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

no, never saw reeker. sequel doesn't incline me to seek it out. watching ole bornedal's the substitute tonight, a danish film distributed by ghost house. looks kinda crummy, but i did like the original night watch, all those years ago. here's hoping...

i really didnt like the signal v much but the further i get from having seen it the less i remember why

i think i said up-thread that The Substitute = The Faculty for the Twilight set. it's not bad, but i'm not sure what Raimi & Co. saw in it.

I like The Substitute a lot! it's better to think about it as an 80s-style "family film" (IE Goonies) than something aiming at wannabe goths or whatever.

Huh

S&man

Not sure yet.

I want to talk about it a bit but w/o spoilering thats gonna be tough

i know!

Ok going to bide my time until there's more than 2 of us by watching "live object"

Btw if I had known that rip torn and udo kier were in this I would have gotten to it faster!

Magician is really horror only in a carnival of souls way
but boy is it good
and don't miss the video essay supplement, very illuminating

the substitute was excellent, way better than i expected. ending was a bit aprupt/unsatisfying, and the heavy-handed business about love being what makes humans unique caused me to gag occasionally, but no complaints otherwise. strong characters, wonderful performances, nicely moody cinematography and at least a little faith in its audience's intelligence. bornedal's got another film forthcoming for raimi and ghost house, called dybbuk box, due next year. looking forward to it.

dibbuk box? something like that...

it's spelled dybbuk. it's a jewish demon.

yeah, i initially spelled it dybbuk, cuz that's the spelling i'm familiar with. but the imdb entry and apparent movie title = "dibbuk box" for reasons unknown, so i corrected for that.

Magician is really horror only in a carnival of souls way
but boy is it good

carnival of souls is one of the greatest horror movies ever made

then you will find some joy in magician. just making it clear that it's only horror accents in an art film, not the other way round

I can see why ppl don't fully dig the signal - it's not a "perfect" movie - but I loved it, one of my favorite recommends from this thread.

don't get yr "angry male character" issue, contenderizer, it's not like the movie's on that guy's side, he's the villain! and he's an interesting one because he's not evil, just sick. the film does have it's share of sadism/gore, but that's why it's on this thread and not the nonexistant scifi one. it sounds like maybe a personal aversion?

paranormal activity

in the middle of watching this with my gf and she's gone to the toilet, the bitch

she's gonna come back and stare at you for like three hours

!!! SPOILERRY TALK BELOW \/\/\/

I just watched The Signal yesterday and I thought it was really good. I appreciated that they cut the tension in the middle with the black comedy stuff. I have to admit that I enjoyed Lewis's character because from our introduction to him it was obvious he was a jealous passive-aggressive guy with some inferiority issues but obviously if he hadn't watched so much of that damn signal he wouldn't have gone so damn crazy... its interesting to see a normal persons character flaws turn into OTT pathologies. There was a lot of brutalization in the film in general, its hard to claim that there was more put on women than men. Perhaps it just seems so much more brutal when the violence turns on women though? It was certainly more unsettling to me to see the lady's friend get her head bashed in repeatedly than say, when the same happened to Lewis (and more gore was shown even).

But, it addressed fears that play heavily into some favorite horror films like The Crazies (the original one) about how one could possibly know if anyone is sane when everyone has to act crazy in order to defend themselves and their loved ones. Sanity being something that is decided by society and not actually real is really scary, cause society seems more fragile than ever in our post-industrial techno world.

The second act brutality played more as slapstick to me though. That is probably due to my own desensitization, and I can see why someone would see it as just gratuitous exploitation.

As someone who refuses to pay time or money to things I see as gratuitous exploitation, I can certainly see contenderizer's larger point about violent asshole men being lavished with attention as a serious problem in modern horror films, since they are edging further away from being strictly the villains and more-and-more straddle that anti-hero line. For instance I thought the guy in Paranormal Activity was an obnoxious and abusive husband and I really hated the movie cause he was in it. Oh well, we all have our own hang-ups.

those dudes are always dicks in these movies, not antiheroes. Dude in paranormal activity is a total jerk.

ok so, watched love object and was kinda eh about it, finally saw human centipede and thought it was pretty well done EXCEPT for the fact that the 2 female leads are kinda terrible, but the big winner by far was Stuck, which I thought was completely fucking fantastic.

Tenebre and The End Of the Line showing up today from netflix so it should be a good week.

oh also watched The Chair and found it kinda lacking tbh - one great spooky shot, but that was about it.

ok, sorry dudes, but after watching tenebre and being kinda blah about suspiria and a few others, i am (outside of Goblin which is awes and that super long crane shot around the house) i am just straight up not really an argento fan.

yeah, I like suspiria but I'm definitely argento-impaired

Boooo. (That said, I can't think of many other directors I love who more regularly inspire choruses of "meh" from those around me.)

not kidding about that crane shot though, its pretty magnificent - apparently the american distributors wanted to cut it and he put his foot down and refused.

You still haven't seen his best picture, then. Write him off after you've checked out 'Deep Red.'

ok, yeah, im def not 100% opposed, so i was going to ask for recs - the other one peeps keep mentioning is something about a bird or plumage or eh never mind ill just go to imdb and stop being stupid. anything you get behind eric?

Yeah, Deep Red is the one that seems to treat the Argento non-fans best.

(I'm not particularly enthused by it, myself. I'm much more in favor of the flamboyant ones: Suspiria, Phenomena, Opera.)

I'll rep for 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.' it's a tidy, downright nifty thriller. But it's Srgento still so in the long shadow of his mentor, Mario Bava, that you might want to watch Bava's delightful Hitchcock riff 'The Girl Who Knew Too Much', first. Argento doesn't come of his own until 'Deep Red,' which is still traditional enough in terms of it's mystery and mechanics not to be alienating. 'Tenebre' almost doesn't make sense until you're immersed in Argento's world, being a metafictional autobiographical reinvention of 'Bird' and 'Deep Red' and a near parody of the giallo form in a slightly futuristic setting. It's his ' Alphaville,' if you will.

deep red is hitchcock + giallo kinda.

That equation doesn't compute, because there wouldn't be any "giallo" without Hitchcock (and Edgar Wallace).

i suppose that's true

LOVE ARGENTO OR GTFO

and he's an interesting one because he's not evil, just sick. the film does have it's share of sadism/gore, but that's why it's on this thread and not the nonexistant scifi one. it sounds like maybe a personal aversion?

― death panel of the mods (Edward III), Friday, November 12, 2010 11:49 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark

it is a totally personal aversion. and it's weird, cuz when viceroy says, "I appreciated that they cut the tension in the middle with the black comedy stuff," i feel completely the opposite. jacob gentry wrote and directed jealousy monster (the name of that segment), and i loved the black comedy stuff up until the point where lewis was fully in control and raged out. the scene where he suddenly, brutally murders laura's (?) friend, and later, where he blinds and tortures laura with poison, were both played for laughs, and i didn't think either was particularly funny. they made me depressed and even a bit angry. perhaps i empathize too strongly with the victims in such situations to ever truly enjoy them. anyway, this aspect of gentry's chapter took me out of the movie and made it hard to get back in. fwiw, i did think it was an interesting, effective and well-made film overall.

that said, a lot of the best ott black humor/horror induces a kind of psychedelic bewilderment in the viewer, where you don't know how far things are going to go or how you're supposed to take it. more sadistic films will push through to the worst thing imaginable, while horror comedies and mainstream films will typically undercut the awfulness, or swerve away at the last minute. it's a legitimate and effective horror tool, and one that i don't have a problem with, for the most part. maybe i was just in the wrong mood for those kinds of stunts that night, i dunno...

i wanna ask though: did anyone watch the short film that's included as a bonus feature? like jealousy monster, it was written and directed by jacob gentry, in this case as a "24-hour film festival" contribution. it's a quick and dirty TCM ripoff wherein a goofy redneck psycho (played by the guy who plays clark in the signal) abuses and butchers several trapped women. given the obvious budget and time constraints, it's surprisingly successful, wringing a measure of suspense out of one deaf victim's attempt to escape and free a fellow captive. but i couldn't get around the fact that it's basically just helpless women getting snuffed one after the other, with a side of sickly lols. disliked it, and watching it after the signal didn't improve my opinion of the latter.

But it's Argento still so in the long shadow of his mentor, Mario Bava, that you might want to watch Bava's delightful Hitchcock riff 'The Girl Who Knew Too Much', first.

― silent ouzo eclipse (Mr. Hal Jam), Thursday, November 18, 2010 10:24 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

hell yeah, or blood and black lace

can't really fathom anyone not digging tenebre, though.

the slasher genre shd probably give up right now tbh

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

Bad horror run for me - end of the line had some great initial jump scares but was teeteringly unfocused and oh man, some of the worst acting I have seen in some time. Really wanted to like it, but I just didn't.

Also lj I hate u.

sorry you didn't dig end of the line, jjj (not my fault, but i did like and recommend it). acting was a serious problem, but i just forced myself to accept it as the price you pay for weird indie horror. dug it otherwise.

and yeah, can't imagine why anyone would want to watch mouse snuff

soz guys, was brought up in the 'animals eating other animals' thread and I felt it would fit here too

the joke is on me, for I have not been able to sleep properly

we are very sensitive in this gore torture horror thread, louis

I Sell the Dead was way way too goofy for me, with a plot so transparent and cgi so blatant that i really didnt like it at all, seemed v v cheap, and not in a good way. Mum and Dad was a nasty bit of mean mean movie, not totally to my liking but some great moments - dad in particular was pretty o_O.

Loved 'House of the Devil.' I love the tone and subject matter of many films from the mid- to late- 70's, and (this isn't a very original idea on my part) I thought Ti West captured it pretty perfectly without resorting to irony.

S&Man = i mean, not really that good. maybe i watch too much S&M porn or something (i know TMI TMI) but most of that stuff was pretty tame, and didn't really dive into the meat of the questions Petty seemed to be attempting to ask.

anyway.

It's not about S&M or porn, ya maroon!

excuse me, but who the hell are you?

It explored three directors, one of whom was obviously a fake (Eric), and didn't really dive that deep into the questions behind why people enjoy extreme, near-snuff, or snuff itself. even the 'paraphilia' talks with the husband-wife team were just completely insubstantial. and anyone who didn't see that last part coming is a maroon, imho.

i raise the issue of s&m and porn because of Zebub's bizarre machismo and those long, lingering shots of that 'dead' girl surrounded by candles. there was something strange there, her uncomfortability. to me, that was the most interesting part of the entire film. otherwise, pretty meh.

It's not a documentary.

The question being asked is not so much "why do movies like the S&Man series exist?" as it is, "could something like the S&Man series exist, unsuspected, amid the protective shadows of underground fringe horror?"

hmm, well, yes. there are snuff films and stalker films that are real and do exist. you can find some of them pretty easily, tbh.

that said, i just finished 'Going to Pieces,' a pretty well-done doc about the rise of the slasher pic, political backlash, etc. streaming instant on Netflix. recommended.

there are snuff films and stalker films that are real and do exist. you can find some of them pretty easily, tbh.

since i will never in my life spend any time searching for such things and reassure myself by believing they don't exist, i'd like you to unpack this a bit. i mean, i know that one can find footage of death and even murder, but we are told that snuff films in the classic sense don't exist. by "snuff film" i mean proper movies which happen to include footage of real murders, not simple, on-the-fly event recordings - a hazy division if there ever was one. i.e., not counting stuff like africa addio (as jacopetti was acquitted) or straightforward documents of executions & other killings.

i mean, do tell (don't show)...