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

A poorly researched NPR piece? You don't say!

My interest in the Slumber Party Massacre series has recently been piqued by my realization that they were all directed by women. Don't know how that translates until I've seen them but I'll report back.

Not just that, the first one was written by Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle! I've only seen about 1/4-1/3 of it thanks to the decision to start watching it pretty much *immediately* before it was removed from Netflix a few years ago, but it certainly holds up to its reputation (namely, that it was written as a parody and filmed by a gun-for-hire director as totally straightforward genre trash).

Watched season 1 of Ash Vs Evil Dead yesterday. I always knew I probably wouldn't get the sequel I wanted but as soon as I saw the trailer for this I knew it wasn't going to be anything like the Evil Dead that I loved. They kept the humour, fun and gore but taken away the atmosphere and cool desgins, then added hard rock (a bad choice I think).
It feels too fannish in places (repeats of things they did in the films), lots of weak special effects (cgi blood and a burned skeleton in particular) and Ash's schtick gets overplayed. The kickass fun they were going for just isn't fun or funny enough to be a success but later on in the series it actually gets quite entertaining and even though I wouldn't recommend it, I might watch the second series.

I am the pretty thing that lives under the stairs did not add up to much of anything for me

Whatever the title is. The Netflix original with bob balaban in it.

I just rewatched the Evil Dead trilogy and want to check out the show now. Is it worse than Army of Darkness? I see that as a much lesser film than the first two but still pretty entertaining.

I'm very fond of Army Of Darkness, the tv series is definitely worse but just good enough for me to be interested in the second series.

THE FALLING (directed by Carol Morley)

Stars Maisie Williams and Maxine Peake. A girl school in the late 60s where girls mysteriously keep fainting. It's got kind of a soft indie-ish soundtrack, autumnal atmosphere, it's quite pretty. I'd give it a non-urgent recommendation.

Disc version includes a short film of Maxine Peake giving a short history of mass hysteria.

Ok, this is another one of those "is it really horror?" cases, but I say there's just enough in Park Chan-Wook's fucked up hot lesbian thriller The Handmaiden to barely qualify. Definitely recommended for fans of psychological twists, beautiful period production and great sex scenes.

Watched Spring the other night. Too much cgi (tired of saying it but I won't stop) and the nature of the woman isn't completely convincing. But I enjoyed it overall, it's quite refreshing in some ways, the setting is quite nice.

the invitation, february, the witch, scherzo diabolico, they look like people, under the shadow, observance...

^^ 2016, year of the creeper/slow burner?

(some of these might be 2015 oficially tho)

also the year mike flanagan def assumes his position as the 'go to guy' when it comes to pg 13 horror

should I subscribe to this Shudder horror streaming service (like Netflix but 100% horror)? Y/N

oh by the way I watched The Falling the other day and thought it was really excellent

shudder is great and their library is pretty big now

oh by the way I watched The Falling the other day and thought it was really excellent

― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin), Wednesday, 14 December 2016 21:10

Yeah it's pretty good

also it's on sale in HMV for £1.99 on DVD. bargain

How much is shudder in the us?

about $5 and I think there's an offer where you get a month free atm

Since the first thing I do when assessing any streaming service is check the horror filter that is as close to a no brainer as it gets even in my straitened circs

shudder roku app is garbage but that's my only complaint. otherwise best streaming service on earth rn

I recall someone here being underwhelmed by Across The River but I thought it was pretty good and creepy.

Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Evolution was another incredibly quiet film. Beautiful and icky. Feels like a short film. Loads of mothers and sons in seaside town.

Anyone seen We Are The Flesh? Seems a bit too nasty and sleazy for me but a lot of critics have loved it and the aesthetic is an obvious cut above most nasty sleazy films.

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

Huh.

Watched some of "The Falling" but had to cut it. The original music was so terrible and the movie felt exploitive. I'd rather watch "Picnic at Hanging Rock" to which it seems to want to be.

Anyone seen We Are The Flesh? Seems a bit too nasty and sleazy for me but a lot of critics have loved it and the aesthetic is an obvious cut above most nasty sleazy films.

Just gave it a watch, and, well, nasty and sleazy doesn't really get at whatever it is this movie is getting at. Like, "A Serbian Film," for whatever point it is trying to make, is nasty and sleazy. This is nowhere near that, or like that. This is ... well, I looked up some takes, and they are OTM:

"Did you ever see Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom? Yeah, We Are the Flesh is 100% an update of Salo from the viewpoint of a Mexican auteur."

"This finds some sort of weird middle ground between the contemporary extremism of Gaspar Noé and Catherine Breillat and the searing genre pulp of Sam Neil babbling about Hell in Event Horizon."

"We Are The Flesh feels like a meeting of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Gaspar Noe in the troll sewer from Holy Motors."

And, per Variety: "Curiously, in a film so clearly interested in the notion that humanity can be degraded to its constituent substances, there is very little scatological material."

These are all pretty accurate. I would throw in stuff like "Dogtooth" and "Delicatessen," too. There is some super striking imagery in this, some truly transgressive stuff, too, in the confrontational performance art sense. It's not really horror, per se, but it is horrific, and I've never seen anything quite like it (or maybe I have?). I wish I knew what it was trying to say.

I'm intrigued but I'm not sure I'll go for it.

Watched some of "The Falling" but had to cut it. The original music was so terrible and the movie felt exploitive. I'd rather watch "Picnic at Hanging Rock" to which it seems to want to be.

― Everything Moves Towards The Sun (Ross), Tuesday, January 3, 2017 11:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why did it feel exploitative to you? I loved it! I thought the themes were sensitively handled and that whole woodsy occult vibe was executed perfectly. Even the soundtrack (which I imagine as kind of a continuation of songs by their 'alternative orchestra') felt charming enough in its simplicity.

Incidentally, does anyone have any recommendations for other occult-inflected films of recent years? Besides The Falling and Ben Wheatley I haven't really seen it done that well in contemporary cinema. (I did not like The VVitch, despite high hopes)

I liked Rob Zombies Satan/witch movie

Yeah, second vote for Lords of Salem.

Hi dance band, I'm not sure I can articulate here why I felt it was exploitive. Perhaps I should finish it, it had most of the elements that I usually like..I normally love occult oriented films!

As far as occult oriented movies - Duke of Burgundy has that feel. It's very sublime.

I appreciate it's not for everyone - it definitely plays up to its coming-of-age tropes. Just looking at her list of influences she cited for The Falling - you called it with Picnic at Hanging Rock! Actually, the whole list is pretty amazing: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/carol-morley-films-inspired-falling

xps I'll check out Lords of Salem soon, thanks.

^ That's a good list :)

Gonna check out Lords of Salem too

+1 Lords of Salem

Lords Of Salem is certainly good in comparison to the rest of Rob Zombie's films.

I got Shudder a few days ago and have just finished the French mini-series Beyond The Walls. It's wonderful.

It seems quite heavily influenced by the kind of survival horror games where you are trapped in a big house and have to try to find your way out without bumping into something horrible but it's also a rather sweet ghost/love story.

i found Picnic At Hanging Rock a bit anticlimactic. Really liked The Falling.

Lords Of Salem definitely looked better than his other films from the trailer but I'm very sceptical.

Can't find the trailer for Shudder except some short films and a bad looking film from a decade ago.

Beyond The Walls looks good.

Picnic At Hanging Rock is definitely better than The Falling but I like both. Don't know why I'm surprised Paul Morley's sister directed The Falling.

i'm gonna have to get shudder soon... as if I don't watch enough stuff already,

Lords of Salem is really pretty spooky/moody, with some striking Kubrick stuff at the end. It drops his white trash obsession/crutch and aspires to something ambitious and, for lack of a better word, classy. Totally/tonally unlike his other films. Which I think partly fueled the negative response to his most recent, which most dismissed as a terrible tumble backwards to House of 1000 Corpses crap.

The main criticisms I've heard of Lords Of Salem is that Sheri Moon is surrounded by superior actors and the script is weak.

She's fine, and the script isn't weak so much as pretty simple/straight-forward. But not objectionably so, imo. There's no real narrative arc, just a slow march toward the inevitable.

Anyone seen The Wailing, Korean film? Caught it the other day. It's very long (nearly 3 hours) and teeters on the brink of being sublime, surprisingly hilarious in parts but maybe a bit frustrating/inconclusive considering the extended runtime.

^^ yeah. really liked it. kinda strange at first with all the tonal changes between humour and eerieness, but in the end those shifts worked to perfection. it never drags through its long runtime.

speaking of (dark) humour and in spite of such a dark subject matter - and i guess it's technically from 2015 - 'scherzo diabolico' is really worthy of attention. a great return to the roots from bogliano after the decent and brief stint with the states.

someone upthread mentioned 'they look like people' and i loved it. top 3 horror from this year for me.

Baskin was on the tv tonight. Wasn't into it.

They look like people was good

so Shudder... I subscribed yesterday. Looks quite good so far - a lot of variety and plenty to wade through, although I must say I'm a bit underwhelmed in some places. Articles about the service from just a couple of months ago names films like Kill List, Room 237 but they don't appear to be on there. Lots of schlocky gore and 80s-style slashers, Cronenberg, Giallo etc which is good but not what I came to it for. Not a huge amount of new films to be honest. They could do with a section dedicated to folk horror. The search function is pretty random too. But it is a new service and I reckon it's worth having all the same.

They have not region-locked their accounts which means you can watch the US selection (which is around twice as large, has more categories and has guest curators) via VPN without any problems. Kill List and Room 237 are both there iirc.

oh... how the heck do i do that then?