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

[BrunoMattei]

Next up, I watched Ju-On and The Grudge. This wasn't an intentional thing, I just bought the latest Fatal Frame and felt in the mood for some Asian horror. The original holds up well and has some solid tension, especially with the underused trope of putting the threat on screen where the audience can clearly see it, but the characters can't. I wouldn't say it's as good as Ringu, mainly because of the non-linear narrative making things a bit convoluted (and the unintentionally funny scene where she wakes up to a room full of cats, most of which are clearly stuffed toys), but still holds up well.

As for the remake, it's fine. Given that it's the same director and still takes place in Japan it does feel like they're treating it with more respect rather than a quick cash grab. As you'd expect there are more jump scares and it explains things far more explicitly, but I've certainly seen a lot worse.

Is The Grudge VS The Ring flick any good?

 

[feral cat #6385]

Is The Grudge VS The Ring flick any good?

Not really.

 

[XYZpdq]

Is The Grudge VS The Ring flick any good?

ehh, as a creepy cinema classic, no
for "two monsters that really have no particular combat skills fight" it's decent enough dumb fun
iirc technically it's Sadako from those 3d Sadako movies who's marginally different from Ring's Sadako or something, and she's a bit more active than Ring's "stand around and look spoopy, then move towards people and look spoopy" style

edit-
in case you want to find out for yourself archive has it

Sadako vs Kayako 2010 : Kadokawa Daiei Studios : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Spirit from Ju-On: the Grudge and Ringu confront against each other

archive.org

also the 3d ones

Eng Sub Double Feature 08 : ultragoji2 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Before I had uploaded the first two RING movies for the Double Feature. Now I decided to upload the two recent RING movies that are titled SADAKO... the main...

archive.org

 

[HereCometheWarmJets]

Watched the House on Straw Hill (1976) and was utterly disappointed that they dubbed my boy Udo Kier. Film was okay otherwise, though at points it feels like it is too reminiscent of Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. The script could have also used a bit of polish.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Watched the House on Straw Hill (1976) and was utterly disappointed that they dubbed my boy Udo Kier. Film was okay otherwise, though at points it feels like it is too reminiscent of Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. The script could have also used a bit of polish.

It's a decent film. It opens well but then kind of peters out. It has one gorgeous euro babe in it as a definite plus.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I learned who Victor Salva was before I saw Jeepers Creepers, a friend kept telling me how great they were and I should watched them since I owned Polanski's Apartment's trilogy, Fearless Vampire Killers & Chinatown (my protest that all of these were filmed prior to his rape ignored) he fucking badgered me into watching it. I think it was either the first one or the second one.

I watched maybe... 5 or 10 minutes of it, but literally in the opening you have a bunch of teenage boys just tanning in the sun wearing any clothes on and I just went NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

I'm also right there with @BrunoMattei we should definitely kidnap that one dude and murder him or force him to watch a youtube documentary or some shit. I lost track but yeah let's do that.

 

[HereCometheWarmJets]

It's a decent film. It opens well but then kind of peters out. It has one gorgeous euro babe in it as a definite plus.

Interesting take. I conversely found the back half of the film to be the most engaging; really felt like the film should have been built more around the sexual tension between the isloated trio (Kier, Hayden, Richmond) with the murderer/motives not being so readily apparent. It does seem like 70s Euro-flicks almost always had primo chicks.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I learned who Victor Salva was before I saw Jeepers Creepers, a friend kept telling me how great they were and I should watched them since I owned Polanski's Apartment's trilogy, Fearless Vampire Killers & Chinatown (my protest that all of these were filmed prior to his rape ignored) he fucking badgered me into watching it. I think it was either the first one or the second one.

I watched maybe... 5 or 10 minutes of it, but literally in the opening you have a bunch of teenage boys just tanning in the sun wearing any clothes on and I just went NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

I thought it was an okay horror flick. Not amazing but it's decently executed. It's certainly not a fucking "masterpiece." Then in the 3rd act it introduces this old black psychic woman for no reason who is like "One of you is going to die!" And she serves no purpose beyond saying that. Part 2 is bad. Never saw the made Sci Fi channel 3rd one that was also directed by Salva. Part 2, BTW, has even more overt pedo imagery.

I'm also right there with @BrunoMattei we should definitely kidnap that one dude and murder him or force him to watch a youtube documentary or some shit. I lost track but yeah let's do that.

We can try negative reinforcement. We recommend Texas Chainsaw Massacre and if the dude says "The remake is better!" We'll just bash him in the testicles with a hammer.

 

[Oats12345]

I learned who Victor Salva was before I saw Jeepers Creepers, a friend kept telling me how great they were and I should watched them since I owned Polanski's Apartment's trilogy, Fearless Vampire Killers & Chinatown (my protest that all of these were filmed prior to his rape ignored) he fucking badgered me into watching it. I think it was either the first one or the second one.

I watched maybe... 5 or 10 minutes of it, but literally in the opening you have a bunch of teenage boys just tanning in the sun wearing any clothes on and I just went NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

I'm also right there with @BrunoMattei we should definitely kidnap that one dude and murder him or force him to watch a youtube documentary or some shit. I lost track but yeah let's do that.

Again I watch those movies before I found out the man was a convicted pedo. I was real gross out afterwords. I follow the one kid he raped on Twitter. I remmber the guy liked my Tweet when I called saliva a gross bastard.

Maybe he would like to help with planning to kidnap and punish Saliva

 

[BrunoMattei]

Again I watch those movies before I found out the man was a convicted pedo. I was real gross out afterwords. I follow the one kid he raped on Twitter. I remmber the guy liked my Tweet when I called saliva a gross bastard.

Maybe he would like to help with planning to kidnap and punish Saliva

Just like Hard Candy!

Great film. I remember seeing the trailer before Saw (or Saw 2) and the audience visibly shuddered when the guy licked the chocolate from her lips.

 

[TV's Adam West]

So, I've been playing a few horror games lately. Let me lay it on you.

Alien Isolation. 10/10.
It's utterly fucking amazing how they were able to capture the feel of the original alien 30+ years later. Unlike Colonial Marines (Fuck you Randy) this actually feels like Alien. The atmosphere and terror is SO FUCKING GOOD.

Manhunt. 10/10. This is the most controversial game Rockstar has ever put out and it's worth it. You're forced to join a snuff film ring and fucking kill anyone in front of you in very violent ways. The sound design is absolutely disgusting in the best type of ways.

Condemned Criminal Origins. 7/10
Very interesting premise, an FBI agent has his gun stolen which is then used to gun down two police officers. You go on a quest to clear your name and hunt down serial killer X. Very good atmospherically.

Dead By daylight is still a shitheap.

 

[JohnDoe]

I learned who Victor Salva was before I saw Jeepers Creepers, a friend kept telling me how great they were and I should watched them

I didn't care for the premise or anything, and the knowledge about Salva was the only reason I watched the movies. I guess I wanted to see if it would give his work a different angle or extra texture, but I was disappointed. Generally speaking, and in particular about that point.

Speaking of deviancy, I recently saw the terrible adaptation of Scary Stories to tell in the Dark, which botched the anthology format in a terrible way while also being chock a block full of progressive globohomo. The pacing is all over the place, as is the acting, but at least the technical aspects were competent, I could see and hear the idiocy on my screen.

I really feel like this was an existing script that had this title jammed in, it really doesn't make any sense otherwise. For some reason it's set in 1968 with the backdrop of Nixon's election, as well. I mean, I know it's so they can hamfistedly say 'war bad' and 'fuck the draft' but it's a lot of setup that ultimately does nothing and could have been spent elsewhere.

They also cast a White girl as the main protagonist and some beaner as the love interest so they also could build up and knock down some strawmen while promoting race-mixing. This also conveniently allows them to kill exclusively White men, including the two teen protagonists who are MainGirl's best friends and get all the development(as cucks). Meanwhile Don Juan is a homeless draft-dodging switchblade carrying drifter that gets every moment of bravery and doesn't die at the end since he built up endurance from dodging the draft and can outrun the monster for 10 times as long as anyone previously.

All of this is set up to resolve a plot where Evil White Men did A Bad for Money and Greed and only the plucky heroine can make the ghost stop killing with empathy and dialog. I tell you, it sure was gripping to watch a teen actor stumble over their lines to convince a ghost that White Man Bad.

In short, fucking terrible. Go re-read the fucking books again, some of the stories are still spooky as fuck and the illustrations sure are.

 

[Calandrino]

I didn't care for the premise or anything, and the knowledge about Salva was the only reason I watched the movies. I guess I wanted to see if it would give his work a different angle or extra texture, but I was disappointed. Generally speaking, and in particular about that point.

Speaking of deviancy, I recently saw the terrible adaptation of Scary Stories to tell in the Dark, which botched the anthology format in a terrible way while also being chock a block full of progressive globohomo. The pacing is all over the place, as is the acting, but at least the technical aspects were competent, I could see and hear the idiocy on my screen.

I really feel like this was an existing script that had this title jammed in, it really doesn't make any sense otherwise. For some reason it's set in 1968 with the backdrop of Nixon's election, as well. I mean, I know it's so they can hamfistedly say 'war bad' and 'fuck the draft' but it's a lot of setup that ultimately does nothing and could have been spent elsewhere.

They also cast a White girl as the main protagonist and some beaner as the love interest so they also could build up and knock down some strawmen while promoting race-mixing. This also conveniently allows them to kill exclusively White men, including the two teen protagonists who are MainGirl's best friends and get all the development(as cucks). Meanwhile Don Juan is a homeless draft-dodging switchblade carrying drifter that gets every moment of bravery and doesn't die at the end since he built up endurance from dodging the draft and can outrun the monster for 10 times as long as anyone previously.

All of this is set up to resolve a plot where Evil White Men did A Bad for Money and Greed and only the plucky heroine can make the ghost stop killing with empathy and dialog. I tell you, it sure was gripping to watch a teen actor stumble over their lines to convince a ghost that White Man Bad.

In short, fucking terrible. Go re-read the fucking books again, some of the stories are still spooky as fuck and the illustrations sure are.

I could never have guessed you were describing a Scary Stories movie if you hadn't said so. There's no way to connect any of that to the books. It would make exactly as much sense if you said that was the plot of the new Batman movie.

 

[JohnDoe]

I could never have guessed you were describing a Scary Stories movie if you hadn't said so. There's no way to connect any of that to the books. It would make exactly as much sense if you said that was the plot of the new Batman movie.

I'll be the first to admit that anthology movies are tricky to do, but the first rule is probably to minimize the amount of framing. Every bit you spend on that is time and energy taken away from each story, and SSttitD spends way too much time on the ancillary shit. That really fucks them over in regards to another issue, which is the PG-13 rating, more on that in a minute.

The better anthology films all have really short and simple framing devices:

• Creepshow- A kid reads horror comics in bed, runtime 5 minutes max.
• Tales from the Darkside- A kid tells scary stories to delay a witch eating him, about 7 minutes.
• Terror Tract- A realtor discloses the horrible deaths that occurred in houses he's showing, about 10ish minutes.
• Tales from the Hood - An undertaker tells scary stories about dead people to the gangbangers that broke into his funeral home, under 10 minutes.

Notice how usually the framing device is ten minutes or less? That gives plenty of time to divide up, so each segment can take as long as it needs to deliver the scares. With SSD, so much is used for the race-mixer framing that each 'story' is a matter of a few minutes, not nearly long enough for the material to work outside of a jump scare.

Part of this same issue is the rating and what they do with it. Not to book-sperg for a minute, but the books have been targets for banning since publication for the same reason they are famous; the illustrations. (Which were all replaced recently.)

Spoiler: Picture that made you shit your pants in 3rd grade

The ghost is looking at YOU. YOU are trapped in that creaky old house, staring down the empty, rotted eye sockets of some girl who was strangled by her lover. Many of Gammell’s illustrations take this approach, putting the “shot” of the piece in the POV of the reader.

Without this horrifying imagery the books would have never been famous, in my opinion. Almost none of this is used in the film, partly because of the rating, and partly because of time. There just isn't enough willingness to push the rating, or time to develop the haunting tension needed to compensate for imagery. The few times they incorporate the style or feel it is so brief that it feels like you're getting a sniff of a delicious meal but never actually get it served.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the movie never commits itself to the material it's supposed to adapt or it's format. It doesn't give us enough of the source material overall, and what it gives is a shadow. It also fails as an anthology film in general, with vestigial stories and a bloated frame. It's just bad overall, a real waste of potential.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'll be the first to admit that anthology movies are tricky to do, but the first rule is probably to minimize the amount of framing. Every bit you spend on that is time and energy taken away from each story, and SSttitD spends way too much time on the ancillary shit. That really fucks them over in regards to another issue, which is the PG-13 rating, more on that in a minute.

The better anthology films all have really short and simple framing devices:

• Creepshow- A kid reads horror comics in bed, runtime 5 minutes max.
• Tales from the Darkside- A kid tells scary stories to delay a witch eating him, about 7 minutes.
• Terror Tract- A realtor discloses the horrible deaths that occurred in houses he's showing, about 10ish minutes.
• Tales from the Hood - An undertaker tells scary stories about dead people to the gangbangers that broke into his funeral home, under 10 minutes.

I would add From A Whisper to a Scream AKA The Offspring to that list of great anthology horrors along with the original Tales from the Crypt (shame on you) and The Asylum.

 

[Calandrino]

Part of this same issue is the rating and what they do with it. Not to book-sperg for a minute, but the books have been targets for banning since publication for the same reason they are famous; the illustrations. (Which were all replaced recently.)

Spoiler: Picture that made you shit your pants in 3rd grade

You'd think it would be possible to make a PG-13 movie based on illustrations from a children's book, even if it's that children's book. Most of them weren't gory, just very strange.

You might be relieved to know that the original versions have been back in print for years.

 

[BrunoMattei]

You'd think it would be possible to make a PG-13 movie based on illustrations from a children's book, even if it's that children's book. Most of them weren't gory, just very strange.

You might be relieved to know that the original versions have been back in print for years.

It would be difficult but not impossible to do. Ideally, the real way to do an adaptation of Scary Stories To Tell in The Dark is film it like Begotten:

 

[Internet War Criminal]

There are plenty of great anthology horror movies.

Just last year I thought that Mortuary Collection was fantastic. Aside from, like, the first two V/H/S/ movies you also have:

Body Bags
Trick r'Treat
Southbound
Tales from the Hood
Ghost Stories
Three Extremes

I'm sure there are a bunch more I forgot

 

[BrunoMattei]

I forgot Three Extremes and Trick R Treat. Body Bags sucked and the best part are the John Carpenter hosting segments.

Carpenter is surprisingly funny.

Trivia: very little make up was required to make John Carpenter look like a corpse.

 

[JohnDoe]

I would add From A Whisper to a Scream AKA The Offspring to that list of great anthology horrors along with the original Tales from the Crypt (shame on you) and The Asylum.

I wasn't really making a list of 'great' anthologies so don't judge for my failure to mention any others. I just posted up the first ones I remembered with lean framing. I'll have to check out The Asylum though, never heard about it before.

There are plenty of great anthology horror movies.

Aside from, like, the first two V/H/S/ movies you also have

Trick r'Treat

Two more great examples. Trick r'Treat is probably the best example of what Scary Stories might have been trying, in that all the subjects of the stories were in the same setting - in one town, on one night. I feel like SS might have been angling for that kind of thing, but it just doesn't gel at all.