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

I liked the main Satanic theme in LoS. I wish there were more to the song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZKg6NZoVXk&list=RD02zPmyFWDo8so

Zombie's Halloween 2 recommended if you always thought Michael Myers dreamed of the director's wife and ponies

I'm no zombie fan, never really enjoyed one of his films tbh, tho I've got some grudging respect for what he's accomplished (cut to teenage me jamming pre-metal scumrock-era white zombie in '87... successful hollywood director didn't seem like it was in the cards for this guy).

but I realllly liked lords of salem, and would've been nudged into total love if the coda was more satisfying. it reached for some phantasmagorical jodorowsky wtf extended climax, but without a real commitment to per/subversion it devolved into 90s metal music video hijinks. for 3/4 of the runtime I enjoyed the lazy drift of its horror-movie-as-tone-poem style, before it decided to become a nu-metal inland empire. yr moves gotta be real sharp if yer gonna drive off the edge of the page like that, and all the promise of that stately lushness ended up delivering more rick rubin than rubens.

all that neg aside, anybody who gives me a beautifully shot & designed well-acted goth-out with that eerie surreal/quotidian vibe is pushing my buttons bigtime. was pretty impressed w/ ms zombie's perf too. her take on a single middle-aged tatted-up ex-junkie (er, spoiler?) who just really wants to get thru the day and hang with her dog, well, there weren't a lot of false notes there. and, as somebody noted above, refreshing to see that person as a central character. I mean we all know someone kinda like this, right? she nailed it.

I can see some of the carpenter ref's others noted above, but lynch is who I kept thinking of during all the interior creepy apartment / foreboding hallway sequences, also in the charmingly-polite/foulmouth-psycho binaries of the landlady and her coven (shit more spoilers). I guess a bit of polanski apartment trilogy in there too. and I dug the comedy intertitles obv swiped from kubrick - horrific sting cue / jump cut / MONDAY - that shit never gets old.

so, lots to like in there, would recommend.

The Conjuring is worth a watch, good couple of jumps in there, had me kinda creeped out in a few parts. Little bit predictable, but still enjoyable.

Watched REC 3 last night. What a total waste of time! The first two are so good, and this one seems to be heading in a good direction until about ten minutes in when the filmmaker abandons the effective found-footage angle and just goes for a regular movie -- a boring zombie movie, as it turns out, with a (sigh) blood-spattered bride with a (sigh) chainsaw. A day later, I'm still pissed off about it.

Right there with you, that movie made me furious.

I am planning on watching 'You're Next' tonight :D

Rec 3 was silly. One of those situations where the first two movies did everything so right I guess they felt they had to go a totally different direction.

Lords of Salem has stuck with me, despite its shortcomings. I sort of wish, again, that there was more mystery to it, that it would be more like the Salem witch "2001" or something. Though I guess it comes close at times.

You're Next more like bore next :(

I had 0.0 interest in seeing you're next until I found out the lead from upstream color was in it, guess she couldn't save it singlehandedly huh

I hated RZ\s Halloween flicks but pretty much unabashedly loved Lords of Salem.

That lead from "Upstream Color" & "You're Next" (dug that one) is also in Ti West's new movie "The Sacrament" (along with the rest of the cast of "You're Next," actually) which I saw last night at the London Film Festival. The movie starts off with real promise and has some really tense bits until - for me, and several people in the audience, it seemed like - the penny drops about 20/25 minutes in and you realize you've figured out exactly what's going on and all interest disappears. I feel like I shouldn't say more than that, but it's enormously disappointing.

Also saw Lucky McKee & Chris Sivertson's "All Cheerleader's Die," which is a lot of fun.

it's enormously disappointing.

Spoiler alert!

Watched MANIAC last night, the remake with Elijah Wood. He's solid in it, the staging is great (90% of the movie is from the first-person perspective of Wood, an interesting technical feat), and the score is awesome. It's impressively made but keeps to its grindhouse roots via lots of nudity and gore. And yet... I found myself wondering how many women I need to see scalped and killed. The answer, as it turns out, is not very many. So I guess I'm left cold by it. Would love to hear your thoughts (it's streaming on Netflix, FYI).

# of women I need to see scalped/killed = 0
i did not watch this movie

I liked "You're Next" but will do the annoying horror film thread thing of saying it's "not really a horror movie." I mean it's set up as a horror movie but ultimately it's more like a low-budget action/revenge movie. It's never scary and it's not really trying to be. The lead actress is great and I enjoyed Joe Swanberg as the douchey brother.

It's a little more horrory than Straw Dogs (which often gets lumped into the wider nets of horror).

NA otm

If that's the case, Last House on the Left and I Spit On Your Grave aren't horror, either.

They're not horror, just horrible or horrific, a lineage that extends from those start points through the torture porn boom. Just because it makes you close your eyes or turn away or turn it off does not make it scary.

when I was 9 I was taken to a drive-in triple feature of the amityville horror/dawn of the dead/last house on the left. the ghosts and zombies didn't scare me but last house sure as hell did.

also where is the horrible/horrific section located and do we need a thread for it

Where do they file "Irreversible?" Next to "Hostel?"

arty eurotrash prolly

Sorry, guys.

I don't really have a dog in the fight about whether revenge movies are horror. I've never even seen I Spit on Your Grave and don't particularly want to (although I have seen and actually own Last House on the Left - I won it in a trivia contest at the first Music Box 24-hour horror movie marathon event). I mostly bring them up because they're generally considered horror cannon.

Plus if they aren't horror, then American Mary isn't horror, and that puts me behind on my 31 horror films in 31 days endeavor.

i am strongly opposed to the idea that horror movies have to scare people to be horror movies, esp as a strident proponent of the dread/creepy based horror film. im down with a well-executed jump scare every so often, but its hardly the be all end all of horror.

Has nobody watched The Conjuring yet?

we already talked about the conjuring! i didn't like it.

i assumed NA put "not really a horror movie" in quotes to avoid people taking the line too literally, more referring to the idea that film circumvents expectations to the degree that those expecting a simple masked home invasion thriller might be disappointed.

no i get that, i was just having a more general reaction to "i didnt jump out of my seat once" as a measure peeps use for horror success.

the dread-fear is so much worse/scarier than the jump-fear
i have cried through movies because of the former, while the latter just kinda makes me vocalize at a loud volume (but not actually feel fear)

even though i knew it had great raves from film festivals, i was totally suckered by the vague mediocrity of the first half of you're next, so the change in perspective was really amusing and impressive. though i totally get why it flopped with audiences following an ad campaign that was really "it's like the Strangers SQUARED!"

LL OTM about dread fear. I like jump scares, too, but honestly most of why they get to me is that I know they are coming and that gives me the dread fear.

As noted above, I really liked The Conjuring. I think it's on Amazon streaming and if it's Prime and not cash, I think I will watch it again to see how it holds up for me the second time.

I have little interest about arguing genre, I was just trying to figure out why someone who was expecting a "horror movie" might find "You're Next" boring/lame. But maybe some people just don't like it! I didn't think it was amazing but I did enjoy it.

Oh no. You brought up genre and we are going to argue genre.

I felt like You're Next didn't know how to interwine its comedy and its more horrific moments. plus it lost a lot of steam when the main *plot twist* happened, as it was a bit of a lame reveal.

I didn't hate it, but I've utterly forgotten it already.

If you're referring to the plot twist I'm thinking of, wasn't it in the last 10 minutes of the movie?

WARNING SPOILERS COMING

that was the final tenth of the plot twist that had been unraveling since about the midway part of the film, when it was obvious that

*SPOILERS*

.

.

the one son was in on the killings, which was too telegraphed and not too interesting. When I found out the other was involved it was sorta like "oh hey, why not". felt like the film would have been better if we never knew who the invaders were (or why they were picking off family members right and left). I appreciate a film that has the cojones to kill off an entire family of that size, but it didn't move me.

the film would have been better if we never knew who the invaders were (or why they were picking off family members right and left).
better? dunno. scarier, definitely. i liked it pretty well the way it was because i am legit afraid of masked intruders who want to kill me and require no extra scaring in that regard.

It did do a good job of creating an ugly atmosphere for about half of the movie, I'll give it that. but then I got bored midway through.

ha i like how this is a movie where some people will be bored for the first half, others bored for the second

I liked you're next well enough anyway but couldn't agree more w/neanderthal about how the reveal cheapened things

Going to watch the maniac remake tonight or American Mary unless someone talks me out of it

Also have some soviet movie called cargo 200 which is supposed to be p fucked up as an option

I had read some interviews with Simon Barrett about how he was going hard for a black comedy/horror kind of thing which got me really interested from the start, so I think my expectations were a little high going in? idk. The 'funny' beats weren't pulled off that well, and they got kinda lost in the more stylish look of the whole movie somehow. Maybe. I'm still rattling it round in my head.

And yeah, the movie pretty much rolled to a stop after the reveal, you were just waiting around to see how they wrapped it all up.

I like those animal masks though.

yeah i bet my experience would have been totally different if i'd gone into it knowing there'd be dark comedy, instead of that being a pleasant surprise after a lot of sub-strangers stuff

yeah, felt the same way. was expecting something grisly and bleak and was actually pretty OK with the comedic bits! but man, that ~twist~ urrrgh. could you still make it funny without doing any kind of reveal and just keep having animal mask guys try to off family members and write "you're next" on a couple more walls? sure, I think so. it'd be scarier for sure too.

yeah the twist undercut it's effectiveness for sure

Ok just started maniac and within the first 5 it sure seems that if nothing else this is worthy for the horror movie soundtracks thread