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I'm seeing this tonight at 10pm at the Arclight in Hollywood. There's supposed to be a Q&A with the writer and director afterwards. I'm expecting nothing but mindless slasher fun. Gore and T&A. Also every review especially praises the clever use of 3D integration, so even if the movie sucks, I don't think it's gonna hurt the medium as a whole.
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Jan 15, 2009 21:12
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It was okay overall. There were good and bad elements. I think ultimately the bad outweighs the good and you're left thinking you just saw a crappy movie with cool elements. Good: - The 3D. Probably better integrated than any other live-action film I can think of. Most of the scenes don't really jump out at you so much as create multiple levels of depth within the shot. It really emphasizes the "this is in the foreground, this is in the middleground, this is in the background" feeling. Pretty cool. There were also a lot of "pop out of the screen in your face" moments too, and I enjoyed them all. The 3D is by far the best thing about the film. This would've utterly sucked without it. - The story isn't half bad. It's a mish-mash of a lot of different slasher tropes from the 80s and 90s. Scream is borrowed from heavily, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The mystery of the killer is well-presented. I thought I had it figured out who it was early on, but they threw in just enough elements to make me doubt myself, only for it to turn out I was right in the end. But I enjoyed the red herring elements. - It's a pure, old-school slasher through and through. And that's refreshing. One thing that annoys me about today's torture-porn fascination is the emphasis on prolonging the death of the victims, so that the audience can revel in their suffering or whatever. The beauty of the slasher genre is that kills are brutal but quick. No real suffering, no uncomfortable uneasiness. Pickaxe through the skull or eye-socket, okay with me! Also gratuitous nudity, another staple of slashers. The bad: - The directing is crappy. It feels like a tv movie a lot of the time. They obviously hired a DP that didn't know how to properly light the Red camera, and as a result there are a lot of moments that look like cheap video. - The whole movie looks and feels cheap. I don't know if this was due to a super small budget, or an untalented production designer, but sets feel small and reused. There are like no extras in the movie. I don't think you see more than six people in any one scene together. - The acting is atrocious. The two male leads are especially bad, with particular emphasis on the Supernatural dude. Jamie King is actually the best actor in the movie, that should tell you how bad the acting is. Which is a shame, because I could imagine the movie would've been much better had it been better casted. The writer and director were on hand to give a Q&A afterwards. The writer by the way has a small part in the film as the truck driver that bangs gratuitous nudity girl. Neither of them really had anything interesting to say.
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Jan 16, 2009 20:23
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Ape Agitator posted:The kills are quick, which is both good and bad. It gives the film a different feel from other F13 movies but you also don't get much gory squeamishness from it all. I've seen all of the Friday the 13th movies and the kills are generally always quick, no?
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Feb 13, 2009 21:24
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InfiniteZero posted:There were exceptions though, like Agitator mentioned, such as Kevin Bacon's scene, the wheelchair, and the infamous sleeping bag kill. I've heard from people that this film has a really vicious Jason in it, but it will be hard to top the viciousness of the sleeping bag kill. Wait, just so we're all on the same page, everyone's referring to the sleeping bag kill from Jason X, right? Because that one was played for straight laughs. I mean, he's not even killing actual people there, just holographic construct-thingies. THAT'S what people are considering the most vicious Jason kill??? Edit: I forgot about the F13 Part 7 kill that inspired it. Yeah, that one was pretty good, although I never really found it all that bad since there's the continuity error where he's technically slamming her feet against the tree, not her head. qbert fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Feb 14, 2009 |
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Feb 14, 2009 01:02
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Just got back from seeing this. Thought it was a pretty good remake of the Jason franchise, but the film literally gave me a headache. Why didn't they just call it Jump Scare: The Loud Noise Chronicles?
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Feb 17, 2009 07:18
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The Remote Viewer posted:The scene with the baby oil bordered on porn, and not torture porn. It was funny because I knew going into the movie that there would be 13 kills and at that point I thought I had counted all of them already but then I realized that I had counted the sister from earlier in the film who we all were supposed to think was dead, and as soon as I realized my mistake the other girl gets offed.
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Feb 17, 2009 21:41
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AICN posted a fairly glowing review of the upcoming Mother's Day remake. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45156 I've never seen the original. Is it any good? This makes me somewhat interested in checking out the remake though, even though I gave up on the Saw movies after watching Saw II.
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May 19, 2010 22:04
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Just saw The Last Exorcism and I thought it was loving awesome. I'm pretty tired of the mockumentary genre, however I was willing to give this a shot, and I think they managed to pull it off without doing all the annoying bullshit I hate. I know the ending's gonna be really divisive, but I personally loved it. I would have been happy with the ending before the "twist" as well, but I ended up having a big grin on my face for the final 5 minutes. Also, did I mention how much I love the Arclight? We're walking out of the theater as the movie ended, and lo and behold Eli Roth and the entire cast are standing in the lobby greeting everyone as they walked out. Turns out they were in the audience the entire time. The actress who plays Nell looks a lot more attractive all dolled up. I complimented her on that 2nd exorcism scene, and she said "thanks, it definitely hurt."
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Aug 28, 2010 06:31
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Technetium posted:I also want to throw out the movie Thirst for anyone looking for a good horror/comedy/drama movie. It's a slightly different take on the vampire story and while it has its flaws it's a pretty good film. I don't remember seeing a lot of (any) discussion. It's from Chan-Wook Park who made the brilliant Lady Vengeance and Oldboy films and the feel of Thirst is quite similar to them, and the lead is played by the main character oh The Host and Memories of Murder. There was a thread on it a while back. For all you English nerds out there, Thirst is pretty much a direct adaptation of Therese Raquin. Except, you know, with vampires.
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Aug 31, 2010 23:41
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Just saw Last Exorcism. Boring as hell for the most part with some decent scares and a completely retarded ending. One quick note about the ending; Eli Roth said in an interview the cultists are chanting "banana bread" backwards during the final scene also. I wonder if you can build some theory about Cotton given those two pieces of information.
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Sep 7, 2010 03:40
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Just saw Frozen as well and am throwing in another recommendation for it. A simple premise executed really, really well. Much better than say, Open Water in my opinion. It helps that all of the actors were pretty solid, especially Emma Bell. This is coming from someone who hated Hatchet.
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Sep 15, 2010 22:27
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Slasherfan posted:Good to hear she can act, she's been cast as the lead in Final Destination 5. She's also in the new Walking Dead series!
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Sep 15, 2010 22:38
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Guilty posted:The biggest problem with Frozen is the lovely writing. It suffers so much from lovely stupid people doing lovely stupid things which never would have put them in that situation it's hard to believe. I mean, the truck is literally right beneath them and NO ONE thinks to throw a drat thing at the truck until it starts moving away and then they just miss it the entire time? The dude who jumps doesn't think to jump to a tree to break the fall? (lynch fears hitting the trees when he tries to climb down) They both sleep far apart through the night instead of huddled for warmth? they don't think to cover her exposed hand? the list goes on Given the extreme emotions of the situation I don't think they do anything too stupid. Granted, maybe I should be watching more episodes of Survivorman or something but I'd probably be about as lost as they were in that situation. Some of the things they did may have been stupid, but not necessarily unbelievably stupid.
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Sep 16, 2010 00:34
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Whispering Machines posted:The Devil's Backbone is up on Netflix Instant view, and I thought that was a really loving creepy movie. Spooky little black eyed ghost kid. Plus Eduardo Noriega is a total rear end in a top hat but still really hot. I recommend it as well. Saw it years ago, but it's definitely del Toro's spiritual predecessor to Pan's Labyrinth.
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Sep 21, 2010 08:33
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I thought I was over the Scream series years ago, but watching the trailer for the new one got me totally excited for it again. I remember going to see the first one randomly when I was 11-12 years old and absolutely loving it and being obsessed with it. This new one seems to have a lot of the feel of the first one, and the nostalgia factor is really working for me.
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Oct 19, 2010 19:23
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I've never seen a Final Destination movie. Do they constantly rotate to new casts, or is it an ongoing epic about how Death is the most incompetent self-correcting force of nature and how all the other demiurges laugh at him behind his back? Actually, every film in the series proves that death is extremely competent. The entire cast dies in every movie, with maybe two exceptions in the whole run of the series.
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Jun 30, 2011 09:46
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Darko posted:There aren't any exceptions; death has literally killed everyone in every movie it was after (any surviving cast members die in between movies as shown either by dialogue in the next movie or on DVD extras for the next movie). Didn't the two main characters of the 2nd one survive?
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Jun 30, 2011 19:29
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Scissorfighter posted:2 is by far the best, and the subtle way it slips from horror movie to comedy was magnificent. 2 is the best and 4 is the worst, and somehow they have the same director. 
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Jul 1, 2011 01:40
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I've seen May and The Woods, so I'm guessing the tone of that trailer is misleading.
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Jul 26, 2011 20:43
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Just finished watching Stake Land and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Post-apocalyptic vampire film with a tone as serious as The Road? Sign me up! I had some problems with the climax/ending, but I understood what they were going for and commend the filmmakers for sticking to the nihilism of it all. I'm sure the movie was made for like nothing, but I was also very impressed with the production design. I totally bought into the world. Also, is it just me, or could the actor that played Mister totally be Mickey Rourke's younger brother?
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Aug 7, 2011 02:53
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Human Tornada posted:Sometimes I feel like a crazy person because I hate that movie. I think the movie completely goes to poo poo in the 3rd act. The whole setup is actually kind of interesting, but then the documentary crew members start behaving exactly like dumb slasher film victims, which makes no sense considering they SAW THE SETUP. As soon as they switched from mocumentary POV to cinematic POV the movie became a cliche mess.
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Aug 12, 2011 05:47
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I'm not sure if this qualifies as horror, but I just saw Peckinpah's Straw Dogs for the first time today and thought it was fantastic. I was particularly surprised by how transgressive some of the scenes and moments were, as well as the morally ambiguity of many of the characters/moments. Hoffman's character is obviously right in his actions by the end, but the fact that the whole siege is built on him protecting a pedophile murderer from the victim's family members is interesting. I liked the characterization of Susan George's character and the character of Charlie as well. The fact that the film had a rape scene that implies that she maybe enjoyed it (for the first half) is just nuts for any movie. Finally, the movie turns Dustin Hoffman into a loving badass and the fact that he maintains the same calm, soft-spoken demeanor throughout the entire climax is a brilliant acting choice on his part.
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Oct 17, 2011 01:08
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So I just watched Kill List and so...yeah, that happened. Reading up on the general consensus for interpreting the film, and it pretty much makes sense when viewed from that perspective. The director was actually pretty overt about it in hindsight. Thank God for subtitles, though, because those were some British Brits all right.
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Jan 24, 2012 01:34
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:Haven't seen this posted in the thread yet, but it looks like spanish films are gaining popularity. First we had [Rec] and its english remake, and now we have Silent House. The more I read about this film the more intrigued I get about it. The gimmick isn't that it's real-time so much that the entire film is shot in one continuous unbroken take, ala Hitchcock's Rope (whether or not the filmmakers cheat like Hitchcock did, even the reviewers aren't sure of). Either way, everyone seems to be saying the film is at the very least an impressive achievement on a technical level.
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Mar 1, 2012 05:53
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Zwabu posted:Was it really shot in one take or just edited to look that way? It wouldn't be hard with modern technology to make this look pretty seamless. Someone posted earlier that they must have cheated, as the camera they used to shoot Silent House on can't technically shoot for that long.
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Mar 13, 2012 17:42
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Demon Knight was awesome and I could never understand why TftC ruined all the cred they gained from it by following up with the terrible Bordello of Blood.
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Jul 25, 2012 06:48
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Looks like the new Silent Hill film's a loose adaptation of the 3rd game? Never played it myself but I still recognize the locales and protagonist. Part of me wishes they would just adapt the 2nd game (best of the series), but they'd probably just gently caress it up.
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Jul 27, 2012 23:25
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Just finished Detention as well. It was pretty insane. Lots of parts I liked, but it's easy to see why it was criticized as much as it was. Lots of tangents and half-developed ideas that never went anywhere other than the director thinking it'd be good for a laugh Fly mutant? 19 year detention? Why? At least the time-traveling bear served a purpose. It was like a Scott Pilgrim meets Scream, but not quite as good as either. Still liked it though, and the teen cast all did solid jobs.
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Aug 8, 2012 07:58
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I agree also about The Crazies. It's very good and one of the few horror remakes superior to the original, actually.
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Aug 14, 2012 01:00
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Well I just saw the new Resident Evil. I don't think these movies qualify as horror anymore. I don't think these movies qualify as movies anymore. It was an incoherent, incompetent piece of poo poo. I imagine anyone trying to watch the film who hasn't played all of the games would be nothing short of flabbergasted. Hell, I've played all the main RE games and I still have no idea what the gently caress happened in the movie other than a bunch of game characters thrown in for no reason. The script was literally a 90-minute session of Horde mode in Gears of War. The characters literally travel from map to map, clearing out all the unique enemies of the map and then moving on to the next. In conclusion, everything about the movie was the worst thing ever.
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Sep 15, 2012 06:11
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Mouser.. posted:That's all well and good. Now for the important question: Was there a shot like this in the movie? They had a lot of poo poo flying in your face throughout the movie, but it was all lame crap like a monster jumping at the camera, or Milla Jovovich throwing a knife at the camera, or Milla Jovovich shooting a gun at the camera, or...nope that's pretty much it. Not only is the movie terrible on its own merits, but it also goes out of its way to physically irritate the audience. There's a scene where the bad guys try to torture Alice by playing loud annoying screeching sounds and the movie literally has you, the audience, endure loud screeching sounds for like 5 minutes. It's like they wanted people to get up and walk out.
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Sep 15, 2012 07:27
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I don't understand how anyone can read the spoilered text in the previous 3 posts and not declare the RE series the most ridiculous bag of poo poo ever.
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Sep 16, 2012 05:20
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Well, poop. Guess they got the whole "naked alice" out of the way when they showed the massive cloning operation in 3 (or 4?). Dredd currently has a 90% on RT, so it might inexplicably be good?
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Sep 17, 2012 00:58
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Sweeney Tom posted:Drag Me to Hell was admittedly a better view in theaters. The audio is picture perfect if you're in a theater. Seeing the midnight premiere of Drag Me to Hell with a packed audience of Raimi fans was honestly one of the best theater experiences of my life. All of the scare moments worked like gangbusters and everyone got all the comedy moments. It was like watching one of your favorite movies on the couch with a friend and having them react exactly how you wanted them to at all the right moments.
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Sep 23, 2012 18:35
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Saw two horror films in the last couple days. The Bay looked interesting from the trailer, but it turned out to be a fairly shoddy Piranha-esque monster movie with a bunch of eco-friendly messages baked in. I liked that the movie used a bunch of different video mediums to tell its story, but the horror elements were poorly executed (really over-the-top musical score kicks in all the time, hilarious freeze-frame/zoom-in method like out of a 90's tv special) and the CG on the creatures looked terrible. Barry Levinson's clearly a novice when it comes to horror, and I didn't care about any of the characters at all. Mother's Day was better, but also a mixed bag. Rebecca de Mornay was excellent, and basically elevated the film from being a complete waste. The problem is that the victims made such painfully stupid decisions throughout the whole movie. I'm convinced all of them would have survived unscathed if they had just sat quietly and not caused problems, but for some reason they all immediately start scheming to fight back and escape with awful half-baked plans. Also there's these 'revelations' throughout the film that keep painting the hostages in a terrible light, and in particular the heroine's reveal truly made her a horrible and irredeemable person in my eyes. Which might have been the point, I guess? Anyways, the film would've been much better if the director could've reigned in his Saw/torture sensibilities a bit more, but I did enjoy the ending. qbert fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 05:55
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It's sad about World War Z because I actually read a great draft of the script a few years back, written by J. Michael Staczynski. It was very faithful to the book, taking place after the war itself, and featuring the interviewer as the protagonist. It even had this great twist of taking one of the more memorable stories from the book and actually revealing that to be the interviewer's backstory towards the end, casting a new light on his own motivations. Instead we get Brad Pitt: Action Hero, and CGI hordes. 
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Nov 11, 2012 05:18
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Craig Spradlin posted:Which story did he write to be the backstory for the interviewer? That's an interesting idea. I wish I had the book in front of me as it's been so long since I've read it, but in the script you learn that when the outbreak broke out, the interviewer tried to outrun it by taking his family far north into Canada, where it was much colder. They tried to survive in the wilderness. Of course, then the disputes start up with other survivors, and very dark things happened. And then Straczynski adds an element to that story that I don't think was in the book. At the very end, the interviewer returns home to his family and you get one last flashback, and I honestly can't remember the details but somehow his daughter gets half-infected, and in present day she sort of acts like a zombie but is not dangerous and is forced to wear a sign around her neck that says "I'm Not Dead" or something. Yeah, the 2nd spoilers above might not read very coherently as it's been so long since I read either, but my overall impression was that the Straczynski script was both good and faithful.
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Nov 12, 2012 19:02
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Craig Spradlin posted:Huh. Like, does that mean the person he interviewed was his daughter? Or just that he was part of one of the other groups? He was the father and they don't actually have him interviewing anyone in the script recounting that story. Obviously the script cut out a bunch of stories to fit movie length. The interviewer's story is shown via flashback towards the end. Also I described that very last twist badly as my memory is fuzzy, but I don't remember it being bad when I read it. More like a Twilight Zone-y ending.
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Nov 13, 2012 03:03
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EC posted:Finally, tonight I watched The Uninvited and really, really enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure I got wind of the movie from this thread, and it did not let me down. It's probably way more of a mystery than it is a horror film, but it delivered some nice scares and an overall creepy vibe that I really enjoyed. Out of curiosity I watched the trailer after finishing the movie, and, uh, if you can not do that and watch the movie I'd recommend it. That's interesting. I hated The Uninvited, but only because I had already seen the Korean film it was based on, A Tale of Two Sisters, years earlier and found it vastly superior in every way in handling the same material. It's one of my favorite 'horror' films, period. Even though you know most of the story beats from watching the remake, I'd still highly recommend you check out the original and I'd be interested in your thoughts on it.
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Nov 30, 2012 05:55
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EC posted:Added to my queue. I didn't realize it was a remake. What didn't you like about the US version? Or was it just a case of liking the first version you saw? I've only seen The Uninvited once, and that was like 3 years ago when it first came out, but I remember the remake changing a bunch of plot elements towards the very end to try and make the film more 'horror' and action-y, which to me ruined the thematic through-line of the rest of the movie. The original was much more of a tragic drama with supernatural elements, whereas the remake just wanted to be a thriller with a Shyamalan twist. In the original the main character is the one with the more out-going, extroverted personality, while the sister is the shy, passive one. I thought it was a mistake to switch those roles in the remake. Really makes the main character, who's in every scene, kinda bland. Also in the original the dad and the girlfriend are way better developed and the girlfriend doesn't do anything "obviously" evil. It's much more subtle. The twist was also more cleverly hidden through a few different filming/plot devices. Also the big reveal at the end of both films is very different, and I liked the original's much better. qbert fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 18:59
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