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

i really loved the woods, talked about it a bit way upthread. and may's great, too. the girl next door, otoh, sounds too grueling.

most recent horror flick i've seen was andre aja's mirrors. started off with some promise, but fell apart quickly, and the last 1/2 hour is just ludicrous.

Shrooms was awesome. Played into one of my pet themes (malevolent fungus) and had A++ semi-deformed cretinous backwoods folk. Thanks for the rec, jjj!

Yeah that movie greatly exceeded my expectations, glad you liked it!

ok so out of nowhere movie that i loved - "Shallow Ground" (2004). what seems to be a creepy incoherent mess actually totally pulls it together by the end, although i get the feeling that there were some cuts for time constraints going on with some stuff towards the end. weird pace that works, def works that dread center in your brain effectively, a jump scare or two but not reliant on them. i dont even know where i found out about this (if its from this thread - hey thanx whoever), its been living in my queue for a while, but i really dug it. on netflix streaming btw, complete with a cover image that will make you think it has to suck, but it doesnt, i swear!

watched a couple of horror flicks last night. first up, saw guy james wan's dead silence. didn't much care for the saw series, but this thing is fucking great! retro gothic ghost story about a haunted ventriloquist's dummy. spooky, evocative and (for most of its running time) scary as hell. wall-to-wall haunted house jump scares, which are silly and get kinda old after a while, but still work like a charm. definitely one to watch with the lights off. not a lot of gore, but enough to keep you off balance, and i've always been a sucker for the haunted doll/dummy thing. movie's basically dumb as a box of rocks and makes no attempt to seem realistic at any level, but it looks fantastic, and is packed with subtle (and not-so-subtle) nods to other flicks: phantasm, the evil dead, suspiria, todd browning's dracula, etc. a perfect halloween popcorn flick, and on that level, at least as good as trick 'r treat.

next: the hills run red. meta-movie combo of the texas chainsaw massacre, blair witch, scream, rob zombie and eli roth. buncha movie geek kids go off into the backwoods, looking for a supposedly dead director of a long-lost and legendary horror movie, fatalities ensue. dialogue and characters are painfully dull, but the concept is at least half-cool, and the movie gets points for keeping the sleaze/gore meters pegged. again, lots of referentiality and borrowing, but it feels more uninspired here. secondhand elements feel less like nods to bava, fulci, TCM & brazil (?) than simple theft from the classics. i dunno, maybe i'm just annoyed by the director's failure to credit the obvious sources for his "ideas" in the commentary... bitching aside, it's a good time if you like lowbrow 70s/80s horror. plenty of special makeup & prosthetic mayhem, gallons of red corn syrup, a quick pace and a nasty sense of humor.

that was mostly bad CGI in tHRR, not red corn syrup. big mistake on Parker's part, IMHO.

that's true and not true. there are a few obvious and disappointing moments of cgi grue (the demonia ripoff tree scene, frinstance), but it's mostly just real/fake blood. thinking of the finger and head choppings, various stabbings, etc...

True, true. The CGI were just so distractingly shoddy in those few scenes.

Rhe only part of Dead Silence that wasn't boring was a joke by Donnie Wahlberg about dummies I probably could have lived without. Pretty much the least creepy thriller about ventriloquism I've ever seen.

A friend's wife asked about it and I cracked something like "yeah it's really scary if you're really scared of dummies" and unfortunately i spoke too drolly and she missed the sarcasm and rented it, later asking me how the hell I liked it.

I don't think I am at all interested, but philosophy of the knife is just out on instant watch netflix and i figured someone here would tell me just how atrocious it is.

Haha I just watched the first 30 minutes of that and decided to come over here and take a break! Timely.

Don't think Im up for it tonight tho, prob going to switch to candyman instead

Hardcore gorehounds I know speak of it hushed reverent tones tho, so I'm going to give it a shot soon and will report back.

ugh I'm reading a thread about philosophy of a knife on a horror movie board and why why why

Rhe only part of Dead Silence that wasn't boring was a joke by Donnie Wahlberg about dummies I probably could have lived without. Pretty much the least creepy thriller about ventriloquism I've ever seen.

― da croupier

watched two more tonight, both inspired by recent recs on this thread:

shrooms: seriously blue-rinsed psycho thriller about college kids tripping balls in ireland. decent cast and dialogue, nice tight suspense and action direction, but no real surprises. figured out what was going on shortly after the first kill, and that took some of the fun away. i was entertained throughout, but hardly blown away, and it's too serious-minded & realistic to ever be a personal favorite. i kinda want my horror to be more fantastical and eccentric.

shallow ground: man this was great! a thousand thanks to whoever recommended it. cover art's so bad i probably never would have picked it up otherwise. one of the most imaginative and ambitious horror flicks i've seen recently. it's delivered somewhat like a stephen king novel, with several storylines progressing side-by side at all times, each containing its own twists & mysteries. never went where i expected, and i can't think of anything to compare it to. for all that, it operates squarely within the genre, and has an intriguingly artless awkwardness that reminds me of romero, cohen and coscarelli. not terribly scary, but creepy enough, and with more good ideas than 10 ordinary horror flicks.

Glad you dug shallow ground!

"philosophy of a knife" is kind of amazing so far, but I can only handle it in bite sized pieces. It is kind of overpowering. Mostly archival footage so far, which means that things could go horribly wrong when i get to the reconstructed "experiments".

Ok Jesus Christ, not sure I will actually manage to make it through this.

my problem with philosophy of a knife is that it reeks of cliched goth/rave/industrial bullshit. (watched an hour or so of it after saying i wouldn't.) artsy-fartsy "embrace the darkness" bullshit without any actual aesthetic or moral intelligence. fucking cheezy-ass halloween rave flyer fonts, dated & uninspired "spooky techno" soundtrack, an artistic sensibility gleaned from watching old NIN videos. iskanov's previous films, which i checked out from the library a couple years back, make this even more clear. the fact that philosophy poses as a serious moral investigation makes it all the more insufferable.

Iskanov's Nails was fun - Lynch put through a cliched goth/rave/industrial grinder - but mostly because it's so short, colorful and frenetic. POAK, being none of these things, is a slog, and a catastrophic fail of non-editing. so is Visions of Suffering. apparently Iskanov's newest movie is even longer than POAK, even more indulgent. oh, joy. all this shit was tedious even before Karim Hussein's Subconscious Cruelty made it de rigueur.

Contenderizer, did you not find the (trying to avoid spoilers now) identity/M.O. of the killer in Shallow Ground a little bit unsatisfying? Overall I liked the movie quite a bit for its great ideas (when they ran the fingerprints through the database I think I actually shouted my appreciation out loud) but it seemingly didn't add up to much. I dunno I think I will actually watch it again soon, my bemusement demands it.

Shrooms, I dunno it just hit a sweet spot for me! I loved the scenery and loved loved the cretinous shack dudes so much. Agree the 'twist' was easily anticipated.

Try out The Chair. I think it ties with The Woods as my favorite of the dozen or so horror flix I've watched on Netflix streaming the last few weeks.

Watched Them (the French one) last night and am still getting my head around it...

oh good, The Chair is on my netflix instant queue but i keep skipping it because every time i look at the cover art i remember Shocker and get worried.

It's very good. Actually I watched it bcuz of a mention by Hal Jam upthread!

Forgot to say I was impressed that Shallow Ground was able to commission a full orchestral score (and quite an intricate one) on their budget. Which was hilariously overactive in the early parts of the movie!

haha, nice! The Chair is a good one. don't be turned off by the horrible artwork. i think i ranted about that upthread. friggin' Lionsgate.

'Shallow Ground' does so many things right, but i agree that the sum-total effect of the movie is sort of underwhelming. i was so excited to see what Sheldon Wilson would do next. Then i saw Kaw...

I was going to ask abt Kaw since it hits another of my sweet spots (I'm rather obsessed with crows and ravens). Sounds like I don't need to ask!

Kaw is watchable, but definitely a cheapo SyFy (Sci-Fi then) Channel creature feature. i just expected something more creative after Shallow Ground.

so i watched paranormal activity a couple of days ago and im struggling to really say much of anything about it. it was fine i guess?

another example of how lots of horror filmmakers dont seem to get the value of creepy anymore, there wasnt really anything built up despite the fact that the movie is 100% intended to be a build up (which is kind of the key factor of camcorder movies tbh). made me feel like i should watch Blair Witch again, which whatever its faults did the build pretty much perfectly. (also might have been more accepting of PA if i hadn't recently seen Home Movies which is also camcordery but way better in execution and tension ramping)

Camcordery at least nominally horror films - S/D/list them here so we can poll them later maybe?

feel free to give this a once over and let me know what im missing

Firin' up The Burrowers right now...

don't expect much

"Paranormal Activity" was 100% about the audience experience. It may be the only movie less well served by DVD than "Avatar."

contenderizer, did you not find the (trying to avoid spoilers now) identity/M.O. of the killer in Shallow Ground a little bit unsatisfying? Overall I liked the movie quite a bit for its great ideas (when they ran the fingerprints through the database I think I actually shouted my appreciation out loud) but it seemingly didn't add up to much. I dunno I think I will actually watch it again soon, my bemusement demands it.

― Blog is a concept by which we measure our pain (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 8:40 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

'Shallow Ground' does so many things right, but i agree that the sum-total effect of the movie is sort of underwhelming.

― Mr. Hal Jam, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 10:25 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

agree that shallow ground adds up to a bit less than it promises, but i'm used to making allowances for low-budget, basically homemade horror flicks. approached it the same way i approach, say, phantasm or martin - measuring it more by what it does well than by what doesn't quite work. plus the first hour is so strong & unusual that i was okay with the underwhelming resolution.

anybody else think it felt kinda crypto-christian? what with the emphasis on family unity, father/husband-hood and retribution from beyond?

So has anyone seen "A Serbian Film"? I'm too scared to watch it.

Late to the game, but House of the Devil was pretty awesome imo. Such a great, slow build. The end doesn't totally satisfy in a "horror" sense, but for whatever reason it didn't really matter. Was thoroughly engaged throughout and I kind of wish more horror/suspense films these days moved like this.

The whole 80's "satanic panic" was always pretty interesting to me and I guess the concept here was a neat way to approach the subject. Also nice to see a fairly authentic throwback without irony or winking BS.

Puppetmaster: Axis of Evil comes out July 27th. Hopefully it will be on shelves at Blockbuster
It's supposed to be a sequel to Puppet Master III which is my favorite (the one with the Nazis)
This movie will probably be the first decent one in the series since Puppetmaster V (1994)
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I haven't seen Quarantine but I heard that [rec] was much better and apparently tons of people think that it is one of the scarier movies out there. I need to see [rec] and Audition
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I rarely get all that scared by any horror movie. I can get shook up by watching something disturbing but that is a lot different than being scared. I also would never watch Cannibal Holocaust
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I hate Rob Zombie movies. I heard he is remaking The Blob.

haven't seen a serbian film, not sure I want to

lately I've watched 'mum & dad' (straddles the ok-p.lame divide) and 'home movie' (pretty dece)

Saw "A Serbian Film," as weirdly coincidentally mentioned in another thread moments ago. Pretty sure every other "graphic" horror movie from anytime before now (god knows what fucking terrors the future holds) will now fail to shock me. (Not really a recommendation, though I do commend the filmmakers', uh, "commitment" to their endeavor.)

Places the movies have convincingly taught me never to travel: Serbia, Belgium.

I'll pass on A Serbian Film - for me the function of horror isn't "make the viewer despair for humanity"

Yeah, I think that's the problem w/ the flick - using the genre of horror as a delivery system for that sort of purpose is inherently problematic.

spoiled myself for a serbian film (i guess?) but i doubt ill ever get to see it

id like to, maybe, since reviewers seem split on whether it has value & i really liked martyrs & hostel & despite the grotesque shit that happens itm it sounds like theres something to engage w/ as a viewer/critic?

but i dont really want to see it as some kind of test of courage/jadededness cuz a) after that hammer vid realized theres a p steep difference btw movies and irl and b) ennnnh

what's this hammer vid that you speak of?

watched serbian film this afternoon, i just hope to god the daily mail readers don't hear of/see it!

what's this hammer vid that you speak of?

last year a video of two dudes murdering another dude w/ a hammer was going around & i tried watching it - p much the most horrifying & unsettling thing ive ever seen - think there may have been an ilx thread abt it? ive watched some p fucked up stuff (martyrs, men behind the sun) but the experience of watching that vid was less dissociative & manageable than any movie has been. basically unbearable ime

i think i've heard of that. i've seen some pretty grotesque stuff on the internet that i wish i could unwatch (bme pain olympics....) but i'm terrified of real violence. i've passed out watching a video in health class, passed out getting my blood drawn, and strangest of all passed out during an episode of nip/tuck (not real violence, wtf.) but i'm fascinated by extreme horror, i loved martyrs, er, "love" might not be the word. haven't seen men behind the sun yet. the feeling leading up to watching a really horrifying movie is intense, i feel really anxious and i'm not sure if i really want to do it, but knowing that its not real and that i can dissociate and analyze it makes me able to go through with it. and i like the rush of doing that, the rush makes it feel more real and triggers more interesting thoughts. i like the anxiety and i'm fascinated that a film can make me feel anxious like that. i like that i can think about horror in terms of why someone would want to make this and why i would want to watch this without quite getting into the deeply disturbing thought processes that would follow actually seeing a snuff film, not to mention the feeling of being implicated in the actual violence of the snuff film by wanting to watch it. i wonder if there is a similarity, though, between the dissociation that allows someone to see a horror film as not reality so as to make the experience less intense and the sort of dissociation that allows someone to actually commit a violent act. or even just the physical dissociation from pain that allows someone to suffer through the pain of getting a tattoo for example.

it does sound like a serbian film manages to merge sex/death in the way the most gonzo ~bme~ gore stuff does one review i read explicitly connected it with goru. which is potentially interesting i think? but from what friends of mine who saw it in mtl have said its relatively cartoonish if still p visceral & the more grotesque it gets the more ur able to maintain "distance"

ill cop to liking that "testing" feeling of watching like french extremity/body horror stuff (generally dont like str8 gore) but i dont want to watch something just for that feeling

i don't really get a rush unless the film pulls me in on a basic "effective film" level.

I haven't seen Quarantine but I heard that rec was much better and apparently tons of people think that it is one of the scarier movies out there.

ive had people say this and i get really confused because they are both functionally the same film, almost shot for shot, w/a slight change in what the source of the baddies is. you def dont need to see both, but eh see whichever is available, the diffs dont really matter imo.

that fucking hammer video - i just want to go on the record ONCE AGAIN and say srsly do not let curiosity or transgressive whatever trick you into searching this out, you cant unwatch it, it is horrible and you will feel guilty in a way that i can only imagine mirrors what unfortunates that stumble across kiddie porn feel like. its a fucking snuff video. dont do it to yourself. every time it comes up i feel dirty and shitty all over again thx to watching it once.

on the more pos side, been watching some horror stuff again

The Hills Run Red - wow, some great freako gore stuff here unfortunately wrapped in a terrible terrible story. you can almost see the good movie poking through at times, some of the special effects are pretty fucking sweet, and despite all the peeps getting all crankypants about "too much CGI", watching the making of afterwards makes it pretty clear that most of this was good old pig guts and slaughterhouse runoff goo (no, srsly, i guess as long as you film in eastern europe they let you still do stuff like that). now on the bad side, there are attempts at being satire which FAIL, the story is uh total garbage, and the first 30 minutes is a slog of dumb set up and oh look titties and missed opportunities for some creepy moments. also one of the leads is some lady from australian pop group BARDOT and she is no good. watch it if you are really bored i guess.

Sheitan - whoohoo weirdo french psycho stuff rides again! this is some strange nonsensical cut and paste jump cut insane shit, one of my faves of the year so far - old school gonzo inbred tiny village all sexed up ready to go unwanted porno or uncomfortable story-telling creepout on our good old usual gang of city teens out for a drugspun chasing action night/morning/holiday weekend in the deep deep burbs. this is a million miles from the deep dark body horror stuff of ils and inside and martyrs, this is pure exploito creepshow funneled through techno backwoods family portrait horrorsleaze. the sort of film that makes me write in run on sentences apparently, but thats kinda how it felt to watch it, so go for it. fun times, kind of funny other than the points where you recoil in a sorta "oh shit did they just do that?" gasp moment.

if anyone has not either one, here's a good idea for a freaky Belgian double feature: the fun, freaky Calvaire and Ex-Drummer (the latter not a horror movie, but still plenty messed up.)