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That scene is genuinely disturbing so I don't know how I forgot it. The almost rape leading up to it feels a bit much for a Poltergeist film though.
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Oct 17, 2011 20:09
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The preacher in the second one freaked me the poo poo out as a kid, and still as an adult. I feel bad now, kinda, cause I learned he had cancer and that's why he looked so god damned freaky, but still... gently caress he was creepy.
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Oct 17, 2011 20:51
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The third Poltergeist really... REALLY bothered me when I was growing up. I haven't seen it in a while, so I can't pinpoint why, but I just remember being really freaked out after watching it, and I was able to handle a lot as a little kid.
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Oct 17, 2011 23:45
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Poltergeist II is kind of worth it as a curiosity rather than as a good movie; it was one of the major causes behind the invention of the PG-13 rating, and Giger worked on the monster design. actually, the whole PG-13 push was around Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. I remember the uproar of the public when those where coming out and the freaked out parents that took their kids to see 'wholesome adventure movies and flicks with cute, innocent animals' I believe Red Dawn was one of the first, if not the fist movie to take on that badge.
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Oct 18, 2011 01:09
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Holdenmagroyn posted:Yeah well...just watched this due to this thread and I really have to disagree here. Boring, predictable and clichéd. And seriously, just how many times can a person go blind for fucks sake? Seconding this about Julia's Eyes. It had some decent cinematography but the film itself is indeed boring, predictable and clichéd. It's also made terribly obvious who the killer is very early in the movie, removing any mystery, and there was very little suspense due to the fact that it was clear that the main character wasn't going to get killed. Some of the concepts were interesting but they just weren't utilized well at all in this movie.
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Oct 18, 2011 02:16
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eckoelab posted:actually, the whole PG-13 push was around Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. I remember the uproar of the public when those where coming out and the freaked out parents that took their kids to see 'wholesome adventure movies and flicks with cute, innocent animals' Actually it looks like I was thinking of the original Poltergeist, which still predates Gremlins and Temple of Doom by a few years.
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Oct 18, 2011 02:23
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eckoelab posted:actually, the whole PG-13 push was around Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. I remember the uproar of the public when those where coming out and the freaked out parents that took their kids to see 'wholesome adventure movies and flicks with cute, innocent animals' I think Red Dawn was the first movie released with a PG-13 rating but something else was the first rated it but wasn't released until later.
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Oct 18, 2011 02:34
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besides Red Dawn, looks like Dreamscape and Women in Red were the others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PG13 not that Wikipedia is the end all of all info on the rating system edit: oh, and the Flamingo Kid eckoelab fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Oct 18, 2011 |
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Oct 18, 2011 03:36
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TUS posted:The third Poltergeist really... REALLY bothered me when I was growing up. I haven't seen it in a while, so I can't pinpoint why, but I just remember being really freaked out after watching it, and I was able to handle a lot as a little kid. The whole movie took place in a high-rise with mirrors everywhere, and people's reflections became dopplegangers and kill them or pull them into the mirror, I think. But yeah, it was kinda creepy.
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Oct 18, 2011 09:08
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Guess what just got added to Netflix Instant; why it's your favorite horror film by Kevin Smith Red State. I'm all aboard for this train wreck and it's just in time for Halloween.
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Oct 18, 2011 17:54
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Niggurath posted:Guess what just got added to Netflix Instant; why it's your favorite horror film by Kevin Smith Red State. I'm all aboard for this train wreck and it's just in time for Halloween. This opened here recently. I thought it was just ok, the first half hour was really good but it turned into a terrible action movie. I felt like Kevin got bored with his horror movie and just turned it into an action movie instead. By the time the movie ended I felt like the opening of the movie was pointless.
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Oct 18, 2011 19:39
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Slasherfan posted:This opened here recently. I thought it was just ok, the first half hour was really good but it turned into a terrible action movie. I felt like Kevin got bored with his horror movie and just turned it into an action movie instead. By the time the movie ended I felt like the opening of the movie was pointless. I enjoyed it, wasn't what I was expecting but it was different enough to make it worth watching. Definitely could do a lot worse.
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Oct 18, 2011 21:32
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Slasherfan posted:This opened here recently. I thought it was just ok, the first half hour was really good but it turned into a terrible action movie. I felt like Kevin got bored with his horror movie and just turned it into an action movie instead. By the time the movie ended I felt like the opening of the movie was pointless. I'm not trying for the whole smug "you didn't get it, heh" post since it wasn't a great movie but I think it was still horror in the other half, just with over the top evil ATF agents murdering indiscriminately to cover their tracks. It just got me wondering, if law enforcement agencies do that in real life then they don't do a good job because horrible news stories seem to surface about them daily and no one cares. Edit: I have to admit I did love the first act, and the movie overall felt like the closest Keven Smith has ever gotten to a real film (and not just "let's get high and talk about star wars and hockey"). Scissorfighter fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Oct 18, 2011 |
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Oct 18, 2011 23:06
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A short (But awesome) teaser trailer has shown up for Piranha 3DD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG4rEV7zuFA Also here's one for Hostel Part 3 which looks kind of decent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFqb8z1tMLU&feature=related
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Oct 19, 2011 19:47
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Hostel 3 looks so unbelievably bad i don't even
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Oct 19, 2011 20:36
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For the type of movie that Hostel 3 is supposed to be, it looks like it certainly delivers. I do want to see it.
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Oct 19, 2011 20:46
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Why did I just watch Poltergeist II and II? Talk about your giant time wasters.
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Oct 19, 2011 20:47
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Saw Paranormal Activity 3 at a special free screening sponsored by Paramount last night here in AZ. I liked it a hell of a lot more than the 2nd one, but not as much as the first. A lot of the scares were blatantly telegraphed, but remained effective throughout. That said, without spoiling anything, I can honestly say that the kitchen scene in this one is far superior to the kitchen scene with the cupboards in the last one. Definitely worth checking out for a matinee price.
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Oct 19, 2011 23:30
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Dissapointed Owl posted:Why did I just watch Poltergeist II and II? Talk about your giant time wasters. Poltergeist II and III are awesome and I won't have you people dissing them.
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Oct 19, 2011 23:53
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I'd like a horror-concept critique please. This is an idea some friends and I fleshed out back in highschool (goddamn, that was a decade ago) for a horror movie. We wanted a monster/slasher/stalker film where the murdering antagonist is completely unknown. The idea was: what if a group of friends stopped in some little town, and found that absolutely every single animal there had been brutally slaughtered in less than 24 hours. Men, women, children, pets, wild animals. Just a small town turned to a slaughter house. So, the usual isolation set-up, nothing special there, but the idea was this: what if no one ever sees the killer/monster/stalker. Not even the audience. These things (monsters? animals? ghosts? soldiers? psychopaths?) are just so loving good that they never get spotted. The prey is always taken unawares, in a window of opportunity where no one is watching, without alerting a single witness and never leaving a trace other than a mangled and eviscerated corpse that obviously died in a blind panic. I'm talking scenes where a group is talking and right at the edge of the screen, just out of focus, one of the group is being murdered 20 feet away, but the attacker is just barely off screen, and everyone is distracted or having their attention drawn away by some diversion. People murdered in windows of opportunity that lasted only seconds. People cunningly split off from the group to be tracked and slaughtered. The aggressors obviously toying with their targets without ever revealing a single glimpse of themselves. We'd have every character developing their own belief as to what they were fighting, but not based on the usual crazy leaps of logic and paranoia you see in horror, but because each one has seen very slightly different evidence, and due to the sheer lack of information they're all clutching to the minor scraps that they think they know. I'll admit, this idea came after a long night of watching Aliens and playing Splinter Cell. But the idea of an ambush killer that was just so perfect it was invisible due to pure skill was interesting. Plus, it would be a slasher/monster film with basically no screeching-violin-jump-scares. The entire film would involve creating an oppressive paranoid atmosphere and then never relieving it by never letting the audience or characters get even the tiny reassurance of what in the gently caress they are up against. Minimal special effects, and really restrained sound production, trying to make you as paranoid as possible so you never look away. We thought it could be a really great independent film, but it would take crazy amounts of skill to create and maintain the necessary mood. Skill which we quickly acknowledged we didn't have even in the slightest, so we got drunk and watched Spy Groove. So my question is: could a film like this be successful, or would the lack of any concrete and iconic foe rob it of any real staying power? I'm totally serious, I'm just curious if this is something that could work, in the right hands.
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Oct 20, 2011 00:05
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How would anybody know? Write it, film it as a short, and find out. Any other advice is meaningless.
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Oct 20, 2011 00:08
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You just described the original planned cut of Curse of the Demon, give or take a few details. There's also Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is barely a horror movie at all seeing as rather than gory but offscreen deaths people just disappear but that's getting a little further afield.
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Oct 20, 2011 00:09
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I'd watch it. That's really all I can say about it, a horror movie concept is kind of hard to critique. It does seem like an interesting idea though, if nothing else. It actually reminds me of how a friend described Cloverfield to me way back when it was first announced. He said there'd be a giant monster, but all the smoke and destruction would constantly block out any view of the monster in question, so there'd be a few different theories between characters as to what was actually going on (monster attack, full-scale invasion, terrorists, somebody chain smoking in a non-smoking area, etc). It got me excited for the movie, up until saw the previews for it.
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Oct 20, 2011 00:31
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:I'd like a horror-concept critique please. As a vague idea, it definitely can work, but you still need to flesh out a lot of the background stuff they won't see before we can give any real critique. Why won't the killer(s) be seen? You mentioned that they are "that good," but that only really applies to the characters in the movie. It's a deliberate choice to have them not seen by the camera at all (and if it's supposed to be that they are "that good" that the camera won't even see them, that's taking things in a really different--but interesting--direction). I'd be interested to see if you wrote up more about it.
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Oct 20, 2011 01:19
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:I'd like a horror-concept critique please. Do you know how it would end?
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Oct 20, 2011 01:21
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Yeah right now you have an interesting concept but you need a story. A movie where the the killer's victory is completely inevitable is going to have no tension whatsoever. If it becomes clear that your characters have literally 0% of survival then the audience will simply deinvest in your them and tune out for the rest of the movie. You need to give them a reason to invest in them. For example, there could be a legend about these killers saying that they always leave one person alive to carry the story to the next town that will be hit. That way you can have drama between the characters (two people who don't want to be split up, someone who wants to gently caress everyone over. Also, the person who escapes, even though they will die in the next town, might have a chance to learn something about these monsters which she may be able to pass on to someone who may have a chance to prepare and fight them properly. The killer can't be the sole focus of a movie; you end up with Hatchet that way.
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Oct 20, 2011 02:03
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I find critiquing ideas and concepts in any medium (art/music/film) is really hard because so much of the quality of the end product is dependent on the execution. Even a lovely concept that is executed really loving well can make for a solid movie. Not that your concept was lovely, just pointing something out. The Strangers is, in my opinion, a good example of a movie with an extremely bare-bones and generic concept that was executed really well, and lifted it above other generic home-invasion films that didn't really nail the tone or atmosphere as much.
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Oct 20, 2011 02:45
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frozenpeas posted:Yeah right now you have an interesting concept but you need a story. lizardman posted:Do you know how it would end? Not sure. But there was an idea one of my friend had where the goal of the group was to make it to the city limits of some sprawling metropolitan area, which implied they were safe because of the sheer number of potential witnesses. In the minds of the characters there should be a critical mass of humans which would ward off the attackers. Like I said, this is a bit above our pay grade. lessthankyle posted:As a vague idea, it definitely can work, but you still need to flesh out a lot of the background stuff they won't see before we can give any real critique. Why won't the killer(s) be seen? You mentioned that they are "that good," but that only really applies to the characters in the movie. It's a deliberate choice to have them not seen by the camera at all (and if it's supposed to be that they are "that good" that the camera won't even see them, that's taking things in a really different--but interesting--direction). I'd be interested to see if you wrote up more about it. I'll try to explain this: in many non-supernatural horror movies both killers and monsters tend to be wrecking balls. They fling themselves all over the place wrecking the poo poo out of everyone, with little to no restraint or self preservation. This gets you T-rex's walking through stone walls and warehouses like they're paper (JP2), sharks that smash through solid objects, serial killers that kill flamboyantly and indiscriminately, so on and so on. Real top predators are paranoid as gently caress. If you catch a top predator off-guard in a place where it's not cornered, it'll loving run for its life. They don't want stand up fights, because stand up fights carry a chance of getting injured. If you're injured, you don't eat, and you die. Top predators want short, one sided, brutal take-downs. Soldiers don't want drawn out fire fights, they want sudden and overwhelming assaults that crush their opponents immediately without attracting attention and reinforcements. Serial killers, when it comes to the actual act of killing, want complete control of the situation; they're not in it for a fair fight. So, in this film, we're pitting a group of people who have one advantage: they know something is going to try to kill them. Maybe they interrupt an attack early on and get a half-warning from someone bleeding out. And whatever it is that's trying to kill them is skilled enough and risk-adverse enough that they never see it. It could be a squad of highly trained soldiers on some insane urban stalk-kill hunt. It could be insane murderers that are really really good at hide and seek. It could be mutated panthers. It could be goddamn ninjas, because it doesn't matter what it is. It'll matter to the characters because they'll be scrabbling to create a narrative, so they can predict how to survive, so they can apply some goal. The audience doesn't get to see them, because we want the audience to be dragged along on that uncertainty. Because if I show it's killer marionettes, the audience goes "oh, ok, they're being killed by killer marrionettes" and that's it, the audience has their cookie and gets to eat it. Knowing the danger removes the fear of the unknown. The goal of the film would be to unsettle the audience as much as possible by never giving the audience an advantage over the characters. This is the same mentality as handi-cam "found footage" films, in which you're seeing through the character's mechanical eyes. In this, we blind the characters and the audience. It's Coverfield reversed: we're limited to what the characters see and experience, even though we still have our magical 3rd person perspective. Whatever the killer is, it needs some kind of presence, of course, otherwise it's characters running from the wind like in that Killer-Tree movie. We were thinking sound. But we weren't sure if we want it to get quiet when they're around, or if we wanted them to only come around when there's noise, so that they have audio-cover. Really, it's whatever one would cause the most paranoia in the audience, so I'm thinking we make it one for a while, then flip flop them. Let the audience build up rules and then yank those rules out from under them. Things like build up the "you're vulnerable when alone" angle, then have someone who gets separated survive untouched while alone while two people are killed in a room with 5 people in it, all because the 5 felt safe and let their guard down. penismightier posted:How would anybody know? Write it, film it as a short, and find out. Any other advice is meaningless. I honestly wish, but I think I'd gently caress it up. Maybe I'll talk to some of my film friends, see if I can pitch a short. The lack of creature effects and heavy reliance on cinematography does really help the budget aspect. This got really long really loving fast. Thanks guys. edit: clarified the whole "why doesn't the audience get to see them angle. Ps, the other reason is "90% of alien/monster/killer visual designs end up sucking, so why not avoid that?" Cinnamon Bastard fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Oct 20, 2011 |
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Oct 20, 2011 03:57
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:I honestly wish, but I think I'd gently caress it up. Plan it all out carefully in advance, and you can probably film it in a weekend.
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Oct 20, 2011 04:04
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:Not sure. And then everyone there is dead too. Fade to black. Writing credit please.
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Oct 20, 2011 06:12
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So are you talking something like: two characters are talking, one looks away briefly while speaking, then turns back to find his friend eviscerated? That kind of thing? Exactly how much information would the viewer be given about the killer? Like, is it necessarily visible? Any hints to the motivation? Do the victims make any noise while getting taken down? This is a real interesting concept, I would watch it no doubt.
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Oct 20, 2011 06:23
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:This got really long really loving fast. I wouldn't worry too much about filming anything. Just write it out, as a story or even a script. If it's film-able after that, you can try it, but you don't need to. I like that you were able to expound on it that much, you seem to have the interest in it so I would definitely encourage you to at least put some down on paper. But there are a few things I think you might want to work out: (and this is my own bullshit opinion, so feel free to disagree) Who/What is the killer/monster? Even though you don't want it to matter to the characters, or even the audience, you still need to know this yourself. The difference between a serial killer and a ravenous mutant panther killing people is going to be huge, and will really affect how things play out. Having an idea of what the opposing force is will help keep the story constant. A regular soldier isn't going to snipe someone from two blocks away and then rip a man's guts out and eat them. There's also a distinction between "not knowing" and "it could be anything." If it doesn't matter to you who/what the antagonist is, it'll show, and the audience won't care either. If they don't care to learn what it is (even though you may not ever show them), there won't be any interesting stakes. However, making the killer "shapeless" or purposely ambiguous take it into a whole other realm. Maybe the killer does shoot on person then rip the other to shreds, but it still needs to "exist" as a concrete entity. I guess I kind of think of it along the lines of "The Great Old Ones" et al. from Lovecraft. Many of them are purposely indescribable, but he still paints of vivid picture of them without necessarily saying what they are. I agree that there is a ton of terror in this idea, but it's tricky to convey. Do we see the bodies? Along the same lines, do they just disappear, or do we see the aftermath? This will be important to keep in check with what the killer is. Having people just disappear can be powerful, but there's less visceral reaction to it. Is it unstoppable? This is, I think, the biggest issue to figure out. If it's unstoppable, you aren't going to want to write a story about them fighting it and then losing and then nothing. Like someone said above, that's what happened in Hatchet (and others), and it sucks. Having the whole build up be rendered unimportant or unnecessary is going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths. If it's an unstoppable, indescribable killer, you've ended up with a story about the interactions between the people we do see and the paranoia/fighting/love/etc between them. That's great, and have been used to fantastic ends, but I would think that this path detracts from the idea you had in the first place. But don't let me put words in your mouth, I honestly think you could go either way with your description. I personally think it's actually a better story to focus on the characters dealing with something they have no control over and can't stop, but based on your description above, you have a lot in mind about the nature of the force itself, in which case the characters and their relationships become appendages of that. If it's stoppable, you're dealing with a man vs. other relationship (I assume you are going with people as the main characters put into this bind). Unlike an unstoppable force, there is interaction between the two. A man's interaction against something unstoppable is irrelevant. It's the end-all, be-all. Giving them the ability to overcome their enemy gives you a chance to explore the relationship between man and 'x,' whatever you want the enemy to represent. I think a series that deals with a similar idea is Scream (and from what I've read of some people's posts, Halloween, though I've never seen them). This deals with an on-screen threat instead of something never seen. However, "who" the killer is is meaningless. It's about the effects of that killing force on the characters. With Scream, the force is stoppable, but also unstoppable. Whenever they kill the person in the end and save the day, Ghost Face comes back in the next film. There's a ton more to be said about it, but I think that Scream is an alright example. And you're right, this is a lot of words to keep on with this, but at least it's a new thing to discuss in this thread.
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Oct 20, 2011 06:45
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:...or would the lack of any concrete and iconic foe rob it of any real staying power? I believe it would be a challenging. Consider Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which had a great cast, action, interesting story, but no clear antagonist and it bombed. There was nothing there for Jude Law to oppose except a vague concept of evil. Primer was a really intelligent sci-fi flick with no clear antagonist and it barely made a blip on the radar. Not that you couldn't make the film work, but the story and characters would have to be exceptional.
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Oct 20, 2011 06:48
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Slasherfan posted:A short (But awesome) teaser trailer has shown up for Piranha 3DD Oh my god was that David Hasselhoff??
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Oct 20, 2011 12:21
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wormil posted:I believe it would be a challenging. Consider Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which had a great cast, action, interesting story, but no clear antagonist and it bombed.
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Oct 20, 2011 19:59
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Xenomrph posted:I don't think it bombed because of that, especially since the movie was loving great. People just, for whatever reason, couldn't get into the 1930s black-and-white serial format that really heavily influenced it. Eh, the movie was okay. But I really believe it would have won a bigger audience if there a charismatic antagonist opposite Jude Law. With only a vaguely definable conflict, a movie can feel unbalanced and Law is a great actor but not a big enough personality for so many grand visuals. Plus the decision to use a dead actor to play a dead villain came off as gimmicky. The movie was set up as Sky Captain vs Totenkopf but there was no Totenkopf (as a personality). Anyway, I think in a horror film with a people vs man conflict Cinnamon Bastard will have issues if there is no man. He'll have to flesh out the film with something other than people waiting to get their throat cut.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:30
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:Do you have any contact info I could reach you at?
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Oct 20, 2011 22:23
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Xenomrph posted:I don't think it bombed because of that, especially since the movie was loving great. People just, for whatever reason, couldn't get into the 1930s black-and-white serial format that really heavily influenced it. I was totally down for the whole aesthetic and it still felt inert and lacking to me - there's something about all-greenscreen movies that I think makes it hard to get really authentic, living performances (e.g., all of the Star Wars prequels).
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Oct 20, 2011 22:48
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WickedIcon posted:Do you have any contact info I could reach you at? yup, you can reach me at thisthrowawayemailaddress at gmail dott com
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Oct 21, 2011 03:46
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Just saw Paranormal Activity 3. Not as good as the second one (the best in my opinion), and the ending was rather blah.. The grandmother is a witch, and is marrying her grand-daughter to an invisible demon? WHAT? However, it was refreshingly funny at parts, just not very creepy/scary, let's just hope they never ever make a part four.
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Oct 21, 2011 06:03
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