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

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.

I agree about there being a danger in mining this territory too long but I think the unconventional structure is something they (and other directors) should keep going with.

I was thinking about this recently how I generally dislike the idea of very studied retro pieces, yet many of my favourite films of recent times have been like that to some extent. To The point where I'm starting to wonder if anyone will do a good Franco/Rollin style thing or any other types of revivals. Some people called Livid a Rollin type thing and it was a bit, but without the nudity.
But I'd prefer people used the old influences as a springboard into something new that doesn't blatantly refer back.

In a review of Strange Colour i read recently, there was a mention of a couple of Rollin-influenced films coming out soon but no details.

Chris Alexander, the editor of Fangoria, did a studied Rollin/Franco homage, Blood for Irinia. it's not very good.

Xan Cassavetes' Kiss of the Damned is too competently directed to be a tribute to Franco, but the Rollin-isms are pronounced and likely intentional. better than Irinia, though not much less derivative. i did like KOTD quite a bit.

i finally saw insidious the other day. i was surprised how much i enjoyed it. between that & the conjuring, james wan is getting better & better at bringing on the oldhouse creeps

insidious 2 was a bit odd though. kinda collapsed in on itself with all the backstory, kinda sloppy

but i have such a big soft spot for whannell & wan together. i even dug the first Saw movie before it got beaten like a dead horse

Insidious seemed so promising at the start but with that scary lady in the darkness and the creepy music but it just taken all the worst things about Poltergeist and amplified them. Conjuring went even further to an infuriating degree.

Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is like a homage to giallo based on an oral description of giallo surmised by a screening of a giallo parody. Expertly silly.

I've heard that Evil Dead 4 might be made as a tv series. Nightbreed tv series is also a possibility.

Just saw trailer to a Dracula origin story that doesn't look great but what made the strongest impression is a bad cover of Tears For Fears "Everbody Wants To Rule The World" that tries to make the song dark and edgy.

Lorde?

I've no clue. I don't know what they sound like.

Lorde

lol, i dialed that up on youtube to see what you're talking about and hooboy it's overwrought

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.

― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Thursday, July 10, 2014 12:13 AM (3 weeks ago)

a tiny trace of amer's magic dissipated when i watched the filmmakers' earlier short films (included on the DVD release). crude little candy-colored retro fetish exercises about observation, leather gloves, female flesh, penetrative knives, etc. all of which is still present in amer but given a much broader and more interesting/challenging context. not sure how far they can go on "i am fascinated by the texture & trappings of this one particular pop genre," but it seems to be working so far...

Yeah, I loved all their stuff so far but the danger is looming. I thought the screwdriver scene in one of the short films felt a bit too much for their style though.

has anyone else seen argento's dracula 3d. it's really cheap looking. this happens in it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssE_6DmL_dk

Stage Fright is fairly entertaining. The first half an hour is substantially better than the rest and it suffers from the traditional horror-comedy complaint of not being tense or funny enough to fit into either genre well but it's likeable.

Also saw Mr Jones which wastes a moderately intriguing premise.

watched Oculus yesterday

it's interesting, but there is a lot of visual/atmospheric sleight of hand distracting you from the fact that the story is very halfassed

it gets kinda neat in the middle & goes crazy with timeline shifts, vaguely kinda sorta lynchian in places. better than expected.

awful lot of plate eating, mouths full of blood & teeth falling out. and choking. lots of choking.

side note: the dad is stonerdude Slater from Dazed & Confused :D

Hey just in case found footage shit doesn't make you want to bang your head against the wall yet, 2 new flicks streaming on NF. "Alien Abduction" (which has got to be in the running for worst marketing and branding department this year) is a pretty effectively creep out tension pounder, certainly dumb in spots but man when it works it really works, and they actually wring out a few new and effective tricks i havent seen before.

"The Conspiracy" on the other hand is way slower and tenser, milking a great burn up to the end, way better than expected - more thriller than horror maybe but the piling of anticipation and dread is very well done. Dark hand behind the curtain secret society creeper shit here, but it works.

Proxy is up today. Will probably watch that over the next few days.

The Conspiracy was definitely watchable.

wait where is proxy streaming? not turning up on instantwatcher

I'm watching it on US Netflix now.

http://us.whatsnewonnetflix.com

hmm maybe instantwatcher is going on the retirement list, lots of stuff has been sorta slipping through the cracks there as of late

The first half of Proxy is excellent - like the chilly Hitchcockian thrillers you used to get loads of coming out of France in the eighties and nineties. The second hour is pretty by-numbers.

I think once Netflix hid its expiration dates, instantwatcher lost its sense of purpose.

Speaking of Netflix, anyone watch The Reef, the Australian shark movie? People seem to like it OK.

I found it very drawn out and uninteresting.

that is a perfect review of Proxy, too.

The realistic or semi-realistic shark horror film never really seems that promising to me, even though sharks are cool. All the Jaws films blend together in my memory, I'm not huge on them. I haven't seen Open Water, from the trailers it seemed very similar to Bruce Jones & Richard Corben's short comic "In Deep", which is amazing but I doubt that kind of story would be at feature length.

Open Water was great -- at least it was in the theater, where the blackness/sound made it feel pretty suffocating. I saw Open Water 2 (a totally unrelated film) on a plane and actually liked it, which says a lot, cuz it's pretty hard to like anything on a plane.

Black Water is very solid crocodile horror film. Recommended.

Open Water is the slow, based-on-a-true-story one with the abandoned scuba divers, right? That was great. But I keep getting it confused with things like Deep Blue Sea or Dark Water or Sharknado.

You are correct.

Open Water was great. The Reef, while well acted, was a slog.

"All Cheerleaders Die" isn't just the worst Lucky McKee, it might be the worst horror film I've seen this year. Fucking horrendous, I'll be mad about this for a while.

yeah, it's bad. watched it the other day and wanted to post something here, but i've been dragging my heels lately, no good reason:

Another in a string of disappointments from Lucky McKee, and arguably his first complete failure. Where his previous films have stuck with fairly serious horror, this one tries a different approach, blending snarky high school comedy with dark fantasy and supernatural horror. Heathers and Mean Girls are obvious touchstones, but All Cheerleaders Die lands closest to 2009's justly-maligned Jennfer's Body. McKee and his writing/directing partner Chris Sivertson show no flair for or insight into the adolescent milieux. They simply run stock character types through a series of absurd happenings, spiking the familiar teen melodrama with goofy magical claptrap and a few jolts of tepid mahem. In the manner of McKee's more successful past efforts, All Cheerleaders maintains a strong feminist perspective and attempts to build a compellingly conflicted complex central character. Those elements do add some interest to the proceedings, but they can't salvage the misbegotten whole. The comedy isn't funny, and the horror never bites. The film's tonal inconsistencies may be 100% intentional, but regardless of what the McKee and Sivertson intended, the end result is more irritating than involving.

though i liked the woods and the woman, i say "string of diappointments" because may still towers over everything he's done since. the trend has been southerly since.

I'm still most impressed by the woods and red, but I still hated this more than I can explain. So basically no matter which of his films you enjoy, you will hate this movie.

So thankful for this thread, because I had "All Cheerleaders Must Die" ready to go for a while, with the weird understanding that it was supposed to be good (despite a scan of some reviews which basically said, um, no it's not)). Obviously, as we've determined again and again, horror can be pretty divisive, and there are some really problematic movies that are worth seeing, and prestige movies worth skipping. But the animosity toward this one is pretty convincing.

What happened to the dude who made "Absentia?"

He made Oculus and has another one coming soon.

More specifically, apparently he's adapting Gerald's Game.

ugh. really?