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

^^ 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

Yeah that piece is so otm

oddly I totally did *not* care about the WHY of the mirror as much as I cared about WHY of the protagonist's elaborate plan in Oculus

Yeah, I sorta agree, but I just figured it was a facet of the mania the mirror inspired. Like this crazy unnecessarily complex coyote plan that the roadrunner just totally subverts.

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

Jeez, September?

Docked a point for spooky slowed down version of pop song in the trailer.

^ from writer-director team simon barrett & adam wingard, on a hell of a roll lately w/ you're next (2011) and the guest (2014). excite.

Yeah, hence my excitement. I thought "The Guest" was kind of dumb, but dumb in a really inspired way. And it certainly wasn't horror though because of "You're Next" I guess people slot it there.

Speaking of slots, "Green Room" isn't really horror either, but it's as much that as anything else, and maybe more that than straight thriller. Anyway, I liked it a lot. Felt very "real:" the scenario, the characters, the way your (and their) first instincts that nothing will end well more or less pays off. Very satisfying.

it certainly wasn't horror though because of "You're Next" I guess people slot it there.

horror's gotten to be an awfully broad & vague category lately. and i think the guest kind of slots itself into the genre with all the carpenter/80s horror nods, esp in the final act. but yeah, it's basically a home outvasion thriller.

dying the see green room

Green Room is a straight up thriller at its core, but the amount of blood in it by the end of the film kinda tips it into horror

Docked a point for spooky slowed down version of pop song in the trailer.

"The Guest" starts like it's horror, sort of, but then turns in to this weird "Terminator"/b-movie riff. Which was harder for me to take seriously.

Ha, forgot "Green Room" had a slowed down "Bad Moon Rising" in the trailer. And yeah, it's a thriller, but it would not take much to make it horror. Maybe less incidental violence and more sadistic gonna get you stuff? To "Green Room"'s immense credit, there are lots of places it could have gone darker or goofier, either extreme, but it mostly stays right in the sweet spot. Also, its depiction of touring in a punk band was pretty spot-on, as was its way of avoiding telegraphing its various twists. Which weren't very twisty, just creatively off-kilter and unexpected yet completely within the character of the film.

Should say, was not nearly as intense or unsettling as I was expecting, especially compared to a time bomb like "The Invitation." I suppose if it was a horror movie it would have probably had no likable characters on either side - grim baddies, dumb and obnoxious heroes/victims - but I was pleasantly surprised at the range of behavior it depicts..

Wow, just noticed how many of the leads were English! Nice accents all around, guys.

Thought 'The Invitation' was really good. More psych-thrill than horror, but definitely suspenseful, tense, some great understated performances especially from Logan Marshall-Green.

Huh. Just watched the witch, and man. Not at all into it.

don't let black philip hear you

Sometimes the films I want to see most are the movies I put off the longest, because I want to give them my full attention (finally saw Blue Ruin, for example, after seeing Green Room). Last night I finally started "What We Do In The Shadows" but I thought it was so funny I decided to save it for my wife. I did, however, at last see "The Babadook," which maybe for obvious reasons I'd been keeping from my wife. It was pretty good! Part of a small family of psychological horror rooted in real grief and loss and in particular the challenges of parenthood. In the former camp are films like "Absentia" or maybe "The Orphanage." In the latter a movie like "Triangle," which struck me as a really well envisioned metaphor for the challenges of raising a kid with special needs. But yeah, "The Babadook," not really scary, but occasionally intense in a really fresh way. The monster as depression/parenthood/mental exhaustion is both real and imaginary, metaphor and literal. Sticks with you.

Viy 3D/Forbidden Empire/Forbidden Kingdom- a Russian film that's a mess but it still has a lot of good designs and set pieces which could have been really incredible in the right hands, most of the cast is Russian and Ukrainian but

Earlene Bentley, an actress, singer and composer known from the legendary Police Academy and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. The film also features the celebrated Charles Dance, recognized for his part as Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones.

Several actors were cast for the lead role of Jonathan Green: Vincent Cassel, Christian Slater, Tim Roth, Sean Bean, Keanu Reeves, Pierce Brosnan, and Jason Statham.[1] The producers had official negotiations with each of the actors. It was Jason Statham who recommended his best friend Jason Flemyng for the lead. Flemyng was soon approved by the director and the producers—they had found a perfect match. Christian Slater, after seeing the footage of the film, said: "I would have killed to appear in Viy! Who is that agent that failed to make me a deal?"[9]

The lead actor Jason Flemyng talks about the film: "If Viy was made in Hollywood, its budget would have reached $200 million, no less. I am impressed by the scale of the production! I have developed a lot of good and friendly connections in the US movie business. I look forward to showing the picture to my close friends: Guy Ritchie, Tom Cruise, Jason Statham, and Brad Pitt. I am sure we will receive good feedback."

There's supposed to be a sequel set in China co-starring Rutger Hauer

finally caught "You're Next" - loved it. Are this guy's other films as good?

Go watch The Guest now.

home sick - wingard's debut feature - is pretty uneven and flawed, but it's still an interesting and druggy take on slasher tropes. not brilliant by any means, but still special for me. on a druggy tip, maybe try pop skull i guess.

saw Baskin last night. Pretty good film on the whole. Loved the colour scheme and some of the performances were great. Fantastic use of an obviously low budget, although the last part, a grotesque Silent Hill-style torture fetish sequence went on too long and just came off a bit disappointing. So tired of gore being the conclusive raison d'etre of so many films. When primetime TV shows like Game Of Thrones show people getting stabbed in the face on a weekly basis, it's hard to be shocked by sicko schlocky stuff so much any more and I'd rather film makers tried to explore more nuanced ways of frightening or thrilling us.