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

Chris Abbott is real good y'all tripping imo

keep thinking about Bliss and its accidentally Verhoevian sense of sleaze

Watched the uncut Possessor tonight. Not entirely convinced it held together and it felt very televisual in places (not a criticism; I'm not even entirely sure what I mean) but the impact was considerable. Cronenburg senior is everywhere, but it's as much a homage to Cronenburg's influences, I guess - Ballard, Philip K. Dick. I liked the commentary on the hellscape of corporate work (Sean Bean quoting Walter Benjamin under a mock-up Sistine Chapel roof), and the sound design was excellent - particularly the grunge and glunge of bodies. I want to watch it again already!

Cronenberg, ffs.

I've woken up thinking about Possessor and specifically why I wasn't 100% convinced (and why I want to watch it again to check) I think it comes down to Abbot's central performance and what Cronenberg's tasking him to portray: essentially to exteriorise an interior drama - that of the battle for control for a consciousness. It's basically trying to reify a metaphor and it resulted in lots of close-ups and mid-shots of Abbot looking bewildered/in mental torment. I loved it when it switched to more concrete portrayals of this drama, for instance, the whole sequence with Abbot in a Riseborough mask will stay with me forever (was it a deliberate nod to the Myers mask from Halloween?) and the beautiful latex orgy of the transformation scenes. Anyway, I'm sounding really negative and I had a blast with it.

I think that's a fair complaint

that said he's better than a few of the leads in early D. Cronenberg movies lol

Agreed on all points. A better actor could have made this a great movie, but it works nonetheless.

pull quote for the resume

Posted this to detritus, but probably best here.

The Zoom movie was absolutely unwatchable to me

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Saturday, 12 December 2020 00:27 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Watched this ('Host') today and thought it was fantastic. I've rarely rooted against an entire cast so much, which I'm sure was intentional. Seriously technically impressive, tense, and a necessary externalisation of all the universal fears that have surfaced during a time of intense claustrophobia. That feeling of indoor spaces stagnating with dread. But way more fun than that sounds. Also an hour long.

Host freaked me out more than any film has in a long time but I watched it on my tablet with the phones in in a very old hotel room in the dark, which I guess is a fair sized caveat

I've skimmed enough spoiler free stuff about "Hunter Hunter" to make me pretty intrigued.

host is good as hell!!! not quite unfriended: dark web quality but so good for what it is

"Hunter Hunter" had an ambivalent review today in the L.A. Times. Sounds like an interesting premise. Reviewer's mention of disturbing / gory elements probably are positives for folk here.

finally watched We Are the Flesh - as grotesque as promised but almost funny as well. I hope the performers were well compensated.

It's definitely super weird and surreal and funny and gross.

this looks fun and dumb!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thcQFXC5sKY

co-written by max landis lol

Somebody upthread mentioned Dorothy Mills (2008) as kind of ho-hum, but the gf & I just watched it and really liked it - were talking about it the next day. It's Irish, has some classic tropes - an outsider upsets the balance of a quiet, reticent island community that would "rather just let the past stay in the past!" kinda thing, but it has some unexpected twists and is pretty bleak overall.
Very gothic atmosphere, and the Irish horror I've seen (not that much, to be honest) has been consistent in quality...it's almost a relief when you get an unknown film and see that it's funded by the Irish Film Board; it's probably going to at least be watchable.

xp, whoops didn't catch that.

ha well I wasn't trying to chirp you out, it's just sad that he keeps getting paid

i agree wholeheartedly! that film will only be interesting if it's not in the vein of "look at us being sexist but really we're NOT being sexist it's old times DO U SEE?!?!?!" which it could well be.

The Thai flick "The Pool" has such a great high concept b-movie hook - man trapped at the bottom of a deep drained pool with a big crocodile - that I had high expectations, but it is so larded down with grade-z melodrama (including one of the most horrible and horrifying on-screen pet deaths I've ever seen) and an obnoxious pro-life (as in, explicitly anti-abortion) message that by the end I could barely give a shit.

Hunter Hunter was like an ominous version of Leave No Trace but with a wolf and then holy fuck the ending

I watched Makeup last night, a British debut from Caroline Oakley. It's set at an out-of-season holiday park in Cornwall and is broadly about sexual awakening and I won't say too much else. It's only horror-inflected really, but it's got a great atmosphere and uses the potential of the landscape and the inherent bleak horror of an abandoned caravan park to good effect. It's definitely growing in my imagination. Good central performance, too.

Impetigore: Kind of a coup for Shudder that they now have Indonesia's Academy submission on there. Wild movie! Some cheap scares and a way overcomplicated backstory, but I really loved the way this movie toys with just how intense/violent or cruel it's willing to get, right up until, well, anyway. You'll see. Very likeable lead and above-average acting and writing in general. Could definitely have been tightened up a bit. It's cool that Indonesia submitted a legit, balls-out horror movie to the Academy. (It will receive no votes, I imagine, but still)

I thought the title was really misleading and almost unfortunate. There's some horrific stuff in this movie, yeah, but it's a lot more interesting and ambitious and artful than the typical gore hound might expect. The general fable-like vibe definitely made the most horrible stuff easier to handle, imo.

I don't know why I'm feeling squeamish but is it Bone Tomahawk levels of mental scarring?

No, not really. There's stuff you might read about the movie that scans like, I dunno, Martyrs level carnage, but it's really handled in a very different way, iirc.

Like, I was expecting something akin to the Indonesian installment of V/H/S/, which is insanely over the top, but this is not that.

yeah it's a lot less violent than a lot of other movies I've seen lately. they hold back on a lot of stuff.

I revisited Evil Dead 2013 recently and man there is some underrated practical-effects gnarliness in that movie

it's a "horror" movie only in the most abstract but i saw Spontaneous last night and it's highly recommended. Meanders when it hits the third reel but the script is tight until then and the lead actress is a treat.

Missed that not only is the PGA pulling their golf tournament from Trump, they have implemented a lifetime ban on ever holding any events at any of his properties ever again. Still think one of the most OTM things I've ever read about this asshole is that he will be the first president in history to end with fewer things named after him than when he started.

lol whoops President Horror Film.

more of a horror movie than what I posted tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K5sRggO8Qo
Anyone seen Dogs Don't Wear Pants? It's a Shudder film so I guess it is horror, but it mostly looks like a comedy but I've heard there are truly brutal sequences. On dvd but no bluray forfucksake.

That...doesn't look like a comedy at all?

Totally looks like a comedy to me, the director said it was a sort of romantic comedy.

There's probably one scene of a dog comedically dragging his ass on the carpet and 89 minutes of entrails

Wait can't be a romantic comedy with a dog

I initially thought this was a joke, but it's real
https://thebedlamfiles.com/film/grizzly-2-revenge/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ESXMnn3FY

I'm not a fan of really bad movies, but I did use to watch the original all the time on TV. "Jaws with Claws!"

Man, I wish I could justify subscribing to both Shudder and Arrow, but I just don't have the stomach for another service, let alone two. Something like Arrow looks especially cool. Given its cult/esoteric nature I have a feeling at least a chunk of its content can be found scattered out across my other streaming services, but for the same reason would be exhausting to find and track. I more or less have to maintain a cross-referenced list of what movies I want to see and where they are as it is, and even those take me forever to get to.

Are Arrow and Shudder in the US that much better than the UK? I suspect so because there's no way you could justify a monthly subscription to either here, nowhere near enough worthwhile content

shudder is cheap as hell

...in the US. It's £4.99 over here which isn't exactly going to break the bank but I'd watched everything I wanted to watch within a week on the free trial and they don't seem to add new stuff too often. Maybe it's worth it over there but looks like you guys get a lot more for your money. I just wish it was better here, not their fault I guess

Shudder is ... $6 here? That's pretty cheap, but I can't imagine I'd watch two things on it a month. Of course, it's all hypothetical at this point. I pay a lot more than that for Criterion, which has enough stuff for me to watch for a lifetime, and even that I barely get to as much as I'd like. I used to have a huuuuuge DVD collection (and CD collection, etc.), and if I'm being honest the same collector bug is at work with these streaming services. It's as if the *option* of watching something is what's ultimately proving hard to resist, even if I know I won't get the most out of even $6.

yeah i suspect there may be differences in what content is available in both regions.

I love Shudder cos it's filling my blind spots fast

Shudder is my fave streaming service and it's not close