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

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Commander X said:
The director of the Terrifier films (which I have said I am not a fan of) posted this statement to FB and Twitter, and I think it's kind of silly for the director of a series of films about a murderous clown to make, but it's gotten a lot of people angry, especially the "all art is political!" crowd and the "media literacy" babblers who've been focusing their inanities on horror for the past several years. Won't someone please think of the Terrifier community?!
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Sillay as I think it is, people are saying this was statement was made due to the Terrifer art director making pro-LGBT statements, I think he instead was attempting to countersignal the exact kind of people melting down over this. How has nagging people for the past decade over how all art is political and how media illiterate they're being worked out? It's people like this who behave like psychos over politics in entertainment that have contributed, in their own small ways, to making entertainment worse.
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I will spoiler my response to this as I feel it would be too long

I personally think what Leone should've probably not made a post if he wanted to quell tensions given how polarizing political discussion is on the internet. I will play devil's advocate for the "all art is political" crowd here since I personally do believe it, but an unfortunate thing with most of the crowd is that the wording of "political" in the expression is pretty poor since most people would think that would mean if, like a film for example is discussing stuff like economic theories, political parties, and who to vote for. "Politics" in this case is more that art of all forms is made based on the culture it originated in (i.e. time period, geographical location, life circumstances, and societal views of the time).

Damien Leone of course probably doesn't think of that, like people expect all directors to have intended meanings behind everything but sometimes with this artistic thing it can be subconscious like how Night of the Living Dead, George Romero famously didn't intend to make any sort of political statement with the black protagonist getting shot by a cop since the intent was to have a guy get mistaken for a zombie by a cop which got him shot, but it became a different issue.

All in all it is a very substantive type of discussion that discussion of it would have to go somewhere else as this isn't the place for a deep dive discussion on artistic integrity and stuff. But it boils down to how art can be interpreted by people as long as it is not in bad faith, which is perfectly fine to do, since free discussion should be allowed.

I watched two pretty psychological films recently as part of my effort to catch up on some 2024 films that I missed out on last year, which were I Saw the TV Glow and Heretic

I Saw the TV Glow, I heard a lot about going in and seeing it, I can see some of the hype as it s a pretty surreal and sort of experimental movie with some creative shots. I also am interested in the interpretation of what is real and what is not, along with the discussion of identity. But personally I feel the film felt a little overhyped as it wasn't that amazing, but I can see why someone would think that and for the people who really love it and identify with the characters, well I am not one of those types of people so it is something I can not understand and I'm fine with that. It's alright, but still pretty creative, and I can see someone who likes those 90s horror shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Are you Alone in the Dark, and such to really love this. But it is not the greatest thing ever, and despite what some people think, I don't think this is worthy of the highest of accolades.

Heretic is honestly a pretty fantastic movie, I am someone who really is interested in sort of exploration and discussion of religion in media, and this kind of roped me in with how Mr. Reed is discussing the different interpretations and iterations of religion while also mixing it up with a lot of metaphors and such. Hugh Grant gives a very charismatic performance that could almost make you believe in what he is saying but we have characters call him out on his bullshit to break down the arguments he makes. There's also a lot of research you can do for yourself to see that he is spouting bullshit or surface level arguments (i.e. like Judaism isn't the first monotheistic religion), and while he makes good points, it is all part of a larger game of manipulation. There's also a lot about faith and such that I can rave about, which sort of reminds me of how The Exorcist would discuss faith yet bring in perspectives to it that are antithetical and it is admirable how one of the characters holds onto their faith till the very end without succumbing to charismatic intellectualism that Mr. Reed brings. Overall, it is probably one of the best horror films that came out last year.
 
Samhain said:
If you really think about it, Neo isn't much better off than Murdoch, as far as being a puppet goes. Throughout the Matrix movies, Neo bases most of his decisions off choices presented to him directly or indirectly by other characters. Even his "decision" to accept that he's "the one" turns out to essentially be false when he's told by the Architect that he's nothing but a statistically predictable bug in the Matrix that the machines expect and prepared for long before he even meets Morpheus. On the other hand, Neo doesn't willingly decide to inure himself in delusions like Murdoch does at the end of Dark City, so there's that.
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How does time work in the matrix again? Was Neo a kid in the virtual 1970s, or does it stay 1999 forever, or what? They also have memory-altering technology, but they apparently only use it for mindwipes and teaching people kung fu and stuff. But on some level or another, Neo's entire life is fake anyway.
 
Calandrino said:
How does time work in the matrix again? Was Neo a kid in the virtual 1970s, or does it stay 1999 forever, or what? They also have memory-altering technology, but they apparently only use it for mindwipes and teaching people kung fu and stuff. But on some level or another, Neo's entire life is fake anyway.
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Yep, but what differentiates Neo from Murdoch is how they respond to that, which I what I think Samhain is getting at: Neo, at every step that he realizes he's on strings, tries to cut those strings (and, even when he was wrapped up in falsehood far more tightly than fragmented-memory Murdoch, still felt that something was "wrong."). When he learns that "The One" is B.S., he doesn't really have a drawn-out existential crisis, instead he says "fuck it" and tries to win, damn the odds; he isn't really encumbered by his past, he sheds discovered falsehoods like water off a duck and then proceeds to beat your ass even if it kills him.

Murdoch, on the other hand, is on a constant quest for a psychological security blanket. While he did fight against the scary vampire aliens disrupting his search for childhood nostalgia, he never rebelled: he can't escape the starting narrative he was given even when he learns it's bunk.

God, I sound like I'm about to start questioning heteronormativity and then troon out.
 
Prince of Darkness, 1987
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Music video for Japanese singer Chisato Moritaka's sixth hit single "Stress", 1989. Coincidence?...absolutely.
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Just saw Army of the Dead by Zach Snyder, and I give it a solid 6.5/10.

In short, a super-zombie breaks loose from U.S. military detention and starts a zombie apocalypse in Las Vegas. The army just barely manages to contain it by walling the city. A group of veterans of the zombie war is hired by a casino owner to crack into his safe before Las Vegas is wiped off the planet by nuclear hellfire, and shenanigans ensue.

Overall it's an enjoyable zombie-slaying romp with some moments of actual tension, let down by poor pacing where in between intense action scenes there's long sequences where basically nothing of note happens. I'd also ding the writing, since there are more than a few moments where the plot relies on characters being stupid or pointlessly cruel for the plot to progress, or for some kind of contrived coincidence (chiefly the main villain, who always appears whenever things are going too well for the protagonists). There's a bit of wokery as well: two of the male characters are cartoonishly evil rapey sleazeballs who obviously die horribly, and the nuke-happy President in one scene is pretty much a poor parody of Trump.

Without spoilering too much, the biggest problem with the movie is one particular character, Kate, played by Ella Purnell. Not only is this character an insufferable holier-than-thou harpie, everything she does, from going unprepared into the zombie-infested hellscape of Las Vegas to save some pajeeta who was retarded enough to go into said zombie-infested hellscape on her own, ultimately leads to the doom of everyone except herself at the end of the movie. Most obnoxiously, the script assumes we're going to somehow sympathize with her, when she keeps putting herself and everyone else by proxy at risk for totally selfish and misguided reasons, and despite her holding a grudge against her father, who goes out of her way to save her, because he was forced to put down her mother because, guess what, she had turned into a zombie and was going to kill them both. I honestly think that if they had somehow forced her character to stay behind the movie would have improved markedly.

If you want to watch zombies get mown down by the dozens by assault rifles you can do a whole lot worse than this one.
 
Last night I watched the obscure Night Life (1989):


It's kind of a mediocre zombie movie that veers into Return of the Living Dead territory with nearly immortal zombies but it takes an hour to finally get to that point and the gore is kind of mediocre. It does have some good zombie makeup and at least one good kill. 6/10. Movies like this make you appreciate the Eyetalian Zombie shit more because those movies had unrepentant amounts of tits and gore and got to the action quickly.
 
Calandrino said:
I liked Companion. As with Barbarian, it's best not to know anything about it if you can help it (sry if too late). The trailer doesn't give anything away but it's hard to talk about it at all without spoilers.
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I've seen a tad about it but now I will try and stay spoiler free. Looking for a copy on the high seas.
 
I watched Stopmotion (2023) and it was pretty fucking meh. You can get the whole movie in your head from the preview, and the film does nothing to take anything in any new or interesting direction. It's just like a big old stack of tropes. Like you know the puppets are going to "come alive," you know she's going to start seeing herself as a puppet, you know she's going to become obsessed with the movie she's making.

And that's OK, really, tropes aren't inherently bad, just these are done so weakly and so bluntly that it's just tedious to get through. The neighbor sassy pre-teen girl comes over to help, for example, and I'm not going to spoil it, but if you don't immediately recognize what's going on, you may be clinically retarded.

The only actual scary part is when she deals with her overbearing stop-motion genius (apparently) mother, because something is wrong with her teeth and it freaked me the fuck out. But then overbearing mom gives the MC a chance to make her own movie, and this girl who's been helping her for years has....zero ideas? Like maybe she didn't want to lose credit, or she was worried mom wouldn't like them - either of which could be acceptable- but it's just presented as, nope, she has no ideas.

Then there's the plot where she tries to go work for an ad agency for no reason - for half a scene. I guess it's supposed to show she's crazy and losing it, but it really seemed more like the ad agency is some kind of ad agency that works the way a 7 year old would think an ad agency works like.

When she gets writer's block, she goes to get some drugs, and has a really trippy drug scene at the club, where she dances, dry humps her boyfriend, and then two unrelated guys have a fight in slow-motion. OMG so trippy. Except it turns out later she didn't even take the drugs. Who gives a shit, it wasn't a big deal anyway.

I don't know. I guess it is competently made and acted, but even at 83 minutes (minus the credits), it seemed really long and boring. The body horror is very, very weak, you think "oh good, this is just getting started," and then, that's it.

The child actor is actually pretty good. I mean annoying as shit, but she's supposed to be.

2.0/5 stars just for the competence, and a good first act. The stop motion is good, I guess, but nothing you didn't see in a Tool video back in the 90s. No titties despite a sex scene and a shower scene. Very minor gore. I really don't know why this was R. I wish it was properly rated at PG-13 because I wouldn't have watched it.
 
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Vampirella said:
That's why I don't like Eli Roth movies.
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Eli to me is like a lot of directors from that time/movement (Zombie, Tarantino, ect.) He seems like a swell guy but I'd much rather hear him talk about horror movies he likes for five hours at a time than watch his movies.

Thanksgiving I liked just because it felt more like a tribute to the shittier slashers from the late 80s (Blood Rage, Iced) in that it felt intentionally shit. There's just some stuff in that movie that's so dumb I think of it more as a comedy. I liked it overall but yeah he has a real problem with making decent characters. Honestly I feel that's horrors' biggest problem the last decade.
Although I do agree the lack of cunt stabbing was a bummer.
 
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