ok lets all shit our pants to something new: post 2005 horror film thread

So without muddying the water with all the decades of classics - what horror movies did it for you (so far) this year? It's almost halloween, and we all need some new stuff rather than watching Suspiria for the fourteenth time, right?

the fourteenth time high? it really makes a difference

well yeah

My surprise nominee (and none of these are going to be academy greats duh) is The Haunting In Connecticut which will not go down in history or anything, but was a totally capable jump scare flick. I have no idea why they promoted the movie the way that they did, the initial theatrical release campaign made it look like some sort of slow yawn slightly creepy snoozefest, when in fact it is 100% cut from the flash of CREEPY DUDE in the mirror/corner/behind the kid school of filmmaking.

plot holes? well yeah, duh, but who cares

This is prob a good place for me to fly my challop flag and say that as great as Let the Right One In is, it isn't really a horror film IMO.

i kinda want to see paranormal activity.

yeah me too! although i fear the possibility that it might be a hype triumph and disappoint.

Drag Me to Hell!

man, still haven't seen that. or even zombieland (which doesn't sound like horror).

all i've really seen in 2009 is drag me to hell and zombieland, which isn't really a horror movie either

xpost

i just watched drag me to hell last night, and as a old school Raimi fanboy it was a ton of fun (srsly sam it is amazing how much mileage you can get out of the power of people/corpses/demonwhatevers vomiting on other people). Curious to find out how it worked for people that weren't kind of the target audience, esp the classic moments of Raimi complete set up nonsense (the best of which had to be the "well duh why not use these ice skates i was about to pawn on my suspended anvil" idiot lunacy).

anybody see any of the big remakes (last house on the left, whichever one rob zombie did this year, etc)?

drag me to hell was so great -- just rewatched but seeing it in the theatre was amazing what with everyone laughing & screaming simultaneously

i think the only nasty cut-em-up flicks i like anymore come from france or asia, though the first 'hostel' and the first 'saw' were good. i have a ton of friends who are in the horror film community and they're all pretty cynical about it these days, everyone wants to turn shit pg-13.

no desire to see the halloween remake, but the trailer was fucking terrifying (i've long held that horror movie trailers are usually way scarier than the actual movie, you just get a succession of jumps and creepy images without any context or warning).

loved drag me... anyone seen paranormal activity yet?

or left bank?

the french stuff is just brutal, but its been some of my favorite stuff as well, im sure a bunch of the usual whiners are going to lump it into the totally dumb invented "torture porn" genre but it just has such a deep sense of misanthropic malice and self-loathing xpost

i have a ton of friends who are in the horror film community and they're all pretty cynical about it these days, everyone wants to turn shit pg-13.

― access flap (omar little), Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://tcmmoviemorlocks.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/famous-monsters-speak2.jpg

^^^ omar's friends

considering using my mod cheat powers to edit the title to include 2008 because so much great unheralded stuff came out last year

'inside' was just as rough thematically as it was in terms of gore imo, i.e. it's one of my favorite films of the past few years.

id make it the whole decade but i think that the hostel/saw/ring/rob zombie non remake stuff would just take over and we've talked about that a billion times already (i love all three of the originals, and will go to bat for hostel 2 as well)

me too hostel 2 is so underrated

really felt roth didn't want to cheap out with an easy sequel on that one

the saw series has turned into a joke imo

oh yeah saw 3 was particularly awful

never seen a saw movie (i am okay w this)

I didn't really feel Hostel when I watched it - though that might've been because I'd watched Wolf Creek the night before which ten times more brutal and believable. Still haven't seen any of the Saws.

martyrs was the best horror movie I've seen in years. it's french torture porn, and then again, it's not... which is what makes it so great. it totally transcends the genre and I can guarantee you won't guess where it's going.

eden park was pretty good. not the greatest film ever made but a nice patch on the "hunted by locals in the woods" genre.

Eden Lake you mean? I liked that a lot, some bits haunted me for a few days. Such a dark ending!

duh, yeah eden lake

there are a lot of recent horror films I wanted to see that I haven't gotten around to. off the top of my head: teeth, the uninvited, embodiment of evil, dead snow... and I guess the haunting in ct now...

anybody repping for inside in this thread needs to see martyrs stat

paranormal is not that great. download it and see it at home. more of a living room thing than a theatre experience.

I wanna see nightmare, too. it's an older film that just got released on DVD, kind of low budget but looks promising.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455983/

oh hey btw for the french horror heads, if you haven't seen frontier(s), thats pretty essential

Eden Lake is british, right? some great horror coming out of britain in the past few years, esp if you like a bit of comedy mixed with your gore (top recs would be Severance and Shrooms)

paranormal is not that great. download it and see it at home. more of a living room thing than a theatre experience.

― let them eat cankles (jeff), Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:33 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really? how so? i would think it would be a quintessential movie theater movie!!

I liked Drag me to Hell. Also liked Jennifer's Body actually. I think a lot of good recent US horror has been genre pastiche/comedy (I'd include Hostel ii).
The French/Asian stuff is nice because it still does well playing the eeriness/bone-gristle straight. I've only seen the first 2 Saws but had to stop because why bother when there's stuff like Martyrs out there.

dead snow is pretty half-assed tbh

theres a foreign language film that is a great companion piece to Eden Lake that i can't remember the name of right now and it is killing me.

Eden Lake is british, right? some great horror coming out of britain in the past few years, esp if you like a bit of comedy mixed with your gore

Yep, it's British. Not many laughs though.

Just grabbed some new 80s movies to watch. Can anyone vouch for these?

Combat Shock
Demented
Don't Go In The House
Night of the Demon

oh yeah wait, Ils (or Them) is the Eden Lake parallel. creeeeepy

haha yeah Eden Lake is def not chock full o' laughs

really? how so? i would think it would be a quintessential movie theater movie!!

Because...

SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
...it is pretty much just a Blair Witch clone and more fun than scary. For me, the experience was ruining by a theatre of 500 groaning teens.
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS

*ruined

combat shock is fucked up. also pretty interesting and pretty good.

thread title edit for the purposes of why not

In light of the new title I will mention Wolf Creek again.

dead snow is pretty half-assed tbh

yeah it looks totally cheeseball but I'm a huge shock waves fan so...

speaking of which, the aussies have def had a horror boom this decade as well xpost

ivy, I totally agree— I mean, this is also why I read Guyotat and Tony Duvert, as their formal and stylistic devices as applied to unique subject matter (war crimes in the former, child sexuality in the latter) are fascinating. now, were both Guyotat and Duvert unrepentant perverts who knew they were writing “true” things that were also “obscene” in the eyes of society? of course, but I am not so interested in who they were, I am interested in what they wrote.

Cooper is an unrepentant pervert, yeah, but he is also a gentle a kind human being, one of the best people I have ever known— giving him a hug a few weeks back after seven years without seeing him was incredible.

anyway, back to horror films.

i wrote all those posts in an insomniac haze. but i guess my point is i never see “shock and gore value” as just that. there is always something else there. horror is a rich tradition and even if the person making the horror movie is a shitty evil pervert… often something else creeps through, that i am able to see even if they didn’t mean to include it or don’t see it themselves or whatever. terrifier 2’s dream sequences, and its final sequence in the funhouse are about the flimsiest intrusions of female subjectivity into a horror movie of this kind i’ve ever seen, but they are still there, and i get a lot out of them. i also really love the scene where the main character falls in a hole. really immediately get on the side of any horror movie where there’s a hole and they go in it

and to draw a line there, no matter how reasoned, is always drawing a line at an arbitrary position, is a means to keep myself from potentially seeing that thing that i love seeing, to cause myself to stop looking. i do not ever want to stop looking

also as much as there's been kind of a critical turnaround on rob zombie films caused by broken mentally ill trans ppl on letterboxd most "serious" people still see his movies as mean, empty, and worthless. and they are. that's why they're good

ivy - you into naked blood or any other sato stuff? imo sato really excels at what you're getting at, if I understand it correctly. extreme gore, extreme sadism, most likely made by and for pervs, etc. etc. but also strangely moving in ways that I'd guess are a mix of intended and unintended. (it helps that the films are often sick from an aesthetic pov too)

fucking. LOVE. sato. naked blood is the freakin best

https://boxd.it/7mXEL9

I've only seen the Terrifier short from 'All Hallow's Eve' on Joe Bob and it kind of bummed me out. With slasher stuff, I like it when there's some kind of inherent humor like Freddy doing dad jokes ("How's this for a wet dream?") or Jason ragdolling that kid in a sleeping bag onto a tree. The Terrifier stuff was just kind of... sadistic fantasies? Like, OK, you're going to dismember a chick, but did you really have to carve CUNT and SLUT into her torso?

Not saying that as an arbiter of the film's worth, it's just not why I personally come to these things.

Even in ivy’s example of Faces of Death, the narrator is named “Francis B. Gröss!”

the all hallow’s eve short really sucks, it’s like… you built a franchise out of *this*?

once they recast art with the current guy the value changes. power of acting

fucking. LOVE. sato. naked blood is the freakin best

<3

Catching up on a few things today:

Immaculate: low expectations going in but knew it was going to be fun when the theme from The Red Queen Kills Seven Times started playing twenty minutes in. Sweeney is great, the final third is delightfully OTT and it makes a fine companion piece to the also very good First Omen.

Red Rooms: Quebecoise psychological drama about a model who attends an accused killer’s trial, from the public gallery. It’s excellent - restrained and disturbing.

Longlegs: very good but probably needed to be longer to avoid needing to dump a bunch of exposition in a slightly clumsy way at the end.

Had a nice double bill with my 14yo daughter last night: Terrifier 2 followed by The Shining.

We also just watched Red Rooms. Creepy af and very good imo. Juliette Gariepy is kind of mesmerizing.

She’s so good!

I heard that Immaculate was similar to the First Omen but I didn't think it was going to be that similar. I preferred The First Omen by far - Immaculate kind of shortchanged the creepy evil convent atmosphere, moving along too fast (despite not being particularly short).

Okay, sharing a little something here -- so one of my podcast cohosts, Oriana, and her husband Steve decided earlier this year to not wait around on various irons in the fire they've had going re film and TV and just went ahead and made a small horror film with their own money. (She wrote the script, he directed, they coproduced.) The trailer is live, and I think for such an effort it looks pretty good! (I pitched in a bit on a Kickstarter to add to their own funds -- they specifically made sure to go union or pay union rates throughout, which was great to see.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuuVTqebEV0

Separately I'm a regular listener to The Bald and the Beautiful podcast and yesterday had Katya talking with Gretchen Felker-Martin about the latter's top horror films of the year and I was thoroughly surprised/appreciative about how 1) I'd seen most of her list and 2) also liked what I had seen quite a lot. So that meant for the couple of ones I haven't I will have to check them out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAlzG17Mi-I

I love what drone cameras have added to the lower budget film. The overhead shots, tracking down a highway, look so good to me.

Not talking about this movie at all, but I do know the HD drone shot, especially down a road, has become a low budget cliche.

I do think they still look cool, cliche or no. I love how technology has made what used to be all these crazy technical crane shots and what not accessible to everybody.

Yes, exactly!

years ago they were filming an episode of Nash Bridges in my apartment building, and they used a pretty big hot air balloon to hold up a camera... I guess an early version of a drone shot where a crane is impractical

ivy, you're the first person I've heard mention naked blood I think. Absolutely bonkers film

splatter naked blood is normal and it’s all other media that’s bonkers

I can't recall who recommended Naked Blood to me, it might have been on here a decade ago

Has anyone seen any of the Japanese series Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi? Appears to be a found-footage horror anthology, maybe sort of X Files-ish? There’s no official English-language release I can find, but some bootleg DIY ones online. Curious if it’s worth the effort.

i have yet to see it but ANYTHING by koji shiraishi is worth seeing

I've seen Noroi twice and never really understood what people love about it but it seems genuine and it's been nearly 20 years

re: sentitsu - i skipped straight to the hanako-san of the toilet one (i mean, how could i not??) and it was a blast. gotta get back on these.

I’ve seen three or four of them and they were all fine but nothing special. Noroi, I liked a lot though.

They’re all on YouTube, or were a few months back.

Anyone else see "Infested"? A little slick, pretty much "Arachnophobia" meets "Attack the Block." I think the director, Sébastien Vanicek, already got snagged to make another "Evil Dead" movie? Anyway, it's not bad, and may have a sneaky allegory lurking somewhere beneath the surface.

The "black metal found footage film", Invoking Yell.

Awful by every measure. Incoherent, zero atmosphere, bizarre editing.

Stacked cast, but this looks a little much?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cMIarrxLGs

Don't know anything about the writer/director.

Looking forward to that one. A24, the cast, the trailer vibe, giving me a Krampus sensibility. At the very least, a murderous parental unicorn is novel.

Thumbs up on Oddity. Slow pacing but liked it for keeping to its internal logic and sticking the ending. Felt like a complete project, versus some that have a cool premise but no idea of resolution.

Also liked Strange Darling, though mainly once it stopped playing with its non-linear structure and used natural lighting. Too much odd lighting at the start(blue, red, grindhouse, overexposed). Nice seeing Willa Fitzgerald outside her Reacher role, and was surprised by Kyle Gallner having big screen chops.

Watching Cuckoo later today.

remain blown away that anyone liked strange darling for any reason

I really liked Oddity. Has anyone seen the director's other film, Caveat?

Caveat is very good as well, similar in its mood and slow-building intensity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55pzldrBRJM
Anyone seen this?

that looks awesome

Don't know where to find it, official site looks empty right now

Smile 2 was way better than what you'd expect a sequel in a horror franchise to be imo

anyone else watch any of joe meredith’s stuff? the new one is legally up on YT and rules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIYy8nnsQRU

survival horror vibes filtered through a well executed retro sov presentation plus a nice dark ambient score and cool creatures and stuff like that… a lot to like here!

it’s been a minute but i remember liking the two variant shorts just as much

watched Heretic over the weekend... all the acting was great (Hugh Grant was exceptional), the production looked good, but ultimately fell flat. It seems to me like there were script edits to sort of explain things that maybe didn't need explaining. Kind of a dud for A24, but no fault to the actors

yeah i found parts of it really impressive but the whole thing was really one-note hammered over and over again

yeah and the 'twist' or reveal was pretty meh

I thought Smile 2 was a superior franchise sequel. The car crash horror and jump scares were done ok. But the character being a doomed celebrity and surrounded by people, yet absolutely alone and living in terror and knowing she is absolutely fucked was executed very well.

Saw a trailer for The Monkey based on the Stephen King story, looks like crap, the Longlegs director decided to make it a horror comedy.

oh i really love the trailer for the monkey