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

but i hate fun, so what do i know?

Maybe i was just in a great mood that night, who knows?

I thought the ingenuity was all technical, not the storytelling. Just creative camera placement and stuff is what I meant.

Catch-up post:

Appreciated I Saw the Devil, but didn't love it. It's slick in a good way, like good Spielberg, and suspenseful as hell, no complaints on a technical level. I very much enjoyed the unexpected comic touches but thought it got lost in the obvious relish with which it presents its antagonist's misdeeds. The hero's story became a background detail for much of the film, and the sleazy presentation of rape and abuse eventually turned me off. A good film, overall, but it can't hold a candle to Memories of Murder (since jjjusten made the comparison).

Rewatched A Tale of Two Sisters to prep for I Saw the Devil and liked it even more than I did the first time around. Insubstantial but extremely well put together: solid performances, stylish visuals, impeccable suspense engineering, and a satisfying central mystery.

I may have mentioned this upthread, but I didn't at all care for Martyrs. Boring and pointless. Inside is marginally better, but when it comes to the “New French Extremity”, I'll take Trouble Every Day or Calvaire (Belgian extremity, I know).

Pontypool is GREAT. Showed it to a friend of mine a few months back, and like A Tale of Two Sister, it holds up just fine on a second pass. Love the ideas, ambition and execution. The Dogville of zombie movies.

Red State is hideous, one of the ugliest movies I've seen in quite a while, but I can't call it unoriginal or insubstantial. Takes big risks, some of which pay off, but the sexual politics are just revolting.

Monsters is okay, but vanishingly slight and full of story holes that undermined my immersion in the story.

Tucker and Dale is funny and endearing. Wasn't blown away.

Had a great time wrestling with and dissecting Antichrist, but it's not one of my favorite Von Trier flicks. Smart, visually spectacular and symbolicially dense, but also a bit of a chore.

Josh in Chicago OTM re: the "trend divide between horror and the horrible" in contemporary scary movies. Not so down with cruel, ostensibly realistic thrillers that exploit the horrible (Wolf Creek and Eden Lake for example). I tend to think of such stuff endurance or survival horror, as those descriptions cast a wider net than "torture porn" and aren't so divisively judgmental.

Didn't care for Black Death. Spent too much of its time heroicizing the faith of the brutal Christian witch-hunters and demonizing the haunted pagans for my taste (even if the epilogue subverts everything that came before).

Love Trick R Treat! Last segment is a bit of a letdown, but I was totally on board for everything up to that point. My favorite horror anthology this side of Creepshow.

Have doubts about anyone who enjoyed The Mist.

Didn't really feel like starting a new thread about it, but parts of Joe Carnahan's The Grey were scarier than any recent horror flick I've seen, though it doesn't qualify as horror per se. A really nice surprise.

Was JUST about to post in this thread in support of the horrorish undertones of The Grey!

It's a horror movie maybe in a Bergman "silence of God" type way, but it's probably more a disaster movie than either. Still, the most singularly upsetting thing I've seen in mainstream release in a long while.

Ok so that's one to add to the watch list, was curious about it already.

'insidious' is just sort of nothing, i think, like its the sort of movie that fills time w/o really requiring much of the viewer or leaving any impression

Is "Attack the Block" horror? It's pretty fun.

xxpost Really misleading trailer, tho

attack the block is not horror. kidstyle sci-fi action, imo. it's way fun.

lol Eric, great minds. It's amazing how much would-be-hokey material you can pull off when you effectively dial up intensity.

Slightly off-topic but I read The Woman in Black tonight, in one sitting. incredible book.

i'm not necessarily arguing "attack the block" is horror but it's barely sci-fi. if they just called the creatures "monsters" instead of "aliens" it would be hard to classify it as sci-fi. either way, i really enjoyed it and think a lot of the horror fans would like it too (though it's nowhere near as gory as most of these movies, some blood/gore but not a lot).

I enjoyed Attack the Block, but think it's massively overrated. Like Tucker and Dale, it's sort of a slightly different take on the same ol', albeit tonally the two couldn't be more dissimilar.

Still amazed that Martyrs has gotten as much OMG mileage as it has. I thought the movie was padded out to the point of absurdity, and silly to boot. Though I suppose that is better than Insides, which is just ridiculous on so many different levels.

well, though they both clearly aim to entertain a broad audience, attack the block is more thematically substantial than tucker and dale. it's also more ambitious and takes bigger risks. none of that necessarily makes it the better film, but i got more out of it.

I really want to see The Grey! I have a irrational fear of wild animals especially dogs of any kind.There are wild dogs that roam the woods behind my mother's house and at night you can hear them howling. They have bred with the coyotes and now they look like wolves. No one really knows what they are at this point.

just saw a trailer for silent house, a remake of a uruguayan film that looks like a mashup of ils and russian ark, starring the olsen twins younger sister

also watched the six degrees of hell trailer which has one of the creepiest taglines in recent memory: "Corey Feldman is back"

If you really want a Corey Feldman horror flick, seek out The Birthday.

Or even if you don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEfx7XEEixA

I really want to see The Grey! I have a irrational fear of wild animals especially dogs of any kind.There are wild dogs that roam the woods behind my mother's house and at night you can hear them howling. They have bred with the coyotes and now they look like wolves. No one really knows what they are at this point.

― JacobSanders

wow it's like some awesome uruk-hai of dogs

At least one overeager animal-rights fellow got annoyed w/ my review; I can only imagine the onslaught Ebert is gonna inspire w/ his not-so-lupine-friendly writeup.

ok, my ctrl-f isn't working, so apologies if I:ve street-teamed for this before on this thread, but I finally got around to seeing Absentia recently and it was an excellent scrappy indie horror movie. A friend of mine from middle-school made it with her husband and I kept watching their updates from the horror festival circuit last year, where it did fairly well. Anyway, it's available On Demand through a bunch of cable providers and will be on dvd in March. Sorry for steetteaming, but this is also an honest recommendation.

wow it's like some awesome uruk-hai of dogs

― omar little, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 5:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

as in "dreadlocked, easily decapitated"

It'd be funny if every decapitation in a horror film took several whacks and completely interrupted the flow of the film. Every "Friday the 13th" film would be 30 minutes longer.

hahaha if jason was really serious about his business he'd be carrying a guillotine around with him

I may have mentioned this upthread, but I didn't at all care for Martyrs. Boring and pointless. Inside is marginally better, but when it comes to the “New French Extremity”, I'll take Trouble Every Day or Calvaire (Belgian extremity, I know).

sorry contendo, but i i don't think i can trust your opinion on horror anymore. Martyrs is the new euro extremity to beat, so fucking brutal and disturbing (admittedly, unfortunately, the very last scene sucked.) Inside is a complete joke. Calvaire was okay, but not operating on the same plane as Martyrs at all, it had some great bizarre visuals, but no tension. still need to see Trouble Every Day.

sorry contendo, but i i don't think i can trust your opinion on horror anymore.

yeah I draw the line at breathless enthusiasm for Pontypool

i am down with martyrs and inside, i dont really seem them in opposition at all.

Then you draw the line at ME shakey!

xpost

sorry. I was really into Pontypool's first 20 minutes or so, but the it's central concept proved too slippery and elastic to sustain the film. I appreciate what it was trying to do, but it failed imho.

sorry contendo, but i i don't think i can trust your opinion on horror anymore. Martyrs is the new euro extremity to beat, so fucking brutal and disturbing

that's cool. "brutal and disturbing" is hardly a plus in my book, whether we're talking about horror movies or heavy metal.

Pontypool is so awesome. I'd see that shit on stage.

Martyrs ... I mean, come on. It's like three different movies at once, each pretty intellectually facile.

know what's intellectually facile, your mom

was Pontypool a play first? seems more like a book-based thing.

I think it was a book first, but it really would make a great play.

xpost Hah, my parents are both doctors, and whenever they saw me watching gory horror movies they'd always explain just how fake the effects were! Still had nightmares as a kid ... hmm, I wonder if anyone ever has nightmares with bad special effects? Like they're being chased by really fake looking werewolves?

sorry. I was really into Pontypool's first 20 minutes or so, but the it's central concept proved too slippery and elastic to sustain the film. I appreciate what it was trying to do, but it failed imho.

i get that pontypool isn't for everyone, but i love both the ideas and the execution (screenplay, performances, photography, editing and sound design). ken loney's description of the zombie attack is one of the most horrifying, surreal and gripping moments of carnage in modern horror, all the more impressive for the fact that it consists of nothing but words and reaction shots. pontypool does get a little thematically heavy-handed in its final scenes, but up to that point, i have no complaints.

and yeah, it'd make a great play

I like a lot of aspects of it - it's minimalism, the lead actors are really good, the sound design is great, the concept is interesting - but the sloppy explication of what is actually going on in the film as it drags on just really killed it for me. in the end it's hobbled by it's own "two (sometimes three) people in a room talking". it needed some kind of reveal/explanation that just never comes.

own "two (sometimes three) people in a room talking" premise

that should say

i was satisfied by the explanation. words become infected. good enough for me. doesn't seem any more unreasonable than ghosts, demons or magical whatever. i prefer horror with fantastical/unexplained/symbolic elements to stuff that attempts to be realistic & convincing.

you know, generally speaking

Calvaire = Trouble Every Day > Inside >>>>> Martyrs = High Tension

and La Meute way below even those

i actually liked Pontypool a lot. i found it more creepy than horrifying, but that's okay.

i'll never get what people like about Inside, i thought it just fell flat on its face. its been a while since i saw it, but i remember my disbelief not being suspended whatsoever.

i have no idea what this is supposed to mean:

Martyrs ... I mean, come on. It's like three different movies at once, each pretty intellectually facile.

Well - umm spoilers - there's the first movie, where the girl escapes and they try to figure out what happened to her. Then there's the other movie about the girl being haunted/attacked by her demonic alter ego. And then there's the third movie, where the other girl is being tortured as part of some vague theological experiment. None are satisfying beyond the most, yes, facile dorm room parsing. Seemed totally padded out to fill a feature-length run time, which is how I feel about most torture porn - pretentious, silly or both.

In other words, yeah, HIgh Tension both raised and lowered the bar in one fell swoop.

Basically, Ponypool is so rich in metaphor (which I'm sure I noted upthread), but Martyrs (and Insides, for that matter) is so literal minded it's totally gormless.

Sorry, Pontypool.