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I watched The Cloverfield Paradox last night, and now I wish I could dunk J.J. Abrams' head in a toilet.

"Forget the preceding two hours (which were just a ripoff of Event Horizon), here's an even bigger Clover monster so we can say you weren't lied to about it being Cloverfield! And now everything is retconned with muh multiverse!"
I remember Ava DuVernay was on Twitter hyping the movie up as a huge triumph for diversity, and then everyone hated it and the Cloverfield series was basically killed off.
 
I remember Ava DuVernay was on Twitter hyping the movie up as a huge triumph for diversity, and then everyone hated it and the Cloverfield series was basically killed off.
TV Tropes are spergs, but the original movie's WMG category devolves into some really funny shitposting.

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I watched The Cloverfield Paradox last night, and now I wish I could dunk J.J. Abrams' head in a toilet.

"Forget the preceding two hours (which were just a ripoff of Event Horizon), here's an even bigger Clover monster so we can say you weren't lied to about it being Cloverfield! And now everything is retconned with muh multiverse!"
I was going into The Cloverfield Paradox because 10 Cloverfield Lane was great, so I was hoping for it to be any good. And then I watched it, and it's one of the worst sequels I've ever seen, let alone one of the worst movies of 2018.
 
I was going into The Cloverfield Paradox because 10 Cloverfield Lane was great, so I was hoping for it to be any good. And then I watched it, and it's one of the worst sequels I've ever seen, let alone one of the worst movies of 2018.
Cloverfield and the Blair Witch Project often get shit on for shaky cameras, but I like Found Footage as a storytelling technique. That and the viral marketing campaigns they did are much more interesting and creative than the corporate dross that gets churned out every 6 months.
 
At long freaking last I got time to check out Zombie/Zombi 2/Zombie Flesh Eaters/Whatever Else This Film Is Called and I think it's better than Dawn of the Dead.

Yeah. I said it. Fite me.

That's the TL;DR version of my experience. As for why it took so long to get to this film? Idk man it just wasn't that high on the list of zombie flicks I needed to watch (and there are unfortunately a lot of them out there). Zombie has everything - dry British humour, gore, convincing gross zombie effects, characters that are (mostly) competent, cheese and most importantly an amazing soundtrack! I wish I'd seen it sooner.
 
Cloverfield and the Blair Witch Project often get shit on for shaky cameras, but I like Found Footage as a storytelling technique. That and the viral marketing campaigns they did are much more interesting and creative than the corporate dross that gets churned out every 6 months.
The two have proven to be very clever with marketing tactics and the final products of the two are one of the greatest horror movies I've ever seen.
 
Kevin Smith wants to make Tusk 2, a follow up to his second worst movie only beat by Yoga Hosers which was already a follow up.
Tusk is a really bad movie, but it's bad in such a unique way that it's strangely memorable for me. Most bad horror movies are either lazy, incompetently made, or just an incomprehensible mess. Tusk is a relatively competent movie, it's just utterly miserable. The pacing is horrific, the characters are all very grating, the gore effects are neither shocking or fun and over the top but just kind of flat and unpleasant, and there really isn't much of plot at all so the wet fart of an ending feels oddly appropriate. Honestly, if Kevin Smith purposely set out to make a movie that was just genuinely awful to experience for the audience, I'd consider him some kind of warped genius.
 
As I remember it: There is an evil entity that goes around killing people, throughout history people have been able to contain it in stories. Once the entity is contained it can only exist in the world of fiction.

The catch? Once the story becomes boring, people no longer tell it and it starts being forgotten the containment starts failing and the entity starts breaking free, but while the story remains in human conciousness (even if interest wanes) the entity will still be locked in the form assigned to it within the story.

Think of Pennywise in IT and how it has to play by the rules assigned to its current form. Craven, within the film, even theorizes that the entity has started to believe itself to be Freddy.

So during the film the entity was stuck using Freddy's M.O. plus some new abilities due to the weakening of the story (ie. Earthquakes, mind control) the only threats were the attempts at reviving the franchise so he went after the people involved in them, but particularly the actress that was his original adversary.
That sounds very similar to an old X-Files episode, the “COPS” episode. Now that I think of it, Freddy is actually in the episode as a manifestation of the monster/entity, oddly with the same five clawed glove from New Nightmare. I wonder if Craven produced the episode or something.
 
Suddenly I remember I watched The Black Cat (1989), which sort of attempted to do for Suspiria what New Nightmare did for Freddy, even beating it to the punch by a few years. Apparently it began life when Dario Argento's ex-wife wanted to make the final Three Mothers movie behind his back and without his involvement. Director Luigi Cozzi apparently thought that was a bit too underhanded and reworked it into a story about the witch from Suspiria coming to life and menacing the crew of a Suspiria remake (prophetic yet again!)... only he actually wanted to do a science fiction movie instead, and dressed it as horror for commercial purposes. Oh, and the title does in fact refer to the Poe story, which Dario Argento adapted at around the same time, though it has virtually nothing to do with this movie.

So yeah, it's a colossal mess that makes no sense, and it's not nearly as entertaining as Cozzi's better messes like Alien Contamination. Cozzi's wikipedia article doesn't even list it in his filmography, though it does give us this gem:

Most of Cozzi's films become "increasingly silly and strange" as their plot goes on.[6]

That's an official, verified fact, complete with source. Definitely applies is this case.
 
Cloverfield and the Blair Witch Project often get shit on for shaky cameras, but I like Found Footage as a storytelling technique. That and the viral marketing campaigns they did are much more interesting and creative than the corporate dross that gets churned out every 6 months.

The thing is with the Found Footage genre is that it's too easy to screw up, especially after Paranormal Activity happened but when you do it right, it's like solid gold. The first Cloverfield was alright and I actually liked 10 Cloverfield Lane a lot, even got to see it in theaters when it came out. But the first Cloverfield worked almost entirely due to the marketing campaign.

IMO, the first Blair Witch Project still holds up as a good film even if you already know the truth behind the marketing gimmick.

I think part of why Blair Witch worked so well when it came out and is still enjoyable nowadays was due to how deep that lore ran, even before the sequels came out and seeing how so much of the overall marketing was tied to the lore itself, with stuff like those TV specials and magazine articles they did to hype the movie in addition to the website.

Of course, the OG found footage film Cannibal Holocaust is one of the gold standards of extreme horror and for a damn good reason too.

Speaking of extreme horror, the first August Underground works so well as a one-off flick since it was meant as Fred Vogel's response to The Blair Witch Project and his attempt at making Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for the Linkin Park generation. In my opinion, the first film worked but both of the sequels were utter shit and were just a disgusting attempt at trying to outdo the edginess of the first one.
 
already ninja'd on this but yeah Nope is literally just Jaws with some skinwalker ranch thrown in which makes it even funnier considering there are people out there who think Jordan Peele is the next John Carpenter or some shit. ...I mean once you realize its Jaws it's downright shameless. But I have to give Peele credit for throwing water on such comments.
 

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already ninja'd on this but yeah Nope is literally just Jaws with some skinwalker ranch thrown in which makes it even funnier considering there are people out there who think Jordan Peele is the next John Carpenter or some shit. ...I mean once you realize its Jaws it's downright shameless. But I have to give Peele credit for throwing water on such comments.
There’s a Lovecraft monster that seems a bit too similar to be a coincidence (the ones who wiped out the Ythians in “The Shadow Out of Time”), big amorphous flying jellyfish that suck prey up with cyclones and violently hate being seen.

I assume that’s the main inspiration for the monster design, which is probably the best part of the film judging by the reviews I’ve seen. If so, then he owes ol’ racist Uncle HP as much credit as El Spielbergo.
 
I got fed up with Get Out very quickly because it started reminding me of The Skeleton Key early on and then having the same plot device.
While one might, on a surface level, compare the two films since they have a similar plot device I would say that the two are polar opposites. Get Out is terrible, a weak film so intent on pandering and propagandizing a delusional narrative that White people would want to take over the body of a smelly ape that it forgets every other rule of cinema and writing to deliver a tepid cold diarrhea of celluloid. The Skeleton Key is a terrifying drama that focuses on telling an engaging story that fascinates and horrifies, with a direct artistic viisual and powerful through lines in the writing, direction and design.
 
While one might, on a surface level, compare the two films since they have a similar plot device I would say that the two are polar opposites. Get Out is terrible, a weak film so intent on pandering and propagandizing a delusional narrative that White people would want to take over the body of a smelly ape that it forgets every other rule of cinema and writing to deliver a tepid cold diarrhea of celluloid. The Skeleton Key is a terrifying drama that focuses on telling an engaging story that fascinates and horrifies, with a direct artistic viisual and powerful through lines in the writing, direction and design.
I always thought Skeleton Key was oddly underrated... the way Get Out is hailed as one of cinema's greatest achievements rubs some salt in that wound.
 
I always thought Skeleton Key was oddly underrated... the way Get Out is hailed as one of cinema's greatest achievements rubs some salt in that wound.
I think Skeleton Key was underrated because of the lead actress. I think people were getting burnt out on her by this point in her career. I remember going 'Ugh, Kate Hudson' at the time and avoiding the movie. After Almost Famous she was in almost, like, 10 shitty romcoms, so people like me wrongly assumed it was gonna be fluff, people who were tired of her shit wanted to move on, and people who loved her and went to see that movie.... well, it wasn't exactly what they were expected.

It kind of gained cult status in the recent years.
 
I saw V/H/S Viral and V/H/S 94 since I might as well finish this series.

Viral is pretty much a shit movie except for one segment. It tries way too hard to be cool and it barely is horror. The magician segment honestly felt like MCU quality and didn't even feel like a horror movie which the only time it tried to be horror was to have a shit jumpscare at the end that felt cheap. The Skater segment was okay, but it felt like it was leaning too hard in "DUDE RADICAL LOOK HOW EXTREME WE ARE!" which could be intentional but it was kind of cringeworthy and if there wasn't any gore, this segment would definitely be for like 10-13 year olds especially with the shitty rap music. The middle segment with the parallel universes is the only good one and actually felt like a horror film and was definitely really neat how it handled the concepts presented, so this is probably the only one worth watching.

94 is probably the best of the films as none of the segments were really that bad and all were quite good. There's one that went on for too long, but aside from that all did their jobs well, and most had a really neat aesthetic that felt very authentic for the time period which I really like. It also balanced itself much better than the other films in my personal opinion.

So if I were to rank each film it would probably be V/H/S 94 > V/H/S 2 > V/H/S > V/H/S Viral
 
I saw V/H/S Viral and V/H/S 94 since I might as well finish this series.

Viral is pretty much a shit movie except for one segment. It tries way too hard to be cool and it barely is horror. The magician segment honestly felt like MCU quality and didn't even feel like a horror movie which the only time it tried to be horror was to have a shit jumpscare at the end that felt cheap. The Skater segment was okay, but it felt like it was leaning too hard in "DUDE RADICAL LOOK HOW EXTREME WE ARE!" which could be intentional but it was kind of cringeworthy and if there wasn't any gore, this segment would definitely be for like 10-13 year olds especially with the shitty rap music. The middle segment with the parallel universes is the only good one and actually felt like a horror film and was definitely really neat how it handled the concepts presented, so this is probably the only one worth watching.

94 is probably the best of the films as none of the segments were really that bad and all were quite good. There's one that went on for too long, but aside from that all did their jobs well, and most had a really neat aesthetic that felt very authentic for the time period which I really like. It also balanced itself much better than the other films in my personal opinion.

So if I were to rank each film it would probably be V/H/S 94 > V/H/S 2 > V/H/S > V/H/S Viral
I agree with the majority of your points, especially that Viral is shit, except I'd switch 2 to 1st place and move 94 to second. 2 has "Safe Haven", the demon cult story by the two guys who made The Raid, which is probably my favorite segment in the series. 2 in my opinion is also the only one in the series without a bad segment, the weakest being Eduardo Sanchez's zombie story, which is just kind of run-of-the-mill.

94 starts off really strong with "Storm Drain" by Chloe Okuno, who I've never even heard of before, which is probably tied with "Amateur Night" as my second favorite segment in the series. The next two segments are also solid, but I thought the right wing militia one at the end was absolute ass. They could have been subversive with that segment and made it so terrorism that the militia was going to commit was actually against the vampires and therefore they were actually the good guys all along. Or they could have had the militia be genuinely competent and dangerous terrorists who finally met their match when faced with the supernatural. Instead they took the lazy "lol racist rednecks dumb" approach that has been done a million times before.
 
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