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 Hotel Irene is a new clerk at a secluded Austrian hotel. She works the night shift and everything seems fine at first but she soon finds out that the girl who had her job before vanished without a trace. Everyone treats Irene with hostility or takes advantage of her and no one will say a word about the missing girl even with the police snooping around the premises. I posted about this in the horror movies thread a while ago. Hotel isn't available in America but it got a release in the UK recently. The best way I can sum up Hotel is that it's one of the most realistic horror movies I've ever seen. Whenever we encounter something that scares or unnerves us in our own lives whether it's going into a basement/dark room at night or hearing weird noises there's always a level of ambiguity to it (in the sense that we have no idea if something malevolent really IS there or not). Most horror movies lay out everything, Hotel is nothing but that feeling of ambiguity. Just expect a very slow horror movie. You can see a clip HERE but be warned: this is a spoilerish clip in the sense that it's the only thing close to a 'scare scene' in the whole thing.  Sombre A serial killer who travels around France doing puppet shows for children faces a crisis when he meets up with a shy virgin and her outgoing sister. Philippe Grandrieux, the director of Sombre, takes an approach to his films where he wants to get the most visceral reactions out of anyone watching them. At the same time he uses the camera to put people in the same mindset as his characters. He achieves this effect with plenty of stylistic touches in Sombre. The lighting is so low that people look more like floating blogs. The editing will made sudden shifts to remove any sense of comfort. Most of the time only low rumbling vibrations will soundtrack the movie (I think it's because of this that Grandrieux gets a lot of comparisons to David Lynch). Sombre has a bare bones narrative but the story doesn't matter. This is all about the feeling of unease it creates. You can watch the opening sequence of the movie HERE.  La Vie Nouvelle A young American soldier in an unnamed Eastern European country becomes infatuated with a prostitute. He tries to hunt her down again, determined to buy her freedom, but ends up going deeper into the dark world of the country's sex trade. This is Grandrieux's second film and while it's extreme (the movie got comparisons to Irreversible when it came out) aside from one relatively tame scene the movie is pretty bloodless. It says a lot that La Vie Nouvelle can conjure up the same suffocating, nauseous feelings that Irreversible did for some people while having a small fraction of extreme content that would match up to Noe's movie. La Vie Nouvelle feels like you're descending down to hell (or something close to it) right along with its main character. As the movie goes on the entire narrative falls apart and the movie shifts into more of an avant garde territory before a sequence that's like watching someone's worst nightmare come to life. You can see a slightly NSFW clip HERE.
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May 19, 2011 08:03
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a foolish pianist posted:I'm pretty sure what you're describing there is exactly what people mean by gore porn. No, what people mean by gore/torture porn is when a movie is violent or gory for the sake of it, or it inexplicably tries to scare you with graphic footage of people being tortured. None of this applies to Martyrs and tossing it off as torture porn is unfair to the movie.
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Jan 30, 2012 02:31
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Since the topic of docudramas came up, here's something similar: Punishment Park (1971) The movie takes place in an alternate future/universe of America where a documentary crew from England films the US government's newest form of dealing with 'criminals.' It's explained that the government has declared a state of emergency with the anti-war movement growing in numbers over the year, and now anyone who simply seems threatening can get arrested by the police. They're then taken to the desert and put through a tribunal made up of "members of the community" where they're given two options: Serve out a harsh prison sentence (usually 10-15 years) or take their chance in Punishment Park. What is Punishment Park? It's a 50+ mile trek through the California desert to a site with an American flag. If the prisoners can make it to the flag within 3 days without food and water they don't have to serve out their sentence. The catch is that Punishment Park is actually a training exercise for law enforcement officers/the National Guard. The prisoners are given a head start for a few hours, but then the officers/solders are sent out to hunt them down. If a prisoner is caught/arrested they're taken back and forced to serve out their sentence. This movie never really got much love since its release. It premiered at Cannes to some decent reviews, but in the same year it was ripped apart by critics at the New York Film Festival. Part of the reason is because people were livid at a British filmmaker portraying America as some sort of police-state nightmare, and no one in Hollywood ever distributed it. Decades later people have finally warmed up to it and given the movie the recognition it deserves, with a Blu-Ray release in the UK and a limited run on DVD in the US. Watching the movie today it's shocking that it's over 40 years old. It's definitely a product of its time but it came before movies like Cannibal Holocaust, The Blair Witch Project, Battle Royale, etc. and you can see this movie sharing some very distant qualities with all of those kinds of films. This isn't a straight up horror film in the traditional sense, but it's an incredibly realistic and visceral experience. It was made for a tiny budget (under $100k including film prints/processing) and there are moments where it's obvious that the cast/crew were actually getting mad at each other and taking things too far. This may skirt the line with the thread's requirements but I can safely say that I was bothered more by this movie than a lot of other titles suggested in here. Here's a trailer (  for language I guess)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suh2r2ojP3I
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Jan 19, 2013 01:24
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Probably the whole prank by the son to suggest she's alive. Lake Mungo is a pretty quintessential example for this thread. Definitely flawed but thematically much more interesting than the large majority of horror films. Plus it earns the long build-up to "THAT scene."
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Jan 23, 2013 17:14
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It's a tragedy, but it does continue to blur the line between documentary and fiction in that film. That blending of real-life elements is what gives Toad Road its edge. A lot of the film's unease comes from losing the stability of accepting it as straight docu or straight scripted. The director's next film, Felt, has been screening at fests to good reviews. Sounds like it has some similar elements to Toad Road, but this one's being described as a feminist film.
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Nov 15, 2014 06:21
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Oculus continues what Mike Flanagan showed in Absentia. He's clearly preoccupied with trauma, and how to overcome a tragedy, except Flanagan's view is an incredibly bleak one. In Absentia, a woman tries to overcome her husband's "death," only to have her husband literally show up at her door the moment she's ready to let go. In Oculus, a similar turning point happens: right when the sister is ready to move on from her parents' death, the mirror finally shows its powers. In both of his films, the trauma gets manifested as some sort of impersonable, all-powerful force that's impossible to defeat, and the characters wind up destroying themselves in an attempt to overcome it. It's bleak because Flanagan's films suggest that the only right thing to do is to never look back at the past, and that by doing so you become a part of it (Oculus made this real explicit with the shot of the glass eyed family staring out the window at the end). This is part of why Flanagan is one of my favourite horror filmmakers working today: the way he merges personal tragedy with folkloric horror is something I don't see a lot of filmmakers doing right now, and the way he mixes the two makes his films very unsettling. The only other recent comparison point I can make is The Babadook, but that movie is straight up not scary and has the message being shoved in your face as much as possible.
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Aug 19, 2015 23:59
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I've been plugging this in the horror thread, but since it's out in a few days I want to throw some praise towards They Look Like People in here. This is a low-key, psychological horror from a director who pretty much did this film on his own. He wrote the script and then flew his friends up to NYC so they could act in it. When you look at the end credits you'll see almost the entire thing was made by the director and his three leads. The film starts with Wyatt fleeing his fiancee after receiving a phone call late at night from a strange, garbled voice. The voice says that the people around him aren't who they say they are: they're malevolent shapeshifters who have slowly taken over most of the human population, and in several days they're finally going to show their true form and start a war with the remaining human population. He's told that his fiancee is one of "them," and after seeing her transform he goes to New York City. Why? To meet Christian, his friend from high school who's gone off to try and live a successful life in the city. Wyatt continues receiving calls and messages from the same person who warned him back at his house, and he tries to convince Christian to get out of the city with him before the poo poo hits the fan. I'll put the rest in spoilers just because the movie isn't out yet, but I won't reveal anything major. So yeah, think of this as a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Take Shelter, with Wyatt constantly questioning whether or not he's suffering from paranoid schizophrenia or actually one of the few people immune to an insidious takeover of the world from dark creatures. The movie walks this line pretty hard, and it manages to come up with a satisfying conclusion because of how well it ties into the relationship between Wyatt and Christian. It's established early on that Wyatt and Christian were loners back in their high school days, and they have a sort of friendship that makes sense to them but looks weird to outsiders. When they meet up again, things have changed: now in their late 20s, Wyatt is about to get married and Christian is desperately trying to live the ideal life of a young professional (job in New York City, nice apartment, going to the gym, and trying to ask out one of his coworkers). He's striving to live out the life that's been pitched as ideal to him. Wyatt, on the other hand, seems to be collapsing at the inevitable shift that comes with transitioning out of your 20s. And that's what makes this movie so great. This is a film about the anxiety that comes with leaving the idealized years of your 20s and entering the next chapter of your life, along with the way we can go against our own grain to try and become a different person in the hopes of belonging. It's a film that really boils down to one about friendship, and how the mantra of being yourself is only part of the equation - you also need people who are willing to accept you for who you are. That's all my rambling/gushing out of the way. I think it's a really special movie that I hope might build up some good word of mouth once it comes out. It's gonna be on iTunes/VOD and other places on March 11th. I caught this one last summer at Fantasia in Montreal and have been championing it ever since.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:57
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Ehud posted:That makes sense. Some general similarities but very different IMO. Queen of Earth was basically about a friend's revenge gone too far. The flashbacks establish that, one year prior, Catherine was a total poo poo to Virginia, rubbing her success in her face while painting her as an entitled/privileged poo poo (like when she goes out her way to point out to everyone that it's not Virginia's house). In present day, things change: now Catherine has lost everything, and in doing so it exposes how weak her success truly was (all she had was her artist father and her boyfriend, two relationships that abruptly end). Virginia sees this as an opportunity to put Catherine in her own shoes for once, and takes advantage of it. The only thing is that Catherine has a complete nervous breakdown from it, and Virginia doesn't realize the extent of it until it's too late. So it's just a tale of these two friends with a very dysfunctional relationship, one founded on petty competitiveness rather than compassion. They Look Like People has a more positive message about friendship and rides a line between watching someone succumb to their mental illness or full-on apocalyptic horror. In other words: QoE is more like a drama with horror/thriller elements, whereas TLLP is a horror with dramatic elements.
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Mar 17, 2016 06:25
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I want to give a shout out to the movie Embers which is on VOD now. It got a very small festival unveiling last fall and a lot of people missed out on it, so it's been under the radar ever since. It takes place in the future when a disease has more or less wiped out the ability to remember, and it follows 5 or 6 disconnected stories that each touch on one aspect of humanity (love, art, education, violence, innocence) and how it changes when we can no longer retain any memories. I thought it was a really neat, ambitious little sci-fi film, but more of a drama than a thriller I guess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkRe0b9L-wI
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Aug 6, 2016 18:46
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