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

[TV's Adam West]

I thought it was okay. It depends on how you approach it. It's a grotesque road movie that has a beginning and end retrofitted in to be like a TCM movie. It's at least different from the other sequels and I have a soft spot for movies with a dark ending. But I don't know why there's a sudden focus to humanize Leatherface in the last couple of movies.

The best thing to come out of the newer Texas Chainsaw movies was R Lee Ermey. He absolutely stole every scene he was in.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

So while .ru was shitting the bed, I ended up keeping up with the 31/31. So, review dump:

Stay Out of the Fucking Attic, a moving company is hired by an old weird german dude to pack his house up, with one order: stay out of the fucking attic. They are all retarded ex-cons, so of course they don't, and all hell breaks loose and it's a fucking batshit plot that's more stupid than enjoyable sadly. Not the worse, but you'd think a movie that basically has discount joseph mengele, anne frank with a twin stiched to her back, zombie mutants and secret nazis on top of decent gore would be better than that. 2.5/5

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is Nazis done right. Or at least puppet nazis and that one weird dude. I was never a fan of the PM series, this is the only one of the series I enjoyed (to be fair I haven't watched a single PM since about 1994. I wouldn't have checked it out in the first place if it hadn't been for the fact that the director of Bone Tomahawk, Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete was involved. If I hadn't, I would have missed out on a cheesy but really fun movie. Lots of gore, T&As, I really hope they make a sequel. 4/5

Halloween Kills is the best Friday the 13th sequel since Jason Goes to Manhattan, easily. I'd say it's middle of the pack, not necessarily near the top, but a solid entry that deserves to be watched over and over again. A bit bummed by the lack of Crystal Lake, not sure I'm a fan of the new mask design, and they could have dropped the melodramatic hospital stuff, but overall I really fucking enjoyed it 5/5 As a Halloween movie? If they cut out everything that had to do with the mental patient chased by the mob, cut most of the flashbacks and retarded townie stuff, it would have been much better. Easily a 4/5. As it stands, barely 3/5.

Landmine Goes Click Holy shit. Holy shit. I don't want to say much more than 'A couple and their friend go backpacking in some eastern european shithole, and it involves a landmine.' Fucking go blind on this one. It... It's a genre bending mindfuck and I was awed by the direction they decided to take the movie in. Fucking must watch 5/5.

Got so distracted by Landmine Goes Clicks that I forget yesterday's movie (which is in itself enjoyable but forgettable)

Sorority Row (2009) is comfy as fuck. I would have called it absolute shit and derivative if I had seen it back in 2009 or a couple of years after, but seeing it today it's fucking quaint. It's peak 2000s slasher, has more than decent T&A, the actors are the perfect kind of 00s retardation going on, the right type of stereotypes, it feels like a time capsule. The whodunnit is actually good enough to blindside you, the gore is not bad too bad either. 2.5-3/5 as a movie, 5/5 for comfy 00s nostalgia.

Not sure what I'm gonna watch tonight, either The Night House or There's Someone Inside Your House

 

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I was filling in my gaps of knowledge about the TCM franchise and I did not know that there is a second Leatherface dark reboot origin story movie from 2017 called Leatherface featuring Lily Taylor and Stephen Dorff.

Neither did anyone else, and it's really really bad. It was in production hell for so long then looked like it was shelved, then randomly came out. It was helmed by the directors of Inside which sounds promising, but it's boring, sour, unpleasant, overcomplicated and the titular subject is barely in it. Leatherface feels like an overly portentous Mad Men flashback with old cars and wife beaters and suspenders, and feels overlong at 88 minutes.

The thing that bothered me most about it is just how NOT Leatherface it is.

We're supposed to believe that kid becomes the Leatherface character from the original film? No way.

The original movie didn't spell out what Leatherface's deal was, but hearing Tobe Hooper speak about the character, you know he's NOT what that Leatherface movie makes him out to be.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

The thing that bothered me most about it is just how NOT Leatherface it is.

We're supposed to believe that kid becomes the Leatherface character from the original film? No way.

The original movie didn't spell out what Leatherface's deal was, but hearing Tobe Hooper speak about the character, you know he's NOT what that Leatherface movie makes him out to be.

Yeah they tried to make Leatherface some handsome guy who was cool which is really stupid, it doesn't help that the same movie has another character who could've fit Leatherface ever, but that won't fit with that continuity's insistence that the Sawyers are just a quirky outcast family who dindu nuffin while the cops are the real bad guys.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

To go back on Halloween, there's an aspect of it that I've really enjoyed: Michael Myers doesn't give an actual fuck about Laurie Strode. Doesn't even know who she is. He only wants to go to Haddonfield because that's where he's from, and he wants to kill, because that's what he likes to do. That's it. No motive, no reason, just a pure, merciless killing machine. That's what makes The Shape a terrifying idea, and why Loomis spent all of that time trying to keep his personality locked down and sedated.

In a sense, I feel like this makes him the ultimate, and best, representation of Michael outside of the original Halloween (and H18). I genuinely think that if you make a fan edit that solves these problems:
- remove the whole mental hospital subplot
- remove a lot of the flashbacks/useless exposition of the survivors
- cut down the laurie's scenes, this is not her story
- makes Michael a tad less John Wick and more vulnerable overall
- a few more scenes of Michael just walking around around

this could have legit been the best Halloween sequel. It wouldn't take much to retool this movie into something great.

Once the trilogy is out, maybe it's gonna be possible to make a 2h30 or so megacut that does just that with all three.

 

[BrunoMattei]

To go back on Halloween, there's an aspect of it that I've really enjoyed: Michael Myers doesn't give an actual fuck about Laurie Strode. Doesn't even know who she is. He only wants to go to Haddonfield because that's where he's from, and he wants to kill, because that's what he likes to do. That's it. No motive, no reason, just a pure, merciless killing machine. That's what makes The Shape a terrifying idea, and why Loomis spent all of that time trying to keep his personality locked down and sedated.

In a sense, I feel like this makes him the ultimate, and best, representation of Michael outside of the original Halloween (and H18). I genuinely think that if you make a fan edit that solves these problems:
- remove the whole mental hospital subplot
- remove a lot of the flashbacks/useless exposition of the survivors
- cut down the laurie's scenes, this is not her story
- makes Michael a tad less John Wick and more vulnerable overall
- a few more scenes of Michael just walking around around

this could have legit been the best Halloween sequel. It wouldn't take much to retool this movie into something great.

Once the trilogy is out, maybe it's gonna be possible to make a 2h30 or so megacut that does just that with all three.

I agree that a fan-edit would fix Halloween Kills. You could easily cut 40 minutes or even an hour of footage and wouldn't miss anything.

To defend Rob Zombie for a second, I thought what he did in taking this sweet little kid and making him the product of a fucked up environment and mommy issues creating a heartless and totally remorseless monster is equally effective. Dudes keep saying that Myers is scarier when he has no motive but he has no motive, largely, in the RZ movies. His only motive is "get his sister" otherwise he kills whoever totally indiscriminately no matter if they're nice to him or not "What did I do to you, Mikey!?"

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I agree that a fan-edit would fix Halloween Kills. You could easily cut 40 minutes or even an hour of footage and wouldn't miss anything.

Yeah there's definitely a good 25-30 minutes of footage that should be cut, and replaced by some more atmospheric content because this somehow feels too energetic for a Halloween movie. That's why I joked it was one of the best Ft13th sequel, it has the kind of energy Jason has in 3-6/7. It shouldn't, it should be a bit more suspenseful, it shouldn't feel like it's almost an action movie.

To defend Rob Zombie for a second, I thought what he did in taking this sweet little kid and making him the product of a fucked up environment and mommy issues creating a heartless and totally remorseless monster is equally effective. Dudes keep saying that Myers is scarier when he has no motive but he has no motive, largely, in the RZ movies. His only motive is "get his sister" otherwise he kills whoever totally indiscriminately no matter if they're nice to him or not "What did I do to you, Mikey!?"

My problem with that is: If you want to make a movie about a trailer park kid whose mother is a stripper and he gets shit on and then he turns into a monster, ok sure why the fuck not, but why call it Halloween?

The first Halloween movie feels like in his mind he was directing The Hillbilly Diaries for the first hour, and then he remembered 'oh shit the studio gave me all that money to make a Halloween reboot' and just decided to remake the first movie sometimes almost frame for frame but at twice the speed.

It feels like two disjointed movies that don't belong together. And the sequel doesn't feel like at all like a Halloween movie, and the characters are now completely fucking different from the first movie. The biggest whiplash being Loomis.

Again, it feels like the sequel is a bunch of ideas he had but for a different movie and he had to shoehorn the Halloween shit in it because he didn't have a choice.


Sure, he tried to make something original, but if someone hires you to bake them a cake and you take the ingredients and turn them into a pineapple pizza topped with marzipan, most people are gonna be pretty pissed once they get to dessert.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The first Halloween movie feels like in his mind he was directing The Hillbilly Diaries for the first hour, and then he remembered 'oh shit the studio gave me all that money to make a Halloween reboot' and just decided to remake the first movie sometimes almost frame for frame but at twice the speed.

It feels like two disjointed movies that don't belong together. And the sequel doesn't feel like at all like a Halloween movie, and the characters are now completely fucking different from the first movie. The biggest whiplash being Loomis.

Again, it feels like the sequel is a bunch of ideas he had but for a different movie and he had to shoehorn the Halloween shit in it because he didn't have a choice.


Sure, he tried to make something original, but if someone hires you to bake them a cake and you take the ingredients and turn them into a pineapple pizza topped with marzipan, most people are gonna be pretty pissed once they get to dessert.

That's exactly what happened. RZ's Halloween was supposed to focus just on kid Myers and basically end on him escaping from the asylum. But the Weinstein's got involved and it became a hybrid of the two ideas.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

That's exactly what happened. RZ's Halloween was supposed to focus just on kid Myers and basically end on him escaping from the asylum. But the Weinstein's got involved and it became a hybrid of the two ideas.

That strengthens my point about how it shouldn't even have been a Halloween movie, and just about a hillbilly kid who becomes a huge serial killer.

Shit, he could have even make it part of his Devil's Rejects universe with the kind of tone this one had.

Although 3 From Hell was fucking garbage.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Recently rewatched Uwe Boll's House of the Dead movie out of sheer boredom for the first time in over a decade and a half.

Watching it a second time and doing so with the knowledge that Uwe Boll is pretty much out of the movie industry and only did his shitty video game movies adaptation as an IRL "Springtime for Hitler" ploy does change the way you view the movie.

Like, it's still a shitty movie and a terrible adaptation of a game whose plot is thin enough to be easily translated to a low-budget horror flick but now it's a lot more enjoyable in that unintentional comedy way, especially with things like actually splicing in footage from the original 90's arcade game with completely unrelated battle sequences or that weird fisherman character who hung around the boat captain.

 

[Commander X]

Speaking of Halloween, one of my interactions with the franchise was reading the novelization of Season of the Witch, written by "Jack Martin" who dedicated the book to Dennis Etchison, i.e. himself.

“Times have not really changed, my friend. The quest for control remains a constant. And now it’s time again. In the end, we don’t decide these things, you know. We are but a part of the great plan. Today the planets are in alignment, the moon is in syzygy, and it’s time. That’s all.”

Cochran snapped his fingers. A gray suit held out three masks.

“Which one? Ah, I think this one will suit you perfectly. It becomes you. It will become you, you know.”

He selected the painted skull and pulled it over Challis’s head like a hood.

“Tell me one thing first,” said Challis. “Why children?”

“Do I need a reason? Oh, I could tell you that they are the easiest prey—and they are, you know. People nowadays no longer listen to them. They provide the easiest entry, the path of least resistance. What better reason, from a purely pragmatic view? But they are such irritating little creatures, don’t you agree? You know that you do, deep down. They are as noisy as wretched sheep and twice as dirty, given to us from out of the filthiest part of woman. And you know what happens to dirty little lambs, don’t you, Doctor? They are invariably given over to the slaughter.”

I admit I'm pulled towards horror stories that deal not just with Halloween but it's ancient origins. In this vein is "His Coat So Gay", a short story by Sterling Lanier, one of a series published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the late 60s to early 80s. The stories are introduced by a nameless narrator, one of the members of an old fashioned "gentleman's club" in NYC and occasionally, retired British Army man Brigadier ffellowes relates one of the odder experiences from his long career. Like how while assigned to the UK embassy in DC during the 30s he struck up an acquaintance with Canler Waldron, head of a wealthy Irish-American family who have weathered the Depression very well, and is invited to spend time at their New England estate for a week of horseback hunting and other activities. However, some disquieting moments occur, Canler's sister Betty seems concerned as the end of October approaches and tries to warn him of something, a slipped note that he shouldn't drink the wine served at dinner one night..

'You, you English boor, would raise your eyes to the last princess of the Firbolgs, whose stock used yours as the meat and beasts of burden they are before Rome was even a village! Last year we had another one like you, and his polo-playing friends at Hicksville are still wondering where he went!'...

“‘The Wild Hunt rides. Slave and Outlander! You are the quarry, and two choices lie before you, both being death. For if we find you, death by these,’ and he waved a curious spear, short and broad in the blade.

“ ‘But others hunt on this night, and maybe when Those Who Hunt Without Riders come upon your track, you will wish for these points instead. Save for children’s toys, the outside world has long forgotten their Christian Feast of All Hallows. How long then have they forgotten that which inspired it, ten thousand and more years before the Nazarene was slain? Now — ride and show good sport to the Wild Hunt!’

 

[Internet War Criminal]

So tonight's movie was The Night House.

Some Plain Jane's husband kills himself. She's feeling a presence in the house. Is it her husband's? Is it something else? Is she going crazy? Stick around and find out!

You really should stick around and find out, because it's actually a really refreshing twist on the Haunted House movie, it's smart, there's tension and scares, and the ending works on multiple levels. Smartly made, really worth watching 4.5/5

 

[Mewtwo_Rain]

To go back on Halloween, there's an aspect of it that I've really enjoyed: Michael Myers doesn't give an actual fuck about Laurie Strode. Doesn't even know who she is. He only wants to go to Haddonfield because that's where he's from, and he wants to kill, because that's what he likes to do. That's it. No motive, no reason, just a pure, merciless killing machine. That's what makes The Shape a terrifying idea, and why Loomis spent all of that time trying to keep his personality locked down and sedated.

In a sense, I feel like this makes him the ultimate, and best, representation of Michael outside of the original Halloween (and H18). I genuinely think that if you make a fan edit that solves these problems:
- remove the whole mental hospital subplot
- remove a lot of the flashbacks/useless exposition of the survivors
- cut down the laurie's scenes, this is not her story
- makes Michael a tad less John Wick and more vulnerable overall
- a few more scenes of Michael just walking around around

this could have legit been the best Halloween sequel. It wouldn't take much to retool this movie into something great.

Once the trilogy is out, maybe it's gonna be possible to make a 2h30 or so megacut that does just that with all three.

I agree with everything but making Michael more vulnerable. The whole point of Michael is he's something far more than human. He may not be fully supernatural, but it's either he is or a combination of him and his mask cause something to create something more than human. I don't really care what the directors say.

It's kind of like the whole mob scene in general when he gets his mask back. When Payback starts playing and Karen has that grimace of despair you can sense some weird energy coming from Michael in that scene. It's very similar to the scene in 2018 when the reporter pulls the mask out in proximity of Michael and some tense wave of air occurs and all the nutters start reacting to the mask and Michael implying both together have some supernatural connection. I know the directors have said Michael isn't supernatural, but they never said the mask and Michael paired together aren't, and both scenes seem to incapsulate this concept perfectly.

The scene where Michael kills the mob was only bad because it was way too quick, and didn't have a good angle at all and the characters fell into a "bad writing" scene where he just kills them one by one in single file line or rock-paper-scissors similar to the fire fighter scene where they watch their friends get butchered like they're shot-gun dueling in Gears of War. What they should do is just have mobs attack him and him brute force through them or groups of people. Show he's transcending his humanity and becoming something else, something worse. It's also one of the few scenes where the exposition was on point and really got the idea across that Michael was a force of nature and truly a embodiment of evil this is also reinforced when Tommy looks in his eyes and sees nothing but pure darkness like Dr. loomis once described it.

A lot of people don't like this scene because it makes people "sympathetic" to Michael, but that's a mistake. In that moment whatever Michael is or has become is starting to effect or warp the reality around him making him more than human and man, and it really shows through the music ("Payback" is real well done here where he puts the mask on and the pacing of the scene changes) and he comes off as he should a powerhouse instead of just a ninny with a knife who likes to kill people.

I would have preferred Tommy to have a better fight scene with Michael, to remove the whole hospital scene which makes Tommy look like an exceptional individual and to have that mob wage all out war on Michael as he forces them back and destroys them little by little. I think "Payback" should have been extended to last longer and not cut off when getting jumped to make the scene more effective at what it tries to portray at first, but they kind of messed that up for whatever reason.

Also there seems to be some disconnect on whether they want Michael to be somewhat supernatural [which I'd argue he should be], or if they want him to be a normal man with some extreme endurance. Most people like the supernatural edge because it creates mystery and discussion of him and his undisclosed lore. Making him vulnerable I feel would just destroy that concept of what makes him interesting and make him a generic slasher icon. He may have been one of the first, but that's not really a good thing these days when he has so much competition. (Michael I mean)

Either way I want more scenes that give me goosebumps like when he recovers his mask in Kills that have that odd supernatural energy/tension in Ends, but with how Jamie Lee Curtis wants to shoehorn political nonsense into the film I doubt we'll get that unless we're super lucky and hopefully it wont' be regulated to being exceptions to the majority of lame scenes.

 

[TV's Adam West]

I'm seeing halloween kills tomorrow after work and dear christ, I'm excited. Then I'll actually be able to read the spoiler texts here too.

 

[Product Placement]

Thought of Rob Zombie movies

House of 1000 Corpses: Haven't seen this one since the mid-2000s, all I remember is really not liking it and thinking it tried way too hard.

The Devil's Rejects: Was good, maybe the best leap in quality a sequel has ever had. It's a very nasty film but never feels like it's trying too hard to be that which was the case in 1000 Corpses.

Halloween: The first half of this remake I think is fine, not really Halloween like, but on its own would have been a fine movie. The big issues come in the second half where it's just an abridged remake of the original movie that does everything worse. The movie would have been better if it was its own original movie or linked to another ip such as Friday the 13th.

Halloween II: I enjoyed everything with Dr. Loomis and it was a really fresh idea to have a survivor cash in on what happened to them. The rest of the movie I found very forgettable and reminding more of Jason than Micheal.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto: I really hate this movie it's extremely unfunny and feels for a lack of a better word lazy. It's what you would get if you told Rob Zombie to make his own version of Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon with half the budget.

The Lord of Salem: I enjoyed this one, much more paired back than his other movies and it works better for it. I feel like this movie would have done better both at the box office and reviews if it came out a few years later and under a label like A24 which is a true shame. Hoping this one gets reassessed one of these days.

31: Rob Zombie compared 31 to his 2005 film The Devil's Rejects, but honestly feels like a midway point between that and House of 1000 Corpses, and the quality it's between those two movies.

3 From Hell: I think he just wanted to revisit the characters again, which is understandable as The Devil's Rejects was his most well-liked movie and he didn't have a hit in a number of years at this point. But in revisiting them he did have much in the way for them to do and plot-wise feel like a more aimless remake of Rejects. But all the characters do well and Richard Brake who joins the family fits right in.

From all those movies got to say Rob Zombie works best the more ground the movie is in terms of tone. But also an issue of control, when he ever has full control you get shit like The Haunted World of El Superbeasto but if he doesn't get as much control as he needs you end up with the last half of Halloween 2007.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The only RZ movie I genuinely liked was Lords of Salem. The two Halloween movies are guilty pleasures. I hated everything else.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I agree with everything but making Michael more vulnerable. The whole point of Michael is he's something far more than human. He may not be fully supernatural, but it's either he is or a combination of him and his mask cause something to create something more than human. I don't really care what the directors say.

He's far more than human, but he's not superhuman. That's a big difference. What I mean by make him more vulnerable is to make him less than Jason. Michael shouldn't be able to go through a bunch of fit fireman with axes and chainsaws like a sad fat girl going through a tub of hagen daaz. Even the producers knew it was retarded so they had them line up and attack one after another instead of just swarming him and killing him on the spot. If he gets ran over, shot 7 times and beaten with clubs by a dozen people, maybe let him need more than 5 mississippis before he's back at full health and stamina? Also, when did he learn Krav Maga and to disarm people like that?

That's what I mean. That's why I called it a Ft13th sequel. That's the kind of shit that Jason does.

And if the goal is to show that Michael is now transcending his humanity and becoming something more and something supernatural, I am fine with that, but it should be something that happens gradually throughout the movie, not immediately from the first frame he shows up when it goes against the characterization of the last movie that just happened minutes ago in the movie universe.

 

[BrunoMattei]

He's far more than human, but he's not superhuman. That's a big difference.

I think you're splitting hairs. This dude has been shot and burned to fuck and back and he's still going. Even if you ignore parts 2-8 and just focus on the first film and the new continuity he still has taken a fucking beating and still fucking going. If he's not superhuman then what in the fuck is he?

 

[Oats12345]

I think you're splitting hairs. This dude has been shot and burned to fuck and back and he's still going. Even if you ignore parts 2-8 and just focus on the first film and the new continuity he still has taken a fucking beating and still fucking going. If he's not superhuman then what in the fuck is he?

Spoiler

I agree the writers said they didn't want Michael to be supernatural. But they are going to have to make him supernatural with how they ended Halloween Kills. I never understood the comparison to Jason. To me they have always been two different characters. I. Understood they are both supernatural killers who don't talk and where masks. But that's it Michael has always been showing to be be pure evil unlike Jason who had sympathetic moments in films. So I never understood the comparisons.
Honselty I thought the movie was going to end with Karen becoming possess by the same evil that possess Michael when she see the young Michael reflection. That was until it cuts to Michael getting back up and starts slaughtering the Mob. Because when I first heard Lauria Strode's speech I was thinking maybe they are implying that someone will take Michael's place as a Killer. Kind of keeping it ambiguous if their's a larger evil at play that possess people into becoming killers. Having a six year boy and later a simple mother suddenly snapped and become monsters being examples that something it going on there that may be otherworldly. I feel it would work with the whole "Michael isn't supernatural" thing. But something supernatural is in play. Of course that idea may be dumb. But at least it makes more since than Michael suddenly becoming supernatural now and starts killing the mob. Honeslty it wouldn't be as annoying to me if it wasn't for the writers saying previously Michael isn't supernatural here. But he has to be for the ending to work

 

[Product Placement]

After Halloween 2018 and IT did well, I was expecting lots of older horror series to get cinematic comebacks but really hasn't been the case. I mean getting a new Hellraiser and Texas Chain saw for streaming, and Friday the 13th right have been in limbo but still of other ips just waiting.

After Halloween 2018 also expected to see new slasher movies in the works but really been none from the studios outside those god awful Fear Street movies. Studios are just leaving money on the table.