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

lmao I did not find one frame of it even properly unsettling beyond some of the kids' praying, but kids praying is an easy shortcut to creepytown for me

imo they are aesthetically super similar and both heavily feature (and exploit, I think in both cases tbh) mental illness as the potential vehicle of untold violences

yeah i don't think they're aesthetically similar, hereditary doesn't have a found footage scene from hell! or a dream sequence as powerful and lonely as the dream sequence in the lodge. and they tell different stories about ptsd differently. hereditary is way more about family-inherited unbroken cycle trauma with a satanic cult edge. the lodge is... well, it's hard to talk about the lodge without spoiling it, but it's not about family or demon shit! i would say they both have miniatures as framing devices, and in one the miniatures are an artistic discipline and in the other they're just creepy ass dollhouses

some of the kids' praying, but kids praying is an easy shortcut to creepytown for me

this isn't even what's scary

the scenes of her wandering/sleepwalking(?) through the cabin's shadows not even sure what reality is real, the recurring scene of her approaching that opaque door... THAT'S scary

harrumph

The Wild Goose Lake earns a mention on this thread for most gruesome deployment of an umbrella

I'm not a fan of the style/tone of this type of video essay but this is pretty fascinating all the same. Hadn't heard of The Evil Within before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXHRdfLnktU

Anyone mention or see "Z" yet? Seems like "The Babadook" redux, at least on paper, but reviews I've seen have been consistent in citing its apparently legit shocks/scares.

In the meantime, I started Blood Quantum, and ... I dunno, so far (25 minutes, maybe) I think it's not great. Digital cameras at least help a lot of low budget movies look good, but the acting and writing are pretty crappy; there's no app or filter that can help that. Inspired setting, though. I suppose I'll go back and finish it this afternoon.

keep at it, it goes places imo

then again I had no problem with the writing/acting so

OK, it was rich with metaphor, clever echoes of history and dramatic irony (linked to that history), but it also relied way too much on genre cliches (the zombie hunter with the samurai sword! the pregnant girl!) and dumb action sequences that tried for badassery (yeah, pop in that 8-track before you wheel your car into battle, maaan) but (imo) fell way short. A couple of good gore gags, but also a few too many moments that went for shock or comedy but also fell short of both. Oh, and it was never scary, to such an extent that I just assumed it wasn't going for scary. It was going for dramatic, but said writing/acting didn't sell that well enough for me.

I bet it would have made a great book, or series, or even (yes) comic. Like I said, the setting/material/story is full of ideas begging to be better fleshed out.

I never find anything scary so those first few points were more than enough for me. I agree the setting would easily support expansion.

"the deeper you dig" sounds interesting: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-deeper-you-dig-movie-review-2020

oooh neat, Phantasm comparison....

I don't remember which of you recommended "Hagazussa," but thanks, it was very good, if very grim. RIYL: The Witch, Ari Aster, erotic goat milking, eating babies, The Sound of Music, black metal album covers ...

I know I recommended it and obvs I like all of those things lol

i definitely rec'd it last summer or fall, i believe.

also hi, been thinking about this thread recently, so popped in to see what's up.

turns out, not a whole lot!

but, I do want to say that I feel like Rhymes for Young Ghouls, Barnaby's film before Blood Quantum, is actually a better flick, even if it isn't as strictly bound to the horror genre. i'm also looking at the both from someone who teaches and reads a lot of Indigenous lit and Native Studies stuff, though, so Rhymes might just be more complex and rich for interpretation along those lines.

Has anyone watched Blood Machines?

Arrow's releases of old films are still fine but I think their new films have been getting worse, all these weak looking horror comedies.

You know what movie hits different in 2020, and also while high? Pontypool

I love that movie. His new movie sounds like a mess.

Huh, this is where I learn that Pontypool isn't on any streaming service right now, and can only be rented, apparently exclusively, on Apple TV. To the torrentmobile!

kind of intrigued by Dreamland cause it unites a lot of the Pontypool people but yeah his recent output is pretty bad. the Hard Core Logo sequel looked like a particularly bad idea. maybe it's for the best if we never get Pontypool Changes Everything

Weirdos looked kinda promising tho

Couldn't find the trailer for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyRkoL45JGk

it rules

Looks kinda eXistenZ-y...

definitely shares some DNA (as you'd guess) but several orders nastier

I still haven't seen Antiviral, but it's on Hulu so maybe I'll get around to it soon.

Watched Color out of Space (2020) last weekend. Really liked it for the most part. Having never read any Lovecraft, was relying on the husband to point out references but also constantly picking up on stuff like the entity changing its environment to the one it came from (one of many Lovecraft things Grant Morrison stole for The Invisibles), so that was good on both counts. You obviously do not need to be a philistine like me to enjoy this film, but it’s not going to matter very much if you are.

Anyway, the body horror in this is fairly gruesome, the kitchen scene really spooked me although it’s relatively mundane - it’s the disconnect as much as the, well, literal disconnection that follows as much as anything. The colour itself infests the landscape til it dominates and smothers. The score is excellent. All very good stuff.

I didn’t really feel they did enough with all the references to Gardner’s father, like either go all the way there or just cut it, I don’t think the film would have suffered without it tbh. The mayor plot seemed unnecessary for the amount of time that was spent on it.

Obviously the best/worst scene was the attic post transformation and the preceding ones were bad enough.

Pretty solid stuff, Nic Cage is fine for the most part (but does The Thing a few points which is always hilarious lol). Joely Richardson also very good.

Antiviral is...ok. It feels like a student film by comparison to the new one xp

Color Out Of Space has a fantastic Colin Stetson soundtrack as well. Some of the people slagging this excellent movie off only did it because Cage was in it and has become synonymous with garbage!

Idk why anyone would say that after Mandy tbh

an ex-film student on my twitter linked some people slagging it off and was saying wtf is wrong with these people! but that was the impression I got.

I don't think Cage made anything in this movie better, but there are parts of it he definitely made worse, imo.

I asked a while ago if anyone had seen or knew anything about "Z." Any news?

not conventional horror but would recommend Bertrand Bonello's Zombi Child. it's not as memorable as Nocturama but is still worth watching and has stuck with me. It has themes of human zombie slavery and witchcraft in 60's Haiti in flashback form and a posh girls school in modern Paris where a descendent of the victim is.

an ex-film student

oh no he's good not bad and was defending Color Out Of Space!

Several new things recently out on streaming and undiscussed on thread:
Impetigore
You Should Have Left
Amulet
Relic
Wretched
The Other Lamb
Gretel & Hansel

Well looks like I have some work to do

trailers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RfEwT2LI2M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw0-cV_J9q4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV_lUlOc4mQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sHbiv7J1xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkyHLudSrCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gjvyfjeJKM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZblQLhKcZQ

we watched Relic
it was solidly pretty good; idk how long it will stay with me. i found the generational female aging horror a little on the nose. Kind of tired of seeing movies that exploit trichotillomania to express the apparently universally-recognized horror of a bald/balding woman. zzzzzz

I'm not going to complain that horror films are in a particularly bad rut because there's been some great ones in the last decade and for overall quality they might be better than ever, I hardly ever see trailers for anything that looks like total shit.

But something about the look and feel of a lot of them is bothering me. Is it color correction? Is it something else about the cinematography? Anyone know anything about the technical stuff able to say? There's some kind of flatness/blandness.

If anything I think a lot of newer horror films look almost distractingly sharp thanks to the digital cameras/drones so often enlisted for low budget horror. All these flying overhead shots of forests and whatnot, and gliding fake steadicam stuff, it's almost distractingly ... slick, for lack of a better word. Perhaps a lot of filters and other digital correction going in during post to synthetically class up something they didn't have the budget/equipment/crew/lighting to do during the shoot, too? I dunno.

FUUUUUUUUUUCK @ "Impetigore".

that shit was bonkers and intense. exactly what i was looking for. classic supernatural curse film.

"Impetigore" was pretty good! I mean, there were a few choices I didn't like, like the way the flashback/information dump happened, or the tag at the end, but the other 90% was ace. I was worried it was going to be all look at me, I am XTREME! But it was more folk tale-like than I expected. In fact, for much of it I was tempted to say RIYL "Midsommar" (despite my misgivings with that one).

What's with the title though? "Impetigore" seems a much better name for the awesome but XTREME Indonesian segment of "VHS 2."

folks I trust tell me this is excellent, presumably heading to streaming sometime this year

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7026488/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

Sweetheart /2019/ is hidden somewhere in the Netflix library and quite enjoyable. The name doesn't suit the movie at all, a breezy reimagining of the LOST pilot with good scares, good visuals and a very non-annoying lead.

Yeah, she's really good. Only misstep is the creature design.

https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/antebellum-movie-review-i-am-tired-of-films-like-this.html

In the wake of Jordan Peele’s success with his first two films — the exploratory Get Out and the beguiling but messy Us — Hollywood has realized that horror is an apt venue for excavating the grooves of Black identity and the mellifluous, dynamic experience of what it means to be Black throughout the diaspora. There is Misha Green’s overwrought Lovecraft Country currently airing on HBO, as well as Justin Simien’s Bad Hair and Nia Dacosta’s upcoming reimagining of the 1990s Tony Todd classic Candyman. The genre, at its best, lets us explore cultural taboos and fears with an unvarnished alacrity. I still think it’s possible to do a horror film that explores slavery in this country’s history, but that requires a sure hand, a strong point a view, and an even stronger sense of history — none of which is demonstrated in Antebellum. It’s hard to create any tension when the characters are so poorly drawn and the world they inhabit has little internal logic. Sure, there are scant moments of tension, but they fizzle out quickly thanks to the inert dialogue and rank stupidity of the story.

White people in particular are rendered as caricatures who seem to get an erotic charge from the violence they inflict, including Jack Huston as the leering Hugo Meadows, a Confederate solider of great standing who supervises the plantation — which isn’t necessarily a misguided approach so much as improperly executed, flattening rather than revealing anything about the nature of whiteness and its emptiness in America. Whiteness is an oft-told lie that powers much of the world, yet Antebellum is neither cunning enough nor intellectually ambitious enough to explain such a truth. So the white people have no internal logic, no gravitas. They evoke neither fear nor overwhelming hate, mostly just boredom, except for Jena Malone, who comes the closest to striking the necessary chord by foregrounding white women’s toxicity. But her performance is undone by the odd dishonesty of the film — the N-word is never uttered, for one.

The effect is wholly distancing. It’s worthwhile to explore the pain and grit of moving through America while being Black, but that exploration shouldn’t come at the expense of the humanity of the characters. Janelle Monáe is entirely miscast; she has been charming in supporting roles like that in Moonlight, but here she lacks the gravitas and precision to make Veronica feel real. But I can’t blame her for not bringing to life what obviously didn’t exist on the page. Antebellum is ultimately a travesty of craft and filmmaking with a perspective that hollows out the Black experience in favor of wan horror.

I see there's a horrorish sounding new John Hyams thriller, Alone, set for VOD imminently.