty Bill Paxton, 2001, HBOMax This is probably my fourth watch of this in the last 20-odd years. I really wish Bill Paxton had been able to make more stuff, because this very modest, low-budget movie that jumps between dream logic, noir drama, period piece, and slasher is really a lesson in doing a lot with less. He lined up the perfect actors for every part and as I recall it's mostly Texas actors. Pretty much a classic.  Mad God Phil Tippett, 2021, Shudder Phil Tippett's passion project/hobby film that took 30 years to make because he pretty much worked on it only when he had the spare time and the student filmmakers on hand. Some of the sequences took years to complete. Not a movie you should watch if you are expecting a standard plot so much as an 80-minute long Tool video about Leviticus. Definitely worth a trip.  Tremors Ron Underwood, 1990, Vudu Probably the first time I've watched this all the way through again in 30 years. Another movie that benefits from perfect casting to back up excellent creature effects. Maybe the only horror movie I can think of where a right-wing nutjob is a net benefit to the team.
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Oct 2, 2022 02:40
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Going to try for 13 write ups this month, though hopefully I'll have time to watch more than that. #1: Dreamland (2019) First, a new to me film. Not what I was expecting, but quite interesting. Director Bruce McDonald has described this as a spinoff of his zombie bottle-movie [Pontypool, but outside of some shared cast and a bit of the undead there's not much connective tissue. Stephen McHattie is great to watch in the dual role of a jazz musician and the assassin hired to kill him, while Henry Rollins shows up as a petty, vain crime lord with a penchant for outrageously gaudy dinner jackets. The whole film has an, unsurprising, dreamlike flow and lots of overt weirdness punctuated by bouts of over the top violence, both of which get kicked up a notch halfway through with the introduction of a wedding planner cum vampire countess (Juliette Lewis!) and her brother, an honest to god Nosferatu who hams it the gently caress up and has a great time doing so. There's honestly not much more to be said with regards to the plot, maybe the hitman secretly has a heart of gold and the fading jazz musician does have one great performance left in him, but if you are in the mood for a bit more style over substance and think you might be down for a gonzo-noir-vampire-fantasy, you should check Dreamland out.  #2: A Cure For Wellness (2016) Second, a rewatch. I really love this one, and I think it was unfairly maligned on release and deserves more of a spot in discussions of 2010s horror canon. It's too long but it's never boring, indulgent and ambitious, sometimes more interested in being a collection of beautiful and terrifying images than connecting them coherently, but it does it so well. The cinematography and retro-medical sets are consistently perfect. The first hour or so is a gorgeously realized, tight, gothic mystery. Things start to go really wild after that and maybe Verbinski starts to lose the plot, but he does so in a way that feels like it could have been done by Hammer Horror or Roger Corman instead of coming out in 2016. Horrific dental torture! Robed cultists! A superhuman German doctor wearing a flesh mask! Incestuous immortals! Squirmy, wormy, eels, Eels, EELS! And it manages to tie all this rather neatly into a criticism of both capitalism and the way our various reliefs from capitalism and modernity have themselves become co opted by the same. It is a great hope of mine that Verbinski will get to do one more big horror film despite how hard of a flop this one was. Mover fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Oct 2, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 02:49
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4. All the Colors of the Dark Where to watch? https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/all-the-colors-of-the-dark It looks like its on AMC plus but I am unsure because they've got it under a different name.  I'll be honest I had to read the wikipedia page for this movie after I finished watching it. Its directed by Sergio Martino who directed a lot of giallo films in the 70s including Torso which is a particular favorite of mine. The story is actually a little bit difficult to follow and the film follows dream logic. Its very disjointed. There are not that many killings in it and their not particularly gory either. There is a lot of gratuitous nudity though. Its not a bad film but you really have to pay attention to what the gently caress is going on and even then you are going to be confused because it uses dream logic in the film. Like its very difficult to follow generally what is happening in the film and whether what you are watching is actually happening. Also theirs 1970s witchcraft involved Spoiler Alert , but uh that's something you'll find out pretty soon. Anyway not a bad film but not as good as Martino's other works.
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Oct 2, 2022 02:53
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 Terrifier, 2016 This one is a pretty simple and straightforwards film. A killer clown murders people. That's it. He is completely silent, so no one liners or anything like that. His clown character comes from his body language. Some girl end up in a basement and brutal poo poo happens. Terrifier is a very brutal movie that cranks up the violence. Most horror films that goes for a killer clown would go for fun violence, but Terrifier goes for just plain violence. And I can see this as a turn off for people who might go into this film expecting the former. Terrifier is straight up mean spirited. Despite the clown, there's no humor in the killings. There's no retribution or justice for the victims. It is just sociopathic torture and killings. It was a nice movie in it just goes for horror and don't try to sugarcoat the gruesome stuff with jokes. Terrifier is worth watching if you just want something pure evil and seeing brutality in action.
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Oct 2, 2022 03:24
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Hot Dog Day #89 posted:
Yeah, this was my reaction to it also. I have a nitpick with this one that still bugs me when I think of it. There's a part where the clown texts them and it's all just normal speech and I felt like it should be emojis or something, I dunno. Like you said, it's not going for fun or funny gore, just straight up brutality.
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Oct 2, 2022 03:31
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I do this every year, but this might be the first year I actively participate in the thread. My theme this year is Horror Anthologies, and I’m about to watch my first movie right now! I will report back.
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Oct 2, 2022 03:37
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 - (4). The Haunting (1999) Directed by Jan de Bont; Screenplay by David Self; Based on The Haunting of Hill House 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson Watched on DVD In some way its kind of amazing that you could take a story as good as Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House... that has been turned into a classic film from Robert Wise and a great mini series from Mike Flanagan and influence countless other haunted house stories like The Shining... that has a stacked cast of talent... that has a director with a bunch of hit movies in Speed and Twister and who shot even more impressive movies like Die Hard and Cujo... with as much money and effort behind it to create such a lavish set and massive haunted house and such a crapload of CGI from an era that usually ages terribly but actually looks fairly clean... and the result is as bad as this film is. At its core the problem seems to simply be that Jan de Bont is way too enamored with the house and the special effects and has no real interest in stories or character. On some level you can kind of understand this. Hill House is after all the main character of the story so it makes some degree of sense for someone in the late 90s to see the marvel of CGI and think they can literally bring the house to life in a scary way. But it just doesn't work. And worst of all everything else is so neglected. Hill House may be a key character in the story but so are Nell and Theo and Luke. Its important to focus on the human characters because its a story of an evil house loving with humans. But this version just does a terrible job with that. There's no depth to these characters at all. Nell has a backstory at least but its delivered so clumsily and he arch is handled so awkwardly that she comes off as flighty more than entranced by the house. And she's got a weird hero's journey arc that just kind of muddies the whole thing. We somehow added a mystery plotline and made it less interesting. And really its just an incredibly dull movie. The house is remarkable and the effects age better than most of the time but its really like 90 minutes of actors walking by statues as the statues turn to look at them behind their backs. Its just so painfully dull. There's no real scares or thrills. Weirdly the film has these extra characters who seem to exist to be taken out mid film in classic horror story style and they're just written out all in one quick stroke right away. And for all the time spent with Nell and her murder mystery its just so boring and shallow. This movie is just boring. I mean the one Owen Wilson scene is kind of funny. Yes. And in general its just weird to watch Owen Wilson being all Owen Wilson in a horror film. But that's such a small upside. This was just a terrible era of mainstream horror and I think the Haunting may be the worst case of money and resources thrown at a classic story but like... with no sense at all of what makes a horror movie work... or even any story.  4 (5). Nope (2022) Written and directed by Jordan Peele Nope is dope! Sorry, I had to. Nope rocked. I somehow managed to go this long without spoiling myself on it. I really wanted to save this one for October and it just seemed like it was gonna be impossible to not find out what the movie's deal is. I honestly might have even seen a few things that DID spoil it but I managed to avoid context and fog my brain enough that I went into this pretty blind besides the up front advertising of it. And man, even like some of the posters are spoilery. But somehow I kept myself pure and I was glad I did because I had a ball. I feel like since Peele debuted with Get Out there's this natural inclination to just try and interpret his films as social and political messages first and foremost. Which is funny since Get Out isn't remotely subtle about what its saying. Us was definitely a much tougher film to unravel as it seemed like Peele had a bunch of ideas colliding at once. Nope feels similar as there definitely seem to be ideas in here about exploitation and the film industry. Its not coincidence that a TMZ reporter shows up in the middle of our characters' "documentary" shoot. Nor does it seem to be a coincidence that a black family with a history of erased roles in the film industry are the targets. Or that they themselves are wranglers of animals who are often exploited. Or that Steven Yeun's character is a former child actor in token roles with animals... that's like an exploitation burrito. And I'm sure we could spend forever unwrapping this stuff and there's definitely people who love doing that more than anything. But honestly, I just thought Nope was a pretty kick rear end throwback B horror. Like those old 50s giant monster and alien movies. The thing people are saying M. Night Shymalan is always trying to do but like... he ends up with the Happening and Peele makes Nope. Or I guess like you could say its the same stuff that inspired Spielberg to make the films he made and Peele was probably inspired by Spielberg too but he’s also telling in that kind of smaller scale, more nuanced way instead of the pure spectacle. Nope has the spectacle but his story is also on the people pursuing the spectacle and maybe even a little judgmental about that instinct itself. Nope kicked rear end. It was engrossing, tense, thrilling, funny, heartwarming. Great cast and Peele is just a proven horror heavyweight at this stage IMO. I mean, he's gonna have to work awhile to get his name in the ranks of the legends but he's 3 for 3 and Nope easily joins Get Out as one of my most fun first watches in horror in a long time. I can't wait to revisit it and I can't wait to rewatch Get Out again. I'm planning a Night of the Living Dead/Get Out double feature for sometime this month and I'm kicking myself that I didn't do it today on the anniversary of NotLD's release. But that's for another time this month. As luck would have it I watched Nope tonight and I honestly don't think I could have picked a better film to hold off until October and kick my month off with a bang with.
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Oct 2, 2022 04:14
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Alrighty let's get this rolling. 1. Revenge (2017) (movie CW: forcible rape, real? spider death) was way better than the generic Shudder-recommended thriller I expected it to be? Each of the main men do a great job representing a different archetype of lovely misogynistic dude, especially the weasel who is downright menacing when he has the advantage and turns into a sniveling baby the instant he loses it, and vice versa. Our main actress does a good job, though she has much less to work with once the action starts and is a much better character actor than physical actor/emoter/whatever you call it. But most importantly, the movie oozes style without being overbearing and has a number of beautiful desert shots and ambitious stylistic choices that nearly all land beautifully. You want dripping blood that sounds like artillery fire because you're seeing it from the perspective of an ant? You got it. You want a peyote-inspired self-surgery vision quest? You got it. Ridiculously implausible human biology and physics? You got it. And since I know this is important to many of you: it's got da goop. It goes out of its way to have da goop. 7.5/10 VROOM VROOM fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Oct 3, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 04:19
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In for 31. This may be a bad idea but to Hell with it. 1. Lady In White Set in a small town outside New York in 1962, this is the story of Frankie (Lukas Haas), a little boy who gets locked in the school cloakroom by other kids pulling a prank, who witnesses a ghostly re-enactment of a murder, only to barely survive an encounter with the still-at-large serial killer. Suspicion falls on the school's black janitor, who was drunk in the basement at the time, but Frankie knows there's something more to it, and the ghost of the girl who was the killer's first victim comes to visit him, and his dreams are filled with visions of the town's notorious "Lady in White". This is a very ambitious film, blending mystery, childhood nostalgia, fantasy, and occasional wacky comedy. Writer/director/composer Frank LaLoggia takes a very stylized approach, lots of elaborate camera moves, deliberately kinda fakey dream sequences and backdrops, and scenes of Frankie's comic relief "old country" grandparents. The film runs a little under two hours and honestly it does drag at times, the broad comedy in particular just never works. Not helping things is LaLoggia's own score, which is hugely overbearing, especially when it's trying to be light and funny. Like it all almost works, but it's really sloppy in a lot of ways; through all that's going on there's not a lot of sense of escalation or suspense, and the climax is really a mess. It just feels like something is missing that would have pulled it all together and made it hit harder than it does. It's an interesting watch, and it's a drat shame LaLoggia never directed again; he's clearly got a great eye. This may be worth a look, it definitely has its fans, but I was left unsatisfied.
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Oct 2, 2022 04:19
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2. Dark Glasses (2022) A prostitute is hunted by a serial killer, who ends up blinding her. Dark Glasses is a nonsense giallo slasher. The killer while totally normal is almost supernatural in his fixation and ability to locate the main character. While being nonsense, things to do happen to keep the movie entertaining which is different from most giallos I've seen. Music is great and the film itself looks sharp. Recommended to watch with friends, not recommended for watching alone. Available on shudder soon.
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Oct 2, 2022 04:34
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3. Blood Quantum 2019 Once again, white people ruin everything.  I wasn't super into zombie movies when this first dropped, so I kept putting off watching it until now. I should have watched it sooner. Awesome zombie action, but more importantly, an actual, fresh take on the genre. The central premise is a good one (Natives are immune to zombies) and it leads to some situations that I've never seen in a movie before, which is cool. Factor in some genuinely gnarly kills (including a memorable one with a chainsaw) and it's a pretty good time. Definitely one of the best zombie movies of the last decade. Rating: 7.6/10 Flopping Zombie Fish
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Oct 2, 2022 04:38
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 2. Dark Glasses (2022, Shudder) Shudder had this on as a "secret screening" tonight, so I went into this totally blind, not even knowing I was going to be watching it. The Giallo subgenre is a big blind spot in my horror viewing, so I can't really speak to how this compares to most of them, but Dark Glasses is a pretty straightforward murder mystery, with the hook being that the protagonist is blind. It's got pumping electronic music and good blood effects, but a lot of scenes just feel disjointed and out of place. There's a random water snake attack that comes out of nowhere and isn't even fun or well-shot to compensate, and the rest of the back half just kinda drifts from scene to scene in a similar way. On the bright side, there's some truly bonkers poo poo that happens, the highs are very high. It's just that the baseline of quality is pretty low. 2/5
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Oct 2, 2022 04:39
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2. Everyone Will Burn Fantastic Fest 2022 @Home  Maria Jose, still struggling with grief over her son having been bullied into suicide by other villagers years before, attempts herself, but is stopped last minute by the sight of a dirty little girl walking on the bridge. This girl is named Lucia, and together it is prophesied they will bring forth the apocalypse; the kid causes awful things to happen, and Maria Jose justifies it because it's happening to people who either made her kid kill himself, or looked the other way on it when the abuse and harassment could have been de-escalated. They did nothing, why shouldn't she? The opening scene is the most well-done, the slight issues I had is they didn't go near as gonzo as they could have with this approach. The last third of the film also felt weirdly paced (star Macarena Gomez has some great rants straight out of a telenovela that helped during this), as is it could have benefited from being under 2 hours. This doesn't detract too much from how compelling the first half is, it just didn't stick the landing **** 3. Dark Glasses Shudder TV surprise livestream Dario Argento's first directed feature in a decade sees three escorts targeted and murdered; a fourth (played by Ilenia Pastorelli, who started acting six years ago) almost joins them, getting chased into a severe multi-carwreck that leaves her blind and a Chinese child orphaned. The killer's unsatisfied with her still being alive, and continues the pursuit Alright, which is better than average considering Argento's output this millennium. Great opening, fun climax, some silly moments, and a very good dog. Definitely didn't expect to see it tonight or this month at all, and it kept me entertained for 80 minutes on a Saturday night with popcorn while I needed to relax/calm down after a hospital visit; more than I could have asked for *** Watched so far: Missing (2022), Everyone Will Burn, Dark Glasses
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Oct 2, 2022 05:03
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 This frame will probably turn into the CHUD version of that Pink Floyd butt poster in every college dorm room. 2) Savageland (Whelan, Herbert and Guidry ; 2015) How the poo poo did this sleep on by me? This absolutely RIPS. It's a horror mockumentary about the lone survivor of an Arizona border town who's also being tried as the murderer of the other residents, but really it's horror gribblies. (It's zombies. You knew it was zombies.) This is at least the best of the mockumentary-horrors I've seen, mostly because it bothers to actually spend effort into portraying a real documentary instead of just being a framing device for found footage. The actual story is pretty well-worn, but it's told really well and in a novel way that's super engaging. Since it's a full-on proper documentary you don't have a bunch of fake video recording that you're trying to shove in there, you just have 36 photos that the guy managed to take and things like police and coroner reports. So we get an actual crime scene walkthrough as our second act! And when someone dies horribly, how do we know who they were? It's a documentary so time to show you some baby pictures and their crying mom. Goes down real smooth, really focused, great visuals and the actors were really dialed in on their naturalism... I can't speak to how this ranks in the sub-sub-sub-subgenre of horror mockumentary true crime zombie movies, but I can say I was intrigued and entertained and I'm gonna tell other people to check this out. 8.5/10 2 down, 31 to go.
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Oct 2, 2022 05:08
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1. Tales from the Crypt (1972), Tubi Neat little movie, but what stood out the most was how out-of-place the "three wishes" story was compared to the others - the other stories were all about how horrible the people were and them getting their comeuppance, but the guy in the "three wishes" story seemed okay and kind of got shafted by his wife's lovely monkey's-paw wishes. Like, the implication of each of the stories is that the person sees how they could have averted their own horrible fate by not being a lovely person, but his fate seemed unavoidable unless he just chooses to ignore his friend's phone call and not drive to him, or forbid his wife from making any wishes I guess. I also don't know who the dude on the motorcycle was supposed to be, or if he was a red herring, or what. They frame him all menacingly leading up to the crash and then he's never brought up again. Peter Cushing out of nowhere was a nice surprise. I wasn't even sure it was him until the credits rolled. Also I like how in the final story the blind guys basically built an excessive, over-complicated Saw trap to punish the superintendent, frankly I was expecting them to just, you know, blind him.
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Oct 2, 2022 05:26
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2: Escape Room 2: Tournament of Champions Amazon doesn't let you screen shot apparently but at least I got the subtitles of an actual line from the movie   My wife and I own an escape room, and I'm about to launch a Halloween themed popup, so this seemed like the perfect choice for today. It's very dumb, but the good kind of dumb I'd say. The logistics and motivations going on are all just beyond absurd, and most of the characters are paper thin, but it's a good time if you switch your brain off and enjoy things. It helps too that the new group are all survivors, so there's no time spent on exposition or anything, they all just immediately get to work solving the rooms and it helps breeze things along.
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Oct 2, 2022 05:29
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 3. The Purge (2013) Props to casting, it legitimately took me a moment to realize Rhys Wakefield wasn't wearing one of the creepy masks, his evil grin just looks that way. The Purge is a mess. Its fundamental sin is that it wants to do blunt social commentary, but it's too cowardly to really bite in on that. So we get the setup of the infamous "for 12 hours all crime is legal" premise, and we get to see how it actually funnels all the violence and exploitation towards the people without the resources to protect themselves, personified in a homeless Black man running screaming for help down the streets of a barricaded upper class neighborhood (a pointed update of Jamie Lee Curtis banging uselessly on people's doors in John Carpenter's Halloween)... but then the primary antagonists of the picture are weirdos intentionally doing horror movie cosplay? The Purge tries way too hard to make them scary, overplaying its hand with stupid tropes like a bad guy casually murdering one of his friends. It makes them feel like pure screenwriting contrivance rather than a credible threat, and worse, it loses the metaphor! Rich douchebags who understand class dynamics don't prey on their own. It's a little weird to use a big high concept just to support a small scale home invasion story, but I wouldn't mind that if it was at least a good home invasion story. It ain't. It starts out as a funny joke that these rich idiots have a McMansion so big that the family can lose each other as they stumble through the hallways. But it repeats endlessly until it's straight up boring watching a nervous Ethan Hawke meander aimlessly in the dark with his gun out. Everyone makes awful decisions, no one can communicate or react properly, and even the catharsis of seeing awful people get violently owned is more perfunctory than satisfying.  .5 / 5
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Oct 2, 2022 05:33
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Savageland is really well done and I still think about it from time to time. The photos are chilling and the whole reconstruction of what happened does a great job of not showing you the horror but forcing you to put it together with all of the implications in your head (well except for those last few photographs, which are heartbreaking).
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Oct 2, 2022 05:35
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 #11.) Dead Heading (2019; Blu-ray) A flight attendant lands, goes to her hotel room, goes to a bar, has drinks with a man, he comes to her hotel room, and she wakes up to find him dead. Those events take forty of the film's ninety minute run-time to occur. The rest of the movie is hiding the body. No spoilers, that's all on the back of the box. I normally try to avoid narrative prescriptivism; I don't think there are absolute rules for things you must do or must not do in the structuring and telling of your story. But this movie really pushed that belief to a straining point. This could so easily have been trimmed down to fifteen minutes or so, and maybe been an effective short film. But instead, it's ninety minutes. Ninety minutes of watching the lead actress go through unpacking her luggage, channel surf, use the toilet, wash her hands, take a nap, check the room service menu, scoff at it, go down to the hotel restaurant (which has the same menu), eat a steak and fries, drink a dozen bottles of assorted alcohols, set her alarm, and take another nap before getting to the actual conflict of the movie. And I'm leaving out at least a half dozen of the other mundanities. It's like the cinematic equivalent of water torture, if you're in the mood for actually following along with a film. And then we actually get to the conflict, and the aftermath of it takes up the second half, which means that time is spent with the actress alone for virtually all of it. Occasionally monologuing, sometimes talking as though people are listening, and across both forms, usually speaking in dire quips or downright nonsense. It's like an exercise to see how little content could be put into a film. Sort of fascinating after a while, though that might just be a sort of coping mechanism. “Heavy Crying” Rating: 4/10
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Oct 2, 2022 05:50
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Was planning to see Pearl at the theater but we didn't make it in time and had to settle for... The Invitation 2022 I can't say I didn't have fun, but this was one dumb vampire movie. Never serious enough to be scary and rarely campy enough to be funny. I actually thought Stephanie Corneliussen, playing one of the vampiric brides, was the one actor who really got just the right level of camp, but she doesn't have a lot of screentime. The action is bad, the jump scares loud, and the romance never believable, but it's a breezy watch that's got some nice sets and a weirdo score. When I say the action's bad, it's at least funny-bad and not just boring. Vampire martial arts mixed with people throwing vases at teach other, that's the way it goes. This is a remix/sequel/adaptation of Dracula, but most of the character names are superficial. Yeah, we've got the Harkers here, but aside from the names they've got nothing in common with the original characters. They're here as references for people who know their Dracula, but it doesn't remix the story in any kind of interesting way. Weirdly this was the first bad theater experience I've had in a very long time. Some kids didn't want us there and booed us as we entered the theater. They left before anyone even got bit.
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Oct 2, 2022 05:53
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Darthemed posted:
You are too kind, as I don't know where the 4 is coming from here.
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Oct 2, 2022 06:01
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Entirely due to technical capabilities. It was competently filmed, shots and cuts were framed well, the sound mixing was fine, the score was fine, there were no shots I noticed with the boom mic drifting in, the color grading wasn't hosed, etc. It's weird, because the cinematographer was also the director/producer/writer, so it really highlights where his actual talent lies. It's his only credit for any of those roles, unsurprisingly.
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Oct 2, 2022 06:12
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