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

couldn't remember if I was the only pontypool hater around here or not... I mean I wanted to like it and there are things about it that are good, but it devolves into something that's much more irritating/eye-rolly than engaging

Eye-rolly? What made you roll your eyes, seeing as it avoids many of the predictable cliches you'd get from any other movie with the same (initial) premise?

well the part where they just start making up/accepting explanations for what's going on for one thing

or the end where the two characters are spouting gibberish to each other

basically I think it's all downhill when the doctor shows up

It's been a while since I saw it, but I was very satisfied with several of my takes upthread. The movie is at least partly about the dissolution of language/meaning, so if you made it to the insane post-credits scene - you did, right? - you see how the characters survive by creating their own reality.

I'm surprised at how many people (not nec. you) get caught up with exactly what is happening and why, when that's literal sort of read is a MacGuffin.

well, the dissolution of language/meaning is portrayed really literally. in a ridiculous fashion, imho.

when you have a character just show up arbitrarily show up and provide an otherwise unsupported and ridiculously convoluted explanation for what has been happening on-screen, that just strikes me as lazy filmmaking.

up to that point the viewer has been shown enough to piece together something is going on that involves language turning people into zombies, but then the doc shows up and the expository hypothesizing goes into overdrive

um SPOILERS I guess lol sorry

See, I thought the doctor was hilarious for providing that literal meaning. But I find so much more metaphoric richness to the film, that the literal reading is to me more a comment on literal readings/our desire for explanation. I plant the film firmly in the absurdist tradition (and have noted the many parallels Ionesco).

Like, this total goofball comes hurtling through the window for the sake of (unreliable) explanation, then makes his exit back out through the window, iirc.

I like meta/high concept horror movies but this one goes farther than I'm willing to go, I guess

stretch to call it a horror i suppose but ben wheatley's new one 'sightseers' is great. far more satisfying than 'kill list' though i'd count myself as a big fan of the former. he really seems to be progressing.

Kill List really let me down, though it was made/acted well. I'm just not sure what to make of the turn to the "Wicker Man," especially given the preceding real-world ugliness.

try 'sightseers' if you get a chance. far more thematically consistent, just as gruesome, genuinely funny and actually a bit moving.

couldn't remember if I was the only pontypool hater around here or not

jjj hates pontypool enough for any ten regular people

haha

anyway I like the doctor in pontypool, it's kind of like oh here's this sane rational person who seems to have answers in the midst of things going to hell and then he starts messing up his words and it's like argh no hope. agree the ending of pontypool gets goofy with the random word shouting but I had been on its side for a long time by that point.

to take a step back from my usual overblown ranty hatred of pontypool, its really the last 20-30 minutes that ruins it for me, i think a couple of earlier moments are really effective, the hand on the window is kinda pitch perfect, the degeneration of the calls to the helicopter dude are amazing, and the tea kettle thing was one of the better moments in oh shit dread filled horror i saw that year. and i kinda love stephen mchattie in anything. but the ending (and even more the completely fucking terrible double ending) kept dragging the things i liked down the more i thought about it. so yeah, i'll admit that there are certainly worse things out there, but i've never had a movie become so retroactively poisoned by the utter drop in quality of the last third. i didn't even hate it right after it finished (albeit with a certain sting wrt the sin city moment at the end), but the more i thought abt it afterwards, the more disappointed i was at how badly they fumbled.

Still ... that's progress!

The doctor was one of my favorite parts of Pontypool. I was really happy through most of the movie, but there was a drop in quality at the end. I'm fine witht he gibberish cure, but somehow they failed in executing it, and the blocking felt clunky. I dunno, it just fell apart. I just kind of cringed through the last bit.

Well fuck it, I'm going to watch scream 4. Not optimistic abt this one at all.

Uggggggh this is awful already

The true meaning of horror is being a movie series trapped with David Arquette...forever.

Everyone in that movie seemed trapped.

SIMILARLY

I just watched the Mother's Day sorta-remake. Plot's pretty different (house party interrupted by previous tenants, a Ma Barker gang looking for money supposedly mailed to the location, who then torture the shit out of everyone) but there's random bits - specific modes of death, references to "Queenie," even a reference to disco sucking - taken from the original. My friends and I wandered on to Mother's Day in high school and it's weird to have such a dark, earnest movie based on a camp classic. Rebecca DeMornay certainly gave it her all as the mom, though.

Only person in Scream 4 who had the ol' Scream spirit was Hayden Panettiere oddly enough

Def recommend Mother's Day to anyone who wants to see an epic vision (2 hours long!) from the director of Saw II-IV

If there is one honest good moment in this movie I will give it a thumbs up. All I am asking for is one.

(Note: I mostly make this promise because I am pretty sure there will not be one)

They can not possibly stab enough of these characters fast enough

i certainly can't recall one

an honest good moment, i mean

i do love that they had the writer of scream 3 rewrite the script

Haha oh boy, that is not promising

Ok hold on, a slightly clever thing just happened, we are not flatlined quite yet

Please someone kill an arquette, that is all I ask

Piece of shit

Sorry, I spoke too soon, horrible piece of shit.

watched ATM tonight - three people walk into the wrong 24 hour ATM booth in the wrong parkling lot and a dude murderously fucks with them cuz why not

come on, who hasn't?

this movie The Traveler, where fat Val Kilmer mumbles and whistles at cops as they die one by one, if even more giggle inducing. They keep calling him The Stranger and Mr Nobody so I'm guessing The Traveler was title #3

is even more giggle inducing.

Avoid A Night In The Woods at all costs. It's from the producers of The Children and Monsters, so you'd expect it to be competent, if nothing else, but it is absolutely dire. The worst kind of zero-effort Blair Witch rip-off. Has literally nothing going for it at all.

I walked out of Scream 4 in the theaters, which is saying something, because the only reason I was there was to kill time. I think I made it until 10 minutes before the end, with its "don't you see!!?!" lecture about social media and reality shows or something, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I knew there was nothing that could happen in those last few minutes to make me hate the movie any less.

Said it before, but Wes Craven has got to be one of the smartest worst filmmaker on earth. For every great movie he made, he made a decade of stinkers. "Redeye" was really good, though. And I should revisit "The Serpent and the Rainbow," which iirc had one of the scariest trailers I've ever seen. "Don't bury me! I'm not dead!!!"

Had high hopes for Silent House, but ended up getting somewhat bored by the end.

Original or remake?

The one with that new Olson which I assume is a remake. Wasn't aware of a different version.

the original is about 1000 times better, the remake is one of the worst recent horror films ive seen

In preparation for Christmas I've watched Sint (which I loved) and Rare Exports (which I couldn't be bothered with), currently rewatching Carpenter's version of The Thing. Why can't films be like that any more?

Huh, I liked Rare Exports a lot. Not really horror, per se, so much as a fun lark.

i was fine with the doctor in pontypool what i couldnt stand was the wet blanket radio producer character, she was just awful

it is pretty great that they made a canadian film where english is the enemy and they have to speak french to survive, i relished that

Ok so if you haven't seen "kill list" yet, stop wasting time and go find it right now. Just watched it, best horror film of 2011, bar none.