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I'm gonna watch 31 movies and beat all the challenges. I've only seen the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie, so I'm going to try and make my way through those, but I don't want to overcommit and deny myself watching other, better movies. Anyway, #1: Alien (1979) It's Alien, man. This time I watched it with the 1999 Ridley Scott commentary. It was fine, occasionally interesting, but not the best commentary track I've ever heard. I think it'd benefit from Ridley having someone to talk to (and there is in fact another track he made a couple years later which is exactly that). It's interesting to hear him talk about the psychology of the cast, how they sort of come together and drift apart as the movie goes on, how the mood changes. To be honest, I was mostly just getting sucked in by the movie itself, and found the commentary only occasionally interesting. Doesn't hold a candle to that one that John Carpenter and Kurt Russell did for The Thing. Turns out the Wet Chain Room is housing for one of the giant landing feet. Anyway, the flick is 5/5  , the (first) director's commentary is more of a 3/5.
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Sep 30, 2023 08:35
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#2: A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) (rewatch) It's wild that this movie was made just six years after Halloween, and feels so polished. Like the idea of a slasher is already so well-established, so here's a movie that's striving for the ideal slasher. The backstory - the thing with Freddy as a child-murderer, going after the children of his killers - seems kind of half-hearted. Why does Freddy have a knife-hand? Because he's a cool villain, and he's got to have a thing, so this is his thing. The main attractions are the dreams, which are great - gruesome, memorable, and the special effects hold up well. 4/5 This is my entry for Freddy vs Jason 20th Anniversary. It's also my second decade for History Lesson, after 1979's Alien. #3: A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)  Freddy's back, and this time he's trying to convince a troubled young man, Jesse, to do his killing for him. All in all, a real step down from the first. Aside from the opening sequence on the bus, the dream scenes are fewer and less ambitious than those of the first movie. Freddy seems less threatening, and really has to struggle to get anything done. And why's it called Freddy's Revenge? He's not getting revenge on anyone! Hell, the whole revenge-against-his-killers thing from the first movie seems to have been dropped. He's just killing people for kicks, which is a perfectly valid motivation, but don't promise if you're not gonna deliver. Anyway, this movie was described to me as "the gay one", and unlike the movie's subtitle, that was pretty accurate. Jesse, new in town, makes friends with a guy in PE, Grady, after he rips of Jesse's pants during baseball and they wrestle. About 60% of their scenes take place in the locker room, and it's Grady he confides in when he gets freaked out over his urge to kill his potential girlfriend - by breaking into Grady's bedroom in the middle of the night. And that's not even getting into the whole gym teacher thing! Anyway, I don't know how to read all this other than to say the movie is casting Jesse's desires as wicked and predatory, which he successfully overcomes with the help of a good woman. It's all very unfortunate. Still entertaining, at least. The movie peaks in that getting-ready-for-a-date scene, IMO. 2/5 This is my entry for Horror Is for Everyone, specifically the queer one. I'm definitely planning to watch that documentary Scream, Queen!, to round things out a bit. This was also a new-to-me watch, so that's one-sixth of that. #4: Deadstream (2022) A Youtuber, let's call him Pogan Laul, streams himself locked in a haunted house for a night to save his channel. Fine but nothing special. The streamer, Shawn, is a good portrayal of someone I don't want to spend time with, superficial and exaggerated exactly the right way. The path to him getting the poo poo kicked out of him (spiritually) is not a surprising one, but it's a fun enough journey, with some decently creepy moments (and some goddamn gross ones). I was grateful to the filmmakers for not putting the Twitch-chat on the side of the screen permanently, that would have distracted the hell out of me. 3/5 This is my entry for the CineD Horror Thread Poll Challenge. It's also New to Me (2/6), and my first movie from the 2020s (History Lesson, 3/5). #5: Lake Placid (1999)  There's a big croc in the lake and someone's gotta stop it! Bit of a miss for me. I don't care about originality that much, and if you want to make a crocodile-based Jaws then go ahead, but this movie's just kind of unpleasant. The comedy all falls flat, and it's got that awful butterscotch colour grading you get in a certain strain of '90s flick, and the characters are all just sort of unpleasant. Particularly the eccentric croc-enthusiast millionaire, he's like if Matt Berry was unfun and unfunny. Anyway, the point of the affair is the crocodile, which is also a bit of a whiff. She only kills two people, both of whom are nameless characters the audience never gets to know. They die spectacularly, at least, but there's no sense of stakes, no sense that anyone with lines is seriously threatened. The special effects are decent, I guess - the animatronics look good, and the CGI is as good as you can expect for '99. Also, I love Brendan Gleeson, but he cannot pull off a small-town American sheriff. 2/5 This is my entry for When Animals of Unusual Size Attack. It's also New to Me (3/6), and my first '90s movie (History Lesson, 4/5). 
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Oct 2, 2023 02:50
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FlashFearless posted:3/31 Is that a 500-point scale?
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Oct 5, 2023 02:21
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#6: A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) This movie rules. Honestly, it feels like a better realisation of what the original was trying to pull off. The kids are more memorable, and have a more interesting dynamic. Freddy's quips are on point. The dream sequences are ambitious and unique. I had no idea Patricia Arquette was ever a scream queen. And what the gently caress, Zsa Zsa Gabor was in this? Poor Wizard Master, never got a funeral. Also the main doctor guy looks distractingly similar to Bill Maher. This has been the highlight of the challenge so far, so I'm using it as my Free Space. It's also New-to-Me (4/6). 5/5 #7: The Pope's Exorcist (2023)  The pope's #1 exorcist is called in for an especially tough case involving a boy. Dumb fun. It falls into the trap of exorcism movies where a lot of the action is our boys just sort of telling the demon to leave, and it's hard to make that interesting. Russell Crowe brings some genuine levity to the proceedings, and Ralph Ineson does a pretty good demon voice (though it bugs me he pronounces Gabriele the Anglo way). I've read a few other reviews that found the end charming for what a naked sequel hook it offers, and I would suggest those people check out the 2021 movie Demonic, which features a Catholic anti-demon death squad of former priests, which is the logical conclusion to 35 years of full-scale war against Satan on Earth this movie suggests. This is my entry for The Exorcist at 50. It's also New-to-Me (5/6) and set in Spain and Italy (1/4 for Around the World). 3/5 #8: A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)  A decent followup to Part 3 - kind of a typical horror sequel, but not a bad one. It's sort of just more of the same, but the kills are still very original, as are the quips! Mustn't forget the quips! There's this weird dynamic where it's almost about Final-Girl-ism, like the whole movie is the process of constructing a new protagonist, who starts as a bit of a blank slate and absorbs the positive characteristics of the others. Just a solid entry in the franchise. Oh, and that one overhead shot of Kristen racing around her room while falling asleep was great. This movie was New-to-Me (6/6). 4/5 , for the Freddy Rap at the end if nothing else. Maybe that should be a category next time. #9: Lake Mungo (2008) (rewatch)  I first saw this in 2014, and it's been sitting in the back of my mind since then. This movie is a fictional documentary about a family experiencing a haunting after their daughter dies. It's kind of a serious, somber movie - the haunting is not a problem to be solved or an evil to be vanquished, it's a human encounter with an incomprehensible part of the universe, that offers no answers. There is exactly one Scare in this movie and it's unforgettable. This movie is set in Australia (Around the World, 2/4). It's also my first '00s movie, completing History Lesson (5/5). 4/5 #10: The Terminator (1984) (rewatch)  It's the Terminator, you know what it is. The movie still rules. There's a terror to how mundane it all is - sure, there's this sci-fi backstory, but for most of the movie the terminator passes as a very tough man using some guns he bought and a car he stole. It's kind of weird, that Arnold playing the villain is a rarity when it's one of the performances that put him on the map. Totally forgot Lance Henrikson is in this thing. And hey, now I know why Cameron's coffee-table art book is named Tech Noir. I'm counting this as Horror-Adjacent, since it also functions as an action movie. 5/5 #11: Chopping Mall (1986)  I had no idea going in, but this is kind of a Terminator ripoff: eight teens are hunted through a locked mall by killer security robots. They apparently spent the entire budget on the robots and pyrotechnics to be used against the robots. I can't fault them for that, though the editing is a bit shoddy, noticed a few ugly cuts between scenes. The cast is kind of unmemorable; the movie kills them off in pairs so as to avoid leaving one half of a couple alive for too long, which seems like a wasted opportunity for them to express emotions, but whatever. Anyway, the movie as a whole is quite entertaining and surprisingly funny. Just a very pure '80s horror flick. This movie stars Dick Miller (but not Keith David). It also stars Barbara Crampton, who might be a good candidate for a future Hey It's That Guy. I dunno, maybe she's been a main character too much. 3/5 #12: A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)  Man, this one was a bit of a whiff. Freddy's back again, and this time he... wants a baby? I thought the "bastard son of a hundred maniacs" conceit from Part 3 was in poor taste, but it wasn't a big deal there. I'm really not thrilled with making it the centre of the movie, opening with a scene of Amanda Krueger getting locked in the asylum, and having a main plot of the guy wanting to inculcate Alice's embryo with evil. The dreams are still a highlight - the motorcycle one in particular was vividly nasty - but I really prefer Freddy the murderer over Freddy the spiritual-rapist. No challenges here. 2/5 Bingo update (using chart #3 btw): 
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Oct 8, 2023 04:07
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God, I'm still 150 posts behind in this thread and like 1000 in the main horror thread. Not behind on my movie-watching, though! #13 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare] (1991)  Ten years have passed since Freddy was defeated, and... he actually won? The intro to this movie suggests a vaguely sci-fi angle where the Freddy's presence has become too severe for the world to keep ignoring, but doesn't really follow up on that. We meet another group of misfit kids, who all sort of feel like remixes of the ones from previous movies. Freddy's motives and mechanics are retconned again, and while I'm not opposed to that in principle, at this point it's just hard to keep track. This is a very '90s-rear end instalment, in terms of how everyone looks and talks, which I'm ambivalent about. All in all, I'm glad they decided to wrap things up here. There were some cool models in the 3D sequence. Shame about all those IT'S-COMIN-RIGHT-ATCHA shots, which really fall flat now. No challenges here. 2/5 #14 V/H/S/85 (2023)  Here we go again! Total Copy: the frame narrative, a documentary about a unit of scientists keeping an alien child under observation. Perhaps the best frame of the series, rising to the dizzying heights of Fine. A couple of great dry jokes. No Wake/Ambrosia: definitely the best one. Holidaymakers are ambushed while water-skiing on a weird lake. A simple, un-showy premise that makes you uncomfortable and doesn't drag things out. It left me wanting more - and wouldn't you know it, there's a second segment that actually follows up on things. I would have liked to spend a full movie with these characters - both sets. God of Death: a news man and a rescue team take a wrong turn in the ruins during the '85 Mexico City earthquake. I didn't hate it, but it was just kind of boilerplate. There wasn't enough material for things to really build up satisfactorily. TKNOGD: a performance artist confronts a cyberdemon live on stage. A bit of a stinker. The jokes fall flat and it takes a long time to do very little. The punchline, though obvious, did get me pretty good. Dreamkill: a murder detective starts receiving mysterious tapes in the mail, first-person depictions of murders... before those murders occur. While it doesn't approach the vibes of No Wake/Ambrosia, this is probably the best conventional story out of the bunch. I'm a sucker for a good detective story, and Freddy Rodriguez really sells his character in only a few short scenes. All in all, it's a lot like the previous Shudder VHSes - it doesn't quite reach the edgy highs of the original entries, but it's pretty consistent at least. It's very true to the usual pattern of anthologies: put your best one up front for a good first impression, and your second-best one at the back to end on a high note. I was planning to watch Tales from the Hood as my anthology, and will probably still do so, but this came up first. Anyway, here I am for Bite-Sized Horror. Also, I think James Ransone is shaping up to be an excellent That Guy. 3/5 #15 Sunshine (2007) (rewatch)  A crew of astronauts contend with space madness on a voyage down the solar system to save the sun. Pretty much every space-horror made since Alien will borrow from Alien, but this is the first time I've watched them near together, and it was especially blatant. The long moody shots of dead corridors, the eerie distress signal, the clunky suits, the dynamic where the crew comes together and then splits apart. Hell, the first guy to die is even named KANEda. Thematically they're quite far apart. Sunshine is, I think, about what a profoundly horrifying thing the sun is, and what a tiny slice of the universal is even remotely pleasant for human beings. There's this little scene towards the climax, where Cillian Murphy falls over - just falls on his face wearing a big heavy spacesuit, and can't get up again. And the movie doesn't make it comical, doesn't have him lament what a stupid way to die this would be; it plays it straight. That one really stuck with me. This is my entry for Picnic IN SPACE, as it takes place in the future (and SPACE). 4/5 #16 The Wicker Man (1973)  A police sergeant travels to a remote Scottish isle to investigate a missing person, and is horrified by the local customs. I had somehow never seen the folk-horror movie til now. It's a blast. Most of the movie consists of the townsfolk living in a pagan paradise, while this stuffy stick-in-the-mud gets upset at them. He's just such a grouch, while the villagers - led by Christopher Lee at peak suaveness - are having such a lovely time. It put me in mind of The Devil's Rejects, if it were told entirely from the sheriff's perspective; sure, these people are evil, but at least they're not lame. The two throughlines (the seach for the missing kid, and the unfolding picture of what these people are all about) come together in a very satisfying way. Excellent ending. No challenges here. 4/5 #17 Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)  Heather Langenkamp comes back to do a movie in which Heather Langenkamp comes back to do a movie, but it seems as if Freddy is somehow becoming real, but it seems as if Freddy is somehow becoming real! This movie is a hyper self-aware followup that seeks to take pieces from Elm Street proper and refashion them into something less goofy, more threatening, more real, though without crapping on the original movies. Instead of wildly fantastic dreams, you get ones more easily mistaken for reality. Freddy is more cruel than funny. Instead of a teen suffering at the hands of oblivious parents, we see the story from the perspective of one of those parents, who is really trying her best to be blivious. Only a few people die, but all their deaths have an impact on the other characters, and really matter to the plot. While Freddy's Dead felt painfully '90s, this movie has a more timeless feel to it, to its credit. I feel like this was a successful attempt to create a type of movie I don't enjoy that much. It's self-aware to a fault - more than once, the audience literally sees the script for the current scene - and feels a bit too concerned with justifying its own existence to simply exist and be entertaining. Maybe I would have gotten more out of it if it'd been a few years since I last saw an Elm Street. Challengewise, this movie appears on the second GOAT list, the House one. 3/5 Wrap-up:  I've got my first bingo!!!
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Oct 12, 2023 13:20
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Basebf555 posted:I have total control of the TV that's on the wall at the office where I work and I basically keep it on TCM all the time. I happened to catch a good chunk of Doctor X when it aired a few days ago and it was really cool looking with that ever present green tint. It's a great picture and all, but I feel like eight hours of Texas Chainsaw Massacre every day would really make for an unpleasant working environment
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Oct 17, 2023 03:01
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#18 No One Will Save You (2023) A bunch of creepy greys try to body-snatch an isolated young woman. A mixed bag for me. Let's focus on the positive: there are some excellent chase sequences, and the aliens really hit the sweet spot where you can buy them failing without it undermining them as threats. The movie has exactly two lines of dialogue in it, and while I thought this was kind of gimmicky, it forces the movie to be a little more elegant in conveying what the characters are thinking and planning. It's well-paced; it avoided feeling repetitive, even though a fair amount of the runtime is the same thing happening. But overall, I don't know, it was just missing something. No challenges. 3/5 #19 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)  What it says on the tin. This was a fun time. Freddy feels like Freddy should, and Jason... to be honest, the only other F13s I've seen are the original and the 2009 remake. It's like all the Jason Appendices, without any Core Jason. Anyway, Jason's a hulking mass that exists to kill teenagers, starting with the most annoying ones, which I assume is true to his character. Their fight makes up about a quarter of the movie, and is a real blast. There's kind of a Godzilla dynamic going on, where one of the monsters is clearly more sympathetic. Jason might be a big lunk who tears through people, but he's not a creep, and he mostly just stays by his lake. Any time where neither monster is on-camera sucks. The normal people are all awful, just acidic personalities. I was sort of charmed by the decision not to have them Scooby-Doo their way into understanding Freddy's plot; instead, they literally just guess what he's doing, and also what his and Jason's weaknesses are. I'm not joking - one of them guesses that Freddy's using Jason to raise Kruger awareness and come back, and all the other characters go "Makes sense", and move on. Anyway, despite my complaints, I got more enjoyment out of it than the last couple flicks before New Nightmare. Why would Jason haunt a planet that's 70% water??? No challenges here (though we really missed a trick by not making the FvJ challenge specific to the 13th). 3/5 #20 Donnie Darko (Director's Cut) (2001, or arguably 2004)  I feel compelled to say I watched this on the 14th. A troubled kid receives instructions from his imaginary friend which might prevent the end of the world. I really loved it. Look, I like horror movies and all, but it's nice to watch something in the middle of the month where the people act like people, and feel things other than terror and horniness. It's a long, contemplative movie that really lets you settle into these people's lives. Everything feels so normal, but Donnie (and the audience) knows in the back of his mind that this is all going to end in catastrophe somehow. The character of Frank really worked for me; he could have easily come across as a joke, but his voice and his whole vibe really truly unnerved me. Like a lot of the '90s/'00s flicks I've watched recently, everyone's incredibly mean all the time, but this movie at least seems aware of it, and there's this deep core of like yearning for a better world. Apparently, the version I watched strips out a lot of the ambiguity, and shepherds the viewer towards one particular interpretation, to the film's detriment. Eh, maybe the original cut's better, but this one is still definitely worth your time. Killer soundtrack, too. I may be the only person in this forum to have seen Southland Tales before Donnie Darko. This movie takes place very specifically in October of 1988, with the prophecied apocalypse set for Halloween, and so is my entry for Samhain. 5/5 #21 Huesera: The Bone Woman (2023) An expectant mother is plagued by visions of this contorted thing that no-one else can see. Quite good. The monster - or whatever - is just so nasty to be around, and the foley work is genuinely excellent, all those sinewy pops whenever it moves. It's also shot uncommonly well. The story, while not the most original, has a lot more subtlety and restraint to it than most of what I've watched this month. I still don't entirely understand the ending - experiencing the worst to get past it? Killing a part of yourself to conform to others? Just an all-round well-made flick. This movie is my entry for Horror is for Everyone, specifically the women's portion. It's also a Mexican-Peruvian production, so I'm going to creatively interpret the rules and count it as South America for Around the World, bringing me up to 3/4. 3/5 #22 Scream, Queen! My Nightmare On Elm Street (2019)  Mark Patton, star of Nightmare On Elm Street 2, recounts his life, his career, and the effect Freddy's Revenge had on them. An excellent documentary. The parts talking about the making of FR are a bit barebones, but the story of Patton's life is interesting, as is the account of the position that the movie has come to hold in the eyes of horror fans. I definitely need to rewatch it - maybe not this year, though. Anyway, this was just a pleasant time, and I kind of wish I'd watched it last, because I've got a bad feeling about Nightmare 2010. Man, Robert Englund's a class act. No challenges. 4/5 #23 The Crazies (1973)  The US government majorly fucks up its response to a pandemic. An all-timer. This is a pitch-black horror comedy; all you can do is laugh as every misery is magnified and every opportunity is squandered. No-one understands what's going on - not because the situation is incomprehensible, but because the people who understand all refuse to share what they know. The few short scenes taking place at the school where the infected are quarantined are absolutely nightmareish, while the action around the town clearly stems from the late-Vietnam nadir of the US military's reputation. Ends perfectly, too. I also really loved how normal-looking everyone was. No challenges - just a good movie. 5/5 Roundup: 
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Oct 18, 2023 13:14
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God, I'm SOOO behind on my posting. Anyway, #24 A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)  It's a remake of the first movie, more or less. I went in with low expectations, and found that it was... fine. Like a lot of people, I felt the change of Freddy from murderer to child molester was in poor taste. The dynamic in the middle of the movie where it seems like Freddy might have been an innocent man was genuinely very interesting, and I wish it had amounted to more. The nighttime scenes in this movie were surprisingly gorgeous, often tinted red or warm-green, unlike the washed-out daytimes. I liked Rooney Mara as Nancy, though she and the others were maybe the least convincing high-schoolers in the whole series, and that's saying something. But overall, the movie was just too much of-its-era. It was incredibly loud, and had all these miniature dreams peppered into it, which began to lose impact, and had a real trailer-fodder feel to them. Anyway, it wasn't as repellant as the Friday the 13th remake from the same period, but it really didn't bring much to the original series. I was thinking about watching Never Sleep Again as a wrap-up, but I'm pretty burnt out on Elm Street at this point. I think I'll save it for next challenge, when I've got some distance from the series. No challenges here. 2/5 #25 Tales from the Hood (1995)  Three gangbangers, meeting with a mortuary owner for a delivery, instead get an anthology of spooky stories. Rogue Cop Revelation: a revenant and a guilty conscience come after a trio of killer cops. Maybe the most blood-boiling entry, as you watch these guys pull off the most half-assed conspiracy - beating the law, but not justice. Features an excellent zombie. Boys Do Get Bruised: domestic terror, a magical child, and a bookish, mild-mannered protagonist; this one's got a real Stephen King vibe to it. The horror is in the mundane parts of the story, while the supernatural elements come as a relief, which is very grim. The story hinges on a final special-effects sequence, and pulls it off pretty well. KKK Comeuppance: a klansman running for senator is besieged by a collection of killer voodoo dolls in the antebellum plantation he's rented out. Maybe the least substantial entry, but it's fun enough. The dolls, though not high-budget or anything, are convincing both as effects and as threats. Hard-Core Convert: a gang enforcer undergoes experimental treatment mend his violent ways. This one less plotty than the others, more of a mood piece, but that mood is one of overwhelming anger, at protagonist K's complete waste of his life and contempt for his community. It leads you down this path of him being taken advantage of by disreputable scientists, but in fact there's no horror worse than the one he creates for himself every day. A very memorable ending, tying into the frame narrative. This movie could be released today and it wouldn't feel dated. This is my entry for Horror Is For Everyone (PoC). 3/5 #26 Coming Home in the Dark (2021)  A family, touring out in rural New Zealand, is taken hostage by two wanderers. This is a home-invasion thriller, that happens to take place a long way from home. It's based off a short story, and it has that edgy, nightmareish quality that only short fiction can have. Within 20 minutes things have gotten as bad as possible, and then it just keeps going from there. It's not unpleasant or gruelling, though. The situation never settles into a boring dynamic; your understanding of the characters, as well as their struggles to control the situation, are always changing. The performances are excellent, too - very genuine, even when the scenario they're in is so far outside what you can picture yourself in. The villains are great and terrifying without ever seeming unbeatable or inhuman. Just a great film all round.  No challenges here, but I'd strongly recommend it if you haven't done Oceania for Around the World yet. 5/5 #27 The Lords of Salem (2012)  A radio DJ is the subject of some sort of supernatural conspiracy. I remember seeing a trailer for this back when I was just getting into horror movies, thinking it looked cool, and then putting it on the backburner for 10 years. Anyway, it's a solid, moody, psych-horror. It's quite unlike the Firefly trilogy (and the 10 minutes I made it into RZ's Halloween); the characters are almost normal people, at least at first. It's got this great grungey look to it, dirty but not hideous. Regrettably, as things went on it reminded me a lot of Hereditary, which is not the movie's fault (Lords was made first, after all), but it didn't benefit from the comparison. But whatever, there were some cool sequences and some fine creeps and some genuine humanity; it's pretty good if you're looking for a witch-movie. Oh, and the finale was a real feast. This Rob Zombie movie fulfils the Rob Zombie challenge, unless I've misunderstood things gravely. 3/5 #28 From Beyond (1986)  Scientists, investigating the nature of reality, succeed disastrously, and find out that the third eye is not a metaphor. Bit of an unintended double-feature with Lords, as both feature Barbara Crampton and Ken Foree. Anyway, The Thing ran so this movie could also run. It's a goopy, pulpy, horny mess of a movie, a practical effects showpiece, a Lovecraft adaptation. It's gross as hell, and there are some major leaps of logic to it (I missed where Katherine got that bomb from), and is overall very enjoyable, just a pure experience.  I was umming and ahhing over the Back of the Video Store challenge, and decided to watch the next movie I saw in the thread with a cool cover. Anyway, that honour went to The Saddest Rhino on page 42, so here we are. 4/5 And to update:  Five bingos!
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Oct 29, 2023 12:31
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gently caress, I realised that right after I made the post, when I went to close the tab with your previous post on it I feel like getting hoodwinked by an awesome poster for a similarly-named movie is true to the spirit, at least. What the hell, The Beyond is only 87 minutes and I've got a free day, I'll watch that too. Kazzah fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Oct 29, 2023 12:36
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#29 Audition (aka オーディション) (1999) A lonely widower hosts auditions for a fake movie to find a new wife. A real slow burn, to the extent that I was wondering if I hadn't accidentally put a drama on halfway through. Has a pleasant atmosphere. Protagonist Shigeharu, although he's doing a very disreputable thing, isn't played as a raging rear end in a top hat, like his character would probably be if this movie were American. He's just so mild and reasonable, and he's surrounded himself with nice things, and it's easy to go along with it and assume things will work out because it's a movie. The movie then eases you in to the idea that there's some big supernatural twist in the works. The truth - it's just a serial killer - catches you by surprise. There's no magic here. The movie is set in the real world, and the wrongs and cruelties of it are just real-world wrongs and cruelties. The climactic scenes are memorably nasty - zero music, forcing you to focus on the awful sound of all those needles going in. Is she right about him? I honestly don't know.  This movie counts as my 4/4 on Around the World. That's two more bingos! (Also, credit to this one blog for the photo of the cat, Nori, that I used) 3/5 #30 Alien: Resurrection (1997) (rewatch)  "When I wake up, it's always worse." A couple centuries after Alien 3, the government (?) clones Ripley, because doing so will also clone the alien implanted in her in the previous movie somehow. Ripley is now a human-alien hybrid savant, who winds up siding with a bunch of mercenaries after they all get stuck on a ship full of aliens. I watched this at my lovely friend Alex's house in like 2004, and am embarrassed to admit it was my first Alien movie. Anyway, it sucks, but I've seen worse. It's memorable, you know? The aliens are the gooiest they've ever been, and are mostly practical models, but they're not very interesting. People criticise Aliens for turning them into bugs, but they still feel threatening there; every encounter ends with someone being horrifically maimed at a minimum. Here, they're fodder, and seem to only ever pick off people who can't defend themselves. The sets are cool at least, a neat evolution of those of the previous films; still industrial and grubby, but the lines are cleaner, there's more of a brutalist side to things. Bad Alien movie, mediocre sci-fi horror movie.  This is my entry for Childhood Trauma. If we're being strict about the scared-you-as-a-kid thing, Dawn of the Dead '04 would have been the best choice, but I watched that last Challenge and it's too soon. Anyway, another two bingos! 2/5 #31 The Beyond (1981)  A cursed hotel, constructed above a gate to Hell, begins to kill off everyone it comes into contact with. Honestly, the plot is pretty half-baked, this is really a vibes movie. It's an exploration of every horrible thing that can happen to a human face. Literally every death scene features something terrible being done to a person's face, whether it's a vial of acid or being eaten by spiders. It's unrelentingly nasty, but it didn't put me off, like severe gore usually does. I dunno, there was this dreamlike quality to it, that gave me a little extra distance. Worth a watch. Had to laugh at the very English-sounding Catriona MacColl insisting she's lived in NYC all her life. Ah, it's an Italian movie, you're not supposed to pay attention to accents. This is make-up for my premature submission for Back of the Store. 3/5 #32 Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)  A peculiar foreign nobleman emigrates to London, but is received coldly. I read Dracula over this past month - not in preparation for this movie, I just felt like it - and it was decent, though fussily detailed as Victorian novels often are. Anyway, I'm judging this movie in terms of how it works as an adaptation, and it's pretty good! There are differences, of course, but I can see how they arrived at them. The movie is considerably faster-paced. The whole will-Lucy-die subplot is cut down to a single night (thank god, those chapters were interminable). The Demeter section is stripped down to a montage, which is a shame, but you've got to make cuts somewhere, I guess. The movie misses out on the book's cosiness, the long stretches where the characters meet up, and share what they've learnt, and try to discern Dracula's plans. There's less mystery, less wonder, which is a shame. I guess they felt it wouldn't work in something so heavily-adapted as Dracula; 99% of the audience knows the rules for vampires, so let's just get on with the story. And to be fair, it's a briskly-paced 2 hours; it's not like they wasted that time on less important things.  Book-Drac is strange, dramatically-speaking. You meet him early on, and get some sense of his character, and then he becomes this faceless presence for the final 80% of the text. Movie-Drac has a lot more going on: his vampirism is changed into a vengeful, grieving rejection of God. He's a more sympathetic character, motivated by his lost love, while the novel's version is just looking for fresh blood. I believe this is an attempt to update the book's Christianity. Vlad needs some more interiority in order to be released and forgiven (oh, spoilers, sorry) in a way the audience will understand. The book has its characters talk in general, unemotional terms about hoping Dracula will be forgiven; the movie personalises it. I wouldn't say I hated Keanu's performance, but I really preferred the long stretch in the middle of the movie where he doesn't appear. Hopkins chose to perform Van Helsing - the nicest man in the world, in the novel - as a blunt prick, which was fun, at least. I've focused a lot on plot, so let me just add that this movie looks absolutely incredible. I think someone up-thread said all the effects were created in-camera? Anyway, it was just wonderful to look at, would love to catch it at the movies some time. This is my entry for Birth of Horror - for the year, not the setting. 4/5 Finally:  It's done! 32 films and 25 challenges. Only 6 rewatches, too. I'll write up my summary tomorrow.
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Nov 1, 2023 12:18
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The wrap-up: 01. Alien (1979) (rewatch) 02. A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) (rewatch) / Freddy vs. Jason 20th Anniversary 03. A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) / Horror is for Everyone (LGBTQ+) 04. Deadstream (2022) / Goat's G.O.A.T.s: Return Some Tapes 05. Lake Placid (1999) / When Animals of Unusual Size Attack 06. A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) 07. The Pope's Exorcist (2023) / The Exorcist at 50 08. A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) 09. Lake Mungo (2008) (rewatch) 10. The Terminator (1984) (rewatch) / Horror-Adjacent 11. Chopping Mall (1986) / Starring Dick Miller (I failed to recognise him as the gun store owner in Terminator) 12. A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) 13. Freddy's Dead: the Final Nightmare (1991) 14. V/H/S/85 (2023) / Bite-Sized Horror 15. Sunshine (2007) (rewatch) / Picnic IN SPACE 16. The Wicker Man (1973) 17. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) / Goat's G.O.A.T.s: You Will Not Leave This House 18. No One Will Save You (2023) 19. Freddy vs. Jason (2003) 20. Donnie Darko (DC) (2001) / Samhain 21. Huesera: The Bone Woman (2023) / Horror is for Everyone (Fem) 22. Scream, Queen! My Nightmare On Elm Street (2019) 23. The Crazies (1973) 24. A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) 25. Tales from the Hood (1995) / Horror is for Everyone (PoC) 26. Coming Home in the Dark (2021) 27. The Lords of Salem (2012) / Robert Zombie 28. From Beyond (1986) / Back of the Video Store, sorta 29. Audition (1999) 30. Alien: Resurrection (1997) (rewatch) / Childhood Trauma 31. The Beyond (1981) / Back of the Video Store, sorta 32. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) / Birth of Horror There were 25 new-to-me flicks (well, 24.7, I'd seen a little of Dracula before. Six decades and four continents were represented. I was genuinely surprised at how few rewatches I'd done - just had a bunch of stuff on my to-do list, I guess. I wish I'd made time for some more golden oldies. Anyway, the highlights in no particular order were ANOES 3, The Wicker Man, Donnie Darko, Scream, Queen!, The Crazies, Coming Home in the Dark, and Dracula. I'd be interested in new tags if we're doing that - but count me out for the movie codes, I can't be bothered trying to figure out if they'll work in Australia. God, Lake Placid feels like six months ago. edit: oh, I've got an idea for a new challenge: watch a movie with a title referring to a they, a them, a thing, or an it Kazzah fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 11:35
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