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

just because its after halloween doesn't mean this thread has to die

so "The Last Winter" is actually a pretty great little eco-horror movie with sort of a "The Thing" w/o any real monsters on screen vibe, and i would whole-heartedly recommend it if the last 15 minutes were not basically THE WORST ENDING EVER.

sauna looks like a good one

btw id like to take this opportunity to thank yall for posting to what might be my worst thread title ever. sorry about that.

I like to shit my pants, no worries

Yeah, "The Last Winter" is pretty good. I didn't even hate the ending, and in fact sort of appreciated how he just sort of went for it. It ended how a lot of horror movies these days cold-start.

On Halloween I ended up seeing "House of the Devil" along w/ a bunch of other stuff. It's sort of reverent-to-a-fault somewhere between the Satanist 70s films & a little gore/prosthetics 80s (sort of irked how critics seem to be conflating the two due to it also being set in the 80s). There isn't really any winking or subverting or whatnot, just a pretty decent appropriation played straight. Some of the performances (not the lead; she was good) & camera-work veered into slightly off 'Masters of Horror' territory - i.e. approximating an old style can end up merely looking like recent TV. Doublescreen w/ Burnt Offerings or People Under the Stairs and nobody will bat an eyelid.

(Ok, pedantry alert has to acknowledge that 'PUTS' is 91. 'The Changeling' maybe but not the goofier 80s e.g. 'Fright Night' or 'House')

Oh and there are these, which sold me on it in the first place:
http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/21226/1/THESE-HOUSE-OF-THE-DEVIL-POSTERS-ARE-BETTER-THAN-THE-FILM/Page1.html

Last night I watched End of the Line because of this thread and thought it was pretty damn good. Some OTT gore and par-for-the-course acting aside, it was definitely my kind of flick. The sound mixing alone provided half the scares. I read some less kind reviews complaining about the ending, but I thought it brought home the whole idea of the movie: either way you look at it humanity's fucked.

ugh, Martyrs fucked my shit up last night. tbh, i really thought i might pass out or get sick for a little while (things that have made me pass out before: getting blood drawn, films in health class, a certain episode of nip/tuck.) the ending was really awesome, though i thought it became less disturbing once you started to find out what was going on and no longer had to try to rationalize it yourself.

here's the sauna trailer. title's kind of nondescript but it's from finland so it must've originally been called hey, we're haunted by the ghosts of our evil deeds!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si8IqpZc8Fo

Watched Paranormal Activity last night & was with it all the way up until the ending, which was a total deal-killler. Then I looked it up on Wiki & found out that I had downloaded a version with the original ending & that the theatrical version had been altered for the better, at least based on the wiki description of the revised ending. That's what I get for all the downloadin' I guess.

The Changeling' maybe but not the goofier 80s e.g. 'Fright Night' or 'House' - The Changeling is an underrated classic & probably my fave "haunted house" ever.

*"haunted house" movie

it's from finland so it must've originally been called hey, we're haunted by the ghosts of our evil deeds!

i miss that meme

I like this thread title btw.

saw "trick r treat" - did not really enjoy. half-assed creepshow does not a good movie make.

deadgirl - could've been stone cold classic in surer hands but as-is it's still worthwhile, nervy filmmaking. aesthetics are def more IFC/indie than grindhouse (moody scene transitions with shots of highways and clouds over ambient soundtrack, hello). major mistake: casting folks in their twenties to play high school students. if they had used real teens, the sexual-coming-of-age angle in the movie would have been uncomfortably foregrounded. most chilling shot: a fashion mag ad casually laid over deadgirl's face after it has been beaten to a pulp.

embodiment of evil - bravura gonzo gore freakout, great if you're willing to unplug yr brain and submit to the bountiful flow of horrific imagery. tacky and vile, but also hypersurreal and not without a sense of humor, like hostel if it were directed by jodorowsky or del toro. still waiting on a US DVD release.

"could've been stone cold classic in surer hands but as-is it's still worthwhile"
"great if you're willing to unplug yr brain"

I'm always willing to unplug my brain but right now I want to see stone cold classic that is brain agnostic!
Any new ones out there? (can be older than 5 years)

have you seen martyrs

Getting it now -- any others?

Stuff I watched in the past week that has been mentioned in this thread:

Paranormal Activity: a pair of cultureless, aspirational suburban dullards are mildly irritated by a ghost. I wanted to see them suffer a lot more for their crimes. A lot more. Barely a film.

Eden Lake: I actually liked this. The forest is shot beautifully. I feel a lot of responses to this film have been too hard on the mechanics of the chase ("how do they run for ages and end up five feet away from the pursuers?") but I don't see how else a director could contrive the repeated catch-escape-catch-escape sequences you need in a story of this kind. A lot of people seemed to get really upset with the class issue in this film, but the fact that it was disclosed so readily and brought to such a bleak—almost, almost funny—conclusion means we're not quite meant to see it the way we immediately want to see it, if that makes any sense.

Pontypool: This is a re-watch but the first time I saw it (three? four? months ago) I was pretty high. I LOVE this cute little movie. I seem to remember it was a novel, then a play, and now a film, so sometimes it seems like you're watching a piece of theatre (it's preposterously verbose and almost entirely static). There are also some really good jokes and the most surprising defence of the Official Languages Act (1969) you'll ever come across. You never know when it'll come in handy, right? (Not sure why the military voice at the end has a Metropolitan French accent, though. Maybe a joke too subtle even for me.)

End of the Line: I watched this based on the recommendation of Mr Hal Jam upthread and it did not disappoint. It doesn't hurt that I live a couple of stops from the creepy subway station some of the action was filmed in, but what we have here is a bit of cheap and cheerful horror that does quite a lot with a little. Fun stuff. I also find the idea of an almost entirely French-speaking crew handily knocking out an English language film that's livelier, edgier, and more economical than the somewhat safe, laborious English-language film industry elsewhere in Canada (stuff like Pontypool excepted, obviously).

SAUNA is great, probably the best thing I've seen this year. I don't entirely get it, but in a way that makes me want to see it again, so if you're up for a movie which is closer to 'Seventh Seal' than 'Blood Feast', seek it out. This is Depressive Black Metal Horror, not Pornogrind Death Metal Horror.

(Yeah, OK, reaching out to a single figure demographic there, but then this is probably the place to do that.)

Waaay xpost: "Innocence" is creepily surreal, rather than horrific, but a great movie. Reminded me a lot of Robert Aickman's oblique 'strange tales'.

This is Depressive Black Metal Horror

I love how you think this might put anybody off.

A lot of people seemed to get really upset with the class issue in this film, but the fact that it was disclosed so readily and brought to such a bleak—almost, almost funny—conclusion means we're not quite meant to see it the way we immediately want to see it, if that makes any sense.

eden lake was very well-done from a technical perspective; ace acting, cinematography, editing, etc. in retrospect all its pleasures are of the mechanical sort, it's suspenseful and it works the emotions but I wasn't really haunted by it. I found the chav stuff to be a moral cheap shot, it's a film where the protagonists are good-looking city folk and the rest of the cast is comprised of violent, clannish, and psychotic bumpkins. it's nothing to get really upset about, lotsa suspense/horror classics truck in the same brand of xenophobia. but eden lake is no deliverance.

I wasn't really haunted by it.

That kid having his head burnt up and the ending both totally haunted me.

Isn't anything sufficiently horrible haunting in that sense tho?

i want to see House of the Devil really bad. and Sauna

I can understand somebody being haunted by eden lake, and not just cause it's showing you horrible things - it's well done so what you're seeing has a good chance of getting under your skin.

but it felt mechanical to me - I could see the chess pieces getting set up on the board from the beginning, and I really didn't get surprised by any of the subsequent moves. I can't imagine any horror film fan would? whereas something like martyrs, the chess pieces get set up on the board and then WHAM BAM wait I didn't know we were boxing I thought we were just playing chessssss

xp

sauna is next in my queue btw

dont bother with Death of a Ghost Hunter by the way. not that you were probably going to, but still

thirst out on DVD this week

anybody seen ink? supposedly lowbudget but very effective, hasn't gotten a lot of mainstream press.

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

^ dude made that movie for $250K

i just watched "the woods" and it was great, looked good, well-acted, etc. but uh i don't really think i understood it plotwise. still really enjoyed watching it.

I've just watched this and I liked it a fair bit. I thought it was a bit Heathers crossed with Suspiria - and though it falls way short of either, it had some interesting touches. There's a nice blustery, autumnal feel to it, and a constant woody creaking that plays throughout that adds a sinister presence. And Agnes Bruckner, in the lead role, recalled the pouty insouciance of a circa 2001 Scarlet Johansson. I liked her.
Apparently the film sat on the shelves for a few years before getting a straight-to-DVD release. It's a little scrappy and not a great deal happens - no real scares either - but it deserved a better fate than the one it got.

i keep misreading this title as 'lets all shit our pants to say something new'

watched Captivity

ehhh nothing new here, "twist" doesnt work at all, ending is stupid

sauna was pretty awesome guys

Glad you liked it - a lot of people at the screening I saw (and online) seemed rather pissed off by it.

you guys just made my sunday.

Bugcrush....really interesting. going to have to watch it again. i like this Treleaven guy, who wrote the story it was based on.

(o also it is up in three parts on dailymotion)

Glad you liked it - a lot of people at the screening I saw (and online) seemed rather pissed off by it.

― Soukesian, Sunday, December 13, 2009 5:47 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

why?

same director who made bugcrush made the ruins, which is mediocre but not badly done given the material. (i think it's just hard to make spindly vines scary on screen.) next he is supposedly making this.

I guess if you wanted sauna to make "sense" it would be frustrating

but it's like a folk ghost story or fable

black metal horror is a pretty good approximation

Why did people not like it? Well, I saw it at a horror movie festival, where audiences seem to favour fast-moving thrill rides involving zombies and unstoppable serial killers. Nothing wrong with that, but it really isn't what Sauna is about.

the ruins was p terrible irrc - might have worked better as a short story but there really isnt anywhere to go (lol) w/the concept visually imo

needed mobile man-sized plant monsters running around