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

Okay, these books are great and I was prepared to write this adaptation off, assuming they would wind up turning an OTT series of 'kids' books into a tepid film for babies, but...hey, it looks like they might actually be going for it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3J2k3Nhicw

http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark-poster-red-spot-768x1137.jpg

that poster is INCREDIBLE

i’m in

I love everything about that poster except for the actual special effect

This reminds I just kicked my doctor pimple popper addiction. Usually I'm not horrified by posters, this one ...urgh. 😱

Saw The Mist again. Good gawd what an abysmal movie. Esp the ending.

We need to do a definitive "ending of the Mist: good/bad?" poll to settle this

The Wind is terrible btw

Just watched Troubled Water (which was Norwegian iirc) and it was really great. Reminded me of First Reformed only even more grim with themes of mother-grief and trauma vs religion and environmental decay. Also, some very good organ music!

First Reformed only even more grim

!

Soooo ... multiple movies on their way about people trapped in small flooding alligator/croc infested spaces? Black Water: Abyss and Crawl? Hmm. Throw in some father/son body swapping and I'm there!

so i've now watched every rob zombie movie. two of them are pre-2005 but i figured this was the more appropriate thread

house of 1000 corpses: a pretty delightful texas chain saw pastiche, the effect of which is like the first and second movies combined (movie practically screams for dennis hopper to run in with a chainsaw to save the day, which kind of happens in devil's rejects). contains several echoes of his future films (the set design of the infinite catacombs beneath the firefly clan's house is very halloween ii), inherits a lot of stylistic tics from his music video work (degraded film stock/videotape, inverted, radioactive color filters) which never really appear in his films again. a first draft but a good one

the devil's rejects: i watched part of, maybe all of this ten or eleven years ago and haaaated it, found it mean and joyless and it put me off zombie's work for a long time. the first half is still pretty mean and joyless, it's undiluted grindhouse sleaze and i find it very hard to endure the extended motel hostage situation, but the rest of the movie almost feels like a reward for living through that horror: the ice cream scene, the reversal of sympathies when the cop starts torturing the torturers which somehow didn't feel manipulative or graceless at all... really remarkable film, surprisingly political in that it's both anti-torture and anti-cop. in almost all of his movies i think rob zombie wants us to witness dehumanization but he simultaneously refuses to dehumanize any of his characters. in doing so he made this, the anti-revenge revenge film. incredible

31: the only one i had left (quick run-down: zombie's halloween is a failure, his halloween ii is a triumph, and lords of salem is equally as good and features sheri moon zombie's best performance (ymmv)). this one has the reputation of being the rob zombie film that even rob zombie fans hate. but... it's great? most of zombie's movies are really beautifully shot, he has a great eye (which is very indebted to hooper et al), but this one is Ugly and 100 percent about being Ugly. shot almost entirely in digital handheld close-up, the kills practically illegible seizures of flesh and blood, it's mean, hopeless, and there's no light whatsoever in it. i get why people hate it; i find it uncompromising and inspiring, and i'm going to add it to the "trump films" thread even though it may not really fit. also zombie's music cues are always really unexpected and wonderful and he outdoes himself with the way he uses aerosmith's "dream on" in this film

forgot to mention: 31 really lives up to the kafka epigraph at the start ("a first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die")

I re-watched Devil's Rejects for the first time in a long time not too long ago, and iirc found the motel scene even harder to watch than before and the turnaround of sympathies ... less effective than I remembered it?

31 I never saw and always forget it was even released. 1000 Corpses I saw once and don't want to see again, Salem is the one I think about the most. Easily his best directed and, iirc, the only one that doesn't coast on grotesque white trash-ery?

correct that lords of salem is the only one that doesn't dwell in gratuitous white trashiness even though i think zombie's use of that is more complicated than coasting on its grotesquery, cf. the authenticity politics and class war going on in both 1000 corpses and rejects

also if you like and think about lords of salem a lot, i highly recommend watching the director's cut of halloween ii, those movies feel very connected to me

Maybe I've seen it? It's possible it was so ugly (in every sense) that I just turned it off.

no no no it's shot beautifully! and is mostly just very sad!

however if you remember a rob zombie movie that featured a white horse, you saw it

Maybe I didn't see it? Which is the one that began with a rape in a hospital? The first one? That one was certainly ugly, so maybe it made me skip the second one. Also, it was the second Rob Zombie Halloween, which would be another reason for me to skip it as well.

Which is the one that began with a rape in a hospital? The first one?

this happens about 30 minutes into the director's cut of the first one

The Hole in the Ground is on Amazon now.

OK, I was weirdly excited for this, but a) it looks like garbage and b) the trailer gives away what must be most of the scares, so you've been warned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6MLJG0RdDE

yeah don't watch that if yer spoiler-averse. also, briefly thought it was Frank Grillo as the dad and was stoked....but alas

I keep hoping film trailers will change again but they haven't for a long time.

Someone I kinda sorta trust said Hagazussa was better than The Witch

Anyone seen this? I'm wondering whether to go tonight.

I just got it in the mail, so I might watch it tonight.

i liked it but not as much at the witch

Suspiria 2018 is on Amazon Prime now and its kind of a mess but enjoyable. It deviates from the original story but idk if you weren’t familiar with the original plot how much sense any of it would make.

At the other end of the spectrum, Unfriended: Dark Web was better than I expected.

I only made it 45 minutes into nu-Suspiria. Really didn't click for me at all.

The discussion above makes me want to take another run at Zombie's Halloween II. I bailed on that one early, too, but I love Lords of Salem so much (I own it on Blu-Ray) that I'm feeling generous.

xpost The first Unfriended was good, too!

the Unfriended movies rule

the unfriended movies do rule, and nu-suspiria is unmitigated garbage

I didn’t even finish the new Suspiria. Just seemed kinda grey and miserable, which is not exactly what I was looking for in a Suspiria movie.

The discussion above makes me want to take another run at Zombie's Halloween II. I bailed on that one early, too, but I love Lords of Salem so much (I own it on Blu-Ray) that I'm feeling generous.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Sunday, May 5, 2019 4:06 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really gotta emphasize director’s cut here, it’s, in many ways, a completely different movie from the theatrical (though i think the director’s cut is the one widely available for rent/streaming online). the footage zombie reintegrates is the stuff that really connects the movie to what he did in lords of salem

really gotta emphasize director’s cut here, it’s, in many ways, a completely different movie from the theatrical

Interesting, because Vern, the only critic I trust, says the theatrical cut is the one to watch, and that's the version I can see on Showtime (through Hulu).

i mean i like the theatrical too! there’s just much more laurie strode character work in the director’s cut

but the preference legit baffles me, there’s so much more to chew on in the dc

lol at shower gator fight

I liked nu-Suspiria! It took a mighty long time to get cooking but once it did, I enjoyed it!

The dance scenes were memorable if nothing else

I remain intrigued because reactions have been so polarized. But the very existence of the film introduces ... issues. That is, the only justification for remaking Suspiria at all is to jetison all the things that were worthwhile about the original, which is tbh overwhelmingly its visual style. Get rid of that though and what's left isn't terribly compelling imo. So I can only assume that the cast and running time portends something different, which begs the question, then why remake the movie at all?

It takes the spirit of the original and adds new elements -- it's a very weird remake and I was dubious/bored for a while but it delivered eventually! Why? Witches, that's why. :)

The original is one of my favorite least suspenseful films ever. Student enters scary school run by apparent witches that is apparently ... run by witches. So they kill her. The end.

So they kill her.

Wait, what?

I was gonna say.

Assuming you're not concerned about OG Suspiria spoilers ...

... that's how I remember it ending?

It's p much exactly the other way around

Huh? The stuff with the lightning and outline ... isn't that the head witch?

Yes, who the student then kills.