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

haven't seen slither, I guess I should huh

i think its the only horror comedy from the last 10 years that really nails it, tbh

meaning horror first w/comic elements. shaun of the dead is pretty great, but its a comedy w/horror elements if you get me

I gave up on the Saw series after a late night viewing of IV where I realized they expected me to remember both the first and last names of characters, but I've been tempted to rewatch them all in advance of the new one.

I almost admire how they've created this byzantine plot instead of just having Tobin Bell live and grab new, unrelated people in each movie. I'd be more likely to admire it if they didn't hinge this plot around actors like Costas Mandaylor.

it's weird, I generally avoid horror/comedy because when it's bad it's dire, but some of my fave films are ones that pull it off (e.g. return of the living dead). I'd really like to know what a jjjusten makes of sexykiller but it is not on netflix.

anyone who makes it past saw 3 is a strong man imo, that movie is fucking terrible.

yeah i agree re: horror/comedy being a pretty dicey proposition most of the time, but when its doen well (slither, severance) its great.

i dont know anything about sexykiller, but am curious - not on dvd yet?

"Severance" was pretty solid, and I seem to recall the ending being ridiculous is a satisfying sort of flame. I think flame throwers and machine guns play a funny role?

"Slither" really underscores the fact that Nathan Fillion should be a big star.

Nathan Fillion is currently starring in his own police procedural on ABC

only R2 PAL, jj.

'Slither' was only necessary while 'Night of the Creeps' was out of circulation.

Yr behind too hard on LHITW. Or maybe I'm too forgiving of all its shortcomings because the *SPOILERS* twist that turns the would-be rapists into reluctant rescuers felt completely fresh and inspired.

did like the conclusion. not the evildoers explanation for their behavior (which made no sense), but the surreal quality of the last 15 minutes or so, and especially the weirdly redemptive moments that we close with. problem was that i didn't much like the movie that got us there.

i'd agree with those above who found splinter pretty average & forgettable. it is/was. it's certainly not as clever as triangle or as well-constructed as rogue, and it doesn't do anything that others haven't done a hundred time before (and, yeah, better). but i enjoyed it for what it was. maybe i was just in the right frame of mind...

think ahma try Cropsey tonight, which looks pretty odd/horrific/verite

re: Cropsey. What could have been a fascinating exploration of urban myth was mishandled by novice documentary filmmakers too easily swayed by sensationalism. The resulting movie amounted to little more than a mediocre episode of Cold Case. i believe that Brancaccio and Zeman set out to uncover the roots of Cropsey, a fearsome figure whose legendary misdeeds traumatized the children for Staten Island for generations. Tracing the legend's origins back to the closing of the Willowbrook psychiatric facility (the same corrupt State-run hospital exposed on TV by a young Geraldo Riveira), Brancaccio and Zeman are quickly distracted by the case of Andre Rand, an ex-employee accused of abducting and murdering a local girl. They abandon the roots-of-myth angle to do some amateur sleuthing, unsatisfied by the circumstantial case that has kept Rand incarcerated Upstate. Crackpot eyewitnesses and evasive law enforcement figures lead them on a wild-goose chase through Staten Island's alleged occult underworld. The enigmatic and manipulative Rand, seeing an opportunity for publicity, entices the naive filmmakers with jailhouse communiques promising a tell-all interview, only to renege repeatedly. Meanwhile, we're thinking, "wasn't this supposed to be about Cropsey?" It was all (sort of) interesting, but ultimately so unfocused and pointless.

There are some great lists in this post put together by a friend of mine and D3nnis C00per's

http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2010/10/lux-presents-2010-lux-than-zero.html

pretty accurate description of cropsey there, unfortunately.

I dig del toro's list

xp

1. Frankenstein (1931)/Bride Of Frankenstein (1935)
Two of the most brilliant films ever made. Paradise lost – never regained. Karloff embodies the plea of Man in a way few have ever done. Whale is in a state of grace as a filmmaker.

2. The Birds (1963)/Jaws (1975)
The two greatest “malignant nature” horror films. Horror is meant to unsettle man’s place in creation, physically or spiritually. Both films succeed admirably at this.

3. The Shining (1980)/The Innocents (1961)
Two of the best “haunted house” movies of all times. In both instances, the scariest edifice is the human mind.

4. Vampyr (1932)/Nosferatu (1922)
The vampiric doctrine concerning the corruption of soul and body is perfectly represented by these two films. One presents us with a skeletal parasite, harbinger of the plague, and the other one with the vague spectre of impending death.

5. Alien (1979)/The Thing (1982)
The two best Science-Fiction/Horror hybrids. In both instances, the irrational horror elements rise above the scientific conceit and throw rational men and women into a paroxysm of terror.

6. Night Of The Hunter (1955)/Don’t Look Now (1973)
Two terrifying fables. Childhood as horror. Tales of innocence endangered or lost in mazes of mortar or trees.

7. The Tenant (1976)/Possession (1981)
Two parables about the dissolution of the self. The horror of an uncaring cosmos landing on the doorstep of domestic life and exposing social theatrics through overwhelming horror.

8. Martin (1977)/Let the Right One In (2008)
Two tales of youth angst as vampiric malady. Unglamourized tales of infinite loneliness and scavenging in the fringes… yet terribly poetic and fragile.

9. They Came From Within (Shivers) (1975)/Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Two tales about the sudden loss of humanity by the pulsating drive of either hunger or lust. Ambulating sacks of flesh that ache with insatiable apetites. Hell is the others indeed.

10. Eraserhead (1976)/The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Two tales of modern anxiety that manage to show us just how uncivilized our social structure really is. Tales of horror within the patriarchal structure that demonstrate that the most horrible place on earth is home.

K guys you have abt 10 minutes to tell me which of these is the scariest/goriest/most disturbing (most intense, basically)

• Deadgirl
• Shallow Ground
• Below
• Antibodies
• something else, new or old, that I can find on Netflix Streaming

Deadgirl hands down

I mean there are things that are way way more fucked up I could suggest but I don't like them nearly as much as deadgirl

I mean if you want super fucked up there's always aftermath or visions of suffering

ha, that del toro list is unsurprisingly a solid one

yeah the del toro stuff is quality canon

2nd jjjusten on deadgirl, and yeah, the del toro list is excellent

deadgirl 3rded

the signal also streaming on netflix iirc

not only do I like the films del toro selected, but his rationale for liking said films is boss and otm, also like the pairing thing he did

so, last night i watched another movie that's been mentioned itt: canadian maurice devereaux's end of the line. funny thing is that i'd avoided it for quite some time, despite great box art, due to vague worries that it would be a christian horror film. lol. it's anything but, and it's great. up there with the children, shallow ground and trick r treat among the best indie horror flicks i've seen recently. basically, it's a zombie movie about people trapped in montreal's subway and maintenance tunnels, but the "zombies" here are delusional religious zealots trying to save humanity from an impending (imagined?) apocalypse. as it happens, their means of salvation consists of bloody murder with sharpened crucifixes. so yeah, it's about as anti-religious a horror movie as can be imagined. unlike most contemporary horror films, end of the line is inventive, atmospheric, visually striking and genuinely scary, at least from time to time. better yet, it's got some ideas and personality of its own. a bit too ham-handed in its religious critique, and some of the performances (unfortunately including the lead) are terrible, but definitely worth a look.

anyone seen devereaux's previous slashers? has some fans on imdb.

note: am only saying that deadgirl is the most extreme and disturbing movie in Stevie D's list, not that i liked it best. shallow ground is my favorite of the 4.

All the best bits in Paranormal Activity 2 were taken from the first one. All the worst bits (that is, the nonsensical barely-explained backstory) ultimately did it in. I did come out of it learning that demons either really, really hate pots and pans and pool cleaners or perhaps just have bad eyesight and commonly confuse them for small children.

PA seemed like one of those films where a sequel would just ruin the magic of it. Like, how do you repeat that again?

It's actually surprisingly effective when it sticks to the template! Our brains don't acclimate to the "gotcha" component of horror films - that's one reason horror films exist - but for all its mechanical jumps it's just not as creepy as the first one, thanks to the pointless backstory it brings in.

Just watched "Drag Me to Hell" again and, man, what an effective fun house. Also, time and again it subverts the usual horror tropes. We know exactly what's going on. There's no mystery what's after her. We even know what it (generally) looks like and exactly what it wants (it's in the title!). Furthermore, the protagonist is a good person with good intentions, the victim of an unfair vendetta, who has a trusting, supporting boyfriend. She's brave and resourceful, and steps up when she needs to step up. She even does the one thing no one ever does in a horror movie (even Paranormal Activity 2 ultimately chickens out on the pet front). And yet, start to finish it's nothing but fun, and even gets away with the aforementioned anvil suspended in a shed gag and trademark Raimi gallons of spewing fluids. And it's even PG-13! Shows what a master of the form can get away with.

Watched Deadgirl this morning, was ok, that is all.

man, i thought Paranormal Activity (the first one) was possibly the most boring piece of garbage i have ever seen. it didn't help that it took place in BARF san diego BARF.

Eh I think it was capable but def not groundbreaking or anything

Well, it's was nice to get a movie able to get an entire theater to lose its collective shit over a bunch of slowly opening doors. That's something, compared to "Saw VI" or whatever.

yeah i mean it was pretty much a one-time-use experience for me, but what an exp it was!

oooh! i want to talk about JT Petty's S&Man - but only with people who have already seen it. anyone?

out of that stevie d list i thought 'below' was probably the spookiest.

btw aftermath is really fucked-up, yeah. maybe more fucked-up: cutting moments.

i already mentioned both of them in the same post YEARS ago i see. i've run out of things to say.

I just watched "Frozen" and it's probably the most tense 90 minutes I've spent watching a movie. Unbearable at times but really well done.

watched Cold Prey last night and for the most part its a totally acceptable movie but after i was done with it i sat back and thought "ok, would this make any impression at all if it was an english language film" and sadly the answer was pretty much no. just another stabby weirdo in the abandoned winter cabin/lodge flick, kinda ho hum and a little light on meat behind the scares. its on netflix streaming but only in the dubbed version (which per usual is awful) so if yer still curious def get it on disc.

mentioned this on another thread, but also watched Black Water on streaming which is a suprisingly boring aussie killer croc movie, kinda like Open Water but with peeps up in a tree.

yep. felt the same away about the Austrian Dead in 3 Days. maybe we in the States and the U.K. are just jaded by the surfeit of homegrown "stabby weirdo" product. the foreign variants can be interesting - like the unrelentingly bleak and nasty Chilean Ángel Negro, or lurid Czech Scream clone, The Pool - but there wasn't much to either of these particular distro pickups.

i watched the criterion rerelease of bergmans Magician last night, which has some fun with horror tropes in art film style; recommended.

Ooh that sounds great!

Oh whoa just after Hal jam mentioned it, s&man just showed up on instant watch netflix. Will report back once I see it - kinda stoked

bergman's magician? never seen it. as good as hour of the wolf?

two i've recently watched:

the signal (2007) - highly recommended by several on this thread, and i can see why. cheap, inventive, lightning paced horror thriller about a mysterious broadcast signal that turns most everybody on earth into homicidal maniacs. much like a contemporary zombie-plauge movie, but with the twist that the monsters are still thinking, feeling human beings who just happen to have lost their marbles. in an interesting twist, it's kind of an anthology film: three directors tell one story in three chapters, each focusing on one of its three major characters. this allows for quite a bit of variety in style and tone. the first chapter is straight up action-horror, the second satirical black comedy, while the third is dramatic and a bit surreal. i didn't strongly dislike this movie, but i didn't love it either. the second act's cruelty distanced me from the film and what came after never won me back. i have a problem with films that lavish attention on powerful, angry male characters who dominate and brutalize those around them (especially when those being brutalized are women). this dynamic often kills movies for me, whatever else they might happen to have going for them.

no man's land: rise of the reeker (2008) - watched this cuz i've seen and liked a number of ghost house titles (sam raimi's production company). nothing special. basic concept is good: people trapped in a strange netherworld, trying to figure out its mysterious rules and what they might imply. unfortunately, the excecution is dull and unimaginative. starts well and chugs along appealingly for about half an hour, but only goes downhill from there.

twist/twist - i really need to read stuff over before i post it...