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

[Calandrino]

Latest binging

The Endless - Not really impressed but also not disappointed since I know that horror fans are bound to overrate every "Lovecraftian" movie. As usual, the writer's "cool idea for a movie" doesn't translate into a particularly great movie, just a lot of expository dialog.

Malignant - By about halfway through the movie it becomes clear that this is borderline-plagiarism of a certain 80's cult classic (Basketcase); in fact adheres more closely to the source than a lot of bona fide remakes. But that movie climaxed with a personality-driven conflict between characters which had been building over the whole movie. This one climaxes with a gratuitous plot twist and a CGI-fueled John Wick action scene. Sign of the times. Thankfully we have fully recovered from '90s irony and this is the cheesiest mainstream horror movie since Wishmaster.

Revenge of Frankenstein - Hammer's Frankenstein movies are a little unique for actually centering on the character Frankenstein (the doctor), played by Peter Cushing as coolly sinister, and not a raving mad scientist. This is a typical Hammer movie and pretty good.

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb - Another Hammer movie. I don't think I've ever seen a particularly good mummy horror movie. It's always the same boring stuff: a nonthreatening mummy-zombie, some cheesy flashbacks to ancient Egypt, at least one character turning out to be the reincarnation of so-and-so or whatever. What does the mummy do when he's off-camera, walking from one victim to the next? Do people pass him on the street and go "hey bruh sweet mummy costume"? If he trips, can he get back up? So many unanswered questions.

 

[frozenrunner]

Just watched the Arnold Schwarzenegger "zombie film" Maggie. You could argue it's a flat out drama and barely qualifies as horror, but I think it deserves a mention.

I had wanted to see the movie for a while now... any opportunity to watch pigeonholed actors work outside their designated zones is something I love. Well, Arnie did a respectable job (Stallone has always been the better actor actor), but Abigail Breslin really stole the show as his daughter. Great script, pretty excellent cinematography, effective (if sometimes overbearing) score, and you will rarely find a film that looks this great for a budget so obscenely low. Highly recommended, Halloween season or any time of the year.

Stake Land

Since we're posting unpopular opinions, Stake Land kind of stinks. It looks great, but the script is not very good. Some pacing issues, and it's fairly predictable. It feels like someone decided, "I'm going to make a meaningful vampire movie," and then wrote the script. Compare that to Maggie, which feels much more genuine about its themes whether or not you like it.

I don't even have to ask if the sequels are awful, do I? I never saw them.

And another great horror flick set in an abandoned asylum called Session Nine.

I adore Session 9, warts and all, and am glad other people remember it... it's got a perfect setting and a great atmosphere. It's certainly a flawed film, though I (rightly or wrongly) attribute that to Brad Anderson being a bit lacking as a director. I don't really have enough experience with his filmography to say that... but I genuinely hated most of The Machinist and will probably get rid of the DVD at some point. "Christian Bale lost all that weight for this script?" Totally sophomoric, film school "my first screenplay" bullshit.

Anyway, I wonder if some of the issues I have with Session 9 could be fixed with a different edit. I think cutting that homeless woman out of the film was probably a good move (people apparently wondered if she was the voice on the tape), but it would have explained a lot of the stuff happening in the asylum. I also think a tiny bit more character development for the relatively big cast would have gone a long way.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Since we're posting unpopular opinions, Stake Land kind of stinks. It looks great, but the script is pretty bad. Some pacing issues and fairly predictable. It feels like someone decided, "I'm going to make a meaningful vampire movie," and then wrote the script. Compare that to Maggie, which feels much more genuine whether or not you like it.

The problem with Stake Land is that it's basically a bunch of short stories that were stitched up together as a full movie. That's why the script is the way that it is. It should have been rewritten from scratch. Knowing that, I think that it ended up being pretty good, although admittedly it could have been much better.

 

[ShapelyMutton]

Latest binging

The Endless - Not really impressed but also not disappointed since I know that horror fans are bound to overrate every "Lovecraftian" movie. As usual, the writer's "cool idea for a movie" doesn't translate into a particularly great movie, just a lot of expository dialog.

I hate to ask but have you seen Resolution? It was made in 2012 by the same folks as The Endless . I don't want to say it's a necessary watch but it's relevant to the film.

 

[A Grey Cat]

has anyone seen any French horror films? Cause believe me the French are fuckups in a lot of fields but...damn their horror movies can be quite literally brutal.

I think the only film that comes close to being this grimdark is the edgelord fest known as A Serbian film.

 

[BrunoMattei]

has anyone seen any French horror films? Cause believe me the French are fuckups in a lot of fields but...damn their horror movies can be quite literally brutal.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=l9HbMlcex2s:159
I think the only film that comes close to being this grimdark is the edgelord fest known as A Serbian film.

Dude, Martyrs. Summoning @Ebonic Tutor .

I mentioned before but I love French horror. Like the Eyetalians, the French go for the visual/surreal kind of horror instead of more paint by numbers kind of plots typical in North American movies. The auteur of this sub-genre is for sure Jean Rollin the master of erotic vampire horror films just by virtue of making so many of them. But the newer French shit is great too.

Best Jean Rollin films:

Fascination
Grapes of Death
Living Dead Girl
Night of the Hunted
Lips of Blood
Demoniacs
Requiem for a Vampire

After that there's a lot of one-off's. You have insane shit like Devil Story:

Revenge of the Living Dead Girls:

And DIY no budget shot on VHS and converted to 8MM gore like The Mad Mutilator:

Then the French New Extremity shit. Of which, most of that is really good although I have yet to see the follow up from the director of Martyrs.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Dude, Martyrs. Summoning @Ebonic Tutor .

I mentioned before but I love French horror. Like the Eyetalians, the French go for the visual/surreal kind of horror instead of more paint by numbers kind of plots typical in North American movies. The auteur of this sub-genre is for sure Jean Rollin the master of erotic vampire horror films just by virtue of making so many of them. But the newer French shit is great too.

Best Jean Rollin films:

Fascination
Grapes of Death
Living Dead Girl
Night of the Hunted
Lips of Blood
Demoniacs
Requiem for a Vampire

After that there's a lot of one-off's. You have insane shit like Devil Story:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GouRsoLweZA
Revenge of the Living Dead Girls:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vdiZvJQxsGI
And DIY no budget shot on VHS and converted to 8MM gore like The Mad Mutilator:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dDoZNVQuwpY
Then the French New Extremity shit. Of which, most of that is really good although I have yet to see the follow up from the director of Martyrs.

yeah im legit glad i found this guys channel in the post i mentioned. We make fun of the French but they sure know horror, though given how much being French sucks must play a part in that.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Dude, Martyrs. Summoning @Ebonic Tutor .

Then the French New Extremity shit. Of which, most of that is really good although I have yet to see the follow up from the director of Martyrs.

Hi!

Do you think you'd enjoy watching a family be brutally shotgunned down, feelings of guilt, torture, and flaying in the name of looking for the afterlife? I'm going to tell you that you won't but keep doubting.

In regards to Pascal Laugier's other films, The Tall man is an eye roll that pretends to be edgy till you see what's really happening. Incident in a Ghostland is basically as fucked up as (if not more than) Martyrs but with the addition of rape and happier ending, also has a Troon villain in it.

 

[Calandrino]

I hate to ask but have you seen Resolution? It was made in 2012 by the same folks as The Endless . I don't want to say it's a necessary watch but it's relevant to the film.

Nope, only heard of this one for the first time ITT a few pages back...

I don't think I've ever heard that phrase outside that film, perhaps it was a regional thing but it feel like the least threatening insult you could imagine. Zombie Karen stabbing her mother with a trowel is a great scene, thanks in no small part to the music, but thematically it always stood out for me as nothing like it ever happens again.

Reminds me that she doesn't use the trowel in the remake, although the camera lingers on it. NotLD '90 is almost a sequel in that it expects that the viewer has seen the original and plays with their expectations based on that. Like the way it changes the zombie attack at the beginning.

has anyone seen any French horror films? Cause believe me the French are fuckups in a lot of fields but...damn their horror movies can be quite literally brutal.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=l9HbMlcex2s:159
I think the only film that comes close to being this grimdark is the edgelord fest known as A Serbian film.

Maybe not what you want, but Eyes Without a Face is kind of a classic. High Tension seems popular, actually seems like one of those movies bound for an American remake but it didn't get one. France's least favored nation status is just a meme.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Nope, only heard of this one for the first time ITT a few pages back...


Reminds me that she doesn't use the trowel in the remake, although the camera lingers on it. NotLD '90 is almost a sequel in that it expects that the viewer has seen the original and plays with their expectations based on that. Like the way it changes the zombie attack at the beginning.


Maybe not what you want, but Eyes Without a Face is kind of a classic. High Tension seems popular, actually seems like one of those movies bound for an American remake but it didn't get one. France's least favored nation status is just a meme.

Eyes Without a Face is great. Bordering on arthouse horror with it's visuals... But, I'll be honest, I find the unofficial Jess Franco remake Faceless to be more entertaining.

Fun 80's trash and one of Franco's more coherent/accessible films. Plus it has an eyeball gag right out of Fulci (rumor has it that the production used a real cadaver for the shot).

 

[12 Year Old Lurker]

haven't been through this whole thread yet, but i'm gonna take a shot in the dark and wonder if anyone could help me track down a horror movie.

i'm sure it was in the style of three stories, i only remember bits and pieces of the first two, but i recall that the final one was something to do with a monastery? or some kind of japanese school, i'm 99% sure the characters involved were young asian girls. my memory of it is very spotty, i apologize for my shitty descriptions. if this doesn't ring any bells then that's alright with me, figured it was worth a try after it stuck with me for so long.

 

[Tempest]

Return of the Living Dead III is very underrated

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Anyways anyone have any thoughts on John Carpenter's In The Mouth Of Madness?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AlugldzO9zY

It was a nice love letter to Lovecraftian Horror with some good, creepy practical effects. but I can't help but think that Necronomicon (1993) did much better in that regard, with tons of 80's era megacheese and an absolutely balls to the wall final story:

With recent rewatches, I was going over Roger Corman's Masque of the Red Death, the best of his Poe-based films with it's baroque delirium. However, his The House of Usher is a properly contained descent into madness, suffused with a Gothic mood and it's also amazing what Corman was able to do with the budget for this film, with the sets and the cast. Even Mark Damon's average-fellow outsider becomes more feverish and nervous as he starts to succumb to the House of Usher's dark atmosphere.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QslKMIOeME8

I liked the Pit and the Pendulum, since it featured Vincent Price going completely manic at the end. (Manic Vincent Price is my favorite Vincent Price.) It also featured Horror Queen Barbara Steele as a villainess who gets the tables turned on her.

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb - Another Hammer movie. I don't think I've ever seen a particularly good mummy horror movie. It's always the same boring stuff: a nonthreatening mummy-zombie, some cheesy flashbacks to ancient Egypt, at least one character turning out to be the reincarnation of so-and-so or whatever. What does the mummy do when he's off-camera, walking from one victim to the next? Do people pass him on the street and go "hey bruh sweet mummy costume"? If he trips, can he get back up? So many unanswered questions.

The Universal mummy movies were kind of ridiculous in how they expected people to be afraid of a shambling mummy going 1 mile an hour. That's why the best of them was the original, which had Boris Karloff (the titular Mummy) throwing away his bandages after the first scene and using sorcery and charisma to accomplish his goals. I will give credit to the third Universal Mummy Movie: The Mummy's Ghost, for having the Mummy win and the girl die at the end. It was a shocking ending for the time. I will also give credit to the 1999 Mummy movie, for making the title monster a near apocalyptic force of nature, but that movie was more of an Indiana Jones type adventure film than a true horror.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I'm catching up with the end of Season 2 of Creepshow (forgot the show existed for a while after the premiere) and the beginning of Season 3.

Anyone who likes Horror Anthologies should watch it.

So much better than that bullshit Twilight Zone reboot by Jordan Peele.

 

[A Grey Cat]

It was a nice love letter to Lovecraftian Horror with some good, creepy practical effects. but I can't help but think that Necronomicon (1993) did much better in that regard, with tons of 80's era megacheese and an absolutely balls to the wall final story:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rGxIJF3qwIs

Interesting it came out just a year before ITMOM Lovecraft was pretty big in the 80s and 90s, shame the man never lived to see how big his name would become. Anyway that plus event horizon makes me wonder why sam neil didn't do more horror roles. In addition to playing Damien in omen 3 i think he had the protentional to be up there with jeffery combs and bill mosley in terms of leading men in horror films.

 

[The Cunting Death]

Gonna re-watch Slither tonight

 

[Product Placement]

Anyone going for the 31 horror movies in 31 days thing?

 

[White Devil]

Anyone going for the 31 horror movies in 31 days thing?

My wife and I are. Still finalizing what we're going to watch but Poltergeist is a definite for the first.

 

[trent]

I'm catching up with the end of Season 2 of Creepshow (forgot the show existed for a while after the premiere) and the beginning of Season 3.

Anyone who likes Horror Anthologies should watch it.

So much better than that bullshit Twilight Zone reboot by Jordan Peele.

"Patchy" is the way I would describe the show.

There's some decent stories but a lot of the acting is terrible. Production budget seems to vary quite a bit between the shorts as well. Some of them look like solid, direct-to-streaming shows and others look almost homemade.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

"Patchy" is the way I would describe the show.

There's some decent stories but a lot of the acting is terrible. Production budget seems to vary quite a bit between the shorts as well. Some of them look like solid, direct-to-streaming shows and others look almost homemade.

To me that's part of the charm, imo. Creepshow is meant to be a throwback to 50s b-movie horror and as such I think it does a great job.

I'll agree that the term 'patchy' feels accurate but come on just compare it to the Twilight Zone remake and tell me that better actors and production = better show.