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Just watched this and I don't know what I was expecting, but that was not it. I thought it was fantastic though. So who opened the door? Theories? What a goddamn depressing movie. 
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Jun 18, 2017 05:36
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Based on the poster, I'm guessing the dog opened it?
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Jun 18, 2017 05:40
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more like "poo poo comes at night" because I saw this movie at night and it was poo poo
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Jun 18, 2017 06:09
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Wrong!
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Jun 18, 2017 06:12
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Why did you think it was poo poo? It was so good 
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Jun 18, 2017 06:13
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for some reason i thought this movie was gonna have a more supernatural bent and i was a little disappointed that it didn't. that wasn't the movie's fault though and i thought it was ok otherwise. that's my review
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Jun 18, 2017 06:16
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:more like "poo poo comes at night" I was worried about seeing this. I spoilered it myself and I'm glad I second guessed. Might be a good rental.
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Jun 18, 2017 06:31
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I liked it but I'd rather have just rented it than paid to see it in the theater. It gets better the more you think about it after, but ehhh was expecting/hoping for more. Guess I wasn't in the mood for a film that ends and you go "uh what." I assume the it that comes at night is the son, as he is infected, and at night he wanders the house eventually infecting everyone. Bill Dungsroman fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 06:52
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veni veni veni posted:Why did you think it was poo poo? It was so good i'm all for movies that deliberately go for a distancing effect, but this movie went a little too far in that direction to the point where it becomes a bizarre jigsaw-puzzle movie like Memento or Primer. the characters have no interiority beyond the dad (and even his perspective is stripped from the viewer by the midway point), rendering their actions incomprehensible and alien. i'm fine with having to work to come up with a metatextual reading of a movie, but i shouldn't be having to exercise my brain muscles that hard just to figure out what the hell happened.
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Jun 18, 2017 07:28
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Interesting. I really liked the lack of insight into the characters personally. I thought it was a really cool way to build tension. I really didn't think the story was all that ambiguous either, other than the big question of who opened the door, which I am pretty sure is supposed to be the big taking point. I dunno, I saw it with a friend and we talked about the movie the whole ride home and came to a satisfying conclusion on everything imo.
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Jun 18, 2017 07:48
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Bill Dungsroman posted:I liked it but I'd rather have just rented it than paid to see it in the theater. It gets better the more you think about it after, but ehhh was expecting/hoping for more. Guess I wasn't in the mood for a film that ends and you go "uh what." what? no. the ptsd and night terrors come at night
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Jun 18, 2017 16:14
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Saw this last night expecting a more supernatural horror movie (or some sort of monster angle or something). Did not come close to what I was expecting, though I thought it did a pretty good job of building a really tense atmosphere. I was never bored or anything, I just thought it was something completely different based on the trailers. Also, Jesus loving Christ it was depressing. The scene where Andrew gets shot was pretty hard to watch.
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Jun 18, 2017 23:36
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Soup du Journey posted:what? no. the ptsd and night terrors come at night Then how does the dog get back in to the "airlock" room? Who opened both doors? Why did the other couple's son get sick? EDIT: Actually it probably doesn't matter thematically, and you're probably right. Bill Dungsroman fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jun 19, 2017 |
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Jun 19, 2017 00:24
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Rarely do I wish for movies to be longer; this movie could have done with a little more time to pad out the characters a bit more and to explore the dreams some more
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Jun 19, 2017 02:05
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This movie had a lot of parallels with The VVitch. It explores themes of isolation, distrust, fear of a sinister "other" hiding in the woods, loss, a father who's just trying to save his family from an encroaching evil, weird sex stuff from a kid dealing with hormones, and it's extremely unlikely to appeal to the general public. Although instead of getting cool powers, the kid struggles with his own mortality until the bitter end.
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Jun 19, 2017 04:29
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OMG JC a Bomb! posted:This movie had a lot of parallels with The VVitch. It explores themes of isolation, distrust, fear of a sinister "other" hiding in the woods, loss, a father who's just trying to save his family from an encroaching evil, weird sex stuff from a kid dealing with hormones, and it's extremely unlikely to appeal to the general public. Although instead of getting cool powers, the kid struggles with his own mortality until the bitter end. Yeah I had the same thought. Not to mention it's being marketed to a crowd that will probably hate it in the exact same way. Bill Dungsroman posted:Then how does the dog get back in to the "airlock" room? Who opened both doors? Why did the other couple's son get sick? It's not fully explained obviously, but the theory me and my friend came up with which most of the internet seems to agree with: The son was already sick. He became sick when his grandfather died. He was sleepwalking through the whole movie, which is a symptom of the illness. He probably went outside while sleep walking and let the dog in. Not sure if he hosed the dog up or if it came home like that. he infected the young boy when he found him.
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Jun 19, 2017 04:49
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veni veni veni posted:It's not fully explained obviously, but the theory me and my friend came up with which most of the internet seems to agree with: I don't really care for this reading. Even though the movie jumps past it quickly, we're told early on that The grandpa showed signs within a day, and Paul specifically says he plans to wait 3 days with Will's family before returning to be safe. It's not outside the realm of possibility that an elderly person would show signs much quicker than a youth, but I find it reaching. As I mentioned in the Horror thread, I don't really care who opened the door, or how the infection spread among the house. Even if the movie had shown us clear as day who and how, Paul's family would have always blamed Will's, and vice versa. Not to mention that doing so would have severely undercut the efforts that the film takes to make you feel the fear and paranoia of the characters. I found it very intriguing that the movie has no heroes or villains. The protagonist is a clearly troubled teen, and the antagonist could really only be described as fear, paranoia, or simply mankind itself. I felt that really, every single character in the film could be viewed as sympathetic figures - both families, Stanley, even the two men who attacked Paul's vehicle. And yet, for all except Stanley and the grandfather, there is enough ambiguity in their characters to doubt their motives or disagree with their actions. I'm glad this thread got posted - I debated doing so myself, but my stomach has been in knots any time I think about the film since seeing it Tuesday night. It really truly upset and disturbed me - and yet virtually all discussion that I could find was complaining that the film has no zombies/monsters, or disregarding it because "man is the real monster" has been done many times before. I will say that one of the few bits of interesting discussion I could find compared the film to Poe's Masque of the Red Death, and immediately I could see the connection. It also makes a lot of sense to me, as I find Poe's writing to be dark and unsettling in the same way that I felt about this film.
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Jun 19, 2017 08:21
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veni veni veni posted:Yeah I had the same thought. Not to mention it's being marketed to a crowd that will probably hate it in the exact same way. Really seems to be the only option but also feels like kind of a cop out, honestly. Can't really explain why I feel that; ties back to me wanting to see more of the dream sequences and more parallel to the real world events I suppose. On the VVitch comparisons, I read elsewhere that the goat used in this movie was also used in the VVitch. Clever cameo if so
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Jun 19, 2017 11:31
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I liked the film for many of the same reasons people have already posted, but I totally understand why audience ratings have been bad. Quite a few articles comment on the ending and I have to agree, it doesn't feel like it earns the "whatever" end because I felt a few themes just get left behind and now we're just here and that's it. It could have easily ended right after the wife and son get shot but instead drags out an additional "oh yeah also the kid dies too" which adds loving nothing to a film that doesn't seem like it would have actually shown us this happening.Then we're just left with Paul and his wife going "now what, we're gonna die too"which serves no purpose except to make you feel shittier before the fade to black. It just seemed like the kind of poo poo that gets cut in the editing process.
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Jun 19, 2017 13:56
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The hardest parts for me were how dumb Paul behaved at the end. He was so cautious and ahead-thinking for the whole film, and then boom he gets too close to Will not once but twice. If he was going to shoot them all - and he was - from the get-go, why not just open the door to their room and shoot them all in a confined space that made it all easier to manage. Also I felt the film had too many dream sequences. I get that it was supposed to blur the line between dream and reality and at one point make you mistrust Kim, but I don't think it worked very well. That's not to say the film was super intense, because it was.
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Jun 19, 2017 18:57
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Even cheesy zombie movies need a predictable monster which follows the rules, which the viewer can internalize to allow them the freedom to be terrified at the loss of the survivors' humanity. This movie had a hollow plot-virus that was expected to matter in too many ways in order suit the plot while also being clumsily telegraphed as the modern horror flick's "look at this hyper-minimalism...the virus doesn't even matter" gimmick. It's becoming cliche; this flick isn't helping. The mini-mysteries clearly intended to reinforce the minimalism (by being irrelevant, therefore bolstering the viewers' suspicion that this film's monster is really just us) backfired for me. I felt more interested in discovering what the dog was barking at, who opened the door, and the backstory of the road raiders (given how empty the wilderness was according to the protagonist's own assertion) than in contemplating the human condition vis a vis survivors killing each other at the first sign of adversity. I think that's owed in part to, as mention earlier, The VVitch doing a better job of delivering a very similar message. And also, the fact that the form is so predictable that I felt wanting for a bit of subversion. The latter issue isn't a lasting critique though; once the current trend in minimalist horror form becomes stale and forgotten, ICAN will shine a little brighter.
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Jun 19, 2017 21:31
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Bill Dungsroman posted:The hardest parts for me were how dumb Paul behaved at the end. He was so cautious and ahead-thinking for the whole film, and then boom he gets too close to Will not once but twice. If he was going to shoot them all - and he was - from the get-go, why not just open the door to their room and shoot them all in a confined space that made it all easier to manage. Paul was an idiot. For all of his forward thinking and brutally logical actions, if there was a possibility of an infection in the house, the first thing to do would be to barricade the room shut or else kill everyone in it (if waiting a few days isn't an option). What I suspect the director had in mind was for viewers to witness Paul becoming more empathetic and human, indulging himself in a little bit of illogical behavior in the name of compassion and hope for a human civilization which might one day return (embodied in his love for his son). But that didn't really come though. Maybe he should've smiled once or twice, and the drinking scene where Dad #2's "brother" is revealed as a white lie should've been cut. That was an unnecessary addition to the tension. Also agreed on the dream sequences. Imparting narrative through dreams is the oldest mistake in storytelling.
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Jun 19, 2017 21:36
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DLC Inc posted:I liked the film for many of the same reasons people have already posted, but I totally understand why audience ratings have been bad. Quite a few articles comment on the ending and I have to agree, it doesn't feel like it earns the "whatever" end because I felt a few themes just get left behind and now we're just here and that's it. It could have easily ended right after the wife and son get shot but instead drags out an additional "oh yeah also the kid dies too" which adds loving nothing to a film that doesn't seem like it would have actually shown us this happening.Then we're just left with Paul and his wife going "now what, we're gonna die too"which serves no purpose except to make you feel shittier before the fade to black. Travis is the protagonist of the story, and his nightmares have shown how fixated and terrified he is of death, so I felt the dream scene of him opening the red door was really essential to close his story. At the same time, the conclusion with Sarah being with him in his last moments and the dinner table scene meant something much larger to me - that Paul and Sarah no longer wanted to keep living in this world, or more specifically, deciding that surviving in this nightmare world is simply not truly living. Sarah is with Andrew in his last moments without a gas mask or any safety precautions. And more unsettling to me, I felt that the whole story represented a microcosm of the entire world, so the final moment at the dinner table directly represented the end of humanity as a whole. edit: mixed up the kids' names JoeRules fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 20, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 07:53
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And just for a moment I want to pipe up about the technical aspects of this film - the score is really impressive and fits wonderfully (even if I did find the mix to be a bit bass-heavy at a few moments that didn't quite necessitate it), and is lit gorgeously.
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Jun 20, 2017 07:59
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Zeris posted:Paul was an idiot. For all of his forward thinking and brutally logical actions, if there was a possibility of an infection in the house, the first thing to do would be to barricade the room shut or else kill everyone in it (if waiting a few days isn't an option). I disagree that the "brother" should have been cut. I raised a huge amount of ambiguity to the whole situation of the other family - was it a white lie and the family still meant good things, and Paul was mistaken in all of his actions? Or was the other father actually a liar and did intend to murder all of them? It raised enough doubt that it could have been either.
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Jun 20, 2017 11:53
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I loved this movie, and was especially glad that there was nothing supernatural about it, no zombies/demons/monsters, etc. The entire theater that I saw it with thought it sucked because they were hoping for some cheap thrill Paranormal Activity poo poo and it wasn't that at all. For all those faulting Paul for being an illogical / less careful dumbass at the end, that honestly didn't even bother me or occur to me, because it felt wholly consistent with him having let his guard down ever so slightly to begin with in letting these people in, and him now frantically trying to regain control. It made more sense to me that in that scramble to regain control he would make missteps / not act hyper-logically simply because he had already let things get too far and so was operating from a place of fear and uncertainty himself. The cadence of the movie as a whole was one of a gradual crescendo from tenuous order and calm to increasing uncertainty and fear straight up to outright chaos and tragedy, and that was mirrored nicely in Paul's evolution through the film. I also very much liked that enough questions were left to the viewer to sort out (who opened the door, what happened to the dog, did Travis infect the kid or vice versa), because in the end that was the entire point of the film; namely that paranoia, fear, and the unknown are enough to drive people in desperate circumstances to their extremes, even in the name of simply protecting their families. As viewers it would be unfair to know the correct answers to these questions because then we'd be in a position to definitively judge whether Paul had actually made the right decisions or not, which again would defeat the purpose of the film's message. MiddleEastBeast fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Jun 20, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 14:40
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 wholeheartedly.
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Jun 20, 2017 19:02
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I thought the film was great. Granted, it took me a few minutes to get over the abrupt ending. Looking back, it was done very well, though.
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Jun 20, 2017 21:01
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JoeRules posted:
I'd argue that the film is in large part a metaphor for nativism/immigration panic/anxieties regarding the death of the nation-state, and Paul, as the authoritarian patriarchal strong-man who ends up murdering several in an attempt to dominate their bodies, is certainly the villain.
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Jun 21, 2017 13:03
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SgtScruffy posted:I disagree that the "brother" should have been cut. I raised a huge amount of ambiguity to the whole situation of the other family - was it a white lie and the family still meant good things, and Paul was mistaken in all of his actions? Or was the other father actually a liar and did intend to murder all of them? It raised enough doubt that it could have been either. Yeah I actually felt that was a great choice for a white lie nugget that was intended to plant doubt in Paul's mind, mostly because it was exactly the sort of a lie that I suspect if it had just been, say, a man and his wife staying with them, Paul would have immediately turned on them and either killed them or demand they leave, but their having a small child with them helped maintain their veneer of innocence where he was willing to let it slide -- while it obviously still ate at him somewhere deep down..
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Jun 21, 2017 14:10
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I was expecting more of a horror film vibe from the trailers and went in wanting that but left being torn. I enjoyed it.... but still let down as many others have said. Our projectionist hosed the couch as well by turning on the lights in that final scene and not waiting till the credits rolled. I should have complained looking back on it but I was still taking the movie in.
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Jun 21, 2017 14:17
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I don't think people were disappointed because they wanted a Paranormal Activity stinger. When I think of a good "abrupt ending" I think of The Lobster. For this movie, it was more just me shrugging "welp that's it" and the unanswered questions left behind didn't ever feel worthwhile thinking about. Stuff like the door doesn't really matter in the long run because it's the paranoia, not the direct answer, that mattered. Yet at the same time none of these things matter too much because of how things end. I still think it was better than a few Von Trier movies wherein he not only wants you to see the most depressing and sadistic moments of humanity but goes the extra length to get a massive boner about it.
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Jun 21, 2017 21:38
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Wife and I saw this in an empty theater at midnight, loving fantastic. Actually preferred it to The VVitch. It's a hard recommend.
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Jun 21, 2017 22:33
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I liked The VVitch a lot better than this, and was hard to avoid making comparisons throughout the movie. I was in a theater and everybody just looked bored. There was a group of 4 teenagers towards the front that left about 40 minutes into the movie. A couple sitting near me would immediately whip out their cell phones during the talking scenes. The film definitely felt slow-paced and when people started realizing this wasn't your typical "horror" movie I think just started not to care as much. Overall, the movie was fine but if I were to recommend a movie like this to someone...I'd just recommend they see The VVitch.
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Jun 21, 2017 23:30
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I heavily preferred this to the VVitch personally. The tension totally worked for me. I got bored throughout the VVitch at times. I guess I can see why it's a divisive film. I honestly wouldn't change much about it personally though. I thought it worked on just about every level. I'm actually a little surprised at how conflicted people are on it here though. I walked out thinking "this is gonna be a goon favorite. I can't wait to check the thread out" just to find that there was no thread and half of you hated it lol.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:38
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When I got to that ending, I knew people would absolutely hate this movie.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:39
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I should say I need to rewatch the VVitch. I think a big part of my dislike for that movie was possibly the absolutely awful audience I saw it with. it was impossible to concentrate with everyone talking and munching on nachos in my ear. It comes at night had a shockingly good audience despite being comprised of probably 40% teenagers.
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Jun 22, 2017 00:44
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:When I got to that ending, I knew people would absolutely hate this movie. That's how bad movies work.
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Jun 22, 2017 08:41
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Zeris posted:That's how bad movies work. Nah that's not true at all. I mean yeah a lot of bad movies have bad endings, but there are plenty of movies that end and people think they are bad because "nothing happened."
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Jun 22, 2017 14:02
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Zeris posted:That's how bad movies work. I don't know how much I believe this.
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Jun 22, 2017 14:38
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