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PostwarMutant
Oct 30, 2010
Polanski's THE TENANT. It shares some similarity with REPULSION - claustrophobic urban apartments, characters slowly hallucinating and going mad - but the subtext about scapegoating immigrants and paranoia over living in exile. The real pleasure is the pure WTFuckery of some of the imagery and the bizarre twists in plot - its got masterful pacing, so that the weirdness comes upon you slowly, and you're never quite sure what's being imagined and what isn't.

Edited because I don't understand how image hosting works.

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Calculations
Apr 27, 2008

PostwarMutant posted:

Polanski's THE TENANT. It shares some similarity with REPULSION - claustrophobic urban apartments, characters slowly hallucinating and going mad - but the subtext about scapegoating immigrants and paranoia over living in exile. The real pleasure is the pure WTFuckery of some of the imagery and the bizarre twists in plot - its got masterful pacing, so that the weirdness comes upon you slowly, and you're never quite sure what's being imagined and what isn't.

Edited because I don't understand how image hosting works.

You're absolutely right! In fact, the Tenant, REPULSION and Rosemary's Baby are all part of a small trilogy. I've seen Rosemary and REPULSION, but the Tenant is next on that list.

My GIRLFRIEND is really into horror movies, but she's more of a slasher type. It's kinda hard to get my friends to sit still for the duration of a slow, alienating movie. I'm amazed that my friend Matt and his lady sat through Eraserhead! gently caress! That movie! My brain!

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

echoplex posted:

Wow, The Keep was on that list. There's an odd, odd film.

Wasn't the keep that one about some protected temple out in the middle of bumfuck Eastern Europe that Nazi's build a base into and remove gold from the walls unleashing the demons trapped inside? I tried watching that movie and I ended up turning it off when it introduced what seemed like a weird romance sub-plot with an angel.

To semi-contribute to the Prince of Darkness discussion I think what ended up really distracting me from the film being truly scary or oppressing what seeing so many familiar faces from Carpenter's other recent work at the time 'Big Trouble in Little China'. It was just hard to get the image of Egg Shen out of my head when I kept seeing that actor appear on screen and then I can never take hobo Alice Cooper seriously.

echoplex
Mar 5, 2008

Stainless Style
That's the one. It's on youtube if you're curious.

It's a pretty terrible film but I wanted to see it when I saw some stills. It's one of those films that looks very mysterious and atmospheric in the promo stills and trailers, but it's shot to bits when you realise it's just another cheesey 80s horror. The look of the film is quite interesting, but that's buried under c-grade acting and editing and the normally dependable Ian McKellan going "nooooooo" a lot. I never watch these lovely horrors for the gore or kills, but for the tiny sparks of inventivness.

Someone posted the cover of the Sorcerer soundtrack they had on vinyl, which was this image:



That's an incredibly captivating, intriguing image. I imagine the film is probably rubbish. But it's that bait-and-switch that got me watching a lot of terrible films (like The Keep).


I saw Prince Of Darkness waaaaay too young. I'd just learned to believe that there was no such thing as ghosts and then I saw that, alone, in a new house we'd just moved into and I was "aw poo poo, no, they're real."

Probably would have been ok if I knew who Alice Cooper was.

Kingtheninja
Jul 29, 2004

"You're the best looking guy here."
Audition was really great and messed with my head. I think it helped right before watching it my friend tricked me about the plot.

:v: :What's this movie about?

:smug: :A TV producer holds an all female audition for a show with the secret intention of trying to find a future wife.

:v: :Well that sure sounds heartwarming and romantic.

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


echoplex posted:


Someone posted the cover of the Sorcerer soundtrack they had on vinyl, which was this image:



That's an incredibly captivating, intriguing image. I imagine the film is probably rubbish. But it's that bait-and-switch that got me watching a lot of terrible films (like The Keep).



Speaking of "bait and switch" and Sorcerer the movie is most known for a disastrous theater run. The problem being that it was the next film by the director of The Exorcist, called Sorcerer but wasn't occult related at all. Theaters also had to print notices letting people know that despite the opening of the film being in a foreign language the rest of the film was in English.

penismightier
Dec 6, 2005

What the hell, I'll just eat some trash.

echoplex posted:

Someone posted the cover of the Sorcerer soundtrack they had on vinyl, which was this image:



That's an incredibly captivating, intriguing image. I imagine the film is probably rubbish. But it's that bait-and-switch that got me watching a lot of terrible films (like The Keep).

It's almost as good as Wages of Fear, and it uses the setting much better. That image is actually a really accurate look at what it's like.


The Keep isn't a terrible film, man! It's, like, half of a terrible film. But the first hour or so is pretty good... :(

Keanu Grieves
Dec 30, 2002



Yeah. I went there.

The Jacket pulls a respectable 7.0 on IMDb, but what most people seem to overlook is just how well it tells a story that doesn't make any rational sense; no, there's no explanation provided as to why the protagonist Jack Starks can time travel a decade into the future from the most claustrophobic form of confinement ever. If you can forgive The Jacket this lone conceit (I, for one, am glad it remains unexplained), you'll be treated to a firecracker thriller that, for my money, ranks among the best of the decade.

That's a bold statement, sure, but with a nimble plot, terrific use of oppressive settings (a snowy Vermont, a mental institution that would make Poe proud and that awful, awful morgue cabinet), a love story as fragile as it is creepy, a secondary psychological mystery with a satisfying payoff, one of the best-delivered lines in any thriller ever ("You're haunting yourself, old man"), and an indescribably clever solution to the ticking-clock conundrum at its core, The Jacket more than earns its day in court. I've loved this movie since theaters, and I still revisit it annually.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

penismightier posted:

It's almost as good as Wages of Fear, and it uses the setting much better. That image is actually a really accurate look at what it's like.

Wasn't there a thread here that compared the two and found Sorcerer to be superior?

I'm not sure if I agree, but I did watch Wages of Fear a while back and found the Las Piedras to be a rustic paradise filled with comical characters (gently caress, the names of the Mario Brothers come from here) and beautiful women, compared to the Venezuelan shithole where people on the run go to slowly die of Sorcerer. A place where there's only one woman for a 100 men and you would do anything to get out of, like drive a truck full of sweating dynamite through the jungle.

Starscream
Aug 17, 2000
I really enjoyed Andrzej Zulawski's Possession and found it to be similar to Polanski's Apartment trilogy in that the tension mounts to a nightmarish point before unleashing utter insanity on you. Sam Neill gives a laughably histrionic performance and Isabelle Adjani is just gorgeous!

Avoid the 80-minute version and look for the 2 hour uncut version.

Ghost Captain
Apr 22, 2008

I did it wit my lil hatchet
Richard Attenborough's Magic, starring young Anthony Hopkins!
He plays a down-on-his-luck magician who takes up ventriloquism to spice up his act. Soon it seems the dummy is alive! It's a psychological horror/thriller with a good performance from Hopkins, and is actually surprisingly good, despite the kind of hackneyed premise.

The trailer played just one time on television, because so many parents called in complaining that it gave their kids nightmares.

Another "living ventriloquist dummy" movie that's worth checking out is The Great Gabbo (1929). It's part-musical, with the dummy singing songs periodically, or the cabaret (where the film's set) putting on an elaborate dance routine. It's a little slow, and sometimes the German protagonist is hard to understand or he just speaks in German, but it's pretty cool and it has some interesting moments and visuals.

echoplex
Mar 5, 2008

Stainless Style

penismightier posted:

It's almost as good as Wages of Fear, and it uses the setting much better. That image is actually a really accurate look at what it's like.


The Keep isn't a terrible film, man! It's, like, half of a terrible film. But the first hour or so is pretty good... :(

I'll give it a go, then, if that's a reccomendation.

There's not really any legs in it as a thread but it would be cool to do a collection of good promo/publicity stills from films (as opposed to screencaps) because I quite often find them really evocative and they tend to capture the best part of a film. I can't find the ones from The Keep that made me want to watch it now, drat.

edit: here we go. Was hard to ignore that once I'd seen it.

echoplex fucked around with this message at 09:18 on May 4, 2011

Mouser..
Apr 1, 2010



- Jess is a single mother to Tommy, who is autistic. Encouraged by her friend, Greg, to take some time for herself, she joins him and his friends for a day of sailing. Soon, they get caught in a freak electrical storm which capsizes their boat, forcing them to seek refuge in a passing ocean liner. Once on board, they realize that the ship is empty. Jess, however, feels that she has been there before. As the group explores the ship further, strange things begin to happen. Jess finds her keys tossed on the floor, food appears to have been prepared for the group, and footsteps are heard in the halls. A masked figure stalks the group while Jess attempts to piece together the unfolding mystery as well as survive.-

I know, I know, must be a slasher movie. Not even close, I really don't want to give more of the plot because to tell more would be doing a disservice. I will say that some have overlooked it as a knockoff of Timecrimes. It's simply not true, this movie is so much better and complex than that movie. Timecrimes in my opinion was simple and became goofy halfway through. I've never had to spend as much time trying to piece together everything that I saw as I have with Triangle. You truly have to pay attention to everything that's going on and you're going to have to go back and check things you saw earlier to see if it makes sense once all is revealed. It's an absolute shame that very few people even heard of this movie and it was quietly released direct to DVD in the States.

penismightier
Dec 6, 2005

What the hell, I'll just eat some trash.

echoplex posted:



Man, that is cool. It looks like Phase IV.

Too bad it's from the lovely part of the movie.

Sunday Punch
Mar 4, 2009

There you are in your home, and the soldiers smash down the door and tell you you're in the middle of World War III. Something's gone wrong with time.
THE INTERVIEW



The Interview is a claustrophobic and intense psychological thriller, and the film that really cemented my opinion that Hugo Weaving is an amazing actor. Most of the film takes place in a small interview room, where an accused man (Weaving) and a police detective (Tony Martin) engage in a psychological chess game. The dialog and the acting from the two leads are both fantastic, and the sparse supporting cast keeps the film focused and tense. It's sort of like a darker, more intimate variant of 12 Angry Men. Hugo Weaving can communicate a page of dialogue with a raised eyebrow or a twitch of the lips, he's just superb. I don't want to say too much about the plot, just watch it if you love films about mind games or with two main characters engaged in a verbal battle of wits.

I wish our (Australia's) cinema industry would produce more films like this one :(

the Bunt
Sep 24, 2007

YOUR GOLDEN MAGNETIC LIGHT
INLAND EMPIRE



"A woman in trouble."

This is David Lynch's magnum opus in my eyes, and possibly my favorite film from the 2000s.

This film is a completely enveloping portal into a horrible fever dream. I have seen it upwards of four times and I still could not give you a straight plot synopsis.



Its use of standard definition digital video plays a tremendous part in the "feel" of the film. The immediacy and urgency of Lynch's ideas and passions come across in every frame. After INLAND EMPIRE, I can finally embrace digital video after years of being a film diehard.

Laura Dern does an incredible job as Nikki, an actress who gets a starring role in a drama mystery film. The film allegedly turns out to be a remake of an old Polish film which was never completed due to the murder of both the lead actors. Meanwhile, Nikki begins to confuse the "reality" world with that of the film-within-a-film. Then, it starts to get really crazy.

If you let the film wash over you and try not to approach it in terms of standard narrative arcs and storytelling techniques, it will hold you captive. Inland Empire requires you to directly acknowledge the unreality of art and cinema, and justly outs the questioning of "what is real in this fictional film?" as artificial and arbitrary.

Shane-O-Mac
May 24, 2006

Hypnopompic bees are extra scary. They turn into guns.

Horns posted:

I like In the Mouth of Madness, but something about it is just... off. While it can be almost unnerving at times and the acting is solid, it's never genuinely scary, and often kind of silly. The finale is amazing and definitely worth watching the whole thing, though.



"Haunted by recent events and on the run, a man finds himself at a seemingly derelict radio station and like the station's only inhabitant must ask himself whether it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

A creepy-as-poo poo short film directed by the producer/director/editor of a TON of making-of/background documentaries for DVD releases. This guy's worked on DVD special features stuff for everything from The Fly to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Don't think for a second that that stops him from making effective original psychological horror though, AM 1200 is still an incredibly tense and well-acted film.

Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to find. Best (legal) place I know of is the official site: http://am1200.com/

I watched this the other day and thought it was great. I really had no idea where it was going, and thought the ending was perfect.

Kolchak
May 3, 2006

If I don't tell this story now, I don't think I ever will.

oiseaux morts 1994 posted:

Whistle and I'll Come To You
I just saw the 1968 version for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I haven't stopped thinking about it. Not only is it genuinely frightening but it boasts a central performance (by Michael Hordern) that I found both funny and heartbreaking. He's a kind of intellectual Mr. Bean sort and it is an odd but very effective deviation from the source material; I could probably have watched 45 minutes of the man simply eating breakfast. I've been trying to get everyone I know to see it. I'm sure it will become one of my all-time favourites.

So anyway, seeing it mentioned in the same post, I tracked down The Woman In Black. Thank you thank you thank you. It's a bit of a slow start but it becomes everything I love in a good ghost story.



This was my favourite moment. She takes two steps toward him in closeup, and then it cuts to this wider shot with her in the background where she is ever-so-slightly hunched over in an incredibly menacing way, getting ready to chase him down. The camera follows Kidd as he takes off and we don't see her again for quite some time, but this last, fleeting image of her hunched silhouette haunts every single subsequent shot to the point where I was dreading each time a door opened or a corner was turned. What a great little movie. Why can't made-for-TV stuff be this good anymore?

I also tracked down the adaptation of James' A Warning to the Curious. I wasn't as taken with it as I was with Whistle, but it had some great moments, and some terrific shots as well. I thought it would have benefitted from Whistle's B&W cinematography but this long shot of the murderer on the hill will stay with me for a while:



Great stuff. Thanks again!

echoplex
Mar 5, 2008

Stainless Style

Kolchak posted:

So anyway, seeing it mentioned in the same post, I tracked down The Woman In Black. Thank you thank you thank you. It's a bit of a slow start but it becomes everything I love in a good ghost story.


Yeah, just that screencap gives me a bit of a shiver. I guess it's the shape of her shilloutte but it's brilliantly effective. Actually horrible.

For years I thought the appearing in the bedroom scare was the ending, so the lake scene was a good surprise.

PateraOctopus
Oct 27, 2010

It's not enough to listen, it's not enough to see
When the hurricane is coming on, it's not enough to flee

Young Freud posted:

Yeah, a lot of the danger the crew of the Icarus 2 faces is that space around them is openly hostile to human life and their ship is so very, very fragile. Even before they get to the movie takes a turn, they've already lost half the crew do to irreparable damage to the ship.

The best part of Sunshine to me is a very, very small part, but it completely makes the movie. After Trey makes the 1 degree mistake and the results have gone down, he tries to apologize, and all he can say is "I hosed up!" over and over again, with this tearful, sweat-drenched expression of just pure bottom-dropping-out-of-your-stomach panic. The actor nails the feeling you get when you realize you've made a stupid, stupid mistake that you should have avoided, but magnified to encompass the fact that his "Oops" moment may inadvertently have doomed the entire human race, and despite that, all he can do is say "I hosed up," because there's nothing else to say--it was an honest mistake that anyone could have made. It's just such a human moment, both the mistake and the apology, in a movie about people who have all of humanity riding on their shoulders, and it drives home that everyone on the ship is there for that reason--because they're human.

o.m. 94
Nov 23, 2009

Kolchak posted:



This was my favourite moment.

Agreed, truly chilling. The whole scene captivates me, it's the fact that it's contrary to the typical ghost scare, where the protagonist is in some dark, claustrophobic place; in this scene the woman approaches through a wide expanse of marshland set against a featureless, yawning sky. It's agoraphobic, and ostensibly Kidd has every which way to run- so why do we feel that he can't escape?

I'm quite excited to see how they handle the remake.

temple
Jul 29, 2006

I have actual skeletons in my closet
IMO, The Keep was a good book. The movie was excessively 80's. I've tried to watch the movie but I can't get more than 15 minutes into it.

Kolchak
May 3, 2006

If I don't tell this story now, I don't think I ever will.

echoplex posted:

For years I thought the appearing in the bedroom scare was the ending, so the lake scene was a good surprise.
I was going to cap her final appearance there too because it's almost as shocking as her first, but that would have revealed too much. The absolute wrongness of where she stands in that last moment is absolutely horrible. Goddammit, I'm getting chills just thinking about it.

Here's my suggestion:



John Brahm's The Lodger, from 1944, a remake of Hitchcock's original (which I have not seen). It's an account - fictional, obviously - of the infamous Jack the Ripper. It features a stunning central performance from an actor named Laird Cregar, who was only 29 (and who died within a year) but his ability to so convincingly play well beyond his years reminds me of Orson Welles.

It's got a great atmosphere and the feeling of dread sets in almost immediately. Cregar brings a maddening sense of humanity to the role; you desperately hope he hasn't done the things you suspect him of.

The b&w photography is perfect. It reminds me of Fritz Lang's M, actually, both visually and thematically (although, now that I think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if Lang had seen the original Hitchcock film, so who knows what influenced what, if at all).



Also, Merle Oberon, <3

o.m. 94
Nov 23, 2009

Ahhh poo poo, goons, I forgot about Tarkovsky!! fire up your blunts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfowVslQBQk

quote:

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, an alien place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers. Over his wife's numerous objections, a man rises in the dead of night: he's a stalker, one of a handful who have the mental gifts (and who risk imprisonment) to lead people into the Zone to the Room, a place where one's secret hopes come true. That night, he takes two people into the Zone: a popular writer who is burned out, cynical, and questioning his genius; and a quiet scientist more concerned about his knapsack than the journey. In the deserted Zone, the approach to the Room must be indirect. As they draw near, the rules seem to change and the stalker faces a crisis.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsSCu6Dqg9Y

quote:

The Solaris mission has established a base on a planet that appears to host some kind of intelligence, but the details are hazy and very secret. After the mysterious demise of one of the three scientists on the base, the main character is sent out to replace him. He finds the station run-down and the two remaining scientists cold and secretive. When he also encounters his wife who has been dead for seven years, he begins to appreciate the baffling nature of the alien intelligence.

PateraOctopus
Oct 27, 2010

It's not enough to listen, it's not enough to see
When the hurricane is coming on, it's not enough to flee

Kolchak posted:

The Lodger

Also worth seeing is a remake called The Man in the Attic, starring a very young Jack Palance in the Cregar role. It approaches the story from a different angle--Palance never evokes the same human sympathy as Cregar, but he takes to the role with a wonderful brooding darkness, and it's easy to believe that this man IS Jack the Ripper. The best way to describe the difference between the two films is to look at the leads' eyes: Cregar's say "I don't know why I do this!" while Palance's say "I don't know why you wouldn't."

Also, if you dig Cregar, check out "Hangover Square," which was his final role. It's similar in tone to The Lodger, though he plays a different sort of character. If I'm remembering right the dieting regimen he went on to try to lose weight during and after that film was what led to his death.

FitFortDanga
Nov 19, 2004

Nice try, asshole

Just chiming in to second both The Lodger and Hangover Square, terrific films.

monkey
Jan 20, 2004

by zen death robot
Yams Fan

Mouser.. posted:



Great movie. And I agree, if you go in expecting timecrimes you're setting yourself up to be disappointed. Where timecrimes has a timeline that can easily be represented by a wire with three loops in it this movie is some kind of bizarre infinite mobius-strip crossed with a strange loop construct that defies logical explanation.

There's some interesting discussion threads on this movie at IMDB. This post in particular is worth reading, especially if you didn't like the movie because it didn't make sense in the context of a time travel story. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187064/board/thread/170267792?d=170284822&p=1#170284822

CzarChasm
Mar 14, 2009

I don't like it when you're watching me eat.

oiseaux morts 1994 posted:

Ahhh poo poo, goons, I forgot about Tarkovsky!! fire up your blunts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfowVslQBQk
Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, an alien place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers. Over his wife's numerous objections, a man rises in the dead of night: he's a stalker, one of a handful who have the mental gifts (and who risk imprisonment) to lead people into the Zone to the Room, a place where one's secret hopes come true. That night, he takes two people into the Zone: a popular writer who is burned out, cynical, and questioning his genius; and a quiet scientist more concerned about his knapsack than the journey. In the deserted Zone, the approach to the Room must be indirect. As they draw near, the rules seem to change and the stalker faces a crisis.

I'm at work right now and can't see pictures or video, what movie is this?

Mouser..
Apr 1, 2010

monkey posted:

Great movie. And I agree, if you go in expecting timecrimes you're setting yourself up to be disappointed. Where timecrimes has a timeline that can easily be represented by a wire with three loops in it this movie is some kind of bizarre infinite mobius-strip crossed with a strange loop construct that defies logical explanation.

There's some interesting discussion threads on this movie at IMDB. This post in particular is worth reading, especially if you didn't like the movie because it didn't make sense in the context of a time travel story. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187064/board/thread/170267792?d=170284822&p=1#170284822

I still can't get through the majority of the theories that people have on IMDB about Triangle. I've never seen such verbose and varied theorizing and explanations of a Direct-To-DVD movie before, and with good reason too.

But this one...this one is unbelievable that someone would write this much about the inner workings of Triangle

Triangle: Mythology and Science (A 4 part dissection of Triangle) :aaaaa:

monkey
Jan 20, 2004

by zen death robot
Yams Fan
Yeah, I couldn't go through them all either, the last time I looked was not long after it came out and there were only a few. They've inadvertently created a sperg trap by deliberately making it so open to interpretation.

Kull the Conqueror
Apr 8, 2006

Take me to the green valley,
lay the sod o'er me,
I'm a young cowboy,
I know I've done wrong

CzarChasm posted:

I'm at work right now and can't see pictures or video, what movie is this?

Stalker (1979).

PateraOctopus
Oct 27, 2010

It's not enough to listen, it's not enough to see
When the hurricane is coming on, it's not enough to flee

FitFortDanga posted:

Just chiming in to second both The Lodger and Hangover Square, terrific films.

Both were written by Barré Lyndon, who's also credited as a writer on Man in the Attic--not sure if he worked on that one in a real sense or if he's just credited to acknowledge his screenplay for The Lodger.

By the way, Man in the Attic also features Frances Bavier as Palance's unwitting landlady--otherwise known as loving Aunt Bea from The Andy Griffith Show. Only thing I've ever seen her in that wasn't set in Mayberry.

Keanu Grieves
Dec 30, 2002

A movie's distribution method shouldn't exclude it from in-depth discussion, especially a movie like Triangle--which, I imagine, went directly to DVD because it was difficult to market. Even the cover and poster art betray its greatness, making a cheap slasher film out of a thriller built around an incredibly ingenious plot and sharply drawn characters.

I'm so glad this movie didn't slip entirely under the radar, because it's certainly one of the best thrillers of 2009, if not one of the best films.

Rujo King
Jun 28, 2007

I say old chap have you any of the good sort of catnip if you know what I mean... harrumphaarmaammhhhmm

Kull the Conqueror posted:

Stalker (1979).

I love Tarkovsky in the same way I love Dmitri Shostakovich. His works might not be particularly accessible (or even pleasant) but they have an emotional impact that goes beyond that of contemporary films.

For example, the "car ride through a futuristic city" scene from Solaris is really almost too long for its own good, but it fits in with the theme of the film so well that you don't really have much of a choice but to watch it intently. And I'd say that the final scene where Kris looks through a window into his father's house and sees it raining inside (to demonstrate that he has gone "home" only by landing on Solaris itself) is one of the most bizarre and yet poignant moments from any sci-fi film.

That said, I'd kill to see a version of Solaris based more closely on Lem's book, such that the emphasis was placed more strongly on the alien intelligence that makes up Solaris rather than the psychologies of the humans involved.

Keanu Grieves
Dec 30, 2002

Also, yeah, Stalker is badass.

foodfight
Feb 10, 2009


Afraid of the Dark

quote:

After a psycho begins murdering blind women in their homes, 12-year-old Lucas Hardy (Ben Keysworth) -- whose eyesight is disintegrating -- launches his own investigation. But when he finally finds the maniac he's been looking for, Lucas comes face to face with fear in this terrifying psychological thriller.

I watched this movie a couple years ago and it really messed with my head. If you have any sort of phobia about eyes or knitting needles this will drive you up the wall. Its on Netflix instant right now.

Rabbit Hill
Mar 11, 2009

God knows what lives in me in place of me.
Grimey Drawer
^^^This reminded me of an Italian film from 2004:



(aka I'm Not Scared)

quote:

Michele Amitrano is a true country bambino: cute as an angel, curious and enterprising as a rascal and means everything to his parents. Father Pino Amitrano is a truck driver, and is often away. Even when he's at home he deals with dodgy villagers and other friends, while mother Anna spoils his useless kid sister Maria rotten. Michele is mostly left doing his sister's chores, getting either of them out of trouble, roaming the sparsely populated grain lands on his bicycle and playing with local kids, which often means minor trouble. One day after a dare leads the mildly mischievous gang to a ruined house, he returns alone to retrieve the glasses that his sister had left behind. Michele accidentally finds a deep hole outside, beneath a metal cover, and sees a boy's bare foot under a blanket inside....

The film creates an amazingly tense and creepy atmosphere for a story that is not about supernatural elements. I thought for sure that little boy would be, like, a zombie child or something, but the reality is actually more grim.



(I'm glad to see there are a few Laird Cregar fans here. If you haven't already seen it, he's fantastic in the noir film, I Wake Up Screaming, playing a pathologically obsessed detective.)

PateraOctopus
Oct 27, 2010

It's not enough to listen, it's not enough to see
When the hurricane is coming on, it's not enough to flee

Rabbit Hill posted:

(I'm glad to see there are a few Laird Cregar fans here. If you haven't already seen it, he's fantastic in the noir film, I Wake Up Screaming, playing a pathologically obsessed detective.)

Nice, I'll add that to my to-watch list. Cregar's got a very interesting story--he had the acting chops but lacked the looks of a leading man, and he knew it, and his attempts to lose weight in a short amount of time were what ended up killing him. Very sad end for a guy with such potential, and very much in the vein of a character he might have played.

Craig Spradlin
Apr 6, 2009

Right in the babymaker.

jeremy oval office posted:

A movie's distribution method shouldn't exclude it from in-depth discussion, especially a movie like Triangle--which, I imagine, went directly to DVD because it was difficult to market. Even the cover and poster art betray its greatness, making a cheap slasher film out of a thriller built around an incredibly ingenious plot and sharply drawn characters.

I'm so glad this movie didn't slip entirely under the radar, because it's certainly one of the best thrillers of 2009, if not one of the best films.

Agreed. I think it's criminally underrated. I don't think the people sperging out over it are necessarily seeing poo poo where there isn't, there's definitely something very smart about this movie, but for me, it's summed up by my conclusion at the end of the film, which was that all Jess needs to do is get back in the cab instead of running to the yacht. The cabdriver is Death, and he's left the meter running.

Anyway, some movies I haven't seen mentioned...



The Killing Room

A group of people respond to a classified ad looking for participants in psychological research, promising payment. A scientist specializing in the analysis of facial microexpressions shows up for her first day of work, ushered into an observation area overlooking the room where the days' subjects are sitting around a table. Nobody is told what the nature of the research is - the participants are told they will be paid at the end of the day after several tests, and the new scientist is told to observe the participants as they are put through the tests. Of course, things get ill pretty quickly, but they're done in a really smart way that's not overly expository, escalates tension, and keeps you guessing throughout as to the purpose of the tests, and for that matter, who's actually being tested. Plus it's got a really strong cast for a direct-to-DVD movie. Definitely worth checking out.



My Little Eye

One of the better "reality show participants stuck in a DEADLY GAME OF SURVIVAL" movies I've seen - what makes this one stand out for me is again, how much of the exposition comes from what the characters do, rather than what they say. We're expected to observe and pay attention to figure out what's going on. Plus, as a movie pretty much relying on the idea of surveillance, it does this nifty trick where we start out the movie watching the characters through cameras of varying quality, with the point of view becoming more and more intrusive as events escalate, until by the end we are right there in the house with them. It gets pretty violent toward the end, but rarely in a gratuitous gore flick type of way. There are a couple of plot holes or disappointing story choices that bugged me at the time, but matter less and less over time in my consideration of the movie as a whole.



Cthulhu

A really well-done contemporary take on Lovecraft. It gets rid of all of the lurid, feverish aspects of his stories (as seen in, say, Dagon) to concentrate on the ideas of family, tradition, and inescapable destiny in the modern-day Pacific Northwest. The protagonist is a young man living in Seattle, who is called home to a small town in Oregon for his mother's funeral. Here we find out that he's estranged from his father, who is some kind of local religious figure. His family has expectations of him that he can't or doesn't want to fulfill, which is why he moved to Seattle in the first place. What follows is his slow entanglement in the problems of the town and the conflict with his family and tradition, against a backdrop of increasing global strife and rising oceans. The whole movie is pervaded with a dreamlike feeling of wrongness that reminds me of Roman Polanski's movies, complete with a segment reminiscent of Mia Farrow's rape scene in Rosemary's Baby.

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IShallRiseAgain
Sep 12, 2008

Well ain't that precious?

Craig Spradlin posted:



Cthulhu

A really well-done contemporary take on Lovecraft. It gets rid of all of the lurid, feverish aspects of his stories (as seen in, say, Dagon) to concentrate on the ideas of family, tradition, and inescapable destiny in the modern-day Pacific Northwest. The protagonist is a young man living in Seattle, who is called home to a small town in Oregon for his mother's funeral. Here we find out that he's estranged from his father, who is some kind of local religious figure. His family has expectations of him that he can't or doesn't want to fulfill, which is why he moved to Seattle in the first place. What follows is his slow entanglement in the problems of the town and the conflict with his family and tradition, against a backdrop of increasing global strife and rising oceans. The whole movie is pervaded with a dreamlike feeling of wrongness that reminds me of Roman Polanski's movies, complete with a segment reminiscent of Mia Farrow's rape scene in Rosemary's Baby.

Don't be deceived, this isn't a Lovecraft story at all. Its just named Cthulhu to trick fans into watching it. Just watch the trailer, and you will see it has nothing to do with Lovecraft's works.

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