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

the "good guys" kind of won in martyrs

i might agree, but that's put an awful lot of stress on the "kind of"

^ ...that puts...

well it's at least as much a victory as passing health care HEYO!

maybe it's really lazy to repost something I posted upthread, but since you brought up eden lake:

I can understand somebody being haunted by eden lake, and not just cause it's showing you horrible things - it's well done so what you're seeing has a good chance of getting under your skin.

but it felt mechanical to me - I could see the chess pieces getting set up on the board from the beginning, and I really didn't get surprised by any of the subsequent moves. I can't imagine any horror film fan would? whereas something like martyrs, the chess pieces get set up on the board and then WHAM BAM wait I didn't know we were boxing I thought we were just playing chessssss

the reward in emotionally investing yourself in martyrs is an intellectual one, and it's not a reward that a formulaic film like eden lake can deliver. whatever you want to say about martyrs, I don't think you can call it predictable.

eh, I think I love this movie too much to write rationally about it.

would agree entirely that martyrs wasn't predictable and that eden lake was. it was fairly easy to predict all the major plot movements in eden lake, but i was no less emotionally involved with the characters for that. that kind of sympathetic identification arises more from performance, dialogue and directorial emphasis than from plot or theme.

what would you say is the reward obtained by emotionally investing in martyrs?

catharsis?

makes sense. that's always the promised reward for vicariously experiencing someone else's martyrdom. only recent film that i felt something like catharsis in response to = lars von trier's breaking the waves. spent several minutes weeping as the credits rolled, not in sadness or anger, exactly, but in something almost exultant/grateful that arose out of those emotions. but that movie (and its star, emily watson) had to work so goddam hard to develop the sympathy and understanding required to pull off the emotional effect. didn't see martyrs doing anything similar, but you know, different strokes...

I was really surprised & pleased with Black Death. It had a really small cinema showing but horror fans need to lovefilm/netflix it hard....

Its the missing link between Witchfinder General & The Wicker Man.

2 of the best ever British horror films imho.

and I agree with Eden Lake sticking with you, but I feel that might be more for britishers. In the UK, the setting, the characters & the antagonists are so close to real life. Kids like that are regularly stabbing each other in my neighbourhood. whereas I was never that worried about meeting a knife-gloved killer in my dreams...

seeing Black Death and probably interviewing the director later this week - I kinda hated Severance so I'm hoping you're right about its goodness.

Ok halfway through "the children" right now and holy fucking shit, why have I not heard more about this film.

never heard of it. checking other reviews gets me all curious. will further.

Ok that was absolutely fantastic.

Ok

want

NOTE: do not watch the crappy terrible trailer for this.

I think this might be my favorite modern british horror film

that good huh? up on the netflix queue it goes

Yeah, The Children is great.

turned it off

I'm a wuss; hate broken bones protruding from skin

ok just watched the end

fukd up film

Ok so def not a new film per se but a recent compilation by Other Cinema Digital called Experiments in Terror is half awful and half awesome. Most of the modernish stuff is kinda artso-crap, but the standouts are "Outer Space" by Peter Tscherkassky which is v v unsettling and the completely and totally unhinged "Dawn of the Evil Millenium" by Damon Packard. Worth a run through if you dig weirdo gonzo stuff.

I'm a wuss; hate broken bones protruding from skin

don't watch Broken

Just finished "Creep" (which is maybe technically 2004 but whatever) and oh man what a squandered opportunity - every decent moment gets followed by something lunkheaded and awkward and str8 up stupid. kept trying to like it all the way through, and although it certainly isn't bad (i mean yeah theres much worse stuff getting pushed out of the horror grist mill) i cant really recommend it at all. in a lot of ways the fact that you could see the bones of something great under all the mess made it way worse, because it was totally frustrating, esp from a director whose stuff ive liked for the most part (severance, triangle)

pontypool was awesome, not on netflix unfortunately.

it had its share of flaws but if you're able to do something new + smart w/ the zombie shtick in the oh 10 I'm gonna be in yr corner.

it's suspenseful, and it gets a lot of mileage out of leaving things up to yr imagination e.g. ppl describing the horrible things that are happening over the phone rather than actually showing them. which would prolly seem cheap in another film but here it's endemic to the plot, survivors trapped and cut off from what's happening outside their bunker.

"let's all shit our pants"

umm...ok, you first

done

OK...oh is that the time? I gotta go, sorry.

ok, I'm stuck at home while a dude installs central air, so im cruising through another netflix disc - Seventh Moon. And it is just fucking awful. iirc its one of the dudes who did blair witch and part of that ghost house underground collection, which thanks to this is dropping to a 1 out of 3 success ratio (The Children was great, this is awful and Lake Mungo was boring as hell.)

Yeah, gonna finish this out of obligation but man I know its not getting any better.

yeah, trailer for seventh moon looked kinda promising but then I heard nothing but bad things about it

"I'm a wuss; hate broken bones protruding from skin"

this is the one gore-ish thing that still gets a "ughhhhh" outta me. that post-seagal moment in the '90s when it migrated from horror and seemed to show up in every mainstream action movie was a living hell for me.

this was talked about way upthread but i watched the last house on the left remake last night. it was kinda bizarre for me. like it was a good movie but that rape scene left me so unnerved i couldn't enjoy anything after that point. and capping it with the dumb microwave scene didn't really redeem the experience for me.

should i bother with the original? or would it mess with me just as much?

God the last scene of last house '09 is so awful.

The original is a much stranger beast. Worth seeing.

yeah im still pissed about the stupid ass microwave scene fucking up what i thought was otherwise a pretty well done movie. stupid as hell.

original is very different, totally worth seeing

and the drawn out brutal rapey bit...?

still quite drawn out and rapey iirc

Has anyone seen House of the Devil?

Its a 2009 film shot in that 70's/80's horror style. I mean every detail from the filming technique to the waxy Coca Cola cups they once served drinks in at fast food restaurants is a throwback to that decade. Its also a pretty solid haunted house/slasher film. Not heavy on the gore but very creepy with a great pay off at the end.

http://imgur.com/f1orP.jpg

some talk about that one upthread; reactions were mixed

Um I just saw A Serbian Film and I want to sob and vomit and tear out my eyes and all of that. P much sets the standard for viewing discomfort.

yeah, curiosity got the best of me and I just watched it as well. mega shocking scenes aside, I thought it was basically garbage. I mean, all that "this is art! this is film!" stuff - hated that shit.

felt like the only things of value it had to offer were also completely unpleasant. the rest was all paper thin characters and dialogue with an idiotic soundtrack blaring over a couple scenes. big chunks of it felt like watching some sleazy cinemax junk to me.

one memorable line tho. you probably know the one. immediately made me think, "I really hope this doesn't become a meme."

I thought the sountrack/score was extremely effective and generally wonderful.

uh "soundtrack"

yeah, not a dubstep fan in general, but different strokes for different folks

where exactly are peeps managing to see this? is it still in some sort of theatrical release, or torrents, or dvd or what

p1r@teb@y is where I found it

I hear there's a torrent of DVD rip of a screener copy floating around that has the words SCREENER COPY in the top-right corner that you don't even notice after a few minutes.

yeah, that's the one I watched. the studio's name appears in GIANT transparent letters every 15 minutes or so as well.

ok thx, was wondering if i was just totally outside the netflix loop or something for a bit there.

this seems like a prime candidate for me to further explore the thing i was trying to figure out here: Enjoying horror films - why do we (or don't we)?

I really should post my ASF rant there - hated it and everything for which it stands - but I'm busy watching 'The Gateway Meat' right now...