The Haunt Of Fear: ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Results Thread

i had martyrs p high but i never want to see it again, i would never recommend it to anybody and there's a couple of images i wish i could wash away from my brain forever.

'The Vanishing' is one of those films I haven't watched because the concept of it is so terrifying to me. In a way it should be my #1 choice as the thought of it is more scary than nearly all of the films I voted for.

audition>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>a whole lot of stuff

never seen Audition either. I guess I should.

Oh man, Martyrs was in my top 5 I think. It sort of redefined the genre IMO and it stands as one of the best horror films of all time.

nothing personal, and everyone is allowed to like whatever, but i just do not get this. it starts off as dumb but exciting slam-bang action movie, and winds up with a long imprisonment and torture section. how does it redefine the genre? you mean that it finally breaks the "peeling a person like a grape (in a fakey but still kinda gross way)" barrier? or are you talking about the meta implications?

Hellraiser broke the peeling person barrier, better.

love the vanishing, but i disagree that it'd be improved by foreknowledge. saw it totally blind, and it just about did me in.

xp - good point

I'm with carl agatha on Martyrs. Been on my radar forever but I'm scared to see it. Shocked to see it ranked so high; I'm re-evaluating my fears. I'm going to assume there's no chance of Hostel showing up on here.

Martyrs: nice when screenpic informs me I will never see

re Bride's 9/55: goddamn the other 46 of you gore-lapping savages

xp to The Thnig - Have you seen Them or Inside or Frontiers? I (unfairly?) lump all of them together as nihilistic movies with way too realistic gore/pain that I am afraid to see, but I feel like if you've made it through one, you can make it through the others.

gore-lapping savages

^ you should work this into one of your crypt-keeper intros, eric

martyrs put me through the ringer, made me actively think about what I was witnessing, and found creative and surprising ways out of its narrative dead ends. I'm a pretty critical horror movie watcher and I can't find fault with it on any level. it sets out to do something and it succeeds on all fronts with stridency and confidence. whether you've gained anything, or found the experience worthwhile, is for each viewer to answer themselves. it certainly is not a pleasurable experience.

Oh yeah, I totally disagree that foreknowledge is a good thing re: The Vanishing. Might have already said this on one of these horror threads, but I find a large bulk of it remarkably prosaic, but that just works so well as the critical moment comes...

See, now I don't want to see Martyrs anymore. I'm not entirely sure seeing a movie that is not a pleasurable experience and will put me through the ringer is something I need to do.

EdIII otm abt Martyrs.

"The Vanishing" is such a fucked up movie. Like watching a really slow car crash that you can't avoid. - dunno what it says about that I agree wholeheartedly w/ this & would add that I thoroughly enjoyed said car crash to the extent that I put this in my top five.

as i've said elsewhere, i tend to viscerally dislike prolonged depictions of helpless suffering, especially when the victim is female and the torment is unrelieved (maybe this says something weird about me, i dunno). martyrs definitely pushes those buttons, so it's likely that i wasn't going to be a huge fan no matter what. thing is, i just didn't find it very engaging on any level. i didn't even find it disturbing so much as irritating. the action scenes in the opening act are satisfactorily kinetic, but i was bored whenever people weren't getting blown through doorways with a shotgun.

then again, my momentary mood often distorts my perceptions of a film's worth. i was hung over and grouchy when i saw martyrs, so maybe it never stood a chance.

Yeah, Carl, I've been dodging not just Martyrs but also Inside. I did see Them. And I did, at long last, gather my courage to see Human Centipede. And I'm glad I saw those two, so I should probably just bite the bullets.

Trying to ask this without being spoileriffic, but am I right in thinking that the American version of The Vanishing changes the ending and thereby ruins it? Have never seen the remake, but that's what I gathered from what I heard about it.

i tend to viscerally dislike prolonged depictions of helpless suffering, especially when the victim is female and the torment is unrelieved (maybe this says something weird about me, i dunno).

If anybody thinks this makes contenderizer weird, speak up so I know you write you off as a worthwhile human being.

"The Vanishing" is such a fucked up movie. Like watching a really slow car crash that you can't avoid.

it occurs to me that the vanishing and audition have quite a bit in common, both structurally and thematically

I'm with carl agatha on Martyrs. Been on my radar forever but I'm scared to see it. Shocked to see it ranked so high; I'm re-evaluating my fears. I'm going to assume there's no chance of Hostel showing up on here.

I'm not necessarily anti-Hostel (it was OK), but imo Martyrs so outclasses the films perceived to be its peers, in terms of art and intelligence, that it doesn't deserve to be mentioned alongside them.

The American Vanishing is one of the worst remakes ever.

Them is great, and really scary/intense. Inside is ridiculous. Human Centipede, more ridiculous. Martyrs is just a pretentious hodgepodge of vague philosophy. The profound "reveal" at the end is so lame. I can't imagine someone not finding fault with it, though I can easily imagine people finding reasons to like/appreciate it.

yeah, unless you're a hardcore distress junkie I just don't recommend martyrs. I love it, I think it's perfect, but it's not for everyone. it doesn't resort to cheap tricks like sexual violence or leering psychos or killing animals, but it will raise your blood pressure, bum you out, then wink at you as it sashays out the door. it's pretty telling that it gives jaded folks like jjjusten pause.

but you know, it's only a movie... it's only a movie... it's only a movie

Martyrs, I will concede, had potential, but like Inside - or even High Tension - it goes a little too far. It's undisciplined (unlike, say, Wolf Creek, which is also unpleasant, but focused).

contenderizer I was very impressed w the way it seemed to just abandon p much all conventions of narrative storytelling but did so in a way that was deliberate and crucial, as opposed to, say, Cube where it was just "hey let's just do this cool idea w/o trying to deal w coherence". Incoherence (or really just how yr left in the dark for so long and evn after the ending) w/in Martyrs is utilized extremely skillfully and it felt like a very fresh and unique approach to filmmaking. Though because of that, it's also kind of a one-time-use thing: you open it, you consume it, and it's done. There's little point in rewatching it unless you're with people who haven't seen it, and the more you know about the plot beforehand the more the purpose of watching the film is defeated.

Yeah, but it's not like some crazy twist occurs, where you can watch people around you react with some sort of shocked a ha! moment. And even as far as OTT goes, it falls so short of that (impossible) goal - the top, as it were. It's just floating there in this weird horrible purgatory, so close yet so far.

Re: torture porn, once we were getting free Showtime & I turned to it at a prime-town hour, like 8pm, and it was some mainstream torture porn movie and was featuring a recognizable actress lashed to a table and being forced to drink a smoothie of blended-up body parts by having a funnel shoved into her mouth. Can't remember the movie or the actress. But it really drove home again how screwed up violence/sex limits are in American media. I mean, imagine what the porn equivalent of that scene would be, presented at 8pm for all the kiddies.

High Tension was just a stupid movie with a horribly flimsy gotcha!-ending that makes p much no sense and comes off as super-gimmicky in a way that Martyrs is skillfully crafted enough to transcend.

Yeah, but it's not like some crazy twist occurs, where you can watch people around you react with some sort of shocked a ha! moment. And even as far as OTT goes, it falls so short of that (impossible) goal - the top, as it were. It's just floating there in this weird horrible purgatory, so close yet so far.

I think that's the point exactly, though. It refuses to tell you a lot of stuff that viewers are trained to expect.

High Tension would have easily made my list if not for having the dumbest, most ill-advised (and totally unnecessary!) twist ending ever. srsly, what a shame

martyrs is an intelligent film, but not an intellectual one. I don't find it particularly pretentious, it doesn't speak down to the audience or put on any airs that it is more than what it appears to be. if you read an interview with the director, he comes off as very down to earth and clear-eyed about what he's doing, and, for a french filmmaker, doesn't strike me as pretentious at all.

Martyrs is insultingly awful. I threw a ton of points at my own pick for the best of the new-Euro horrors (Belgium's Calvaire) but I gather that has absolutely no shot.

re: martyrs

yeah, unless you're a hardcore distress junkie I just don't recommend martyrs.

agreed. here's something I said on another thread that described my not exactly pleasurable experience while watching martyrs:

my imagination (and dread!!) was running wild the whole time. plus, the film does a lot to disorient the viewer as well. there's almost a... psychedelic?... quality to watching some of this stuff.

more or less, this is the appeal for me. it's a powerful film imo. it was just shy of my top 10.

am I right in thinking that the American version of The Vanishing changes the ending and thereby ruins it?

Not seen the remake but from what I hear this is very much the case, yes.

Well, to get a little spoilery here - SPOILERS:

When the big reveal turns out to be a secret society investigating the relationship of pain-prompted epiphany as a gateway to the afterlife, then my pretentious-meter goes a little red. At least Hellraiser is campy about (if we're honest) a similar idea.

Calvaire is good! And it has the greatest dance scene. (You read that right.)

xpost

Come to think of it, if Martyrs actually didn't tell you what was going on, I would have liked it more!

And even as far as OTT goes, it falls so short of that (impossible) goal - the top, as it were.

this is another thing I like about it - obv there are far more horrific things that could have been depicted in martyrs, and have been depicted in plenty of other horror films. but martyrs just gets under your skin so successfully, it's all due to craft.

btw if Mel Brooks appears in the next 55 slots I will rev up my chainsaw.

re: more french stuff

them (ils) is really awesome and one of the most effective scary movies I've seen. but my advice would be not to watch it if you live alone!! caught it when I still did and found it tough to shake all kinds of nasty home invasion thoughts. :-/

hate, hate, HATE high tension.

still fuming over the ending almost a decade later, lol

...as opposed to, say, Cube where it was just "hey let's just do this cool idea w/o trying to deal w coherence". Incoherence (or really just how yr left in the dark for so long and evn after the ending) w/in Martyrs is utilized extremely skillfully and it felt like a very fresh and unique approach to filmmaking.

that's an interesting point, but i'm not sure i understand it. cube, it seems to me, is a perfectly coherent film that doesn't feel a need to explain what's going on at the big picture level. the small-scale details make sense, though, and nothing violates the film's general sci-fi "realism". martyrs is similarly stingy with the top-down info (how, exactly, was all this arranged?) and never seems 100% credible, but it's nowhere near so narratively incoherent as, say, fulci's the beyond or lynch's mulholland dr.

Yeah, a point in Martyrs favor is that it is not this surreal, stream of consciousness orgy of violence. It's pretty methodical. Almost ... surgical.

Man, I hate Cube. All of the Cubes.

Martyrs is insultingly awful. I threw a ton of points at my own pick for the best of the new-Euro horrors (Belgium's Calvaire) but I gather that has absolutely no shot.

calvaire was one of my very last cuts, and in retrospect i regret not throwing some points its way. i love it, but had too many sentimental favorites i just couldn't let go of. the one representative of "new french extremity" i did save room for was claire denis' trouble every day, which got one of my top 10 slots.

It's pretty methodical. Almost ... surgical.

lol

I mean I love Cube and it's incoherence too, but with Martyrs it was more of a plot device of sorts where with Cube it was just a shrug. They used their lack of explanation in very different ways and Martyrs was a lot smarter about it.

tl;dr option: M was my #1 and I don't give a fuck if it's not horror. Also, genre is more a perpetual activity than a thing per se, more a verb than a noun

I am the first-place voter for M and I have no interest in proving its status as a horror film. I only voted in this because jjj asked me to. And not only did he muck up his ballot with post-classical caca but now he's on vacation during the genre bloodbath?!?!? For shame! :) So I just voted for what I thought were the greatest films listed in the noms and figured the very fact that a film was nominated was genre justification enough for me. Took about 10 mins. if even that. In fact, I did it so quickly that I forgot another greatest film of all time contender Night of the Hunter and also Vampyr so I'm glad the latter has shown up. Sorry, Carl. With me, you would've placed way higher. So if you want to hear why M might be the greatest film of all time, I'll oblige. But if you want to know why it's a horror film, forget it. I don't even like the genre (although really it's the serial killer film that I hate).

I do think that the arguments about boundaries in this thread (and others like it, I presume) reveal a misunderstanding about genre because genre is more a perpetual activity than a thing per se, more a verb than a noun. As Rick Altman puts it, "genres must be seen as a site of struggle among users" (in Film/Genre, p. 99). Or here's a juicier quote: "Whereas no critical discourse, however prestigious and oft repeated, can become part of Hamlet, even the lowliest of genre critics cannot help but contribute to the genre itself" (84).

So when Edward says "there's a difference between a horror movie with a social conscience and a film of social conscience that is horrifying" and then Deric says "if the audience reacts to a film as if it were a horror film, it should qualify as a horror film at least as much as the rote garbage that's only accepted as horror," it's necessary to determine how they're using genre and the value of their approaches. Edward privileges production when he conceives of genre and Deric privileges reception. But to better grasp the discursive (language-like, argumentative) nature of genre, the goal is to incorporate as wide a variety of genre uses as possible.

So Edward's statement is "right" given how he uses genre. But Larry Cohen uses genre differently. Any interview with him makes clear that he conceives of It's Alive as a film of social conscience that is horrifying rather than a horror movie with a social conscience. I'm not privileging Cohen's voice over Edward's. Rather, the genre lies somewhere in between, within the conversation. Similarly, if someone pisses their pants to Threads, then it's a horror film to Deric. Sure, no prob. But if you watched me watching The Long, Long Trailer, I guarantee you would've thought I was watching a triple feature of Martyrs, Inside, and Henry rather than a supposedly light and breezy Desi and Lucy comedy. In short, the applicability of these approaches shift depending on user and context.

And the same applies to greatness and masterpieces and all that. Masterpieces are waaaay a discursive formation as Saint Foucault once told me in a bathhouse in New Orleans. Stevie D might think there's a way to distinguish between the most enjoyable films and the greatest (he really doesn't think this but let's humor him) but there's no hard and fast rule that could determine the distinction. In fact, the very idea that great and favorite can be distinguished is meant to hide the self-interest behind proclaiming greatness.

Man, I hate Cube. All of the Cubes.

yeah, not a cube fan. did like the part where that one guy got cut up into little person cubes. otherwise meh.

http://www.tcj.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/McCheese-Picasso.jpg