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

using a balding old naked woman to horrify people is one of the oldest dullest tricks in the book imo. honestly because it's so common i didn't think twice about it in Barbarian. i wouldn't have expected her to look any different tbh.

am I the only one here who thought Hatching was great? I am not a hardcore horror fan so it was just the right level of scary for me, also I love the sound of Finnish when spoken

I love Cabin In The Woods in all its meta glory

Boy, "X" was OK but "Pearl" was utterly inspired. Martin Scorsese otm.

prey for the devil: incredibly average possession/exorcism movie with more than a few anti-choice vibes? solid lead performance tho

lead was jacqueline byers who has barely been in anything but i look forward to seeing her in a good horror movie maybe someday

i saw two horror-adjacent-but-not-really-horror-movies recently and i don’t know where to post about them!:

1. the menu: maybe a little basic in some of its storyline choices but deliriously entertaining anyway

2. bones and all: this movie worked its way inside of me and did something to me and i’m different now

Agree with the "Barbarian" reviews itt. The Justin Long "boop!" made me laugh.

The Menu felt like a foodie Theatre of Blood

This is a good thing

I thought "The Menu" was great, like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by way of Peter Greenaway, with a dash of "Ratatouille."

skinamarink: remember when you were a kid and you'd turn out the light to go to bed and the shadows in your room would collect into the shape of a face on the ceiling and if you were tired enough you could hear sounds like gnarled speech coming from its bottomless mouth

^^^ I just came here to post about this, my son the horror buff sent me the trailer last night. Intrigued.

Getting some serious "Near Dark" vibes from "Bones and All."

This was fine and there was more I liked about it than didn't, but at the same time it felt frustratingly half-baked, like a low-budget pandemic rush job, with limited time with the actors and locations (maybe it was?). Also count me among those that did not really like Mark Rylance's Clare Quilty as written (and directed) by Stephen King.

horror and horror-adjacent 2022:

crimes of the future
dark glasses
bones and all
mad god
pearl
nope
the munsters
orphan: first kill
you won’t be alone
skinamarink
smile
x
terrifier 2
halloween ends
bodies bodies bodies

bitter disappointment:
scream ‘22

best first 30 minutes of a horror movie:
barbarian

not good at all:
the invitation
prey for the devil

still need to see:
resurrection
watcher

best horror movie from the past i saw for the first time this year:
the shout (1978)

horror/horror-adjacent director i grew increasingly obsessed with over the year:
shinya tsukamoto (tetsuo the iron man, kotoko)

Tsukamoto and The Shout is my all-time stuff, have you seen Tokyo Fist, Haze, Vital and Gemini yet?

Rebecca Hall has been in at least 3 horror films and I haven't seen any of them yet.

Best Horrors from 2022/2021 that I saw this year

Top Tier:
Skinamarink
Flux Gourmet
Hatching
You Won't Be Alone
The Northman
Lamb
The Feast
Memoria
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Hellraiser
Censor
Strawberry Mansion

Middle Tier:
Hellraiser
Deadware
Incantion
Black Phone
She Will
Barbarian
Gaia
Broadcast Signal Intrusion
Things Heard & Seen
In the Earth
Resurrection
Prey
VHS 94
Nope
Shepherd

Disappointing:
X
Deadstream
The 8th Night
Medium
Watcher
Midnight Mass

Lol I see I've put Hellraiser in 2 tiers, and that def reflects my indecisiveness over how good it is...

Did you see Pearl? I thought it was a lot better/more interesting than X.

Tsukamoto and The Shout is my all-time stuff, have you seen Tokyo Fist, Haze, Vital and Gemini yet?

still working my way through the filmography so no not yet! literally just saw tetsuo ii body hammer a few weeks ago (it’s insanely great and i should’ve bought the manga entertainment release back when it was constantly advertised to me on anime dvds when i was 12… wonder how i would’ve reacted to it, suspect i would’ve instantly been on its wavelength bc people transcending their bodies to become big guns is awesome)

Your putting Hellraiser in both the top and middle tiers also reflects my feelings about it.

Things I saw this year (not all from this year) that I liked a lot:

Barbarian
Hellraiser
Censor
In the Earth
Prey
Barbarian

i have tetsuo ii on vhs... (and didn't like it as much as the first)

it isn’t quite as singular or homosexual as the first but it still… rules

nice to see another Hatching fan!

Watched Hellraiser at the weekend and still working out my final opinion, at the moment I feel it was very well done compared to all other horror remakes (Suspiria the exception), but compared to early Hellraiser it felt surprisingly smooth and didn't have the grime and suburban ennui that I associate with the first film and the franchise ethos.

Cant say there was anything wrong or lacking, just expected more ambition in the delivery.

to clarify, well done compared to every remake in the last 20 years but I feel the Suspiria remake is a great example of well done and ambitious remake.

I don't think anyone has posted this yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCt7Iq6wSUw

Evil Dead Rise, a sequel, I guess? Directed by Lee Cronin:

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

well i have tickets for skinamarink, hope it's not boring

Feeling super suspicious it's gonna be "cursed images the movie" and as online as I am i don't think i'm that online

that evil dead preview looks pretty good but i'm a sucker for injury to the eye motif

sorry to say that it is kinda “boring”

Going to see Enys Men a week on Monday, will try to remember to report back.

Have to admit that looks right up my alley, but I do love impressionistic horror much more than others around here, it seems

from the camcordery thread:

Saw Skinamarink in theaters last night and, while I come equipped with considerable moviegoing patience and appreciate the commitment to the bit, this mostly missed me. As a Gen Xer, i think the vintage on this madeleine is a bit late for my taste. We like our mindfucks more explicit.

That said there are certainly a few interesting moments, particularly the ending shot. The (rare) jumpscares felt pretty cheap and elicited giggles from my audience. In general, the star is the film grain so I can't imagine getting too much out of this on an ipad screen... if you're gonna see it, try it on a big screen but keep your expectations extremely small. Props to Ball for getting mainstream distribution for what is explicitly an experimental film tho! Sneaking this into the discourse is no small feat.

M3gan was fun, but it did feel an awful lot like Child's Play reboot. like the style is a bit darker (though it has plenty of jokes), but I seriously get annoyed when two movies this similar come out within a few years of each other.

i thought M3GAN was pretty CH3AP. there was nothing redeeming about it; the technology scenes were very b-movie, there was almost no atmosphere, no cool shots, no interesting sound design, no memorable lines, no 'whoa' moments... it's good for a silly laugh, but even the laughs are like 'heh'. such an empty, empty film... but maybe i'm just getting old...

Saw "The Menu" again, and it's even better the second time. And even funnier, too, so much so that I'd barely count it as horror. (Made me want to reassess "Midsommar" and its own debatably innate comedic angle.) Lots of little one-off mumbled lines and other details I caught in the background the second time.

Think I said up thread but it's very much Theatre of Blood for foodies. Many guffaws.

The first suicide made me gasp out loud though (trigger warning - there's two of them in the movie)

Is M3gan supposed to look like that Olsen actress who is in the Marvel stuff?

LOL that was exactly who I thought she looked like

She's supposed to look like the lead actress — Allison Williams, from Girls and Get Out and other stuff I've never seen.

The Watcher (movie, not the unrelated tv series) - Feel like there was a better movie here lurking beneath the surface, and then they went for the safe ending.

there's a lot of great things the film illustrates about the anxieties foisted upon women by an abusive society to where they are forced to constantly be on their guard, as well as how their rational fears are minimized by those around them.

it then appears to be playing against the usual 'stalker' trope, framing it very ambiguously as to whether the alleged 'stalker' is actually following the lead at all, or if pre-existing traumas and the anxiety of being alone in an unfamiliar culture have caused her to see patterns that were not there, resulting in her eventually stalking the accused.

and with that, there could have been an interesting discussion around where the line is drawn for when it is acceptable for women to act in these situations, especially when often law enforcement in many countries practically require a woman to be beaten half to death before they MIGHT intervene. but they destroy any possibility of that by then making the alleged stalker the serial killer everybody's been looking for, essentially repeating tired tropes from other, similar movies.

however, I still did enjoy it simply because the anxiety of the film came much more from the lead actress's facial expressions and the cinematography rather than dialogue. lots of great performances. the ending is just so abrupt and lazy.

Watching "Smile" right now and it's bad and stupid and badly written and I can't believe there's 45 minutes left. It's no "It Follows." ut my daughter wanted to watch it, so ... ugh.

Anyway, it is kind of funny, but I wish it was a comedy.

Smile ruled fuiud

It really follows It Follows. But worse.

Malignant - the acting is reminiscent of an insurance commercial doing a fake movie… but it kind of works?

I enjoyed the total insanity of Malignant

Tbh, I had skipped it, but had been reconsidering based on how many reactions similar to that I've seen. There's "it's crazy and badly acted and ridiculous, skip it!" and then there's "it's crazy and badly acted and ridiculous and you have to see it!" The difference between the two can be pretty subtle, as David St. Hubbins once opined.

The antagonist is like The Crow but melted.

Malignant was my favorite movie of 2021.

Black Phone is now free on Amazon Prime so I think I'm gonna check it out. I watched First Reformed last night and need more Ethan Hawke.

you won’t get much more from the black phone