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

made me cross

well, my partner worked out the first 'twist' fairly early on although the other half-way twist was more unexpected. I really liked it.

noteworthy. from the last couple of months :

the invitation - worthy of all the buzz surrounding it. somber, paranoia driven thriller that manages to convey unbrearable tension throughout. brilliatly acted and directed.

hush - 'oculus' didn't really live up to the expectations after 'absentia', but it was still a noble effort and flanagan is def one to keep an eye on. interesting and nail-bitting efficient take on the tired home invasion theme. and again, with carachters you really care about.

intruders - speaking of home invasion, this one tries to put a fresh spin on the genre. it doesn't work all the way through, but it's still worth a shot.

baskin - expectations could never be fullfilled for this one i guess, but the first(?) turkish horror movie is a no holds barred take on satanism. twisted and demented.

man in the orange jacket - again, went with the biggest expectations. after such a brutal start, things tend to dwell too much on the psychological aspect when i prefered for it to stick a bit more with the slasher undertones. the arthouse tendencies prevail, but one can't ignore how beautifully shot it is. a promising start for latvian horror.

baskin - expectations could never be fullfilled for this one i guess, but the first(?) turkish horror movie is a no holds barred take on satanism. twisted and demented.

zomg been anticipating this for months, fruitlessly checking sources, etc. and now it's out! thanks for the heads-up, rusty.

looking forward to the invitation, too.

Anyone seen or heard much about that Polish vampire mermaid in the '80s movie "The Lure?"

Sounds cool, you got any links?

oh, and baskin isn't the first turkish horror flick. there's a turkish dracula from '53, and plenty of more recent examples. hasan karacadag's dabbe (2006) pulls some interesting twists on haunting, possession and j-horror tropes (and it's had 5 sequels so far).

oh, and 'southbound' is the best anthology i've seen in a long, long time. in light of some recent light-hearted, seasonal themed affairs like 'tales of halloween' or 'a christmas ghost story' the serious and dreadful tone is truly welcoming. overall it's really coherent and one of those rare occasions where the wraparound story makes sense.

also, there should be way more horror movies using the desert as scenery.

oh, and baskin isn't the first turkish horror flick. there's a turkish dracula from '53, and plenty of more recent examples. hasan karacadag's dabbe (2006) pulls some interesting twists on haunting, possession and j-horror tropes (and it's had 5 sequels so far).

^^ yeah, didn't seem likely, hence the (?). i guess i saw it promoted as such somewhere?

There's a "Lure" trailer here, in Polish with no subtitles:
http://cineuropa.org/vd.aspx?t=video&l=en&did=301711

NSFW wordless trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKBMAAqZ7no

Here's the Polish one from the first link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufjCgXPxKuc

Sorry, I think that's just a clip^

other than that, really want to see 'darling', 'february' and 'holidays'. and tho i didn't like 'cloverfield' that much, i might give this new one a try.

re holidays : mostly because i want to see what the kevin kölsch and dennis widmyer tag team and sarah adina smith come up with.

Darling was all right, a small-scale pastiche of Repulsion and The Tenant.
A bit too many jump cuts and attack music for my taste, but if I'm gonna stare at an intense scary face for two hours I don't mind it being Lauren Ashley Carter's.

Hush was pretty good. A decent exercise in crafting a near-wordless home-invasion horror, though even at 80 minutes it was getting to be stretched a little thin. A little more conventional, and not really a patch on either Oculus or Absentia, but another really effective horror from Mike Flanagan.

Caught the Innkeepers on Film4 last night, thought it was a pretty good low-key horror though when it actually got to the ghosts they were a bit "clanking chains and moaning". Didn't realise it was Ti West, who I assumed I hated but I haven't actually seen any of his full length films (I do hate basically all of ABCs of Death and don't like V/H/S, so those probably count).

House Of The Devil and Innkeepers are not bad. He's doing a western with some bigger actors now.

I generally disliked ABCs Of Death but Cattet/Forzani and Lee Hardcastle's segments were great.

The Indonesian cult V/H/S was worth the series existing.

^^ otm

watched baskin and the invitation last night. both quite good. loved baskin's full comittment to A) harebrained nightmare logic and B) spooky purple lighting. disappointed by the final act's extended torture wallow, but it didn't ruin the film for me. and though it's played a bit straight for my taste, the invitation is excellent. 2nd rusty's enthusiasm.

The innkeepers is the only good ti west full length.

Mike Flanagan seems to be getting progressively less interesting with each film. Hopefully he can turn it back around soon because board fav Absentia was so promising.

I actually liked "Hush," which shares some similarly elegiac qualities with his other films and has a lot of other stuff going for it, not least making you care about the protagonist, which like 99% of horror movies fail at. Its flaws are forgivable I think because it looks like he filmed it almost as an exercise, a secret low budget film with a handful of people in a single location, straight to Netflix.

Actually, if you look at his timeline, Flanagan is kind of fascinating. The idea for "Oculus" came first, and he made it into a short film. Then he lost funding for the feature version, so made "Absentia" funded by a Kickstarter campaign. It did well enough that he got the go ahead to make the "Oculus" movie, which was supposed to be followed by "Before I Wake" until the studio went bankrupt, so instead he wrote and made this one, quietly. I guess "Before I Wake" was released in a few countries, and was supposed to be out here now, but got pushed back. He's doing "Ouija 2" and writing the reboot of "I Know What You Did Last Summer," no doubt as a mercenary gig, to pay the bills. (thanks wikipedia)

Anyway, it's all been a scramble, poor guy.

That said, yeah, this one felt like a quick riff on you're next.

I really, really couldn't hang with HUSH. Just was not able to suspend the requisite disbelief to get me through logic problems. Just a case of having seen that movie a half dozen times now, each other version much better.

But man - that LURE trailer!

And I'm pretty excited for the new Nicholas Winding Refn horror flick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cipOTUO0CmU

Speaking of "that movie," anyone remember "Mute Witness?" I thought that was really solid, way back when.

xpost Modeling world "Black Swan?"

Oh man, Mute Witness was so, so killer. Genuinely terrifying.
And when that key cameo happened it was SO leftfield I remember multiple nerds in the theater going "holy shit!"
Whatever happened to Anthony Waller?! That guy should have made SO MANY more movies by now

Looks like he made a handful of overlooked or forgettable films, last one in 2009. But hey, how about this "American Werewolf in Paris" poster!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/ParisWerewolf.jpg

OK, was watching "The Invitation" and I wasn't sure I could make it. It's super-uncomfortable, and so Los Angeles it's kinda insufferable. But then a character basically voiced my objection word for word (love it when that happens), and then ... the movie shifts ... Still super-tense and paranoid and uncomfortable - that's the point! - but thanks to the excellent direction, just great. Went in totally blind and it was worth it, even if I think I aged a few years. One of the best endings I think I've ever seen.

Ha ha, it totally was Not Tom Hardy from Prometheus as the lead! Anyway, he was good.

Can't decide if Green Room is gonna be great or trash.

Oh come on, it's going to be great. It's the Blue Ruin guy!

Mute Witness was way better than Hush although Hush was still okay.

Yeah Green Room looks amazing.

It's got great reviews but I guess the 'fighting humans' genre of horror is less what I'm into, so I'm still a bit unsure about it.

patrick stewart as a neo-nazi psychopath, is there any way that this won't be entertaining?

Green Room is genuinely one of the most unsettling movies I've ever seen. I literally felt woozy in a couple of scenes (some GNARLY gore FX factored in there). Jeremy Saulnier is the real deal.

'green room' is wonderful. lean, harsh, it's smart people against smart people..it will be under-appreciated as a thriller because it's so gross and mean. i hope saulnier makes a bunch of these but he shows so much craft and narrative skill in this movie that i fear he'll start making normal movies soon.. if you like 'fighting humans' horror or crime/suspense fiction in general i can't recommend it enough.

agreed, definitely worthwhile. outstanding competence of direction in what, sensibility-wise, should be a skeezy '70s exploitation grindhouse film. loved it.

First trailer for "The Shallows" looked weirdly promising. This one looks "Deep Blue Sea"-riffic, which ... could go either way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdxIlSuB70

Deep Blue Sea the super intelligent shark movie with Samuel L Jackson, Thomas Jayne, LL Cool J and a cast of some others.

Gravity 2

Can I just say that still of Blake Lively in the video is like woah

Great piece for fans (or non-fans) of "Hush:"

https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-flanagan/regarding-the-why/10153664900868087

I argued at the time that no matter what we said, it would not be satisfying. “The mirror frame was carved from a tree where they hung witches,” “the glass was made from sand from a beach where the devil played volleyball” - there simply isn’t an answer to the question “where does an evil mirror come from” that isn’t, frankly, stupid.

paraphrased from elsewhere, but...

I remember hearing a story told by Ernesto Gastaldi, the screenwriter of The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock. He says the director, Riccardo Freda, threw away the last 10 pages of his script. Gastaldi asked, "But why? This is what ties it all together and allows it to make sense." And Freda replied, "Exactly."

^^^anecdotes to live by imo

good points in that piece

I liked Oculus alright, haven't seen his other stuff