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

Lucky (just added to Shudder) is one of the most unique and unsettling movies I've seen since, uh, The Empty Man. what a gutsy little movie.

really? i found it extremely confused and unsure of how to clarify its story. Several great ideas floating around but none of them ever fully arrived at, muddied by poor acting and wooden dialogue imo.

I didn't have a problem with the performances or dialogue! But I'd like to rewatch before I say anything more.

i suppose i would too if i planned to rewatch it! I think there were at least three good films worth of ideas in there but this couldn't follow anything through to the point where it clarified its aims. Was it a self-reflective comment about how media terrorizes women through constant depictions of brutality? Was it a kafkaesque horror story about how capitalism and monogamy locks us into a cycle of violence against women? Was it a critique of the women's movement and the lack of common interests across generations and willingness to support one another? It felt like it was trying to do all that but it couldn't quite decide how to land a punch one way or the other so there was tons of meandering from idea to idea. Like, yeah: i see the echoes in the tableau of lovers in bed and murderer and victim splayed out on the floor. Congrats but to what end are you presenting those images? Needed more time in the oven imo.

I'm fine with presenting those ideas as an unresolved mess because that's how they feel IRL - the confusion/conflation/whatever felt like a knowing and purposeful feature rather than a bug, to me. Certain specific moments in the script gave me the distinct impression that they knew exactly what they were doing here.

there's an argument to be made there i suppose but this didn't feel to me like some sort of Lynchean fever dream where there was an underlying logic to everything. It just stacked absurdity on absurdity until it started breaking and falling apart. That they decided to make that falling apart a feature and not a bug in the final reel didn't make the intent any clearer as far as i could see.

the intent felt crystal clear to me but I'll refrain from saying any more for now. hopefully this little discussion will tempt others into checking it out!

Shudder was such utter shit for a while that I cancelled my sub. Oh well.

tbf most horror movies ARE shit. idk, lately whenever I take a chance on something new / new-to-me on there, I more often than not end up vibing with it.

yeah it's a genre with a very low hit rate for me too.

in a way that's why I like horror, cos finding a good horror film = like discovering an artifact on an archaelogical dig

I have a low base of expectation and a love for the genre which means even a half decent horror feels like a personal favourite

This is probably discussed somewhere in this thread but I’m not going to load the whole thing looking for it — last night we watched The Wailing (2016, Na Hong-jin), and it was super long for a horror film but also pretty engrossing, very vividly made and with enough twists to keep it interesting. As I often find with K- and J- horror, I’m still trying to sort out its various strands, but its quasi-incoherence didn’t detract from the experience.

horror movies are very good, even the bad ones (not speaking for modern low budget shudder exclusive horror here, i feel like that's probably bad bad)

currently watching a screener for the QC horror-satire Slaxx, with a Dupieux-ish premise involving killer jeans, and it's pretty funny so far. and the correct length at 70 mins.

70 mins

Dag. And I thought it impressive that "She Dies Tomorrow" came in at just under 90 minutes.

I watched Dead Snow last night. It was pretty bad but I had a good time except for the what the fuck scene in the outside toilet.

I mean, I like a lot of crap horror— I'm not some "Artsy Horror" stan.

but for a while, Shudder was just stuff that looked unbearable, stuff I'd already seen a million times, or stuff that I'd seen once and never care to see again lol.

they just added two larraz films, vampyres and edge of the axe, plus amityville ii: the possession which i've always wanted to see

they go through fallow periods but i've never regretted spending $5/mo on it or whatever

they were very useful when i challenged myself to watch all of the ring films a few months ago (project still incomplete)

They also just added Ali Abbasi's Border which I've been meaning to see for years!

We enjoyed the Irish slow-burner Without Name over the weekend... a strong little eco-folk horror with a small cast and a brooding landscape. The film began with a warning for epileptics, so there's some wild visual stuff.

whoah, 'unsane' (2018) was mega. surprised it's had such little attention... i'm quite desensitized and jaded after growing up watching years of dark horror, but this still managed to get me on the edge of my seat and surprise me and make me yell at the tv at points. shot on an iphone, too? so cool. top performances.

About Richard Stanley being an abuser.
https://sharedhallucination.blogspot.com/2021/03/777-truth-will-out.html

We stand with victims of abuse. We believe those who speak out. We believe women. https://t.co/bq0llzZ8t7

— SpectreVision (@_SpectreVision) March 16, 2021

Maybe 2016 is getting to old for this thread but I watched The Untamed. There's a tentacle sex monster in a cabin that people go to and its unpredictable if it will hurt you or not. There's a lot about homophobia, the director said it was partially inspired by an openly homophobic headline in mexican newspapers. There's a crater with lots of animals having sex and it all looks real enough that I imagine they just digitally spliced them together in the same place. It's quiet film for the most part and mostly about a family (but not in a boring way), I didn't understand a couple of things the characters did but I mostly liked it, the ending wasn't anything special.

Ben Wheatley's In the Earth trailer just dropped this morning.. looks right up my alley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lqkfo7IymU

that looks dope!

Anyone seen Koko-di, Koko-da yet?

I really dug it

the twee rabbit puppetry was a bit much and it sometimes spins off the rails but Koko-Di was genuinely unsettling and slowly opened up into something much more complex than it seemed. As far as surreal Swedish meditations on loss and shattered identity told through horror tropes go, it would be a good back-to-back with Persona.
I caught it at a late-night pre-release free screening in the city and the woman next to me clearly thought she had come to a standard horror movie and spent the third reel loudly opining out loud variations on "THIS SHIT CRAZY" and "What the fuck GOING ON in this movie?"

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Saturday, February 22, 2020 4:55 PM

one of the last films i saw in theaters, sigh

Can we talk Possessor spoilers? Really well done film, and educational for the behind-the-scenes stuff. I'm curious about a few things. . The first question, the ending, is fairly obvious, given the overlay of Vos over Colin when she kills her son. What seemed somewhat a conflict about returning to her home life, as evidenced by Vos' initial forgetting she and Michael were separated, then visiting them at home, was actually her desire to leave him and her child entirely. Yes? Second question, why did she disguise her possessing glitches? Was it as simple as she wanted to continue her jobs, avoiding her personal life?

I haven’t seen it yet but I’m excited that Jim Williams (A Field In England) did the score

That Ben Wheatley movie looks great. It also looks *remarkably* like this other movie on its way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9HYegwSw1s

good article slash interview re empty man which was discussed upthread https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/the-empty-man-david-prior-interview

I had a brief email exchange with him, suuuuper nice guy by all appearances

It hadn't occurred to me it might be the last movie ever with the 20th Century Fox logo. that's pretty wild.

loved loved loved the empty man. i have a few complaints (maybe i'm the only one who found it visually kinda flat and drab in spots? yet in others it was incredible) but otherwise it was made just for me. script was completely in the richard kelly register

it was so scary! even the stupid jump scares were scary

yesssss

it's definitely very grey, which both helps/extends the mood and flattens things visually somewhat

there are so many weird little details I still think about regularly

I loved a LOT of images and sequences in Come True......shame the actual plot and characters don't come together and the ending is student-film awful.

but seriously, those dream sequences. truly eye-popping at times.

Okay, finally watched the Australian film Relic this weekend - anyone seen it? What a great, genuinely scary film, tackling a real-life subject with heart and emotion. Mostly female cast, creep old house, creepy forest... a seriously well made film chock full'o metaphor.

Really want to see The Empty Man — James Badge Dale is a great, underrecognized actor.

xp If you liked Relic, you might check out "The Taking of Deborah Logan". Similar dementia/horror vibe though different causes.

Read Cullen Bunn's The Empty Man graphic novels this week from Hoopla, now interested to see how that translates to visual.

@ unperson: that movie has some great moments for all the Daleheads out there

@alpaca: the film and comic have almost nothing in common

Thanks, good to know. The comic has a Suicide Club / Pulse / Pontypool / Clive Barker vibe, so assumed it did, when someone mentioned the gore factor.

I feel like I watched Relic, but can't remember it at all