/horror/ general megathread - Let's talk about movies and shit.

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HodgePodgeRogerDodger said:
The Exorcist probably is one of the best Horror Films ever made. Shot well, characters are good, and some of the cut dialogue is great. The horror is layered, the mothers fear for her daughter, the actual demon, and Father Karras own doubt in the face of evil.

I like Marron a ton. The cut dialogue where he tries to alleviate Karras’s fears about how the demon is using the girl as a weapon against them and plant doubt into them is good.
Exorcist 3 is pretty good, not as well put together as the first, but a god continuation.

I’d say it’s a lot like John Carpenter’s The Thing in how it balances surreal and alien horror with a more mundane horror. Powerless in the face of an unknown with Reagan in The Exorcist and an inability to turn to anyone in The Thing. No one is an idiot, they approach things in a manner like rational people.
I don’t want to sound pretentious, but they’re just well written with good effects. They’re a bit more refined then a slasher movie, to put it in a pretentious way.
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My favourite scene in The Thing (and I agree with your analysis completely) is where Kurt Russell admits they are all going to die. It is a not badass line for the trailer, it is simply acceptance of how dire the situation has turned out. Few films admit such a moment in a subtle way. If they did, there would be melodrama or the stakes wouldn't be all that bad.

I've seen many films, read many books, I cannot seriously say I have witnessed this moment done correctly often (the Hateful Eight, Taratino's Thing, tried and failed).

It took a few watches for me to pick up on it. It astounds. Props to Carpenter for the nunace.
 
BiggerChungus said:
Horror movie characters are generally stupid, but Kills has some of the stupidest I've ever seen.
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I agree the mob B plot and their hesitation to actually kill Myers is retarded beyond classic horror characters, but characters lining themselves up for slaughter is a classic slasher trope that has almost reached endearing levels due to it's prominence.

BiggerChungus said:
The fact that as soon as someone (Laurie) actually acts smart and tries to kill him, and all it takes is a slit throat and he's done, makes me think Kills was meant to have been the ending movie but because of a forced sequel they had to redo it to make sure Michael survived.
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Nah it was always meant to be a trilogy. The preliminary script called for a 3 and half hour movie and that was after it was chopped and dissected, to the point Blumhouse agreed to finance the film only if they agreed to re-insert the full scope of their script but split it into separate sequels.

The problem is they chickened out of whatever their climax originally was and went with a new story with a timeskip, which is unbelievably dissonant with the rest of the films prior. It was all clearly intended to take place in one Halloween night and the following day's early dawn, as it should have been. The story of Halloween is stretched incredibly thin the more time goes on. A serial killer with no plans to hide and hellbent on returning home only ends with police/military intervention unless you finish the tale before anything above local law hears about an escaped mental patient going postal.
 
Hazel Motes said:
My favourite scene in The Thing (and I agree with your analysis completely) is where Kurt Russell admits they are all going to die. It is a not badass line for the trailer, it is simply acceptance of how dire the situation has turned out. Few films admit such a moment in a subtle way. If they did, there would be melodrama or the stakes wouldn't be all that bad.

I've seen many films, read many books, I cannot seriously say I have witnessed this moment done correctly often (the Hateful Eight, Taratino's Thing, tried and failed).

It took a few watches for me to pick up on it. It astounds. Props to Carpenter for the nunace.
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John Carpenter in the commentary track remarked that he envisioned it with Kurt Russell like a military officer knowing he’s going to die with his men who are afraid of dying. To their faces he could lie and encourage them to fight, but all alone he has to deal with it.

The Exorcist really works because the build-up. The demon basically is taunting everyone when it can. Shit like the stomach writing is basically a way for the audience to know that no one is doubting Reagan is possessed after enough characters have seen shit by themselves and has individually came to the same conclusion.
You don’t need some idiot doubting the existence of the demon and getting killed by it to show the audience it’s serious. The entire movie has medical science running of explanations.

To bring up The Thing again. The bloodtest scene has Gary call it nonsense because he’s calling bs on MacCready’s theory rather than the titular monster. It’s building up how inhuman the monster is and Gary is not a scientist. He’s a nigger strapped to a couch who could get executed by the loner veteran who took his authority.
 
A Grey Cat said:
Flint wouldn't know his ass from a hole in his crotch (Which i can only presume he has) let alone know what good taste is.


To stay on topic, Nice try with trying to use the Halloween 3 font Ends. You WISH you were as good as 3.
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They thought they were being clever because Halloween 3 diverted from the Myers stuff yet the difference is that Halloween 3 never advertised itself as a continuation of the Michael Myers stuff.

Ends however framed the movie as the big battle between Laurie and Michael.

Honestly Kills and Ends were fucked from the getgo when the writers decided to sniff their own farts than anything else cause if they had humility these films would be much better
 
Doctor of Autism said:
They thought they were being clever because Halloween 3 diverted from the Myers stuff yet the difference is that Halloween 3 never advertised itself as a continuation of the Michael Myers stuff.
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They called it Halloween 3. It was implicitly implied, that's why there was so much backlash and they went back to Myers in 4.
 
BiggerChungus said:
The fact that as soon as someone (Laurie) actually acts smart and tries to kill him, and all it takes is a slit throat and he's done, makes me think Kills was meant to have been the ending movie but because of a forced sequel they had to redo it to make sure Michael survived.
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Compared to the previous times Michael was killed (before the next movie), slitting his throat feels anticlimactic.

Original: Stabbed with a crochet needle, stabbed with his own knife, and shot six times before falling off a second floor balcony
2: Both eyes shot out and set on fire via gas explosion
4: Hit with a truck, shot multiple times before falling into an old mining shaft
H2O: Involved in a vehicle crash that pins his body to a tree trunk and is decapitated with a fire axe
 
The Nothingness said:
Compared to the previous times Michael was killed (before the next movie), slitting his throat feels anticlimactic.

Original: Stabbed with a crochet needle, stabbed with his own knife, and shot six times before falling off a second floor balcony
2: Both eyes shot out and set on fire via gas explosion
4: Hit with a truck, shot multiple times before falling into an old mining shaft
H2O: Involved in a vehicle crash that pins his body to a tree trunk and is decapitated with a fire axe
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2 was originally supposed to be his definitive death, and that was a great scene. Sucks it got cheapened so much by endless sequels.
 
The Nothingness said:
Compared to the previous times Michael was killed (before the next movie), slitting his throat feels anticlimactic.

Original: Stabbed with a crochet needle, stabbed with his own knife, and shot six times before falling off a second floor balcony
2: Both eyes shot out and set on fire via gas explosion
4: Hit with a truck, shot multiple times before falling into an old mining shaft
H2O: Involved in a vehicle crash that pins his body to a tree trunk and is decapitated with a fire axe
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Originally in Halloween 5 he was supposed to be resurrected by a Satanist dude who does a spell and there's something with the Thorne symbol. But they scrapped that and reshot the scene with a homeless guy seemingly tending to his body and he apparently was hibernating/regenerating from his wounds????

Not even going into Halloween 8 where he's electrocuted and set on fire.

Rob Zombie Halloween he is shot point blank in the face.

Rob Zombie Halloween 2 he is repeatedly shot by the police presumably killing him (for now).

2018 movie and Kills where he's shot and stabbed repeatedly and there's no fucking way anyone can walk away from that.
 
Ita Mori said:
A serial killer with no plans to hide and hellbent on returning home only ends with police/military intervention unless you finish the tale before anything above local law hears about an escaped mental patient going postal.
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One of the weirder things in Kills is they mention they're calling in a SWAT team, but it never shows up. Almost no cops show up at all period, then Michael's just able to disappear for four full years by hiding in a local easily-found sewer tunnel. Compare that to the first two where cops are everywhere and Michael has to sneak through alleyways and the woods to evade them, actually using his mask and outfut as a disguise to blend in on the streets.
 
BiggerChungus said:
One of the weirder things in Kills is they mention they're calling in a SWAT team, but it never shows up. Almost no cops show up at all period, then Michael's just able to disappear for four full years by hiding in a local easily-found sewer tunnel. Compare that to the first two where cops are everywhere and Michael has to sneak through alleyways and the woods to evade them, actually using his mask and outfut as a disguise to blend in on the streets.
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There's many things about the new trilogy that doesn't make any sense when you think about it.

If Myers is superhumanly strong then how the fuck did the cops catch him at the end of the first Halloween? It makes sense in the context of the 1st movie because he was basically catatonic until he just one day "awakened" I guess and his strength was fairly normal excluding the scene where he stabs the guy to the wall. But here it makes no sense. When he was restrained how did he not escape? Why wasn't he prosecuted for the death penalty? And there's a simple fix:

2018 should have opened with Myers never being captured. He was still out there. Then you have Laurie's paranoia being fully justified (of course, you could ask why she just didn't move out of the state for one thing) and adds to the myth of Myers growing in Haddonfield.
 
You can still vaguely interpret Michael as being supernatural, maybe he would have revived again even after having his throat slit... if they didn't shove his body into a crusher.

But it is weird that Kills seems to blatantly confirm he's supernatural, only for them to side step that and keep it vague at best, but Michael seemed to be in a weakened state in the sewer and when he killed the cop it seemed to literally give him more life and revive him, which is the closest Ends gets to any supernatural angle, as well as him looking into Corey's eyes and seemingly literally seeing a kindred spirit.

I would be interested to know just what they had originally planned for a third movie.
 
In "shot on video horror movie from 1991" news, I got around to seeing "Slaughter Day", a SOV splatter-fest shot in Hawaii years ago by identical twins Brent and Blake Cousins. They play a couple of guys just looking to earn some beer money when they show up to work on restoring a remote cabin, only to find one someone being hacked up with a machete. One of the rawest SOV films I've seen, full of rough acting and stunts that look like people were put into actual danger - it's like if The Evil Dead was shot on S-VHS and you could hear the director shouting "Go!" about fifty times because they were using on-location sound and editing from VCR to VCR. The duo must take on a group of possessed construction workers who've been turned into undead killing machines thanks to a copy of the Necronomicon. (In close-ups, it's actually a copy of Necronomicon, a collection of H.R. Giger's artwork). It's been brought to Blu-Ray by Visual Vengance, a new outfit whose niche specialty is apparently various Shot-On-Video horror/sci-fi/etc. movies from the 80s and 90s

 
Dom Cruise said:
You can still vaguely interpret Michael as being supernatural, maybe he would have revived again even after having his throat slit... if they didn't shove his body into a crusher.

But it is weird that Kills seems to blatantly confirm he's supernatural, only for them to side step that and keep it vague at best, but Michael seemed to be in a weakened state in the sewer and when he killed the cop it seemed to literally give him more life and revive him, which is the closest Ends gets to any supernatural angle, as well as him looking into Corey's eyes and seemingly literally seeing a kindred spirit.

I would be interested to know just what they had originally planned for a third movie.
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I know two original plans was for Ends to take place on the same night as 2018 and Kills, the other was to involve COVID somehow in social commentary. Like there was no excuse to not do the former except the writers and director wanting to make this story of "Hmmm what makes a psychopath hmmmhmm" that is garbage
 
BiggerChungus said:
2 was originally supposed to be his definitive death, and that was a great scene. Sucks it got cheapened so much by endless sequels.
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Even 2 is a bullshit sequel that cheapens the original and its ending, even if it's not as horrible as some of the other ones. Michael mysteriously disappears at the end of 1 and I guess we'll never know what happened to him after that or what drove him to kill because the only sequel that counts is 3.
 
At the risk of giving an unpopular opinion, Lords of Salem has got to be one of Rob zombie's better films. If only because the last couple minutes are so batshit insane and feel like images taken from a nightmare.
 
I was gonna say I'd take Halloween Ends over Lords of Salem but honestly both are so horrible that gun to my head, I don't know which one I'd pick. I might have to go with LoS just because HE is so fresh in my mind, but six months from now I don't know. That's how much I hate that fucking movie.
 
Ita Mori said:
HOW???
This film sucks as a sequel, as a trilogy climax, and as an individual film.
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Because its the most creative the series has been in probably decades. Anything after 2018 was going to be bad, that's just reality. I knew it once they inevitably announced Kills. Michael should've died in the 2018 film. Ends is bad but its entertaining, intriguing and ballsy considering that the original objective was to ground Myers and bring him back to basics going into the 2018 film.
 
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