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

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.

see, I at least had fun w/ Inside as an over-the-top psycho gorefest; it felt much more modest than Martyrs, much to its credit.

I can barely remember it (which is why I consider it vastly inferior to the already stupid Martyrs), but I think I recall finding it enjoyable in a OTT way UNTIL the policeman comes back as a zombie, and then I realized how much the filmmakers were just spinning their wheels. I was glad to hear the CGI baby inserts were allegedly done without their permission, though.

oh man cop coming back as a "zombie" is one of the coolest things about that movie, its a very sly trick and tip of the hat.

also im sorry but theres a million miles more legit depth to martyrs than pontypool, pontypool just wears "look at me i am thinking" right on its surface but thats all there is.

nah.

A million miles? Really?

Legit depth?

I like Pontypool a lot, but then I'm a tremendous sucker for homegrown (Cdn.), well-executed high-concept genre stuff.

Speaking of which, anyone but me seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flz5_JDGI3Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEUQUFvuV6I
=Martyrs

so pontypool is about words acting as a virus because why? who knows? and then 90 minutes of movie happens and we learn nothing at all. its an empty movie wrapped up in an attempt to look smart while saying and signifying nothing at all.

whoops, that was a misleading clip. it's not a cheap-looking period piece, it's about LARPing gone wrong. xxp

Who says Pontypool is "about" anything?

so pontypool is about words acting as a virus because why? who knows? and then 90 minutes of movie happens and we learn nothing at all.

^^^this

never heard of Martyrs before, now I'm curious

re: Pontypool, I've always taken it as principally being about french-english relations in Canada, or just cultural/linguistic hegemony in general if you like.

Personally, I still think Pontypool is a metaphor for Quebecois independence, which is at least partly about language. Simon, you're Canadian, what do you think?

I understood that going in but that didn't make it a better movie. the movie was still 2/3rds two people sitting in a room making up explanations for things

i do enjoy that this is a showdown between canadian horror films

well not inside i dont think, but the main contenders

I feel kind of weird about 'it thinks it's smart' as a dismissal? So it overreaches itself a bit, big deal! I like a thinkin' mess!

Oooh oooh I need opinions on The Wild Hunt! How izzit?

eh i dont think it thinks its smart as much as it really really wants us to think its smart. i was thinking of reading the book to see if it just got fucked up in transition actually

I think Pontypool could have been less vague but maybe the concept would have completely fallen apart with closer inspection. I doubt it tho cause I will accept pretty lamebrained explanations for things in horror movies.

The Wild Hunt might be my fave QC flick of the last few years - funny, genre-defying, and surprisingly rousing. Only real flaw is the writing of the "queen" / girlfriend character, really underdeveloped.

And yeah Josh I definitely read it that way too, at least in part.

I will accept pretty lamebrained explanations for things in horror movies.

yeah so will I! Instead we get ... nothing. we get the half-guesses (which turn out to be correct, for no apparent reason?) of the two main characters and that's it.

I like that bit in Dawn of the Dead when the zombies hold up a sale banner that's been painted over with IT'S ABOUT CONSUMERISM in bloody letters.

I'm not saying the film should've been more obvious about it's subject matter. it was plenty obvious!

tbh a lot of this is handwaving from me because the central problem with pontypool is that it is scary exactly once, and that happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Why are you all convinced Pontypool explains itself? The main characters have no idea what's going on, and the addition of that language expert just makes it all the more surreal.

because by the end they're babbling to each other about what they need to say (and how) in order to save themselves etc.

like they have no idea what's going on, but then they talk about it enough to convince themselves of various courses of action

actually the only thing that could make me more irritable would be if the 80 minutes spent parsing what was happening was just a red herring because then what the fuck is the point at all

and the presence of the language expert just makes this all the more irritating! it's like the film introduces a character that should explain stuff and then he doesn't, rendering the character's appearance fairly pointless.

xp

i do have a proposal that would bring unity back to this thread but it would require you all to watch Red State and that is a bridge too far imo

xpost The movie does not end with them babbling! The movie ends with them in a highly stylized bar, in black and white, continuing the surreal streak.

and the presence of the language expert just makes this all the more irritating! it's like the film introduces a character that should explain stuff and then he doesn't, rendering the character's appearance fairly pointless.

Exactly! It's hilarious. At one point the language expert is literally tossing back popcorn, fascinated, while everyone argues!

Once again, I bring up Ionesco. Particularly "Rhinocerus,"

oh see i was giving the movie credit by ignoring the weird natural born killers second ending as something stupid the producers forced them to tack on

xpost only spelled correctly, sorry

There's an alternate ending?

I must have fast-forwarded through and/or completely forgotten this "second ending"

its a post credit or partial credit ending