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

Inside is way better than I'll ever be willing to give it credit for.

inside is one of those movies that's totally riveting but you watch the entire time with O_O that expression on your face. i think the thing with the cop at the end was especially O_O

Drag Me to Hell (maybe this deserves top rating - on the fence about this) - I'd grant Grindhouse this same status (both features + trailers)

Highly Watchable - also, add to this: Hatchet, a thoroughly entertaining bit of self-aware slasher-camp

Hard Candy, with Ellen Page, is more of psychologicall thriller than horror, but I liked it a whole lot. Basically a two-character movie.

When done well, which sadly is not often, horror is my favorite genre. From the above recs I added Martyrs, Woods, Wolf Creek, Them, Deadgirl and The Strangers to my Netflix queue.

I enjoyed The Mist (it's better in B&W if you have a choice). Agree the ending would have been better if left after running out of gas/seeing the monster thingy walk by, etc.

Drag Me to Hell was OK (not scary at all, though). The CGI was at times cartoonish. But it doesn't take it self to seriously either. Don't think I'd recommend it to someone who's not already a big Raimi fan.

I only saw The Descent once a few years back. I thought it was great, and one of the scarier movies I've seen. I didn't find the CGI monsters to be that bad.

Trick R Treat was a solid movie. Again, not really scary, but it was entertaining and well made. It captured Halloween well (if that makes any sense).

As far as older films go, I saw David Cronenberg's The Brood last week. Some of the acting in that movie is subpar, but there were scenes that creeped me out, so if you haven't saw it yet, I'd recommend it (especially for Cronenberg fans). Not sure how popular this film was when it came out.

Was Scanner's good?

I guess Dead Snow isn't out yet in the States as a DVD. But will check that one out as well.

Patrick McGoohan RIP is excellent in Scanners. Also there is head exploding.

One last thing: I can't believe Land of the Dead got positive reviews. Pretty much one big waste of time (and I'm a huge fan of Romero's). Diary of the Dead was better, but not really that good either. There's a new one out (or soon to be out anyway) called Island of the Dead. I don't have high expectations but I'll probably end up checking it out on Netflix.

I watched Drag Me to Hell only yesterday. About as scary and as clunky as a fairground ghost train, but it gets by on sheer enthusiasm and a likable performance from the lead. Forgettable though.

All this Mist love mystifies me. No atmosphere to it at all, just dead.

The Brood is maybe Cronenberg's best, outside of The Fly.

LOL I finally watched Devil's Rejects last night expecting i dunno what and it was mostly a comedy right? With some awesome tunage that gave me renewed respect for Rob Zombie's collection of 70s LPs. Terry Reid!

About as scary and as clunky as a fairground ghost train - see, this is what I loved about it. It totally felt like a relic from a bygone era that probably never existed to begin with. For that, it succeeds on style points alone imo.

Saw Saint Ange (Martyrs director's earlier film) on Netflix instant watch last night. It's quite slow & remarkably similar to Orphanage in places which is interesting since it came out earlier. Can't really recommend it though it does have another bizarre 3rd act switch involving subterranean lairs.

The Brood is maybe Cronenberg's best, outside of The Fly.
― cough syrup in coke cans (Eric H.)

I love The Fly, but if you're in the mood for a horror movie, I think The Brood's better. I always thought The Fly was a tragic love story (with a few gross parts peppered in).

There's one scene in The Brood that was pretty shocking. I won't give it away for those who haven't seen it. But for those who have, it's the one in the school with the teacher. I don't think they'd be able to film that scene in front of kids today. My jaw hit the floor.

trick r treat was pretty rad - kinda o_O that it went str8 2 video on demand considering. wrt to martyrs idk - the more i thought about after watching the more vivid and terrible some of those images were the last half hour of them finally breaking her will probably be one of the lasting cinematic moments from this decade 4 me

the end of martyrs has a truly horrifying clarity to it~~~

also watched antichrist which made me think of martyrs which i guess revels in the obliterating rather than the purifying nature of pain. it has some pretty amazing images too but its dreamy and cheap. i really disliked it

I read the Wikipedia synopsis of Martyrs--I don't think I can sit through it. As much as I want to love horror movies, I am a wuss when it comes to gore. I think that's why I like ghost movies best, though they are more rare among horror flicks it seems.

I'd def add Wolf Creek to my list, somewhere near the top. For some reason, I thought that came out in '04.

i'll always rep for this flick, it's a good spooky ghost flick with little gore (ok it's from '02 but still..)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyJcIgmi8Qs

The Brood is one of the best horror movies ever! Everybody should see it. Agree that the acting's wooden, but it's Cronenberg: what do you expect. Plus it suits the tone.

Drag Me to Hell is fantastic, one of the best horror flix I've seen in forever. Not at all scary, but a blast from beginning to end. Plus second Pillbox on Slither (goofy but fun) and The Hills Have Eyes remake (suprisingly great). Also loved Haute Tension and had no problem with the twist. And Wolf Creek. Grim as shit, but very well-made and genuinely unsettling.

Descent and Devil's Rejects are both solid, interesting films, but I didn't love either. Descent is crippled by bad story logic in the second half (why are things that depend on scent and sound so completely incapable of smelling or hearing ANYTHING, EVER?), and Rejects by horribly annoying dialogue that becomes insufferable long before the film ends. And, man, that final shot/scene is such a botched opportunity. Just shoot it all in slo-mo, blast Free Bird and run to credits as the splatter flies. How fucking hard is that?

Will also poo on Inside/A l'interieur while I'm here. Fun to watch, in a hands-over-the-eyes grossout kinda way, but man that shit was silly! Cheezeball politics, half-baked satanic symbolism, big reveals that come as no surprise at all, wooden & obvious delivery of everything. It's kinda fun, but the combination of deadly serious & grimmm tone plus the bonka-bonk goofiness of the material just didn't work for me. Final scene is marvelous, though.

Did like the French Frontier(s), which is similar in many ways (especially WR2 knucklehead political subtext), but better simply because it doesn't take itself half so seriously.

Speaking of taking shit way too seriously, anybody see that English chav-horror flick Eden Lake? Very well done, great acting and cinematography, but damn that pissed me off to no end.

Haven't seen Martyrs (I think I've had enough of the pure suffering/annihilation of beautiful women as fetishized aesthetic spectacle). Or Trick 'r Treat, which I guess I should rectify immediately.

I'll check it out, thanks for the rec. (xpost)

Haven't seen Martyrs (I think I've had enough of the pure suffering/annihilation of beautiful women as fetishized aesthetic spectacle). - it goes so far beyond the usual parameters of "torture porn" as to be securely in its own category. I can understand wanting to avoid this film, but you should not do so b/c you see it falling into easy genre trappings.

below!!!! lol it took me most of that movie to understand it was supposed to be set during wwII

I thought Them was a lot more effective than The Strangers (pretty similar plots).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAWEvZh8flg

all that talk about sinking german ships and the british sailors and american subs can be misleading...

I'll give Martyrs a shot eventually. Intended to watch it earlier this year as a part of a catch-up session on "endurance horror", but got burned out after watching Frontier(s), Imprint, Inside, Singapore Sling and Eden Lake in a couple days. Only so much a man can take.

P.S.: You've seen Singapore Sling, right?

I mean, it's reaching back a ways (1990), but it doesn't get talked about or seen anywhere near enough.

yah no obv im retarded its just thats the only thing i really remember abt that movie - realizing it was supposed to be ww2 - that and trying to remember what other movie i saw that one chick in before

xxpost

singapore sling is greek right? have not seen, will check out

it's got half the main cast of lock stock and two smoking barrels and zach galifiniakkis (sic) also

whoa waht

yah the cast of below is pretty great but i <3 bruce greenwood so

Speaking of taking shit way too seriously, anybody see that English chav-horror flick Eden Lake? Very well done, great acting and cinematography, but damn that pissed me off to no end.

there's a bit of talk upthread about that one, I called it xenophobic but nobody took the bait.

Haven't seen Martyrs (I think I've had enough of the pure suffering/annihilation of beautiful women as fetishized aesthetic spectacle).

I dunno, that's kind of like saying "I'm sick of japanese horror movies so I'm not watching audition"

martyrs transcends any torture porn label and takes things to a whole other level. yes, a large part of the final third involves torture, but so does the final third of 1984. in a similar way, martyrs' aesthetic isn't fetishized, it's just bleak as hell.

oops thread is moving too fast nevermind

P.S.: You've seen Singapore Sling, right? - nope. Will add, along w/ Them, to the queue post-haste. This thread is making me realize how much has passed me by in recent years, being ostensibly a horror stan & all.

Singapore Sling isn't horror, exactly, it's just ... something. Something that everyone should see. It's kind of a sequel to Otto Preminger's Laura, but with more torture. And porn.

Good to hear so strong a defense of Martyrs. I'd just gotten to this place where I'd noticed how many current films seem revel in this one very specific spectacle: beautiful woman with long (usually dark) hair in a thin (usually white) dress. As the film progresses, she is tortured, imprisoned, humiliated, sexually threatened and dunked in blood and/or offal. By the end of the film, she is so emotionally and physically shattered that she has come to resemble a wild animal. Her hair is matted, her skin and formerly white dress dark reddish brown with blood and filth, clinging to her shivering body. She is framed against plain or light backgrounds where she stands out like a bloody stain, a clot. Or else she is shot in extreme close-up, where her gore-soaked skin makes the whites of her eyes stand out like Audrey Tautou's. Eventually she dies.

I'd got to where I'd seen this image so many times in so many different ways that it started to bother me. I felt like I was watching not horror movies, but some dismal kind of fetish porn, female passion plays. So I decided to take a pass on Martyrs, based on exhaustion more than anything else. Once I get my nerve back up, I'll give it a shot.

Singapore Sling isn't horror, exactly, it's just ... something. Something that everyone should see. It's kind of a sequel to Otto Preminger's Laura, but with more torture. And porn.

shit - i just remembered a friend gave me a copy of this, and i still haven't watched it.

the foreign films get all the attention, but North America has been holding its own. you have to look beyond the marquee, or even the aegis of PR-hogging distributors like Lionsgate, Ghosthouse and After Dark. and it helps to have the patience to sift through each week's crop of mostly dire direct-to-DVD (and now Netflix) offerings. i hesitate to call it a renaissance, but NA-indie horror has never been stronger, demonstrating an embarrassment of new ideas and technical ingenuity. ever since the deserved cult success of character-driven gems like 'May', we've had these offbeat entries:

Deadgirl
Grace
End of the Line
Love Object
The Other Side
The Stink of Flesh
Stuck
Zombie Honeymoon

some uneven first films ('The Roost', 'Hatchet', 'Home Sick', 'Murder Party') show enough genuine promise to make one optimistic that the best is yet to come from these young directors. Ti 'The Roost' West's Satanic '70s throwback 'The House of the Devil' looks like a winner. that said, i'd pay good cashmoney to keep a camera out of Alex 'Dead Birds'/'Red Sands' Turner's hands. and Brad Anderson needs a good talking to.

even the played-out postmodern slasher film has overcome its 'Scream'-assisted demise and mounted a minor comeback, with such strong entries as '36 Pasos', 'Red Velvet', 'The Hills Run Red', and 'Earth Day' all being worthy of discovery.

since the immaculate 'A Tale of Two Sisters', J/K-horror cinema seems to be in steep decline. S. Korea and Japan may yet surprise us with another jolt of out-of-nowhere brilliance, and you can never completely count out powerhouse directors like Shinya Tsukamoto (who needs to drop the 'Nightmare Detective' crap, ASAP), Sion Sono ('Exte: Hair Extensions' will be forgiven if 'Lords of Chaos' lives up to its impossibly high expectations), Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Joon-ho Bong (forget 'The Host;' 'Memories of Murder' is the must-see) and, of course, Park Chan-wook. i actually have my hopes set on Thai horror as the next big thing. it's still in its awkward adolescence, caught between the inescapable box-office influence of 'ghost girl' scares and the hyperbolic cruelty of the Western 'torture porn' craze. but the style and the talent are there, as is evident even from Troma-esque parodies like 'Sick Nurses' and 'SARS Wars: Bangkok Zombie Crisis'. when the Thais ease up on the leering irony, as in the unsparingly nasty 'Art of the Devil 2', they really bring it. Thailand hasn't had its international break-out horror hit yet, but i'm sure there's one in the offing. the erratic anthology '4BIA' isn't a bad place to start. introduces the main players and sums up the state of Thai horror - stylish, if derivative, somewhat confused, and a little "slow," narrative-wise.

'The Nun' (someone mentioned?) is pretty awful, with an entirely CGI menace that misses the mark entirely. certainly not indicative of the best of Spanish horror. you'd be better served by the "big" pictures - 'El Orfanato', 'El Laberinto del Fauno' - and with the ingenious 'Timecrimes', Amenabar's definitive 'Tesis', or even the not-quite-satisfying 'The Nameless' (for me, Balagueró remains promising but has yet to pull it all together. 'REC' and 'Para Entrar a Vivir' show he's on the right track. there's no way that 'REC'2 can be anything other than a misstep sideways).

Damn, Mr. Hal Jam, I have seen exactly NONE of the American films you rep in that list (shame on a lazy horror fan). Thanks for the recs! And while I'm at it, 2nd the buried Tale of Two Sisters mention for anyone who hasn't seen it. Agree that it's the last really great Japanese horror flick I've seen.

Plus hell yeah for Timecrimes. Not a horror flick at all, just a sci-fi mystery thriller with a big dose of giallo-style suspense & shock. But it's one of the most entertaining and satisfying genre flicks I've seen in ages.

x-post to sarahel: Singapore Sling is sooooo good! It's a period piece shot in B&W, in the manner of 40s noir, a loving and surprisingly thorough reproduction of the style & tone, really beautiful from a visual standpoint. And it's horrifying and hilarious and revolting and hypnotic and just one of the strangest things I've ever seen. Plus the two female leads are AWESOME. Unforgettable performances from both, though one's clearly more unforgettably unforgettable than the other.

oh, he told me about it before making me the copy - it was in trade for me making him a copy of Peter Watkins' Privilege

Goddam Hal Jam, my Netflix queue was already getting out of hand & then you had to go & drop all that. How many horror flix can a bro sit thru? I guess we'll find out..

I felt like I was watching not horror movies, but some dismal kind of fetish porn, female passion plays.

ha, it sounds like you were in exactly the right frame of mind to see martyrs!

maybe it's just me - because frankly I can't think of any single element of the film that would cause this - but I spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of torture porn while watching it. there's definitely a self-reflexive aspect to the film. I hesitate to talk too much about the plot, because not knowing where it's going is half the, uh, fun.

Tale of Two Sisters is actually Korean & I'd also recommend it - sort of a summation of Asian horror tropes elegantly bow-tied together. It was also loosely remade recently as 'The Uninvited'.

I have seen Deadgirl, Love Object, & Stuck but I didn't really like any of them. Maybe that scene is just not for me.

I looooove korean movies and I was convinced a tale of two sisters was one of the best movies I'd ever seen for about 3/4 of the runtime

but in typical korean fashion, the ending drifted off

still would recommend it highly

Never seen Privilege (or, honestly, ever heard of Peter Watkins), but based on some quick snooping around, he & it sound fascinating. Another one for the endless list, I guess...

tale of two sisters is like david lynch decided to direct a ringu-inspired bros grimm tale

shutter - thai film- was good but it might just miss out on this time frame, i think it was 2004

xxp - you of all people on ilx should watch Peter Watkins' films.

Oops on Tale of Two Sisters. May have known at some point that it was Korean, but "Japanified" it in my memory due to laziness and/or cultural ignorance.

Speaking of Japanese films (ahem), anyone see Strange Circus, by Shion Sono, the guy who made Suicide Circle a while back (and also Hair Extensions, I guess, which I haven't seen)? Kinda sleazy and cheap, but so inventive and bizarre and titillating and cetera. Again, it's not horror, not exactly, but it's very closely related to horror and another recent favorite. Probably make a good double feature w/ Tale of 2 Sisters. Similar in some respects, but waaaaaay more OTT.

Me of all people? Damn, now I guess I gotta...