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

made rosalind leigh our halloween watch. found the end a little deflating when it came but enjoy it more as I let it sit. like it went from whatever it was to something else entirely, but that something else wasn't bad either. sadder and sweeter and less scary but not bad. or pretty much: jjusten otm.

ps josh if, just speaking hypothetically, this had been the kind of movie that would involve monster, imo it would also be the kind of movie where that monster's presence would be accounted for unambiguously.

but hey i thought mulholland drive was pretty straightforward so what do i know.

When everybody in the world sees this movie I want jjjusten to post his take bc I too have a take (also thought it was unambiguous) and I want to see how wildly different all our takes are.

Also there is one part near the end that nearly put me over the edge (not a jump scare. LL knows the part) that I could not stop thinking about as I was trying to go to sleep last night.

the bit where she says his name in the garden

had me like >>>>>>>

xpost I thought said hypothetical monster was totally unambiguous. Is that the wrong take? Had it been more clearly ambiguous, imo, I might have gotten more out of this flick. I guess I wasn't sure what the monster was supposed to be/represent? Because there was enough spooky supernatural shit at work that I wasn't sure what I was meant to take from the guilt trip side of the film. Or, for that matter, why the guy kept waking up on the floor. Or what pills he was taking. It was all very elliptical, I though, which can be good, but I wish I knew if I actually missed something vs. whether I'm looking for something that isn't there.

that's what made it good!!
the pills? the slime-licking? the guilt? his confident cooking skills? i don't really care to try to figure out what it all means. all of it was there for the viewer to interpret. it beats being bonged on the head by skinny angry witch ghosts.

I can't really get with that at all. If leave too much to interpret then there's nothing actually there. I guess it all depends on how much you trust the perspective of the camera in this, though I tend to think what's shown to us, especially absent the presence of the protagonist, is "real." It's lame if you just show, say, a ghost floating around, and then try to argue it's all in the head of someone not present.

the person who wielded that camera did a really great job, imo. i trust that person!

Like, is what he sees, and rewinds on the VHS supposed to be up for interpretation? How about the manner of death of his mother? The neighbor talking about the animal? The hypothetical monster creeping around while he sleeps? All that stuff. It's too concrete to be ambivalent, but too confusing to be concrete, especially once you toss in pills and passing out and things going growl in the dark.

The camerawork was cool.

Yeah I dunno, none of that bothered me much. The camerawork was really cool, the set dressing was cool, it was scary, the actor was good, Vanessa Redgrave A+ choice, I didn't feel insulted or disgusted by anything, that alone would have been enough for me. Maybe I have low standards? (I don't think so, but maybe I do)

I don't think so. I have low standards, but I would not say that you do.

I actually just took everything that happened as literal in the world of the movie and metaphorical in the world of making the movie (kind of like how we are to take the events of the Exorcist as literal, but also understand there are metaphors for Father Karras's loss of faith and guilt over his relationship with his mother). So these things happened to Leon, but they also were meant to represent his emotional issues about his strained/estranged relationship with his mother.

yes, and her possible delusions that came real?

OK if we're just straight up talking about it ... there was something at the end that made me think that maybe the whole story of Leon visiting was all in the mind of Rosalind as she was dying - like she was imagining a redemption for Leon that allows him to be happy, and forgiving him for his lack of religious belief. But I don't remember specifically where that interpretation came from - I guess because a literal interpretation wouldn't be as satisfying without a little more explanation? But either way, I enjoyed the movie and am OK with it not totally making sense.

Oh that actually makes a lot of sense w/ the voiceover at the beginning.

I kinda thought it might be dementia?

My feeling was similar to NA's. A story Rosalind is telling herself.

i am also in NA's camp

some slight differences in interpretation but the key thing being that Leon never goes to that house at all. There's a clear exterior shot that establishes this at the end of the movie.

I figured that was just "later" since on the way out he said to sell it all. But nope, you are all making even more sense.

Now I want to watch this again.

YES I AM A FUCKING GENIUS YESSSSSS

okay so if we're doing this jjusten otm. this is a ghost story in the most literal sense. QED.

and it's not about forgiving Leon for lack of faith, it's about mistakes and regret and learning too late that love (which = god after all) is more important than belief.

if what the purely hypothetical monster was supposed to be/represent was unclear you definitely missed something in the final voiceover.

Just say it. Come on. Say what the monster represented.

CAPITALISM

DEMENTIA

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Monster/Theories

PRIDE, duh.

http://smollin.com/michael/tmonstr/mon011.jpg

I DARE some young aspiring horror filmmaker to pull off what Grover did there.

M. Night, eat your heart out.

Again, not post-2005, but for those who enjoy low-low-budget stop-motion horror (like the original EVIL DEAD or EQUINOX), you gotta check out WINTERBEAST. So much stoopid fun.

I liked "Magic Magic." Really well-acted and effective and depressing.

Finally watched 'My Amityville Horror'. Felt like the director cheesed it out a bit much with the overdone sound effects/music cues. But I found Daniel really fascinating and a v sad protagonist. The part where he was talking about constantly having to play the role of protector *for himself*, that he was never really able to enjoy much of a normal childhood, that really got to me. George really did a fucking number on him, jesus.

The stuff with Lorraine Warren was ! and O_o

finally saw stoker last night (the american debut of Park "Oldboy" Chan-wook), which has its own thread but only one post from someone who's actually seen it, so posting here. Highly recommended to old-school auteur theory types, as you can really see the director chafing against the material. First half of the movie is loaded with abstract portent, shit like Mia W creepily a hard boiled egg on a table so that the shell crackles after a funeral, people can't open a door without signaling "that ain't right," and it seems like its going to build into a grotesque peak when suddenly exposition comes barreling forth and all that ambiguity goes out the window. So whether you see it as a self-indulgent director fruitying up a strong Hitchcock homage or a visually striking director hampered by a b-movie thriller script, it's one of the clearest examples i've seen recently of the two being at odds.

Some would debate whether it's horror but there's death, lotta modern dark "gothic" shit and the title made everybody think it was a vampire movie, so

Finally saw Lords of Salem tonight. SUPER into it. Definitely a new fave.

you are all high. that rosalind leigh movie was bogus. protagonist didn't have to do anything but wander around gazing at stuff, and wasn't even credible (or interesting) doing that. house looked like someone barfed a "spooky props" warehouse all over the place, silly & distracting. final explanation seemed to dispel the subtler aspects of the mystery in favor of a blaokboard-erasing cheat. not scary. boo.

did like stoker, tho. agree w da croop (croopsy?) that the style seemed at odds with its somewhat underwhelming substance, enough so that it fizzled somewhat in the 2nd half, but i dug the style enough to enjoy it overall.

Rosalind Leigh was great - thanks for the recommendation! It seemed unambiguous to me that Leon was never at the house and the movie was a story Rosalind was telling herself, either just before death or as a ghost. The monster seemed to me to be a manifestation of Rosalind's loneliness, no?

I watched the Innkeepers and V/H/S over the weekend. Innkeepers did the horror comedy genre really well, although I preferred the comedy to the horror. Great sense of tension and humour but the false-starts were scarier than the final payback. Did enjoy this though. V/H/S was disjointed. The first story (cat demon lady) was by far the most impressive while the rest of the stories seemed to riff on similar themes and some of them were a bit difficult to follow. I didn't think the whole thing held together so well and a lot of the stories could have taken more time to develop. That said, it did give me some pretty creepy dreams so obv something worked.

Calvaire was good though - a nicely done take on an old favourite, beautifully shot too.

OTM! love that movie. since i don't see many belgian movies, i'll lump it in with france and say, with trouble every day, it's one of my favorite horror films from "that region" in the last decade or so. so strange and, yeah, beautiful.

speaking of rosalind leigh, it's interesting how central the idea of belief has become to tales of the supernatural. so many possession & ghost films in semi-recent years that make a huge point about the tension between skepticism and faith. TLW&TORL primarily stresses belief in the divine over things that go bump in the night, but both are in play (and the latter sometimes stands for the former anyway).

xpost that bit in the bar was amazing.

If we're talking monster (since so many have seen "Rosalind") I think the film's own literal-mindedness worked against it. For example, I find it really hard to believe that ghost or real Rosalind imagined her son sitting at a desk reviewing security footage. That's what I meant by its hinky POV: there was so much that happened that I could not imagine from the POV, real or imagined, of "Rosalind." I will reserve judgment as to whether that is sloppiness, shortcuts or just sort of hail-mary (so to speak) fingers crossed obfuscation. There's omniscient, and then there's multiple POV, and I thought the movie walked the line in a really confusing way, like, I dunno, cameras breaking the 180 rule.

Calvaire! The bar scene is legendary. It is worth the price of admission 10x over.

otm

another way to view rosalind might be to suppose that leon /really did visit the house, and was haunted by his mother - in the form of the monster. she has been so consumed by her loneliness that its monstrous form is all that remains. she doesn't recognize her son when he does return, and he (of course) doesn't recognize her.

not sure that works any better than "it was all in her ghost-head."

I like anger-regret demon on the loose better than "it was all in her ghost-head."

not my idea, but yeah, i like it too. still don't like the movie tho.

I liked stoker a lot, def dark + weird + gothy so would appeal to a lotta folks here

ending falls apart big time but being a fan of s korean and/or horror films I'm used to that

it gets almost 3/4 of the way in before losing the plot so that makes for a good amount of gorgeous design & aggressively virtuoso camerawork