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

I like horror blogs and have no problems with fandom. I just hated Stakeland.

I like some horror blogs (I'm a member of one) and magazines but I was just trying to convey the type of fan who loves virtually everything that isn't totally incompetent.

There used to be a great blog devoted to scenery in films, but it seems to have stopped.

About to watch "Here comes the devil" per aeros emphatic recommendation upthread. Will report back. Streaming netflix, FYI.

Experiment ruined 20 minutes in by baby, but so far 90% whoa awesome, 10% huh camerawork.

I'm really surprised at contenderizer finding that it is a 'gorgeous film, exquisitely well crafted'. I thought it looked like ugly, cheap digital. However, this once again helped the off-the-cuff-ness of it all. I'd say check the last half.

― Frederik B, Monday, May 5, 2014 8:14 AM (1 week ago)

i thought it was lovely, sharp, beautifully composed digital, the latter not at all compromised by the loose, handheld approach. have never seen a bad-looking KDK film tho. re alan n: i often wondered while watching whether i should just bail on the thing, but an awful, rubbernecking fascination that held me through. it's really lingered in my mind, not just due to the yuk factor.

^ on moebius

http://www.deadline.com/2014/05/cannes-stephen-king-novel-geralds-game-to-be-adapted-by-oculus-helmer-mike-flanagan-and-intrepid-pictures/

thanks for weighing in, frederik & contenderizer. I'll give moebius another shot sometime soon.

THE CONJURING
I disliked this. It has many of the flaws of Insidious but worse, another nauseating sentimental depiction of a nice dull American family being terrorized by spirits. It seemed like it was made for a conservative audience that is in the habit of being exploited by mediums who claim they can speak to ghosts.
It does some things well enough and like Insidious, some of the music was good but all this got buried under bad cliches.

MAMA
The visuals of the mother spirit are central and while there are quite a few images that are quite cool, they just aren't done well enough. There are moments where the face of the mother spirit is a real actress but a bit distorted and it looks better; I think they should have stuck with that more realistic technique because the more spidery images just make you think "the concept art for this is probably really good".
The drama side is okay (certainly looks good next to The Conjuring) but not as moving as it was probably supposed to be.

watched proxy --not dreadful, but it's way too dour, characters are not well-crafted, ppl behave unrealistically @ several turns, not enough is explained abt the first woman really or overall generally; there is also a really absurd slomo blood spurt in joe swanbergs face where u can't not scoff @ it

Just watched Triangle, thanks to this thread. Help me out here, those who remember it. * THAR BE SPOILERS*

The loop logic of it seems solid, except for the moment of the wreck. Had she survived it, crawled away, and then limped off to the dock, that would make perfect sense and lead to the beginning of the film. But instead, there's suddenly a second her gazing at the aftermath of the wreck. But at this point, unlike on the boat, there should be only one of her, not multiple hers. Ah, crap, you'd probably have to have seen this yesterday to be able to discuss this much detail. Pretty cool movie, flaws and all, with one fantastic reveal (she comes around a corner chasing the married woman and you see... well, you know).

***spoiler***I could totally be wrong here, but part of why I loved Triangle was because they did such a great job of keeping the overlapping timeline(s) logical up until the very end where they just seemed to say "fuck it, this is a much more entertaining ending than trying to have it make sense"

Ah, crap, you'd probably have to have seen this yesterday to be able to discuss this much detail.

― The Thnig, Friday, June 6, 2014 12:28 PM (10 hours ago)

yeah, had fun, but don't recall the details anywhere near well enough to really get into it

I've watched some trash recently when it has been too hot to do anything else.

Paranormal Activity 5 has the advantage of being marginally better than Paranormal Activity 4 but is still very slight. The only thing that the series really has going for it is well-choreographed domestic scares and the latest essentially dispenses with any of that, leaving very little.

The Entity is another in the long line of films where mediocre actors wander around a disused light industrial unit in Romania insane asylum shrieking and filming things falling over. It's played completely straight and the back story about Russian MK-ULTRA experiments adds nothing. The whole thing looks like it could have been devised, written and filmed over the course of weekend. It's completely pointless.

In contrast Banshee Chapter, which also had an MK-ULTRA theme, looks quite passable. It's loosely based on Lovecraft's From Beyond and stretches a low budget a hack of a lot further.

Jug Face could have potentially been interesting to those who don't have an aversion to hillbilly stereotypes and hammy acting but it doesn't really gel together. Might have been ok as a 45m TV thing but doesn't do enough to sustain feature length. Sean Young is good value as a scenery-chewing backwoods matriarch though.

World War Z is exactly as you would expect it to be from the trailer.

considering the trashing WWZ got on its own thread, I was pleasantly surprised by it.

wow "Megan is Missing" caught me completely offguard. Not sure it's really good in almost any measureable way, but wow. Last half is stunningly unpleasant and difficult to watch.

Oculus was a big disappointment after Absentia, quite ambitious in a way but actively irritating from halfway.

Oh sweet Jesus "Megan Is Missing." I think I'm glad I saw it, but I'm positive I'd like to never see it again.

agree
i just remembered what it is

and i dunno if A Field in England counts as "horror" but whooeeeey was it good! i think i loved basically every single thing about it.

oh hey I just watched that too! I got a bit frustrated with it while it was on but then reflecting on it later it's grown in my estimation. It's one of those things that seems simple on the surface plot-wise - not a lot really happens - but it has all these little details that tie the narrative in knots.

I was thinking that Friend and Jacob are spirits that are trapped in the field, and Whitehead joins them at the end - but this leaves open why Cutler is there, what his role is.

I'm sorry, the characters are named

the singing one with the beard and the hat
the alchemist's servant
the one with VD
the guru
the rakish bodyguard

i think that was it? i really liked the bug segments too.

ok Friend is the singing one, Whitehead is the alchemist's servant, the guru is O'Neill ... I think Cutler is the rakish bodyguard and Jacob is the one with VD. At the end in the final shot (SPOILERS) Whitehead is standing in the field in between Jacob and Friend and wearing Cutler's hat (and other clothes iirc?)

the implication being that Whitehead has assumed Cutler's role/replaced him... altho Whitehead didn't kill Cutler, it was O'Neill that blew Cutler's face off iirc. see I already need to see this again...

Man, none of that explanation makes any sense to me. Nevertheless, LOVED the movie.

Turned off Megan is Missing because I could not rid myself of the suspicion throughout that it was made for creeps to masturbate to, and the suspicion became conviction when the last bit of "found footage" was introduced, and life is too short and good horror movies are too enjoyable for that shit. "Torture porn" as a metaphor is bad enough, don't need the real thing.

my interpretation is of A Field in England is not fully formed, but it does seem like there's some kind of magic/metaphysical underpinning to it. they all seem trapped in the field, deranged by it, and the stuff with the ropes and the dead returning and the hallucinations seem to require something more than any explicitly realistic interpretation.

My interpretation of "a field in England" is that I haven't seen it yet so each of these posts throw me into an eye covering panic.

On worse news, I'm about to watch "Wolf Creek 2". Not optimistic, tbh.

Jug Face last night (it's on Netflix instant now). I dug it a lot. It felt something from Creepy magazine drawn by Wrightson or something.

I saw some of "World War Z" the other day (the unrated cut, whatever that means). I hated it sooooo much, it was such a turd. Basically every scene, every line made me groan. At one point I thought, well, at least it must be wrapping up, but there was an hour left! So I turned it off.

Seriously, it just stunk. Everything about it was so lame. Possibly hammered home by the scene with David Morse pulling out his tooth. I thought, huh, this is a movie about a mass zombie outbreak, and this is where the so-far more or less bloodless movie pulls out its try-to-shock chops? Except it was just stupid and funny, and totally nonsensical.

Movie is barely horror. Certainly not scary. Directed by algorithm and phony across the board. Every set looks art directed down to the cheap trash blowing around, a trend begun really early on when they escape from some NYC (I think?) traffic jam in this conspicuous late-model R/V that popped out as obviously as the Mystery Machine.

Nothing we've posted will ruin A Field in England for you imo -- it's more of a full sensory experience type movie. Figuring out the plot is something I would care about maybe the 2nd or 3rd time I saw it. Get the soundtrack!! It's great.

Jon Lewis- I've never heard of Jug Face but you've interested me greatly with that Wrightson comparison.

I picked up a DVD copy of Strange Color Of Your Bodies Tears today, but I had no idea it had even been shown at anything more than festivals, I thought it was going to come out at the end of the year or something!
Although it's probably a sad thing that it didn't get shown at the cinema (maybe GFT shown it?) I love surprises like that at shops.

Wasn't a huge fan of jug face, but it is streaming on Netflix for the interested

any words yea or nay on Last Kind Words?

My friend made that. But I've only read the script thus far ...

This is a hard sell but Afflicted is a decent found footage vampire movie, honest. It is more like a low budget but superior Chronicle. I mentioned it on here before and fully understand people's antipathy for a found footage, vampire movie.

Xxxp saw copies of Strange Color OYBT in Fopp, is it worth picking up? (how does it compare to Amer?)

Haven't watched it yet, maybe tomorrow night.

Is "Willow Creek" supposed to be any good? I generally like Bob Goldthwait's movies, which have all been pretty daring and original, but this one seems so much a straight-up "Blair Witch" retread that I wonder if there's something more to it.

i'm keen to see it

Hmmm take this with my tastes in mind, but I enjoyed paranormal activity the marked ones/5 and wolf creek 2 WAY more than I expected to.

OK, so "Willow Creek" is indeed exactly what you (I) expected, with really nothing at all added to the formula. Pretty weird that Bobcat would make it, in fact. That said, I guess it's done about as well as it could be done. Actors are pretty good, some long take intensity perhaps heightened by the relationship between the characters, and at least some of the requisite dumb behavior I can defend. Still ... I dunno. It's not "Grave Encounters."

Strange Color Of Your Bodies Tears was fantastic. Probably better than Amer, certainly way more violent. Loads of techniques, more direct references to Italian films (references tend to annoy me but it didn't here), lots of Art Nouveau. It's like they are determined to make every shot count.

My dad caught one of the more extreme scenes and was totally shocked and offended, saying that the filmmakers should be shot or put in jail. Every now and then I get a reminder that stuff I'm totally used to can really still shock people. Like when I bring up a topic into conversation that many people would rather not think about but usually doesn't bother most people you talk to.

There's a really beautiful girl in this who looks familiar (maybe a model), but the cast list doesn't really describe much to know who played who.

After a bit of research it appears to be model Aline Stevens.

Wow, looking into it, a lot of people absolutely HATE "Strange Color Of Your Body's Tears." Perhaps largely for being totally indulgent yet utterly humorless? Regardless, I'm intrigued.

People seemingly found it boring for all the reasons I found it exciting. Indulge away! More Incoherent nightmares! More! I want to get lost in the labyrinth sitting between Inferno and Inland Empire.
Shove your nice Christian American families and cocky teenagers up your asses.

Yeah, I kept spelling the title wrong.

Willow Creek was so inconsequential, nothing happens and annoyingly it is quite competent. I have better hopes for Oculus tomorrow night, which can't be that bad as is has Katee in it.

Willow Creek was so inconsequential, nothing happens and annoyingly it is quite competent.

This is OTM. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and aspects of it are way above average, and yet the movie is so inconsequential it's baffling, especially coming from Goldthwait. In fact, after I watched it I looked up some interviews, to see what was up. I guess he paid for it all himself, shot on location with a small crew, did a ton of research, and pretty much all the locals are real locals who may have thought they were being interviewed for a real documentary. Goldthwait was wary of going into a mode so played out (found footage), and even was very self-aware of its similarities to "Blair Witch," but uncynically just wanted to make this movie. I guess Goldthwait just really likes bigfoot.

One line he took repeatedly in interviews is that maybe critics and fans have seen a million movies of this sort, but he hadn't, so it was fresh for him. Also, he had a friend say, basically, that since he's working on a musical and a western, supposedly, and they are the most played out of all movie sorts, then why not found footage?

I watched Strip Nude For Dark Drops Of Autumn Vice The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears last night and enjoyed it. It looks fabulous, the soundtrack (mostly culled from various Morricone / Nicolai works) is great and there are lots of nice homages to genre classics (down to one of the characters being called Edwige). Although there isn't really much attempt made to match Amer's build-up of suspense, visually there are lots of scenes that surpass their previous work. I do feel they need to do something different next time, though. As beautiful as Amer and SCOYBT are, it's not something they can get away with repeating endlessly. It would be interesting to see them applying the aesthetic to something a shade more conventionally structured.