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

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.

omfg possessor

it's so good!!!!

finally someone made a perfect movie

somehow manages to feel like a '90s industrial cyberpunk body horror film without ever completely looking like one. i bet the films syncs up really nicely to a skinny puppy record

dissociation cinema

That trailer looks excellent.

there's a reason I was hyping it up back when it first leaked....it's roughly 10x as good as Antiviral which looks and feels like a student film by comparison

Not sure if this is horror but I'm intrigued
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74axp18cK3I

It was 5 years ago but did anyone see WE Are Still Here? Just thinking that I need to see more things with Lisa Marie in them. She hasn't been in anything since that year, sadly.

I wonder how she managed to sell warehouses full of Tim Burton's stuff without his permission. Story is that she had the keys and just sold it off quickly, maybe it was just one buyer.

Kind of forgotten how strong an impression she made on me in her Burton films.

Saint Maud was worth the wait. Didnt think i had much time for slow burn psychological horror right now but the performances are great and it nails the run down English seaside town psychogeography vibe i assume it's going for

House That Jack Built recently added to Shudder....might be time for a revisit

Once was more than enough with that

I'm a huge horror fan and have slogged through my fair share of Von Trier miseryfests but I preemptively nerped the eff out on that one after reading some detailed plot descriptions. No can do.

its saving grace is that it's frequently pretty funny, and the ending is kind of wonderful. lots of pretty pointlessly ugly sadism in between, of course.

The Lodge - liked its pacing and felt it earned (and stuck) the ending.
The Wretched - decent low-budget flick and performances. I like endings, though, vs. "it ain't over!" endings.
Underwater - better than I thought. Kristen Stewart in a Dr. Christmas Jones role - ymmv. Good Lovecraftian monsters, reasonable
ending, though I question the last station's safeguards.
Black Christmas - hokey premise, but appreciated the #metoo inversion. Thought the end fight veered slightly over the top, and glad
they didn't go with the alternate "it ain't over" ending.

Waiting to borrow The Hunt, Relic, Vivarium, Train to Busan 2, Save Yourselves, and Fantasy Island from the library. Love my library.

Is Sputnik worth a $6 rental? Expecting that to be Underwater-grade.

I sorta hated The Lodge, almost came off as a parody of "elevated horror" at times

I can see that. It's definitely aiming for The VVitch territory. I thought Keough did a good job, as did the kids.

Speaking of sorta hating and "elevated" parody, how I'm feeling watching "The Third Day".

the lodge is great once you put all notions of “elevated horror” out of your head. singular lonely misanthropic vibes and actually scary! no wonder people hated it

I wish I could find movies scary again, I blame my years covering Fantasia Fest for completely desensitizing me against both psychological and more demonstrative forms of horror (I still enjoy the movies of course)

xpost the suicide in that movie was horrifying

i don't really find horror movies scary anymore either but usually if they penetrate my defenses it's got something to do with the strength of the atmosphere, which the lodge has in spades

speaking of being scared, i watched host the other day and for an hour-long horror movie filmed in zoom it has a bunch of quality jump scares

Yeah, I find the funhouse aspect of horror movies still scary. Like, do they stick with me and keep me up at night? No. But a jump is a jump, and as simple as the movies are I don't know anyone that liked turning off the lights at home at the end of the day after seeing Paranormal Activity.

actually, the midsection of Hill House did sort of get to me, I think as a result of prolonged exposure to the characters and the OTT howling despair. but that was a pretty special case.

Looking forward to Possessor, Green Knight and I might give Blood Machines a try but more than ever I never know how and when I'll see a film.

everyone's raving about possessor but i assume from the cronenberg connection that it's gory/gross ... is that correct?

yes it has its moments

Wolf of Snow Hollow is a weird one - some compelling moments, lots of iffy ones, but mostly worth seeing just for Jim Cummings, who's an incredibly compelling guy to watch. (Also, features Robert Forster's final role :( )

so ... how violent is "possessor uncut" exactly?

i'm really not crazy about gore, was able to make it through "ichi the killer" and "martyrs" but i think that's about my limit

if you made it through ichi the killer i'd say you're doing pretty well for gore in general, tho idk about this film

Well, those two are about as gory as it gets, so I imagine (having not seen it) that you're probably ok.

xpost

I recced that movie to a friend and he got angry at me and couldn't get past the spooge on the plant 2 minutes in

I've never seen that film but Shinya Tsukamoto used his own jizz for that scene. What a legend.