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

Nobody's trying to shame you!

Sorry, that sounded accusatory. Any criticism I have is about the movie, not about people who watch it. Also I pretty much always read the Wikipedia summaries of the movies mentioned on this thread that I am pretty sure I won't watch.

likewise read the synopsis and just .... yeah what is the point of that

I pretty much always read the Wikipedia summaries of the movies mentioned on this thread that I am pretty sure I won't watch.

lol me too (cf Martyrs tetc.)

DUMPLINGS!, Human Centipede etc

Ha, yes, all of the French "new wave of horror," A Serbian Film, the Woman...

They are not my scene but I am usually too curious to leave it alone entirely.

xp!

I've seen both DUMPLINGS! and Human Centipede! Human Centipede is surprisingly tame, actually. I liked it!

DUMPLINGS! was more gross in concept than execution, I thought.

But everybody has different tolerances. jjjusten and Hal Jam and EIII are probably like "WTF wouldn't you watch Martyrs?"

This is one of my favorite threads though I know I'm too much of a wimp to watch like 80% of the films on here. I'm one who reads the wikipedia entries as well, but I was so taken aback by the one for Martyrs I decided to stop that as well.

I feel some discomfort/shame about having sat through the whole thing, but tbh the first part was pretty well done. The two girls had a charming unconventional (yet totally familiar) friendship and were convincingly early teenlike. I have to give the actors props for that. The rest of the movie was sick in the worst way and I wish I hadn't seen it. I'd be ok never talking about it again!

Human Centipede 2 is basically everything people were afraid the first would be but wasn't.

In many ways, reading the Wiki description of "A Serbian Film" - a movie I am torn about, but largely supportive of, in the abstract - is an experience in and of itself, because as you read it you think no fucking way, but then you see it and it turns out to be both beat by beat accurate but also nowhere near as horrifying as you imagined it to be. Which introduces its own conflicting feelings. Would I prefer it was harder to take? Why? Is there anything that would be truly too hard to take? Why? Etc.

I have so many things to say right now

Human Centipede 2 was boring me so I turned it off.

About to start "Twixt", expecting a show down between modern Roman Polanski and modern Val Kilmer to see who can fuck this up more.

God damn it, I mean Francis ford coppola

Hold on, could this actually be...awesome?

Nope, never mind, the brief what the shit greatness that happened in the first half hour has sunk into a mire of dumb as dick garbage.

Even Bruce Dern mowing down on the scenery and a totally awesome cameo from Don Novello (!) can't save this from itself.

I too have read Wikipedia summaries for movies that sounded too torturey -- for example, I've read about Martyrs and A Serbian Film and have not sought either of them out. But I had no idea going into Megan is Missing what I was getting myself into. So while I would have avoided it had I known better, I didn't know better, and I'm ultimately glad that I saw it. It brings up the old dilemma of how to react to a piece of art that is deplorable in a number of ways but also really well made and effective and emotionally genuine in others. One of the things that often signifies true "horror" to me in either movies or books is that sense you get, at some point during it, that the filmmaker or writer is not to be trusted, that his or her moral compass may be off and you're being led to a seriously bad place. (Classic old-school example: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.) Usually, though, by the end of the movie or book, you are either returned to a point of relative safety or are given enough evidence of sensitivity and intelligence throughout that you let the artist off the hook, or even admire them for what they've done.

Megan is Missing does have those moments of sensitivity and intelligence to differentiate it from truly redeemless crap like Captivity -- but the last 22 minutes of the movie let go of all that good work, abandoning us without warning into apparently pointless terror. This could be seen as brave or inexcusable and I don't know which one it is. But here I am still thinking about it, and I like that, even if I can't like the film.

That's really interesting. I think there's something positive to be said for a movie (any creative product) that does not take you back to that safe space at the end, although I think brave overstates it a little.

As with so many things, it's subjective and what it boils down to for me is that I don't want to go to a seriously bad place. Coming from someone who styles herself a fan of horror movies (and books and comics and whatever else) that makes me sound like a big phony, maybe, but it's the truth. From what I've read, I wouldn't want to see Megan is Missing even if it did have a (relatively) happy ending (a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for example, which only ends happily by the most miserly definition of happy).

That doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have been made (or even if I think so that I would seriously espouse that argument), or that people are bad for watching it or wanting to watch it. Just that I think with movies that go off the rails and fail to return, it is very valid to say, "Nope. Not for me."

well see now i have to watch it

Ditto.

Ha! This would have been the moment where I pointedly avoided it!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Diffrentstrokes.jpg

But everybody has different tolerances. jjjusten and Hal Jam and EIII are probably like "WTF wouldn't you watch Martyrs?"

― carl agatha, Wednesday, October 23, 2013 6:06 PM

actually I'm like "wtf wouldn't *I* watch martyrs" but everybody else can make their own decisions abt what they can handle

the thnig expressed most of my thoughts on the subject. avoiding disturbing content when it comes to horror movies seems like a fools errand and can result in missing out on some powerful + thoughtful aesthetic experiences (eg snowtown), or even just an entertaining one - if you read a description of a film where the coda involved a man's decapitated head being used to rape a naked + bound college coed you might say no thanks, not for me, but I don't think re-animator is an exceptionally disturbing experience to be avoided. the human centipede is a great example of a movie that's far less graphic than ppl expect, and I love it in part because the *idea* is more horrifying than anything displayed onscreen. martyrs on the other hand *is* exceptionally grueling, for me there are redeeming meta aspects in there but many here have found their mileage varying on that front.

either way there's no reason for anybody to endure needless psychic trauma, the irl world is traumatizing enough

I mean, not that there's anything wrong with staying on the ground-level floor of things like The Conjuring, but I like heights.

Human Centipede is surprisingly tame, actually. I liked it!

― carl agatha, 2013年10月24日 星期四 上午9:04 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the concept was so deeply horrifying that i couldn't sleep for weeks just thinking about it. by the time i got around to seeing it i was pretty much over the visceral reaction, and the women's acting was so bad that in execution it was just silly.

myriad comments upthread re favouring wikipedia over actually watching some of these movies is wholly otm. like hell i'm sitting through child rape, jesus christ.

The "bad place" argument is sort of fascinating to me. Someone pointed out recently how so many revenge movies spend as much or more time on the inevitable rape or other violation as they do on the revenge. So how should I feel sitting through that stuff? Obviously, I am meant to be disturbed (or titillated?), to some extent. But how am I supposed to feel during the revenge? Relieved? Excited? Thrilled? Entertained? That's why "Irreversible" provides such a strangely unique vantage, seeing as it gets both rape and revenge over with, so a degree, pretty early on, taking them out of the equation. And then also, because the movie has such a more overtly "arty" pedigree, does that put it above your more gormless, typical torture porn? Or does its pedigree provide me a moral "out" while I'm watching it, because I'm doing so in the name of Art? Haven't seen "12 Years a Slave" yet, but I imagine it introduces a similar conflict. Slavery was an outright horror, an atrocity. Do I need to see a movie to emphasize something that really needs no further emphasis in my mind? Am I a coward for not wanting to see its horror confirmed again? Am I a fool for subscribing to a recreation as a legitimate substitute for a horrifying reality I can never know? Is the fact that this particular movie depicts this particular horror in apparently greater detail/verisimilitude something to be praised? Enjoyed?

All sorts of stuff to think about that I honestly rarely think about, even though it's always swimming around up/in there all the time.

I don't watch them as much as I used to but I went through a very big slavery/racism epic phase that was partially informed by wanting an entertainment-based hook into some of the horrific back channels of American history and how it directly impacted my forebears, but mostly because I wanted to support movies that cast African-Americans in lead roles or cast a lot of African-Americans is supporting roles; in 2013, this means you are either watching a lot of Tyler Perry (or Tyler Perry-influenced) movies or a lot of slave movies. In that landscape, something like "Think Like A Man" comes across so much better than it would if there were still movies like "Eve's Bayou" and "The Inkwell" to challenge it.

I wanted to support movies that cast African-Americans in lead roles or cast a lot of African-Americans is supporting roles; in 2013, this means you are either watching a lot of Tyler Perry (or Tyler Perry-influenced) movies or a lot of slave movies.

This is OTM and super frustrating.

either way there's no reason for anybody to endure needless psychic trauma, the irl world is traumatizing enough

Yes. Like, I don't really need to see rape scenes, at least not the way they are done in 99% of horror movies (American Mary being a notable exception). The scene you mentioned in Reanimator, which I otherwise like a lot (I'm a bit of a Jeffrey Combs partisan anyway) comes close to ruining the movie for me.

Does it matter that the scene in Reanimator is so blatantly going for shock to the point of camp?

josh do you know what a trauma trigger is

it can ruin the whole camp angle for some ppl

that's the one scene in Reanimator (a film I love unabashedly) that really goes close to the "OMG I don't want to see this" line, but it dances along it pretty artfully. and the disembodied head is much more comical than horrifying in general (yelling at his body, etc.)

ymmv

as with most of this really

rape scenes are weird, it's not that it's a subject that shouldn't be addressed on-screen (of course it should) it's just that the depictions can vary so widely. there are right ways and wrong ways to approach it, but I can't really say which is which until I'm watching it. it's true that textual plot summaries don't really do it justice. although fwiw I can't really imagine how I would be cool with the depiction of the rape of a 14yo a la Megan is Missing, that is just some imagery I don't want in my head.

In some ways, playing a rape scene for camp is even worse than playing it seriously. The tied-up co-ed, who remains helpless and without any agency during the scene, is definitely traumatized by sexual violence but oh look, it's a disembodied head so it's funny. It minimizes rape into something we can all brush off as hilarious!

I can think of ways to make that scene funny without being potentially movie ruining. Don't have the woman totally naked, bosom heaving on the table in a way that sexualizes the violence, for one. If she were wearing a dress, you would still get the point without feeling like her assault is used as an excuse for a titillating (lol?) boob shot. Instead of having the guy rescue her, have her rescue herself and maybe soccer kick the head away, then she gets some agency and we get to see the headless corpse bumbling around looking for his head some more, which is always funny. Two small directorial decisions would take that scene from cringe inducing to pretty great, IMO (with the acknowledgement that making it great for me would not necessarily make it great for everybody).

agree the nudity/boob shot is totally gratuitous

another thread fave w/ big warning stickers is deadgirl. it's got a lot to say abt objectification and there's zero titillation but def not for the squeamish.

yeah I've been thinking of watching that but dunno if I could sell it to my wife

y'know, based on the description

The issue with Megan is Missing that was messing with my head relates directly to my first post about it -- the rape is not just in the movie, but it is being filmed for the titillation of others. In the movie, Megan's photo was identified on a fetish porn site, and you can imagine where it goes from there. So there were multiple layers to the rape --
1) the fact that it was happening at all
2) the fact that the viewer is subsequently watching it as a viewer of the movie "Megan is Missing" and
3) the fact that in the movie "Megan is Missing" it was intended to be used in a titillating fashion for people (who?) to presumably pay for and watch on the internet for their own pleasure

The combination of those three things was what sent me over the edge into intrusive thoughts and general mental upset.

That said, it's not that it was gratuitous or played for titillation for the viewer of "Megan is Missing"; it's that it was horrifically violent and played for titillation for the viewer of rape porn, which is not the same thing as the movie Megan is Missing.

Does that clarify what bothered me a little better? I wasn't prepared to really go into it in that much detail, but it's much more complicated than "yuk child rape."

yo, that makes perfect sense, yo.

Yes, it totally does.

I also watched THE BASEMENT, a super-fun 8mm movie shot by a bunch of dorks in 1989 (but I can post it here since it didn't get released until 2011). It's an anthology film, so you get 4x the stupidness. All the dialogue is dubbed in, of course, and it's really foul-mouthed, which is amusingly incongruous with the squeaky-clean we-made-this-in-high-school vibe. Highly enjoyable.

josh do you know what a trauma trigger is

No, I totally get it. I wasn't asking to be snide, just asking if it mattered. There's a whole strain of the campily horrible stuff - Gordon Lewis, Peter Jackson, Troma, et al. - stuff that just goes so extreme it gets ridiculous, by design. But it's a tricky road, why any/all portrayals of rape in film are bad (even though more often than not I find it extremely troubling, too, no matter the context) but the myriad other violations in horror movies are somehow quantifiably less offensive. Like, a fake rape riles, but a fake beheading or disemboweling or cannibalism or flaying? Eh. You know? There is so much tangled up psychologically with sex and violence and their depiction that I suppose it stands to reason their combination in the most visceral, unpleasant sense would be exponentially harder to unpack.

Man, I totally forgot about Deadgirl. I'm not sure that movie is ultimately any good, but there's definitely something going on there.

Like, a fake rape riles, but a fake beheading or disemboweling or cannibalism or flaying? Eh.

Real rape happens often to a lot of people, or to people that we know and often are close to. Beheading and disemboweling and cannibalism... not so much.

Beheading videos are such the rage that within just the last week Facebook went back and forth on allowing them, no?