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

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.

watched the Guest - thought it was okay, not great, a bit too by the numbers, although the big setpiece at the end had some nice De Palma + Lady from Shanghai nods. Was hoping the backstory for the villain was going to be more fleshed out/interesting than it was, as portrayed it felt thin.

The Guest was bonkers and great but, yeah, pretty slight. And not a horror film even by any of the usually loose criteria I use.

Any thoughts on Conjuring 2?

Green Room is the new film to beat, IMO. Unassailable good.

Unassailably

Ah fuck I just realized the male lead is the guy that just got killed by his car.

good movie, but nothing to do with horror, imo

I watched Jin Na's The Wailing the other night. It is easily the most deranged and entertaining horror movie I have seen in ages. It is about a village where people start becoming familicidal maniacs after a dodgy looking Japanese dude takes up residence nearby and when the hapless investigating cop's daughter becomes possessed he calls in a Bhuddist voodoo shaman for help. Some might find it a slog, but it certainly didn't feel 2 and half hours to me.

yeah, its not a horror.

only horrors i see in cinemas now are either the conjuring and all those franchises (though have unfortunately not seen most of them), or art horror crap like the witch or to a lesser level of indie horror pretension, it follows.

i did love unfriended though. want to see friend request too :)

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/11/11906016/the-wailing-horror-film-review

Article bout The Wailing I saw a while ago.

Not getting why some people think The Witch is so arty farty, it's pretty straightforward. It's near the top of my favourite films of the last few decades and has many of the qualities I look for in horror.

I know I cast a wider net than many, but I'm really not sure how people make these particular horror/not horror judgements. I feel like half of the 70s classics would fail the modern horror test.

green rm is at least horror adjacent

I know I cast a wider net than many, but I'm really not sure how people make these particular horror/not horror judgements. I feel like half of the 70s classics would fail the modern horror test.

― Here, let me Danesplain that for you (jjjusten), Thursday, 14 July 2016 16:46

And a large amount of the horror book canon.

witch felt like two films.

Green Room clearly horror.

green room is horror, the witch was one film, sorry haters

i just don't get what might tie green room to horror, other than suspense & gore.

it's not scary, supernatural, spookily atmospheric, ghoulishly macabre, or obviously tied to horror tropes & traditions.

it's a tough, tense little siege thriller, like deliverance or assault on precinct 13.

where borderline cases are concerned, i can usually see what might make someone class a film as horror, but here i'm at a loss. is it just desperate situation + gore = horror?

Well, all you would have to do is tweak the context a hair to make it horror. Like, pretty much keep it exactly as is, but instead of neo-Nazis they're vampires or werewolves, trying to keep it on the down low. Like Dog Soldiers or whatever. Does it need a supernatural or unusual (like serial killer) angle to be horror vs. merely horrible?

Yeah, I mean "Ils/Them" wouldn't fit into horror by that measure, right?

Or "The Strangers". Or "Wait Until Dark".

I guess there's a really fine line between a thriller and horror. Like, Last House on the Left/Hills Have Eyes are what?

you want me to say what now, like I don't get it, is that it

Does it need a supernatural or unusual (like serial killer) angle to be horror vs. merely horrible?

Not necessarily, but it needs something.

I mean, I can see why Psycho is considered a horror film. It's deeply macabre and clearly out to scare its audience to death, not just put them through a suspense wringer. Norman's madness sort of warps reality, lending the fundamentally mundane proceedings an edge of the otherworldly. The shower sequence, with its shrieking string stabs and frenzied montage, aims for the texture not of waking life but of nightmare. Similar things could be said of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Though neither film has any supernatural element, to enter the worlds they create is to plunge off the edge of the known into an imaginative space that feels darkly fantastical.

Again, there's none of that in Green Room. It's just a movie about some decent people in a bad situation. If it's a horror movie, then so is Full Metal Jacket. And sure, the case could be made...

Is Last House on the Left horror?

I think it and most home invasion/people hunting people movies of that ilk are classed that way so I don't have a problem labeling Green Room as such. Agree though the line between these films and more thrillers is pretty blurry (I mean I don't often hear Deliverance classed as horror for example, but it's probably no less so than Green Room is.)

I really dug The Witch but everyone I watched it with was like, ehhhhhhhhh whatevs. It really bugged me!