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

imo it's the same with metal/heavy music
it'd be nice to have a better distinction but w/e

in both cases they keep trying to make "extreme" happen but then i just feel like an extra in a surge commercial which no thanks

Noe never bettered I Stand Alone imo.

I mean I'm up for pretty much any genre but there are only a handful of realistic horror films I really like. It can be a tad frustrating reading horror anthologies looking for supernatural weirdness but mostly getting murder/serial killer stories.

I wouldn't have thought heavy music and metal getting lumped together presented much of a problem. People map the genres so precisely that there is less chance of walking into the wrong room.

But there's always going to be stuff that is difficult to describe. I'm not sure I could call Martyrs a realistic horror film, and doing so might be a spoiler because in places it plays with your ideas of what is happening.

Sometimes I wish the horror genre had a different name and it would be easier to avoid stuff I didn't like so much. "Weird" is gaining some ground, "Dark Fantasy" is quite problematic and already has associations with other genres.

horror is an awfully big umbrella, especially nowadays. i prefer the weird and surreal to brutal extremities, and "dark fantasy" is fine by me, so long as it's closer to the company of wolves than twilight. because i'm particular, i find i have to do quite a bit of reading and listening to get a sense of what might be worth pursuing. which isn't to say i avoid stuff like the human centipede and martyrs, but at least i know in advance what i'm getting into.

I used to never watch trailers because some great films have bad trailers (most modern big budget films have shit trailers) but now I'm trying to cut back I'd prefer to use the help of trailers regularly. I should probably do the same with track clips for albums.

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW

If edited down this could have been really amazing. About an halfway through I thought I wasn't going to see anything to make this truly worthwhile, then wham, those melting hot images were stunning. The second half is a big improvement, with more lovely stuff going on.
I was totally not expecting the two really creepy bits and it was all the more unsettling for that. The second creepy bit was especially striking.

I was bored for most of the film (the early scenes in particular are way too drawn out) but those good moments were worth more than a lot of whole films I've seen recently.

Panos Cosmatos has got to be one of the most promising new directors out there. Keeping my fingers crossed he'll make tighter mood pieces in the future. As with a lot of the current directors I like, I hope he can let go of the retro stuff.

goddam, just lost a response :(

like you, i realized about half an hour, 40 min in that it wasn't going anywhere, didn't have anything on offer but surfaces. thing is, i dug the vibe & design so much that i happily accepted it on those terms. such a gorgeous, immersive nothing of a film. has to have been deliberately styled as "altered zones: the movie", though, right? triangles, videotape, drones, telepathy, ossified futurism. freaking rainforest wall decal. which sounds horribly contrived, but ambition and attention to detail carried it through. and yeah, the creepy bits! gave the 2nd half a nice jolt of wtf energy.

if you mean to include cattet & forzani among the promising contemporary directors who need to "let go of the retro stuff", i half agree. they & cosmatos at least manage to present a distinctive, contemporary POV through the retro shag. tendency to emphasize style above all else might be the bigger limitation.

Although I can fully appreciate retro works, I always feel as if carefully recreating an older style is not the best way to go. I think people should always try to extract the essential essences from the old things without trying to keep the era they were from.

So I have been very surprised that most of my favourite films of recent years have been retro works to some extent.
Berberian Sound Studio and A Field In England were relatively light retro, they weren't just set in an earlier period, they borrowed some recognisable style elements from earlier films. But AFIE probably owes much less to past films than anyone of the crop.
Amer and Strange Color Of Your Body's Tears carefully recreate a lot more. Refn using retro elements too.

I've heard that SCOYBT was advertised as "all style, no substance" but I'm taking that as a joke.
I have a major axe to grind about the popular definitions of "content" and "substance". Most people equate plot/character with the only meaningful substance to the extent that something like Iron Man or Stakeland gets regarded as deeper than Beyond The Black Rainbow. Which of course is horseshit.

Visuals and sounds can have as deep a substance as anything can.

As dull as the film was at points, it has a richness, immersiveness and beauty that few films ever approach. Surface is not necessarily superficial.

I saw Kate Bush's video for "The Sensual World" recently for the first time and it really blown me away. That's what visuals and sounds can do. Yes it has lyrics but you don't have to understand English to love this video.
Made me think I should be watching way more music videos. But it's hard finding good ones.

I would have liked SCOYBT better if it was as long as "The Sensual World."

That's fair enough. I think it's too long as well. But it's still one of my favourites. I think Amer suffers more from being too long. The first segment is near perfect but the last two don't have as much to dwell on.

I really wish short films had a better platform to be seen from. Obviously there is YouTube and Vimeo and you can score a huge hit but rarely as big as a feature length film. Most of the really famous short films I can think of are animated.

I finally saw Wolf Creek last night

idk I kind of feel like I separated into 2 people watching it.

On the one hand, it definitely did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre thing well - ie it's all hopeless, no there's no explanation, yes this guy's a giant creep and you better fucking run or you're going to die sorry we can't tell you why just run
i liked the setting, I thought John Jarrat was great. He reminded me of my dad in a weird way which was kind of lol/kind of upsetting

but then there was the other part of me that found it kind of boring and stupid. And I hated that we spend so much time with both girls over and over in endlessly stupid perilous situations (like I'm going to climb into a pit full of dead bodies just because I dropped my gun jfc) and watch them get tortured in a fair amount of detail meanwhile the other dude is tied up ~somewhere~ the whole time with a few cutaway shots and oh nvm he got tortured off camera, he gets himself free, and off he goes. I really hated that. It just felt SO lazy.

I think the campfire scene was good but I don't think there's a much to recommend the film. It is unpleasant but not in a way that really does anything impressive.

Anyone see "Coherence?" Dunno if horror is the right category for this one, anymore than "Upstream Color."

Yeah I really liked it, it was very similar to the excellent Spanish sci-fi movie Timecrimes. I am always a sucker for movies that have multi-verse, time travel type ideas and this one didn't disappoint. The low budget movies of this type are often the best ones and the low budget approach actually makes them more like horror movies than say Looper.

'so oculus was alright. Kind of muddy but effective and I jumped and gasped at the end. I watched this only because of karen gillan and was pleasantly surprised.

I watched a very bizarre and creepy Dutch movie tonight called Borgman about a bearded vagrant type who you first see living in a network of foxholes in a woodland area with other friends, who are getting hunted by a gang of killers lead by a priest. Then after fleeing he creepily imbeds himself into a wealthy household in a very insidious but horrifying fashion and steals the gardeners job and the surreal horror unravels slowly ...

??? That sounds perfect

It is very good, not perfect but definitely above average and worth your time.

Yeah, Borgman seems very much a future cult classic.

He made Oculus and has another one coming soon.

― Simon H., Sunday, August 17, 2014 10:31 AM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― Simon H., Sunday, August 17, 2014 10:51 AM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ugh. really?

― SEEMS TO ME (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, August 17, 2014 10:55 AM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post

http://deadline.com/2014/09/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-remake-horror-movie-sony-834570/

...huh.

I'm hoping his talent will outshine the questionable source material in both of these.

so The Guest is getting good 'quality' reviews.

(ie, it's a sea change from the V/H/S movies the guy did, i guess)

otoh, Sam Adams' complete L'box review:

I am not trusting any of you fuckers about Adam Wingard movies ever again.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-horror-films-21st-century?utm_content=buffer27b32&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebookbfi&utm_campaign=buffer

well all the ones on that list that I have seen are great, guess I should see the rest then

The Descent and House of the Devil are both roughly 3/4 good (which I noted in the Halloween thread was also the case with Lords of Salem). I'm beginning to think I almost prefer horror movies that maintain a more mediocre consistency of tone to those that hit some serious heights for a good while only to stumble in the home stretch. It's as if some modern horror filmmakers grew up reading King and taking exactly the wrong storytelling lessons away from his stuff.

I would say 3/4 great in the case of The Descent.

I've seen May, Bug, and Berberian Sound Studio. The latter probably my favorite altho it's so meta I dunno if I would really call it a horror film. it's more like a film about horror films shot in the style of a horror film. May was great. Bug was a little one-note but solid.

To toot my own horn: http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-horror-films-of-the-aughts

I thought "The Guest," like a lot of movies from this hipster horror crew, was a ridiculous, underdeveloped lark, but it had a lot going for it as a particularly brazen pastiche. It's like John Carpenter traveled back to 1984 with a copy of "The Terminator" and "Drive" and gave them to Wes Craven.

TOOT TOOT

(heeeeey)

Also works as a less escapist take on "Captain America."

Saw The Quiet Ones and The Possession Of Michael King yesterday - the former very conventional but slightly above average, the latter with a moderately promising set-up but terribly executed and boring.

The Babadook looks like it might be worth seeing,

The Babadook looks awesome, just from reviews which are all very positive.

The first two thirds of Oculus were really good. Fell apart a little at the end. Rory Cochrane bears a disconcerting likeness to Danny Dyer.

always happy to see Bug get props.

I just watched Borgman and for the most part I enjoyed it, but what exactly happened? I really enjoy the build up but when it was over I couldn't tell you what happened, aside from being very unsettled by the whole film.

watched House of the Devil on Sunday. Was immediately taken with it just from the opening sequence and it was really strong until about 2/3rds of the way through when it just sort of... peters out halfheartedly. Really reminded me of the Strangers in that regard, where the setup and buildup of tension is really well done and then when it comes time to deliver it just fails. Too bad.

yeah... on balance, though, I very much like it. Now what about The Sacrament? I've liked every Ti West movie I've seen up til now but something made me turn this off less than 5 minutes in.

this was the first Ti West I've watched, would check out other stuff just based on his clear mastery of style - I kinda blame the script in House of the Devil more than anything else, just anti-climactic.

The guy playing quasi-Jim-Jones in The Sacrament was excellent. Everything else was blah.

More focus on that character / his motivations and less on the Vice crew hiding from gunmen would have made it approx twice as good.

Shakey, the Innkeepers is pretty awesome

Oops sorry for doxxing u

Yeah the innkeepers is the best thing he's ever done

Again, tho, didn't stick the landing.

it makes me think up-and-coming horror guys should start with the ending and work backwards

Endings are for losers