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

I am basically getting the impression that Jennifer Lawrence is going to one day own Hollywood

Just saw Chernobyl Diaries: You know, I rather liked the set-up here. Unique location, nice feel, solid opening half with the bear and the dogs and whatnot. Then, you know, the rest of the movie happened after that.

haha that is a very apt description i think

finally got around to Cabin in the Woods. very enjoyable! I have never liked a Joss Whedon anything before afaik

firefly and serenity are worth your time imo

OTM, if only to lol at Nathan Filion and Alan Tudyk attempting to curse in Mandarin

I tried Buffy a long time ago but something about the jabberiness and shitty production values really turned me off.

was not especially surprised by anything in CITW but loved all its details. "System Purge" button did not disappoint, was fun just trying to catch all the references

i never clicked with buffy post-facto but i think that was kind of a "you had to be there" moment

Buffy is enjoyable enough while watching it but I never was engaged enough to actively follow it

meanwhile Firefly/Serenity had a much more interesting premise to me and is actually helped by only being one season and a movie

Made it ~30 minutes into Martyrs, gf says I tapped just before shit got real. Even reading the wiki plot summary afterward gave me chills.

Martyrs is lame. First 30 minutes is like 30 minutes from a different movie. Shit gets real after that. Real ridiculous.

Buffy is the very definition of a cumulative show, where the emotional and plot payoffs are only there for those who have followed it. It's not an ideal show to dip in and out of, and it's not helped that the first few episodes are not very good. But it quickly really kicks in as a truly amazing series. A few of the later episodes, like the musical episode and "The Body," are some of the best TV ever produced, but they both require a preexisting investment in the characters.

I haven't rewatched Buffy in years, largely because I don't think I'd be as impressed as I was at 18 and 23ish.

IMO the musical episode suffers greatly from most of the cast being absolutely terrible singers

also, the best parts of the episode are the background musical scenes happening to other people, like the woman singing to the meter maid about trying to get out of a parking ticket; the actual main character story stuff didn't land at all IMO

I felt Buffy as a show worked much much better when it mixed real stakes in, particularly with unexpected deaths of ancillary characters. I also loved the concept of Dawn but sort of hated the way it was done.

I loved the way it was done, and wish the show ended after that season.

Could never get into Buffy, loved Firefly.

hahaha "martyrs sucked, buffy rules" = me and josh have very different opinions on things and the world

Martyrs is terrific but quite a lot of the power hinges on the twist late on.

buffy > firefly, both classic, though.

martyrs is also awesome.

The part I saw was very well made and the tension was ratcheted nicely, I just wussed out.

Buffy is the very definition of a cumulative show, where the emotional and plot payoffs are only there for those who have followed it. It's not an ideal show to dip in and out of, and it's not helped that the first few episodes are not very good. But it quickly really kicks in as a truly amazing series. A few of the later episodes, like the musical episode and "The Body," are some of the best TV ever produced, but they both require a preexisting investment in the characters.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, March 18, 2013 1:37 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm

firefly is pretty weak in comparison, the characters/performers were not nearly as charming or compelling. maybe it woulda gotten better.

Amazingly, given the confrontational material, I am in the minority on "Martyrs." I do think it's well made, etc., I just think that what you have to endure is pretty much negated by what I consider a BS ending, a problem that's been a facet of French horror since "High Tension." But hey, some people think "Martyrs" is smart and profound, etc., so more power to them. I will concede I appreciate its thematic ambition, bullshit or no, more than I appreciate the strictly bullshit of something like "Insides."

haha and again, we have v different tastes, i think martyrs is great but inside is near perfect

I think they're both roughly equal, or close enough and so far beyond almost any other contenders that the decimal points don't matter.

i hated 'inside' so much. the acclaim from ostensibly sane martyrs-digging ilxors makes me wanna give it another shot, but i was high as fuck when i saw it and i still didn't like it, so i doubt that i'd come around.

finally saw [rec] last night, tight little flick.

I think (rec] and its sequel are totally great, totally scary and immersive. Third one is silly, even if by design.

Third one is terrible awful garbage.

Watching "sinister" tonight in the hopes that it will be the first good horror movie of 2013. Not optimistic.

Ok that was fucking fantastic. More tomorrow when I don't need to go to sleep

It's great, isn't it? I'm not sure why my expectations were so low going in but it's really effective.

ethan hawke

I'd be skeptical too

Sinister looks like a great movie from the trailers

It honestly barely ever missteps throughout - performances are great, writing is solid, expectations are thwarted in all the right ways, soundtrack is capital C creepy and awesome. Basically gore free, but that isn't to say theres not some pretty terrifying moments. In a lot of ways it felt like the classic era of modern japanese horror stuff.

I am here today to urge you to see Little Deaths, a resolutely unpleasant but very interesting UK anthology film. You'll be a bit disappointed by the conclusion of the first of the three stories, but the storytelling, style, and editing is solid throughout. The second story, "Mutant Tool," is by far the most fascinating--hard to fully grasp but possibly brilliant. But each story has something worthwhile, or at least highly unusual. Get on it.

a couple dudes i'm pals with made this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRq1SmwJnN0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRq1SmwJnN0

is there a genre name for that kind of straw dogs/funny games/strangers home intrusion horror?

"Home invasion horror" sounds snappy enough to me, not sure if there's a proper term.

Sinister had some great BOOs I just couldn't forgive what idiots all the characters were.

also that house had the shittiest lighting - you couldn't even see the walls during dinner

i mean you move your family into a murder house (i guess so you can stare at the backyard where the murder happened), and find a box of murder tapes in the attic that you know was recently empty. then you watch one tape a night, stroking your beard in horror instead of GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF A MURDER HOUSE WHERE WELCOME WAGON LEAVES YOU SNUFF FILMS.

Netflix streaming surprise tonight "citadel" which although treading similar ground to "Eden lake" and "ils" is well worth giving a chance. Not without flaws certainly, but still

that movie would be a lot scarier if it were called your next but good on them for hiring barbara crampton

xps

Yo, we watched "Sound of My Voice," which is more of a drama about a cult than a straight-up horror film, but what the hell, I'll mention it anyway. Undercooked but mostly the undercookedness works for it. Plus the vomiting-tarp scene is classic.

Loved that movie until the last minute

Sinister had some great BOOs I just couldn't forgive what idiots all the characters were.

Recalling a funny New Yorker takedown.

How can you hope, or presume, to crank up our dread of the inhuman when, from the start, you refuse to play by regular human rules? Throughout “Sinister,” the rooms remain darker than crypts, whether at breakfast or dinnertime, and the sound design causes everything in the house to moan and groan in consort with the hero’s worrisome quest. I still can’t decide what creaks the most: the floors, the doors, the walls, the dialogue, the acting, or the fatal boughs outside.

Earlier:

. His latest project—“This could be my ‘In Cold Blood,’ ” he says—concerns a family that was hanged from a tree outside the very house where Ellison now dwells, although somehow he has failed to inform his wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance), of this cheerful fact. Up in the attic, he stumbles on a clue: a boxful of old Super-8 films, plus, helpfully, a projector on which to show them. Switching it on, he finds himself watching scenes not just of the hanging but of other multiple murders from the past. Who made the film? Or, rather, *who made the film?*, as Ellison writes on his notepad. The director of “Sinister” is Scott Derrickson, who co-wrote the script with C. Robert Cargill, and we can but pray that they move on to a new bio-pic of Melville. Imagine his questions: *one leg only?* and *why a whale?*

looool

eh thats a pretty lazy review, very rex reedish in its "couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the film because it was beneath me" vibe. particularly in the second paragraph, where it looks like hes willfully ignoring information from the film in lieu of zingers

god i hate reading half-assed critics banging their self-satisfied boners on the table wrt horror, its just the worst

no, jjj, that is valid criticism, delivered with perhaps a touch too much snark. the J-horror audio and visual stylistics were overplayed to the point of distraction.
i think you're just unwilling to accept criticism of a movie that you loved. personally, i am a lot cooler in my enthusiasm for Derrickson's film. it was... okay. with a hilariously bad climax and ending.

Ha lets be clear, I didn't love the movie. Still, complaining abt the idea that dude didn't tell his wife abt moving into a murder house when a huge plot point is the fact that dude didn't tell his wife abt moving into a murder house is crap criticism.