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

horror/com

Housebound is my favorite recent horror comedy (good year for Antipodean chills), but I'm now quite curious about What We Do In the Shadows.

Yeah Housebound was piss funny. I am not a fan of Clement/Waititi's previous work, but from the reviews this seems be very dark and funny.

Was it from this thread that I got the recommendation to watch BENEATH (the one where the teens are trapped on their boat by a devil-fish)? If so, damn you! So lousy!

Anyone seen the Iranian vampire movie, "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGmTdo3vuY

No, but I've been looking forward to it for some time.

it's good! virtually no horror elements to it at all tho'.

You mean other than it being about a vampire?

yes! there's no suspense at all. it's more of a dybbuk movie of sorts i think; kind of a peek into a world i don't know anything about.

I look forward to seeing it! Iranian cinema is so sneaky and subversive. This one in particular. In a society that targets women for being alone at night (under the pretense of prosecuting prostitution), it's pretty ingenious to have a female vampire wandering around at night preying on men.

Or completely regressive, female sexuality as predatory threat etc

idk I havent seen it

It was filmed in LA fyi (tho it is in Persian and set in a fantastical Iran)

What We Do in the Shadows is good fun with a few big laughs. It needed more of Rhys Darby's rival gang of werewolves, though. But yeah, if you liked Flight of the Conchords...

so a (former) substitute teacher was just convicted of four felony counts for (inexplicably) showing The ABCs of Death in class.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/01/15/Verdict_in_substitute_teacher_trial.html

wow

http://www.fright.com/edge/2014YearInHorror.htm

Always unpredictable and a little bit baffling in places. Happy about his top 2 though.

Yeah, it's an interesting list, though as you say, all over the place. To be honest, I'm somewhat disappointed by the preponderance of long-reach borderline horror, especially in the top 10: Nightcrawler, Blue Ruin, Sin City 2, Edge of Tomorrow, etc. The former two are excellent films, but it's not like 2014 was such a terrible year for genre horror that one has to push out into straight-up crime thrillers and "blockbuster" action pictures to fill slots.

My top 10 2014 favorites (many are no less stretched than the fright.com list):

1) Under the Skin
2) Moebius
3) The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
4) Rigor Mortis
5) Only Lovers Left Alive
6) Miss Zombie
7) The Babadook
8) Housebound
9) What We Do In the Shadows
10) Found

Five more I'd love to include, but which don't quite make the cut as 2014 releases:

A Field in England (Swedish DVD in Oct. 2013, but first played NY in 2014)
Here Comes the Devil (limited US release in mid-December 2013)
Byzantium (okay, this is a straight-up 2013 release I'm including just because I dug it)
Dark Touch (apparently played NY in 2013, but no other non-festival showings or DVD release until 2014)
We Are What We Are (US remake - another 2013 release I'm throwing in for no good reason)

The Worst:

Thanatomorphose
Horns
Crawl or Die
The Devil Incarnate
Septic Man
Judy
Hotel Inferno

dunno if this got discussed here but um:

Watch the eerie trailer for a horror film about a murderous EDM producer

i must check out more of your list contenderizer. only seen the Babadook out of that list (and most of Under The Skin), but I thought it was one of the best horrors I'd seen in years.

Great list, contenderizer. Lots of stuff to check out & reminds me to try to catch Strange Color of Your Body's Tears eventually somehow...

Is Under the Skin horror? Kind of funny to slot a movie of wobbly genre itself as your number one after listing all these movies with horrific elements as stretches.

yeah i wouldn't have called it a horror personally.

This person's lists seem to always make room for entries in the extreme suburban fringes of the genre. Compliance showed up on one of them.

speaking of which, is Compliance worth a watch or no?

Yes for Ann Dowd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uPK9Ov6Zd4

This looks fucking mental!

Kind of funny to slot a movie of wobbly genre itself as your number one after listing all these movies with horrific elements as stretches.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, January 16, 2015 6:16 AM (34 minutes ago)

sure, but i called myself out on it. and under the skin is, imo, extremely effective as a horror film (though it clearly isn't genre-bound).

Horror dilettantism is totally acceptable to me.

also, the primary connection to the horror genre in the four films i singled out is a combination of violence and suspense. i just don't see that as sufficient (a matter of personal preference). under the skin adds elements of both the fantastical and the grotesque/macabre, an uncanny atmosphere of lurking dread, and a dreamlike sense of isolation in a strange and threatening environment. to me, that's more than enough.

kind of dying to see I now.

I think Under The Skin as a horror seems obvious. Especially considering how inclusive most fans, creators and critics are.

I didn't see much last year and I don't really care for the most part.

But allowing for films that many of us only got to see last year.

1. A Field In England
2. Strange Color Of Your Body's Tears
3. Under The Skin
4. Borderlands

Probably should watch (from these lists, including even not so horrory stuff) the recent Kim Ki Duk films, Dance Of Reality, 300 Sequel & Sin City 2 (both on the strength of the reviews of Eva Green's hotness, and of the former films insane campness), Hard To Be A God, Beauty And The Beast (Gans), Badabook (I'm a bit reluctant because it seems like a lot of films I've seen), Nightbreed Directors Cut, I.

I hated the first 300 more than I hate fascism, but the second one was probably last year's camp masterpiece.

The thing that got me most interested was someone saying that Baz Luhrmann will feel threatened by its campness.

I'm not into Baz Luhrmann but maybe if he made action films I'd like him more.

i thought under the skin was more horrific than babadook or a girl walks home alone

Eva Green deserves all of the trophies.

you guys are making me wanna see 302 & the sin city sequel, which lemme tell you, is quite an accomplishment

Hard To Be A God

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, January 16, 2015 7:14 AM (7 hours ago)

been putting this off for the better part of a week. so long, so poop.

Don't do it contenderizer, sin city sequel is fucking horrendous

okay, thanks, some semblance of reality restored

Just watched 300: Rise Of An Empire.

I'm just trying to get my head around this: some people recommended this as if it were silly to a pleasantly surprising, even sublime degree. But the film I just saw was every bit as dull as I would have expected if I had seen no reviews.
There's a daft sex scene and some fights are pretty well composed in places but that's spoiled by the special effects and this film is really just boring. Not nearly silly enough to be worth watching. Even Eva Green's bare breasts seem to be compromised by the cgi.

I too am sorry you watched 300

Badabook (I'm a bit reluctant because it seems like a lot of films I've seen), Nightbreed Directors Cut, I.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, January 16, 2015 7:14 AM (4 days ago)

Yeah, The Babadook slots in comfortably with the wave of slickly-produced, generally well-behaved, "things that go bump" style supernatural horror that's been cresting since Insidious. Films of this sort often feel rather generic even when they're quite successfully scary, but writing, performances and themes distinguish The Babadook from the subgenre. It's not perfect (like Oculus, it arguably fumbles at the goal line), but it's definitely worth a watch.

Disappointed by Clive Barker's Nighbreed remix, but I never dug the original. Strictly for the fans, I expect.

As a sort of long stand-alone episode, I thought Oculus was one of the few to actually stick the ending (once you get past the fact that the whole setup doesn't make a ton of sense). Speaking of which, the lightbulb-eating scene in that movie has stuck with me and still makes me shudder on a regular basis.

Badabook from trailers reminds me of Mama, Orphanage, House Of Voices and lots of the J-horror wave, more than anything like Insidious.
I prefer this style of film to a lot of things but I just wish they had a bit more going on.

i mentioned insidious cuz i see it as helping to kick off the recent flurry of housebound supernatural horror flicks, but yeah, the two don't have much in common

I'd suggest paranormal activity did it.

I thought Oculus was one of the few to actually stick the ending (once you get past the fact that the whole setup doesn't make a ton of sense)

agree w this completely

like there's no reason given that they don't just smash the mirror immediately but setting that aside everything else about it was v good imo

i wanted, for no good reason, to distinguish the current haunted everything trendlet from the ongoing found-footage boom. have to concede that insidious took after the paranormal activity flicks, though. in a broader sense, 1999 was ground zero for all such stuff (the sixth sense, the blair witch project, ringu outside japan).

i get you there