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#48: X (2022) (new to me) A group of enthusiastic amateurs travel to Leatherface country so they can make a porno and you'll never guess what happens. Is Ti West winking at himself when the film-nerd director of "The Farmer's Daughters" says he's making "artistic" porn? X is by all measures a pretty standard killer-hick slasher movie, but there are enough unusual choices here to suggest West is doing more with it. I'm thinking specifically of the cross-cutting he uses for certain scene transitions as well as the split-screen "Landslide" sequence that serves as the movie's pivot point. Melancholy is a flavor you rarely get in horror movies, especially in slashers. There's a strange wistful quality to everything even as eyes are pierced and fingers hacked off. It's a different kind of momento mori, a reminder that surviving to old age can be its own kind of horror story.  .5/5October Challenge Tally: (new watches in bold) 1. Trick 'r Treat (2007) 2. Motel Hell (1980) 3. TerrorVision (1986) 4. Halloween Kills (2021) 5. Nightmare City (1980) 6. Spookies (1986) 7. Dawn of the Mummy (1981) 8. Halloween Ends (2022) 9. Demons (1985) 10. Demons 2 (1986) 11. Assignment: Terror (1970) 12. Black Roses (1988) 13. Here Comes Hell (2019) 14. Death Spa (1989) 15. Paganini Horror (1989) 16. Hellraiser III (1992) 17. House of the Wolf Man (2009) 18. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) 19. Blades (1988) 20. Delirium: Photo of Gioia (1987) 21. A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) 22. Hocus Pocus (1993) 23. House on Haunted Hill (1959) 24. Popcorn (1991) 25. Maximum Overdrive (1987) 26. Van Helsing (2004) 27. The Addams Family (1991) 28. Octaman (1971) 29. Eyes of Fire (1983) 30. The Howling (1981) 31. Evil Dead II (1987) 32. Phantom of the Opera (1925) 33. Friday the 13th Part III (1982) 34. Friday the 13th Part VII The New Blood (1988) 35. Jason X (2001) 36. Blood for Dracula (1974) 37. Flesh for Frankenstein (1974) 38. M3GAN (2022) 39. House of Dracula (1945) 40. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) 41. Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) 42. Thirst (1979) 43. Dracula's Dog (1977) 44. Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (1980) 45. Return of the Living Dead (1985) 46. Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988) 47. Witchery (1988) 48. X (2022)
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Oct 23, 2023 19:04
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 161) The Day of the Beast - 1995 - TubiTv I first heard about this one in Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen by Adam Lukeman. Story follows a priest who's attempting to prevent the birth of the Antichrist. Part of the procedure is to commit as many sins and evil to find the time and place. This one's definitely a stand out when it comes to 'Antichrist's birth' films. It's listed as a horror comedy, but the comedy is more the dry wit/droll type humor than the more silly style we're accustomed to. Essentially an 'anti-nativity' story with three not so wise wisemen seeking the unholy birth. It's a very well done film with good effects. The humor might not work for some, but it clicked with me.  162) The Mothman Prophecies - 2002 - Prime I think I might be biased in favor of the low budget angle of cryptid films. This one isn't an awful film, but it just wasn't pulling me in. I don't know if it's because of the big name actors or it having more polish than the lower budget films. Maybe I'd feel different if I read the book the movie's based on, but this one wasn't quite working with me. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:09
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Splint Chesthair posted:#48: X (2022) (new to me) nice observation also saw X for the first time on this challenge and was impressed. look forward to watching Pearl soon
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Oct 23, 2023 19:24
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:nice observation Thank you, and I’m also looking forward to seeing Pearl now. After watching the trailer I’m getting the impression West made X just to set the table for Pearl. Looks wild.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:43
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Sunday catch-up time. #29. Ernest Scared Stupid (Vudu) After accidentally unleashing an ancient troll, dimwit handyman Ernest P. Worrell must defend the children of the town of Briarville. Threw this on as a boring Sunday mid-afternoon choice, which is a pretty ideal way to watch any kind of "Ernest" movie in general. On its face, I know that it's not a particularly great film, but I can't be totally objective with this film; it was, weirdly, a pretty consistent staple of my late childhood, and I always enjoyed the Ernest character. And Jim Varney is always great, in pretty much anything he showed up in. Plus, this one has Eartha Kitt in it to play backup, which never hurts to have. (The rest of the cast, particularly the kid actors, are all pretty weak, though.) It's got a lot of charm, some great makeup effects work, a surprisingly decent score for something like this, and a couple of decently well handled spooky scenes. I don't know that there's a ton to say about it, but I think it works as a pretty fair idealization of something like this, the best possible version of a Very Ernest Halloween Special. That's gotta be enough to earn a strong recommendation, right?  /5 #30. Cobweb (Hulu) A scared young boy in a deeply troubled home begins to hear strange tapping sounds in his bedroom wall. Things only escalate from there. Went from one "kids in peril" film to another, though this one had a very different approach to that idea. It's pretty well acted - Lizzy Caplan is very good as the harried mom character, and Antony Starr is good as Homelander Jr., but I'm a little less sold on the child lead, and especially the child bully character. I thought the setup was decent, but where they took the story was a little inexplicable, more because I thought the film was leading us to the sister character was some kind of spider-themed witch. I would need to watch again, but there are moments where she is crawling around and the shadows make it look like she has 6 limbs, so I feel like they're trying to lead you that way. And that might at least make the title and that random aside with a spider in the classroom make sense, right, that there's some kind of spider connection tying all of the elements together. But as it is, it feels like "we walled up your sister for misbehaving for longer than you've been alive" is kind of a disappointing revelation in comparison to what they had seemed like they were setting up instead. That said, I still thought the big twist at the start of the third act was fun, especially considering that the call back landed for me just mere moments before it did for the characters (though it was done better in Cult of Chucky). Had we ended the movie right there, I think it would be a minor classic, but when you keep going with that ending, in the way that the film does, it can't help but undermine what came before it. /5Watched so far: As Above So Below, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, Saw IV, The Exorcist, One Cut of the Dead, Slugs, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Saw X, The Return of the Living Dead, Tales of Halloween, No One Will Save You, Destroy All Monsters, Cujo, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Hocus Pocus, A Bucket of Blood, Mama, Child's Play 2, Friday the 13th Part 6, The Mummy's Ghost, Brain Dead, Saloum, Perpetrator, The Blob, The Vampire Lovers, Wake in Fright, The Evil of Frankenstein, The Faculty, Ernest Scared Stupid, Cobweb Individual Challenges = 13/13 NEW-TO-YOU = 6/6 HISTORY LESSON = 5/5 AROUND THE WORLD = 4/4 HORROR IS FOR EVERYONE = 3/3 Halloween Bingo = #15 (COMPLETE)
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Oct 23, 2023 19:58
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 #19: The Banshee Chapter "MK Ultra experiments also included the From Beyond drugs" is such a great premise for a movie. Unfortunately, The Banshee Chapter mainly uses that to explain why there's a cliche "normal guy but his eyes are black and his face is slightly CGI distorted" monster. They do nothing with that idea. If that's your premise, I want to know how that has effected American history. At the minimum you need to then go on to establish that the American government has been under control by space monsters or space monster collaborators. Ideally you would build a whole new structure of 20th century American history out of it. School shootings are caused by the space monsters. 9/11 was secretly an attempt to destroy the space monster portal hidden under the WTC. Do something with it, don't just use it as justification for the same lazy monster I've seen in a dozen other movies! I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. ---------------- Gripweed fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 20:37
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25: 30 Days of Night I've wanted to watch this for years but it never seems to be streaming anywhere. Saw it in tv last month and recorded it for now, and I'm glad I did it's pretty great. Killer concept and great vampires. I will gladly take an animalistic, monstrous vamp over a suave seductive one any day. Giving them their own language was a cool choice, too, really sells the otherness.
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Oct 23, 2023 20:47
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Splint Chesthair posted:Thank you, and I’m also looking forward to seeing Pearl now. After watching the trailer I’m getting the impression West made X just to set the table for Pearl. Looks wild. Pearl hits very differently than X, both are excellent
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Oct 23, 2023 21:21
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Gripweed posted:
I too would watch a movie of Delta Green.
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Oct 23, 2023 21:57
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Xiahou Dun posted:I too would watch a movie of Delta Green. Hell yeah!  33. Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) A long time ago I bought some of those packs of 50 movies, with free/cheap licenses, and someone with some cheap equipment in their garage to make the DVD off of. This was on one of those, and boy was the quality bad. But I watched it while working, so something I didn’t have to pay attention to was perfect. Men in giant rubber leech suits that kinda looked like leeches if you squint attack some folk around a swamp. An initial plot of a love triangle was probably more interesting than the giant leeches, but what do you want - it was a breezy distraction.  34. Atom Age Vampire (1960) From another (or the same) set of 50 crappy transfers, the quality on this one was just as bad, though the movie itself was a little more interesting, about the horrors of using science to fix scars in the atomic age. Some Jeckyll & Hyde, some Eyes Without A Face, lots of jargon and some latex scar work combined to make this… ok.  31 Challenge: 1. Last Voyage Of The Demeter, 2. The Evil Of Frankenstein, 3. No One Will Save You, 4. The Meg 2: The Trench, 5. Mindwarp, 6. Damien: Omen II, 7. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, 8. Black Belly Of The Tarantula, 9. Dracula 3000, 10. The Horror Of Frankenstein, 11. V/H/S/85, 12. Totally Killer, 13. 2001 Maniacs, 14. Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell, 15. Resident Evil, 16. Renfield, 17. Petey Wheatstraw, 18. The Fury, 19. Lust Of The Vampire, 20. Dead End Drive In, 21. Dark Harvest, 22. Seven Footprints To Satan, 23. The Dreaming, 24. The Devils, 25. Frenzy, 26. Swamp Thing, 27. Huesera, 28. Gothic, 29. Demons 2, 30. Scream 4, 31. Final Destination 2, 32. The Grave, 33. Attack Of The Giant Leeches, 34. Atom Age Vampire Bonus Challenges: Meta Challenges:
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Oct 23, 2023 22:07
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 163) The Skull - 1965 - Prime This one's a very nice Hammer/Tigon/Amicus entry involving the evil surrounding the skull of the Marquis de Sade. It's got Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and is lightly based in truth as the Marquis' skull was stolen from his grave and to this day hasn't turned up so it's probably in the hands of some collector. Overall, I liked it, even if some of the effects are unintentionally smileworthy today. In fact one of the prized pieces in my movie poster collection is a large rolled original poster from this movie. The paper's so thick it's borderline cardstock. Someday I'll get it framed. This one's a recommend from me. I'm not even dignifying this one with a poster image 164) Island of Death - 1976 - Prime This one was a mess of a trainwreck. A couple go to an island in Greece where they resume a killing spree from London. It's very rapey, including the rape/murder of a goat kid. The murderous couple are apparently killing people they believe are perverted/sinful, but doing it in the most perverse and degrading ways possible. This one really feels like a 'extreme for extreme's sake' like A Serbian Film is. Skip this one. It's not worth wasting one's time on. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
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Oct 23, 2023 22:17
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19. The Devil Rides Out Christopher Lee in a phenom role as a guy fighting the literal forces of darkness and Satan. Just a phenom of a film that goes hard. ----------------
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Oct 23, 2023 22:47
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 36. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions The sequel to the first movie. It picks up right where we were left off. Everything outside of the escape rooms was pretty meh, and honestly, annoying. The people in this one weren't as interesting as the previous group. The good news is that the escape rooms were still a blast to watch, which is what the movie is about. They kept me glued to the movie. If you liked Cell, you'll like these. 3.5/5 Philthy fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 23:26
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 Bonus Challenge #11: Picnic in SpaceMeta Challenge #2: New-To-You (6 / 6)Meta Challenge #3: Around the World (3 / 4)18. Dead-End Drive-In (1986)  Watched On: YouTube I’ve always had a soft spot for “Ozsploitation”. Basically, films made in Australia that just own where they are set often infusing punk rock with the stereotypes people have of the land down under. Mad Max might be the best example of this subgenre which had presence in the 1980s (along with Australian culture in general). I wanted to find a film from this region that was both fun, proudly made by the people who live there and has a unique spin on the horror genre. I think I found it. This is about Australia after an economic crisis plunges the world into hell in the near-future. Australia becomes a setting of anarchy and chaos where everyone is kinda fending for themselves while trying to hold what littles of society together. It’s set-up early on that the punk rockers are in charge (ah, a classic 80s trope) and even the cops really are in it for themselves. The film follows two teenagers going to a drive-in for a movie (and a little something extra) only to have their literal wheels stolen by the cops. After spending the night they find out from the owner of the drive-in that the place is basically a camp for socially undesirables and he and his girlfriend have wandered into it. That being said; everyone there is friendly, open, understanding and wishing to help them out and ease them into this world. The pair find themselves either accepting or dealing with this world. They can’t get out but rather have to cope with the various elements inside and forge a new identity as a result. I liked this film, it’s wild and manic and you actually feel for the characters who came in as out of control teenagers then somehow became more constrained. Worth a check. /4Meta Challenge #6: New-To-You (1 / 6)19. The Last Broadcast (1998)  Watched On: Shudder (Canada) This is kind of the forerunner for modern found footage films predating The Blair Witch Project by a year. It’s about a film crew that went out into the pine barrens of New Jersey to investigate the Jersey Devil. Specifically the survivor that was accused of murdering his film crew team. Told in a pseudo-documentary style it’s a little more structured than The Blair Witch Project which was all raw video footage. The best way I can describe the aesthetic is a late 90s Fox network special (anyone over the age of 35 knows what I’m talking about). It’s a unique thing to see because it’s also very low budget and feels…off at the same time. Like it’s kinda self-aware but also delivers it’s premise (the Jersey Devil, come on…) with cold sincerity. The deadpan narrator as well really sells the surreality of the whole thing. I love horror movies that evoke that unsettling nature by making you kind of question their approach but want to see more (which goes full circle to their pseudo-documentary route). You start this film really not knowing a lot about it other than the info dump about the man being accused of murdering the other two members of his film crew. From there, the movie starts to peel back the layers one by one which sucks you in as a viewer. I really cannot begin to describe how the narrator is perfect for this film. His dry deadpan just sells everything so well but is also unsettling and surreal and complements the late 90s low budget filmmaking perfectly. I should mention this but I typed all this up before finishing the film where it’s revealed at the end that the narrator is the killer. It took me totally off guard and what I typed before should really empathise this. Especially when the filmmaking takes a total change and it stop being a student film and something being more real. God drat This is an ultra low-budget film (Wikipedia says it’s cost was $900) and man does it show. It feels like a student film but one that would have gotten a drat good grade as someone’s thesis. You can tell a lot of love, attention and seriousness was put towards this even if the acting, sound work and sets are spotty. But that’s only because they were working with what they had. The film is, like I said, a pseudo-documentary capturing a murder mystery in a way that feels ahead of its time. Like, I kept thinking to myself all the tropes we see in Netflix true crime flicks. A very fascinating film worth checking out. /4Total: 1. The Samhain Challenge, 2. The Toxic Avenger (1984), 3. Se7en (1995), 4. Freddy vs. Jason (2003), 5. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), 6. Shaun of the Dead (2004), 7. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), 8. Saw II (2005), 9. The Birds (1963), 10. V/H/S/99 (2022), 11. The Forever Purge (2021), 12. Day of the Dead (1985), 13. Green Room (2015), 14. Saw III (2006), 15. Cooties (2014), 16. Hell Fest (2018), 17. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), 18. Dead-End Drive-In (1986), 19. The Last Broadcast (1998) Spooky Bingo Card  Bonus Challenge The Samhain Challenge: The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III (1992), The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VI (1995). The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VIII (1997) Horror Adjacent: Se7en (1995) Freddy vs. Jason: Freddy vs. Jason (2003) Goat’s G.O.A.T.s (House): Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) Rob Zombie: Shaun of the Dead (2004) Childhood Trauma: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Big Mean Animals: The Birds (1963) Bite-Sized Horror: V/H/S/99 (2022) Birth of Horror: Day of the Dead (1985) Goat’s G.O.A.T.s (Tapes): Green Room (2015) Picnic in Space: Dead-End Drive-In (1986) Meta Challenge History Lesson (5 / 5): (1960s - The Birds, 1980s - Toxic Avenger, 1990s - Se7en, 2000s - Freddy vs. Jason, 2020s - V/H/S/99) New-To-You (6 / 6): (Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), V/H/S/99 (2022), The Forever Purge (2021), Cooties (2014), Hell Fest (2018), Dead-End Drive-In (1986)) Around The World (3 / 4): (Asia - Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989); Europe - Shaun of the Dead (2004); Oceania - Dead-End Drive-In (1986)) Horror is For Everyone (1 / 3): (LGBTQ+ - A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)) History Lesson (5 / 5): (1980s - Day of the Dead, 1990s - The Last Broadcast, 2010s - Green Room, 2000s - Saw III, 2020s - The Forever Purge) New-To-You (1 / 6): The Last Broadcast (1998) ---------------- Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 23:34
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37. The Blob (1988) This is one of those movies that just makes me wonder "why can't more movies be this good". Because it doesn't do anything hugely out of reach of other movies, it's just an incredibly well-made movie, the performances are all good, the effects are fantastic (that phonebooth kill is one of the best practical sfx sequences ever), and most notably, the script is drumhead tight, a perfect exercise in setup and payoff. It just crams so much stuff into its runtime, it breezes through with no dead air at all. A huge "if you've not seen this, fix that" recommendation, it's one of my favourite monster movies of all time. "Great. I killed the strawberry jam." 5 out of 5! Watched so far: Saw X, Wishmaster, F13 Part 6, One Cut of the Dead, The Exorcism of God, The Stuff, Razorback, The Curse of Frankenstein, Demon Knight, Freaky, V/H/S, Trick 'r' Treat, Goodnight Mommy. Matriarch, Last House on the Left, Phantasm, Dude Bro Party Massacre III, Exorcist: Believer, No-One Will Save You, VHS/85, Hellraiser, Totally Killer, Beaten to Death, Hellraiser II, Annabelle: Creation, Unfriended: Dark Web, House of 1000 Corpses, Phantasm 2, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Terrifier 2, TCM '03, Devil's Rejects, The Exorcist, Would You Rather, Lords of Salem, Pumpkinhead, Maniac Cop, The Blob
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Oct 23, 2023 23:41
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Justin Godscock posted:
The Last Broadcast is such a fascinating and underrated film, though I wouldn't place it super high on my list. The sets are my issue, with obviously fake newspaper and clear "shot in a dorm despite the subject supposedly being a famous producer" shots, but at the same time the people who made the movie had such clear knowledge of the technology it would take to make the story realistic that when combined with the great narration gives it just enough heft and realism to be memorably spooky. I wasn't as big on the ending as you were initially because it somewhat changes the entire central concept just a little too much but I really love the last few seconds of the movie a lot and it grew on me a lot the second time around. It really deserves a lot more than just being seen as something to compare to The Blair Witch Project.
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Oct 23, 2023 23:45
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 #20: Rigor Mortis FREDDY VS. JASON 20TH ANNIVERSERY CHALLENGE - Vampire and ghosts, and the interactions between them.There's a lot of cool poo poo in this movie. The martial arts fights with ghosts and vampires are insanely cool. I really liked the sort of professional respect between the retired vampire hunter and the necromancer. Strong performances across the board. There's a strong theme and pretty much everything is in service of it. I'd never seen a Jiangshi movie before, and Rigor Mortis makes it seem super creepy and hosed up. Like, this isn't some funny hopping vampire, this thing is a goddamn abomination. But, unfortunately, the movie is also insanely depressing! The theme is acceptance of death, and not in a optimistic, "life well-lived" kind of way. All the characters are tormented by death. Pure, senseless, brutal death. There's a brutal rape scene and a child getting insanely murdered and neither of them felt out of place or exploitative, this movie sustains such a consistent dour tone. And in case the super cool marital arts fights threatened to impart some kind of heroism to the situation, it turns out to all be an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge scenario Rigor Mortis is in no way a bad movie, but fuckin hell I am in no mood for that kinda poo poo. ----------------
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Oct 24, 2023 00:09
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11) The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) Challenge: Birth of Horror, I'm sad to say. Meta: New To You (5/6), History Lesson - 1970s (4/4), Around the World - Australia (3/4) Talk about being missold on a movie. What I was expecting was Maximum Overdrive: Oz Edition. What I got was Crash without the weird sex or any other real point of interest. This is not a logical movie and it doesn't even have that Paris in it. Still, nice to see Bruce Spence in an early role.
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Oct 24, 2023 00:44
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56. Hellbender (2021) This movie is cool because it's a small guerilla-shot project by a small family of people who wanted to make a cool and weird artistic rock movie about their invented mythological creatures and a witch-demon family in the woods. The band the film is built around is also that same family. It's actually really cool, with great folksy woods cinematography, good music, and some really cool special effects. I don't have a ton of thoughts, but the mood of the film building around the lore of the Hellbenders is really cool and chilling, there's some fun mysticism for those who love Weirdo poo poo happening in their movies, and it ends with a great last sequence. I love the vision and the daughter's creepy poem, and there's some cool gore too. I wish the ending was darker - apparently they had the idea to give it the "obvious" conclusion and I think I would have preferred it that way, but they didn't have the budget. It's a strong film about folklore and mother-daughter bonding with a lot of inventive editing and great music, and it's very atmospheric. Lots of cool psychedelia as well. It lacks that last punchy spark to make it as memorable and as enchanting as I was hoping, but that doesn't mean it isn't a great time with a really unique story and team behind it. I look forward to whatever they cook up next. Rating: 3.5 Worms Out Of 5
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Oct 24, 2023 01:00
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 165) Tales from the Crypt - 1972 - DVD This one's an all around solid anthology based on the Tales from the Crypt comics. Granted, it tends to get overshadowed by the later HBO series. The wrap around is five people on a tour of some catacombs find themselves in a room with an enigmatic crypt keeper who questions them into visions of their deaths. The individual stories are absolute classics, some even being adapted for the HBO series. My favorite two are Poetic Justice and Blind Alleys. The former has Peter Cushing as a retired garbageman who saved enough to afford to live in a nice neighborhood. He's a widower so he spends his days taking care of his dogs and entertaining the local children. His snobby neighbors are offended by his very existence and one begins a targeted harassment campaign against him until he commits suicide. One year later and the snobby neighbor gets his comeuppance. The latter story involves a new director for a home for the blind who quickly cuts costs for his own enrichment until the residents patiently work to get revenge. The wrap around ending is exactly as expected. Highly recommend this one.  166) Vault of Horror - 1973 - DVD Pretty much the sequel to Tales from the Crypt, though this one has no cryptkeeper style character. In this one, five strangers taking an elevator find themselves in a sub basement no one selected that has no exit. To pass the time until help shows up, they share stories of recurring nightmares they've had. After the last nightmare's shared, it turns out that the nightmares are how they died and they're condemned to recount them for eternity. It's with the ending that does bring questions. There's a UK unedited edition and a US edited version. The differences between them being particular scenes being swapped out for a still image which looks like a momentary freeze frame. There is a still shot of the dead men walking into the cemetery that doesn't appear in the movie. The still's shown up in tons of magazines, but that's it. There is what looks like a clumsy edit where one would expect the scene to be placed like in the US edit, but no one has found any footage where this still might've come from. There's been speculation that it was just a promo shot, but that doesn't explain the clumsy edit that this scene would fit in exactly. So that's a mystery for now, but who knows. Again, this is another high recommend from me. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
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Oct 24, 2023 01:05
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46. The Strangers 2008 Directed by Bryan Bertino  Are you a sinner? Sometimes. It's incredibly bleak, so it's surprising that Scott Speedman's star power is deployed here. The sound design and music are great though. My best guess is that this movie was underwritten by a home security system trade group. 👻👻👻/5
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Oct 24, 2023 01:26
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 27) Huesera: The Bone Woman Valeria, stop cracking your fingers. You'll end up all crooked. I...loved this. A memorable nightmare in sound alone: cracking bones and crying babies--but with a dope soundtrack. Doesn't hurt that the film looks amazing, too. Pregnancy body horror/postpartum psychological horror. When you want to escape the trap but you can only wriggle free by breaking every bone in your body. When you want to create something but you can only do it by ripping off parts of yourself. Sincerely hope to see Natalia Solián in a million more roles after this.
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Oct 24, 2023 01:31
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13. 15 Cameras Vudu  5 years since the release of the last entry and 8 years since the first entry, a documentary has been made depicting the trail of destruction left by a creepy landlord who's been spying on, and eventually killing, his tenants. A true-crime-obsessed binger gets into watching the miniseries after buying one of the developments in question; her boyfriend and new-landlord discovers the cameras are still operational, and more tempting than his common sense, while he decides on who their new neighbors should be. None of them know the killer's still alive... I thought 13 Cameras sucked. I thought 14 Cameras sucked, and in my review of it elsewhere I said at the time I hoped the series died there. The only thing I love more than being constantly correct is when I'm rarely proven wrong and actually surprised by something. The franchise almost by default has its best entry here, taking a different approach to the material by having someone become just like the killer in every way except the violence. Just as creepy, predatory and disgusting, the guy admonishes himself thinking that habit (acknowledging you're loving up) makes him any better than the last guy, but doing nothing to stop himself. He's a horny straight guy, he has access to someone else's home, he has access to cameras in their home, he has access to cameras in his own home that his partner's unaware of; with enough elements at play, with enough tools at one's disposal, you know one's true character. The killer wasn't as much of an outlier as we unfortunately liked to believe I still don't know if I necessarily want more of this franchise, but if it focuses more on this and on stuff that makes you think than exclusively on stuff that makes you nauseated (like an old creep with a limp looking at camera feeds and licking his lips for 45 of 90 minutes), I wouldn't avoid it or look upon clicking Play on it with a shudder like I did anticipating this *** 13/31 (NightMare, Appendage, VHS85, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, Totally Killer, The Pope's Exorcist, It Lives Inside [2023], The Puppetman, The Conference [2023], The Devil on Trial, Night of the Hunted [2023], Lockdown Tower, 15 Cameras) I won't hit my full goal for the month, but at least I've now hit my minimum I hoped for, and I still have at least a few more I plan on seeing before the month's over; Exorcist Believer tomorrow or Wednesday, When Evil Lurks Friday, and I'm hopeful to slot Dark Harvest sometime between
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Oct 24, 2023 01:39
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 28. 28 Days Later dir. Danny Boyle (2002)  First off I swear I didn't plan this as movie 28, stars just aligned on what number I was at and what I felt like watching today. My memory of my childhood is pretty hazy but I know the first time I watched this was pretty early in my horror appreciation, in (late) elementary school I got really into zombies both because of the general zombie zeitgeist that this contributed to* but more specifically because I loved Shaun of the Dead. I haven't it seen it since back then but certain parts really stuck with me: the scene where Jim has sugar crash, the drop of blood in the eye, Jim stalking outside of the windows in the last act. I love the DV photography, obviously plenty of it is leaning into looking rough as a way to heighten fear but other sections lean into a sort of smeary beauty not totally dissimilar to something like Godard's In Praise of Love. The whole thing hangs together for me better than I remembered, after years of reading that the third act kills it influencing my memory of I can't say I really agree having seen it again. It's definitely an abrupt shift but so is like, a random bunch of bikers showing up in the original Dawn of the Dead. The structure of the movie is basically three instances of the survivors we've grown attached to running into a new group of people and having to decide what to do about it, and I am pretty happy with the last one being "a bunch of prick military guys get hunted down in a spooky house." Maybe it's just nostalgia making it so I'm not thrown off by it but whatever. *I am going to be nerd pedant about this because I have to be true to childhood me: while this movie is clearly inspired by the zombie genre and is a novel take on post apocalypse horror, these are NOT zombies because they're just infected, not risen from the dead. Infected/Contagion films are a perfectly respectable genre that it has good company in, including the George A. Romero classic The Crazies. /5, and some maltesers or whatever candy they have in England. This is my last challenge, Childhood Trauma. I probably last watched this in like, 2006? 2007? Wow that's scary to think about.  Challenges Completed (13/13): 1. CineD Horror thread poll GOAT Goats (REC from Tapes list, Ringu from House List), 2. Horror Adjacent (Night of the Hunter), 3. That Guy (Keith David in The Thing), 4. Exorcist 50th anniversary (Exorcist III), 5. The Birth of Horror (Trauma in Minneapolis), 6. Animals of Unusual Size (Godzilla and Anguirus in Godzilla Rides Again), 7. Rob Zombie (Dawn of the Dead's Zombies), 8. Back of the Video Store (Sole Survivor), 9. Picnic in Space (History of the Occult, period piece), 10. Bite Sized Horror (Creepshow), 11. FVJ (Friday the 13th (1980)), Samhain (Night of the Demons), Childhood Trauma (28 Days Later)  Meta Challenges (18/18): New to Me (6/6), Around the World (4/4, Europe/Asia/Australia/South America) History Lesson (5/5, 2000s/1950s/2010s/1980s/1990s) Horror's For Everyone (3/3, POC/Women/LGBT) Bingo card 22  3 bingos!    Card complete!  Just gotta hit 31 movies now.
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Oct 24, 2023 02:23
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Warlock II: The Armageddon On Tubi (Film 22/31) Well where do you go from Warlock? Warlock II: The Armageddon, obviously. The time-displaced witch hunter's gone, replaced with AARP commercial druids and a teen couple who are both the chosen one. What's druid magic like? It's the Force with tree language. The Warlock is back, and I have to suspect that someone was upset that he was likable. Because he's just a mean dick now. It's still Julian Sands, but he's twice as cruel and half as fun. Now instead of collecting pages from the Grimoire, there's some magic stones. We get a bunch of vignettes where he's collecting each stone from whichever druid descendant ended up with it. It's a neat way to get some kills, and to visually track his progress towards Armageddon. This is, I should note, extremely 90s. The girl teen Chosen One wears chunky boots and a sun dress. There's awful pre-CGI visual effects and one-liners. A lot of shots are very, very clearly inspired by Sam Rami. It all kinda works, but now it's like a gory YA novel. It's absolutely popcorn, and it's about as good as the original - just different. 3.5/5 STAC Goat posted:Warlock 2 is a low key guilty pleasure favorite of mine. Its just so 90s. Its trash. But its the trash I was watching at 3 AM before I could google "insomnia". I've got a special place in my heart for this one. I had the poster from the video store where I spent the 90s. (His shadow has demon wings and that never cMe up in the film.) The CGI knife fight at the end still cracked me up,; they just filmed the actors making farty constipation faces at each other and then added a PSX quality knife waivering between them. You can even see the pixels. It's so deliciously awful!
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Oct 24, 2023 02:28
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Gripweed posted:
Just a note, the Chinese title 殭屍 is Jiang Shi, like just hopping vampire. It’s kind of a shame they had to translate it because it’s a bad rear end title.
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Oct 24, 2023 02:30
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 37. The Lords of Salem This was a miss for me. It started out pretty fantastic with some great imagery and I dug the background building he was doing. Then the last quarter of the movie seemed like he didn't have a proper ending written, and it was a dozen or so short scenes of random evil stuff he threw together and called it a day. Disappointing. 2.5 / 5
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Oct 24, 2023 02:37
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23/31 The Brood (1979) Custody issues via Cronenberg. There aren't enough trigger warnings in the world for this movie. I should have watched all of Cronenberg's stuff when I was still young.
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Oct 24, 2023 02:44
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57. Titane (2021) JESUS CHRIST.  5 CHOPSTICKS OUT OF 5 I'll have smarter and more elaborate thoughts later I'm sure and I'll post them on Letterboxd but my god he hosed that car!!!!!!!!!!!!! Movie loving ruled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Oct 24, 2023 02:52
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 X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, 1963 I got to have my dose of Roger Corman movies every year in these marathons. A doctor wants to expand the light spectrum the human eye can see and make it possible for doctors to see inside the human body with the naked eye. The grant board wants results if they are going to keep giving him funds, so he does the experiment on himself and it works, but passes out from the pain. The grant board decide to cut funding as a result. Since it worked, he insist on keep administering the eye drops. He accidentally kills a coworker by pushing him out the window and runs from the police since no one will think it was an accident because his sanity is being questioned due to resent events. His life on the run turns out be quit nightmarish as he no longer sees the world in normal light, always seeing through things and people, even his own eyelids. This is an very underrated sci-fi horror in my opinion. It don't have much in horror in terms of people getting killed and our main character is not some cackling mad scientist. He is just a doctor trying to do what is right. It don't need over the top horror stuff to be a compelling story and it is told with the right phase within the right running time. I strongly recommend this for anyone that likes older sci-fi horror.
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Oct 24, 2023 03:07
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20. The Fog (oct 23) the ideal time to start watching this movie would absolutely be at 11:55pm. as cozy as it gets: just lie back with a blanket, turn the volume up, and let the synth and the chill roll in. it seems like a big fun Carpenter family vibe: a character named Nick Castle, his stable of faves (Jamie, Adkins, Adrienne, Nancy Loomis), as well as plenty of cute namedrops. someone else already mentioned the slow, gorgeous shots of rained-out coastlines and the ocean; the steep path to the lighthouse radio station is absolutely beautiful. this movie is proof you don't need to run a movie for two hours to evoke a mood and tell a story with multiple characters. 90 minutes is the sweet spot. also, the lack of gore and a relatively low body-count help this land on Carpenter's more family-friendly side. i think this is shortlist as a horror movie to watch with my younger sisters; i think they'd have a grand old time. Gripweed posted:
i kind of liked Banshee Chapter a lot more than i expected; Ted Levine doing essentially a Hunter S Thompson rip the whole time was great fun alf_pogs fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 03:19
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 6. Scooby-Doo! and The Witch's Ghost (1999) Spooktober comfort food. Possibly the most autumn depiction of autumn I've seen on film. You can hear the rustling leaves and feel the chill in the air just looking at a still image. It also introduced the most iconic one-hit-wonder fictional band ever. Hit it sisters! / 5 7. Talk To Me (2023) I've seen a lot of people call this the most surprising horror movie of the year but I wish I liked it more. The initial possession scene is like a magic show. Enticing to watch until you start noticing the flaws. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it reminded me of It Follows and how much I'd rather be watching it instead. / 5HORROR ADJACENT (Animated horror) 6/6 NEW-TO-YOU 2/4 AROUND THE WORLD (North America, Oceania)
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Oct 24, 2023 03:20
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47. Death Line 1972 Directed by Gary Sherman  Be a good lad and go home. Death Line, aka Raw Meat, features Christopher Lee with a mustache, Donald Pleasence as an eccentric jerk police captain, a grieving underground cannibal who decorates his home with his leftovers, and relatively plausible plot progression. There isn't much on-screen violence but it's surprisingly intense and bloody for what is essentially a spooky police procedural. It would have been better with more of Christopher Lee's smarmy MI5 officer, or more commentary on labor exploitation in the late 19th century, but it's still definitely entertaining in a grimy way. 👻👻👻.5/5
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Oct 24, 2023 03:55
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 39. Gojira quote:Again you are left to reckon with two distinct entities in a single film: Gojira, the jaw-dropping effects masterpiece using suits, miniatures, stop-motion animation, hand-drawn animation, stop-motion, rear projection and even papercraft puppetry in one shot. It's a stunning achievement in any age, even moreso in 19-loving-54. You are also left with Gojira, the cultural artifact, a horror film first and foremost that does not shy away from absolute horror. To say Honda was drawing on imagery that was more than already present in the minds of Japanese less than a decade after nuclear obliteration of two of their cities and firebombing of many others is an understatement, and the anti-war message is loud and clear (and a bit too heavy-handed, but so it goes).  / 51. [•Rec] 2. Attack the Block 3. The Wolf House 4. Bird with the Crystal Plumage 5. Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein 6. Perfect Blue 7. Juju Stories 8. The Invisible Man 9. Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10. Ringu 11. Pearl 12. Exorcist III 13. A Bucket of Blood 14. Labirynth 15. Slotherhouse 16. Stoker 17. Lords of Salem 18. MAY 19. Wild Things 20. The Lost Boys 21. Possessor 22. I Saw The Devil 23. Retribution 24. Clearcut 25. Don't Torture a Duckling 26. Carnival of Souls 27. Possession 28. Tigers Are Not Afraid 29. Gamera 2: Attack of Legion 30. Noroi: The Curse 31. The Mortuary Collection 32. Titane 33. Triggered 34. Candyman (2021) 35. Child's Play (2019) 36. Renfield 37. Evil Dead Trap 38. Apt Pupil 39. Gojira
Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Oct 24, 2023 |
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Oct 24, 2023 04:05
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 167) Grace - 2009 - TubiTV In short, pregnancy/motherhood makes you crazy, and also able to will the dead to undeath. Having been pregnant twice, I can attest to the hormones rewiring the brain, but jury's still out on willing undeath to happen. To this day I can't watch anything happening to infants/small children in horror movies when I used to be fine with it before. That said, I wonder if because I've popped out a couple kids, this film fell really flat for me. Story follows Madeline, she's had two miscarriages and is pregnant with #3 when she's in a car accident where her husband and unborn baby die. She refuses to induce which is what's done for when the baby dies at this late term because of the risk of sepsis, and eventually delivers a stillbirth that somehow stirs to life. Yeah, this isn't going to end well especially with everyone making the absolute worst decisions possible. From the start, we learn Madeline is vegan, planning an all natural holistic birth with a midwife who's her ex girlfriend and is having every decision nitpicked by her mother in law. All I can say at this point is Welcome to Pregnancy where everyone with a pulse will give you solicited/unsolicited advice over every single decision you make even if it's choosing to wear the ratty sweats one day instead of the technicolor vomit patterned maternity dress. Being vegan is fine as long as you've got a doctor monitoring things to make sure you're hitting the nutrient and caloric beats you need to while pregnant. Even going the midwife route can be okay as long as you're ready to hightail it to a hospital if things go wrong during delivery since when things go wrong, they go wrong scary fast. I do question the ex girlfriend as the midwife because exes are exes for a reason. Right off the bat, the signs of something's not right are present. Baby Grace smells of rot to where she's attracting flies and can't keep breast milk down. Granted at the time the mantra was Breast is Best while demonizing anyone who couldn't or didn't breastfeed regardless of the reasons, and that now it's Fed is Best, that Madeline doesn't try any other options on feeding or go to a hospital makes me raise an eyebrow because you don't know what's causing this. Madeline's not letting her mother in law see Grace or even answer her calls is another eyebrow raise because it's not dismissing her concerns that something's wrong. Be cautious because of past issues with mother in law, fine. Have someone else present when she comes to see the baby to keep things civil. The rest of this pans out as expected, ending with Grace is teething and chowing down on the boob. If I was rewriting this one, I would've gone more into the mental devastation of the previous miscarriages with Grace being stillborn and her signs of life are all in Madeline's head. We've all seen the stillbirth tribute websites to know how brutal this can be to an expecting mother and this would've meshed better with Madeline's crumbling mental state. If I'm recommending pregnancy/new baby horror, I'll be quicker to go with It's Alive than this one.  168) Die, Monster, Die - 1965 - Vudu This adaptation of The Color out of Space does suffer the same issue most Lovecraft adaptations of the time do in that the effects technology wasn't quite there yet. Other than that, this one's pretty decent. It's a bit of a slow burn but it's worth it. It's a recommend from me. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:08
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Wishmaster On Tubi (Film 23/31) I saw this years ago and it had to have been before I really got into horror. It's the evil djinn movie. He needs to grant a bunch of wishes to steal souls and charge up a genie portal to wreck reality. But he can trick people with cheats. Maybe Wishmaster sits down in front of you at the movies wearing a big hat. "Oh," he'd growl, "would you wish me to move?" Don't say yes! That's how your soul (eventually) gets trapped in the jail crystal. Or maybe you'll die in a terrible CGI-related slaying! It's dumb. But what's cool is that there's seriously a whole entire convention's worth of cameos and Easter eggs. It's fun and it's gimmicky, but I shouldn't have double-featured it with Warlock 2. That's just too much cheese for one sitting. Overall the plot is basically a pretense to string together a bunch of fun horror nonsense. I do wonder if you could wish him into being powerless or kind-hearted. Maybe they do that in a sequel. Oh no there's sequels. 3.5/5
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Oct 24, 2023 04:13
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18. Horror Express This was a spur of the moment rewatch and it continues to be one of my favorite horror movies. The pacing, sets, cast, and story are all well executed and engaging and it's filled with a lot of simple effects work that is nonetheless memorable and at times striking. A great movie I'll likely continue to come back to every few years when I want to watch something I know I'm going to enjoy.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:18
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Gripweed posted:
So it trundles along, never truly bad enough to hate, but never even rising to the incredibly low bar it sets for itself. It's a lazy, boring first draft turned in to an ugly, unfocused mess. It's a DTV movie that somehow got a theatrical release. It's a movie full of clichés with nothing it particularly wants to do with those clichés, just have them there as storytelling shortcuts. It contains everything that should be cool - waterlogged neonoir, unkillable monster, gritty detective avenging his partner, sex clubs... but none of amounts to anything and we just get this pastiche of other, cooler movies that it alludes to without actually doing any of the work to truly evoke. And then the monster in the end is just shot a bunch and dies. Whee.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:24
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26: You Won't be Alone World (Australia 4/4) Hard to really call this horror, though it is about witches and is quite bloody. More of a coming of age story, very slow and poetic.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:32
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October 23 - Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made Antrum is a movie so evil that it's really, really evil. People just die from watching it. And people go crazy and die from watching it. And there's all this creepypasta stuff with it. And now you get to watch the movie which is an ultra low-budget student film where two kids are digging a hole to hell and encounter spooky people and poo poo. God I hate the term creepypasta but that's what Antrum is. You've got the core of a good idea here, and then they keep piling it on like it's some SCP nonsense and it just keeps getting shittier and shittier. This is like a sixteen year old's idea of what is spooky and edgy. And it's annoying because I can see how both the central conceit of the fake film and the actual narrative structure of the film within a film could work. Instead of piling on details about how creepy the film is, how about having an ounce more subtlety and making the framing documentary about the recovery and restoration of the movie with some quiet cues that there's something not right going on. And how about actually leaning into surreal elements instead of dropping them in for momentary jump scares? While I was watching Antrum I was coming up with a dozen ways that the exact same concept could be done a dozen times better. Like this. The credits are all in a Cyrillic alphabet in what seems to be a half-assed attempt to imply it's a foreign movie. Except the film was clearly shot in southern California with Americans. So they either need to ditch the foreign alphabet or lean into it being an artifact of uncertain national origin (for example, not having a visible American flag as set dressing). This is a movie for people who think SCP poo poo is the spookiest thing ever. Anyone else is going to be rolling their eyes pretty hard as they keep going "Are you scared yet? Are you scared yet? Are you scared yet?"
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Oct 24, 2023 04:36
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