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Maxwell Lord posted:I disagree- it can be really satisfying to have that cathartic release. Alien's a good example, as is Jaws. This film's ending works for it, though. The Thing is the best example of where the monster thoroughly dies (?), but this solves nothing. But that's already the ending of It Follows. Killing the monster has not solved the underlying problem. You still haven't 'woken up' from your nightmare. edit: Also, Gojira - "Sure, it's dead, but, who knows, if man doesn't stop testing atomic weapons there'll probably just be another one. THE END."
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Mar 29, 2015 14:17
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 11:21 |
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 FFFFFFUND IT!
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Mar 29, 2015 16:22
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Haha someone submitted that post about jackin' it to feet to Goons_TXT and they just tweeted it. https://twitter.com/Goons_TXT/status/582240883006918657
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Mar 29, 2015 19:47
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I suddenly realized that the way It Follows treats the influence of parents in the story is overtly similar to Brick. I should re-watch Brick.
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Mar 29, 2015 19:50
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Haha someone submitted that post about jackin' it to feet to Goons_TXT and they just tweeted it. Hell yeah.
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Mar 29, 2015 20:17
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So um, where the gently caress can I actually see this movie? It's supposed to be released today in a limited capacity but I didn't know "limited" meant exclusively in New York City. I figured there'd be at least some small theater in Boston that would have it. Just saw it at the Coolidge Corner Theater if you're still looking for a Boston (well, Brookline, but whatever) theater
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Mar 29, 2015 20:22
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If you're in the Washington DC Area, it's playing at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Regal in Hyattsville, the Arclight Bethesda, Angelica Pop-up, West End, AMC Lowes Georgetown... Not the E-Street, which surprises me.
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Mar 29, 2015 20:50
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I'm surprised nobody mentioned the shot where Jay dips her arm into the pool to shake off the ant. I think that was an important clue to understanding how the monster functions.
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Mar 29, 2015 21:15
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Hmm I guess I was wrong about It taking the shape of Kelly in the kitchen since the actress was under 18 when it was filmed so that wouldn't have worked. I guess that was just some random girl.
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Mar 30, 2015 02:38
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Just got out of it, enjoyed it quite a bit. It's so synced with my own personal blend of nightmare logic that it felt more like a try at capturing that puddle of id and not a more explicit metaphor.K. Waste posted:There are moments like the 360 pan in the high school hallway where the visual content is such a blur that the horrific sound becomes the subject. I was hoping this was just my theater. I can't believe they meant to have that much blur on the shot.
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Mar 30, 2015 02:59
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morestuff posted:I was hoping this was just my theater. I can't believe they meant to have that much blur on the shot. Honestly, I think it's also a consequence of the quality of the digital projection - if you watch the trailers for the movie on YouTube, that shot actually has, like, perfect sharpness and clarity. That being said, even were the shot clear, the important thing is that it's a plodding 360-degree to a window where there are tons of people outside, all of whom could be the potential It, and, consequently, nothing is the subject. It's like the cruel God's eye of the film gets bored with what's going on and realizes, "Oh, hey, I can do this!" It's clearly alienating in one sense, but it works stupendously.
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Mar 30, 2015 03:23
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K. Waste posted:hat being said, even were the shot clear, the important thing is that it's a plodding 360-degree to a window where there are tons of people outside, all of whom could be the potential It, and, consequently, nothing is the subject. I feel like I'm  here, but I don't think there was a single shot in the film where I didn't pick out the Follower the first time it was on screen. I just looked at the entire screen and said "which person is facing the camera?"
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Mar 30, 2015 03:53
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MisterBibs posted:I feel like I'm So if someone is coming towards the camera, than it's It? What if it's not? I think you're kind of underselling the beauty of It as a creature. It's classic, B movie hokum, but it's filmed with such captivating formalism. But it's like elegantly filming the Invisible Man. How are you certain what you're looking at if one of the components is invisible? The camera is quite objective in It Follows (d.p. Mike Gioulakis), which is part of what gives the film its dream-like atmosphere. I don't know about anyone else, but I used to have really vivid nightmares as a kid about watching horror movies, where my consciousness would constantly change between myself watching the action, and identifying with the p.o.v. of characters in the 'film' (which was never so much a concrete story as a series of horrific images). When I watch It Follows, I see and feel a lot of this. That pan is just a really evocative example of that. It's like the movie is giving us just enough information in order to set the spectator on edge, but literally adheres to such a rigid structure in conveying this that the feeling of 'no escape' becomes more palpable.
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Mar 30, 2015 04:09
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What exactly are you doing to your tweed jackets to necessitate the leather patches on the elbows, Professor Waste?
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Mar 30, 2015 04:37
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The nightmare comparison is apt considering It is based directly on a reoccurring dream the director had as a kid.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:06
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MisterBibs posted:I feel like I'm Even in the scene where It wasn't It?
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Mar 30, 2015 05:35
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K. Waste posted:This movie was all right. While I get the reading by some that it's a straight shot metaphor for STD's and STI's, I think it's a little more explicitly about rape. I still need to incubate on it a little, but "It" isn't really characterized as a horror of the body as much as of the mind. There's this pervasive atmosphere of feeling deceived through and by the film, with characters constantly invoking trust and questioning each others motives. And the ending seems to be explicitly constructed to leave us without satisfaction, such that even to the extent that "It" (much like the Cenobites of The Evil Dead) represent a horrific conceptualization of sex, Its (if temporary) 'conquest' is presented in a very awkward, contrived, sex-negative way. This is pretty much my thoughts, I really didn't enjoy the film, it wasn't awful or anything, but I don't understand the hype and ended feeling skeeved and disappointed. It wasn't even scary. :/ My favourite scene was when a bunch of teenagers showed up at "Hugh's" door and his mom answered, and then they're all in his backyard, drinking pop and juice.  Also Paul was a creep, gently caress that dude. Him shooting the younger sister was pretty funny though HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I think the synth score hurt my opinion of it more than it helped, as well. I'm tired of that shorthand, I think. Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of Carpenter lately (and bands that wish they were him) and the score for this film was just loving lazy. Also re: the feet thing, this is the promotional picture my local theater has been using: 
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Mar 30, 2015 05:45
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The feet thing reminds me simultaneously of the opening credits of Lolita, the exaggeratedly sexy poses in Charlie White's OMG BFF LOL Bathroom, and all the foot-washing action in that bible story.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:53
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drat, this movie is good as hell. Too bad lots of reviewers keep thinking its about STDs when its so clearly about sexual assault and trauma in general. My friend pointed out that the address in the beginning is "1492" which is an additional subtle hint to underlying trauma and guilt. The ending also reminded me of the Babadook, though significantly more pessimistic. Paul may have, altruistically or selfishly who knows, shared the burden with Jay, but there's no escaping its reality. They can run, they can scheme, they can pass it on to as many other people as possible, but it's still coming for them at some point.
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Mar 30, 2015 06:26
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wyoming posted:
Um, Paul shot the main protagonist, Yara Also I think Paul never had It following him, not only because It probably died in the pool, but Jay and Paul genuinely liked each other, and their sex wasn't a forced "do this to you because someone did this to me", which is a legit reason a lot of sexual assaults occur.
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Mar 30, 2015 07:18
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Grem posted:Also I think Paul never had It following him, not only because It probably died in the pool, but Jay and Paul genuinely liked each other, and their sex wasn't a forced "do this to you because someone did this to me", which is a legit reason a lot of sexual assaults occur. Naaaaaah. It was made pretty clear that Jay doesn't share Paul's feelings, which is why they drifted apart. as they got older. Paul, selfservingly, put himself in a situation to "help" (i.e. coerce) Jay, while acting like a little bitch about anyone else she slept with. Throughout the movie, they connect through shared memories of when they were younger. She likely sleeps with him, because like Hugh, she is now longing for more innocent times. The whole "do you feel any different?" thing is like, well of course you don't idiots, it's just sex, it wasn't going to be magical because of some childhood crush. K. Waste is right on connecting Paul to the peeping toms, (we see Paul knocking on the front door of the house when the camera goes back to Jay getting in the pool) dude is a creep.
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Mar 30, 2015 10:38
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Grem posted:Also I think Paul never had It following him, not only because It probably died in the pool, but Jay and Paul genuinely liked each other, and their sex wasn't a forced "do this to you because someone did this to me", which is a legit reason a lot of sexual assaults occur. If this were the case the film would be even more problematic and paternalistically sex-negative than it is on a satiric level: Jay galavants recklessly with boys and gets 'raped,' and the only way she overcomes the trauma of rape is by consenting to a relationship with Paul who "really loves her," and who "was her destiny" all along. Far from overcoming the trauma of sexual assault, Jay has passively fulfilled the narrative of a 'broken blossom' who finds tenuous salvation in a conventional, monogamous relationship, repressing the reality of her exploitation. It re-frames the 'problem' from the rape itself and how it occurs and how it becomes socially permitted,* to the 'problem' of feminine social independence and sexual agency. I don't agree with any other of wyoming's feelings regarding, like, the score (it's amazing), or the skeeviness of it, but only because the fact that we both agree that the film's being viscerally and emotionally disturbing (to the extent that wyoming didn't even find it enjoyable) makes the point with out either of us having to agree on its qualitative merits. Personally, I like the film more and more as time goes on precisely because of just how thoroughly 'skeevy' it is. Mitchell does a very good job of using abstract horror to produce a plethora of meanings. In the case of the reading of It as a metaphor for rape and rape culture, in particular, the horror that the film evokes is particularly potent. If our concern is with Jay 'moving beyond' the trauma of the metaphor, with her 'living' (whatever this means), then we have fundamentally failed to engage the actual problem, which is the conspicuous culture of apathy and gendered sexual privilege that cultivates this trauma and presents only 'one way out.' This is very similar to what happens when people confuse the opposition of pornography with social justice, citing spurious blind surveys and studies that find a greater proportion of pornographic performers have experienced some form of sexual assault and rape, and then concluding that the rough sex in porn is the problem. The problem is not the arbitrary circumstances of consensual sexual acts - there is very little difference between what Greg and Paul do**--the problem is rape and effectiveness with which our society, rather than the individual person, deals with it. The solution is not to find the 'special way' (abstinence and marriage) that 'sex becomes good, again.' The solution is to end the chain of exploitation and coercion. This is precisely what we see at the beginning of the film. Yes, it's tragic and morbid that this woman is consumed by her trauma, but she has bravely confronted death and temporarily stopped the cycle of exploitation, which Hugh is left to begin again because he's a desperate, pathetic person. If all the characters had the bravery of the girl in the opening, the chain of death would eventually eat itself. Jay and Paul just choose to repress it. Essentially, they choose superficial security over freedom. This is appropriate, because the nightmarish qualities of freedom are also an overarching theme of the film. (I hope nobody minds if I quote myself): quote:The motif of childhood nostalgia is repeated [from The Myth of the American Sleepover]... in It Follows... Hugh points to a family of three by a water fountain and expresses his envy for the simplicity of childhood, with all security and desires satisfied (though, he should more accurately say determined and controlled) by tangible figures of authority. Of course, all the primary cast of It Follows still do live with their parents and abide by comfortable structures. The problem is, ironically, freedom. Superficial security and commitments, conventional social structures (the nuclear family), dominant ideological values, these all form the environment that cultivates nostalgia, and that makes the dreamy façade of ‘nowhere place’—not the abyss of the past or the future, but a stable present—psychologically manageable. It is freedom, on the other hand, that corrupts the stability of his ‘nowhere place,’ reminding one incessantly of impending change and inevitable doom. This is addressed by Jay herself as she lies in a pink bra and skirt across the back seat of Hugh’s car after having sex with him, parked outside the looming frame of a crumbling factory building... There was a time when Jay blissfully daydreamed about summertime affairs blossoming into true love, but these have been replaced by visceral, intimate encounters with no promise of sustained purpose, and nonetheless she has found herself content. It is here that Hugh, without warning, incapacitates Jay with a rag of chloroform, and the dream of security finally becomes the nightmare of freedom. This is why It Follows is such a tremendous horror movie. It makes that ultimate statement that a horror film can make, and it does it well: "Death is good." * Notice how even when the police determine that Hugh's address that he gave to Jay is a red herring, they don't bother to investigate the scene, which would have led them to crucial information as to the whereabouts of a battery offender. Obviously, this is deliberate on Mitchell's part, removing the adult influence from the narrative. But what this keeps coming back to is that the environment of the film conspicuously ignores and consents to Hugh's treatment of women as object vessels onto whom he can pass his trauma. ** Really, the only difference between what Greg and Paul do is that Greg is suggestively changed by his encounter with Jay. He is more intimate with her, visits her in the hospital, and when he tries to visit her again once she's been released, Jay's friends stop him, which he responds to without any trace of aggression or sense of entitlement.
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Mar 30, 2015 16:26
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wyoming posted:Naaaaaah. Yep. At one point, sometime after Greg died, I was really worried that the movie was going to go in a direction where since Jay clearly doesn't want to sleep with him Paul rapes Jay to 'help' her. That would have just been awful so I'm really glad the movie didn't go there.
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Mar 30, 2015 16:54
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:At one point, sometime after Greg died, I was really worried that the movie was going to go in a direction where since Jay clearly doesn't want to sleep with him Paul rapes Jay to 'help' her. That would have just been awful so I'm really glad the movie didn't go there. One of the many reasons why It Follows is so much loving better than Teeth.
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Mar 30, 2015 17:30
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K. Waste posted:I don't agree with any other of wyoming's feelings regarding, like, the score (it's amazing), or the skeeviness of it, but only because the fact that we both agree that the film's being viscerally and emotionally disturbing (to the extent that wyoming didn't even find it enjoyable) makes the point with out either of us having to agree on its qualitative merits. Personally, I like the film more and more as time goes on precisely because of just how thoroughly 'skeevy' it is. Eh, I've warmed up to it a bit as well, I don't feel as sour towards it today. It's not a bad movie, but I still feel it's ultimately disappointing. The one thing I do find interesting is how negatively it portrays all the male characters. Hugh and Paul are obvious, but then you have Greg checking out the nerd girl's rear end while they're searching Hugh's fake house, the idea that maybe IT took awhile to come after him because he slept with that girl we see him flirting with at lunch, before he goes to comfort Jay in the hospital. The implications of Jay not wanting to mention IT looked like her father at the end. And so on.
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Mar 30, 2015 17:42
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K. Waste posted:One of the many reasons why It Follows is so much loving better than Teeth. Well yeah, Teeth is garbage.
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Mar 30, 2015 17:43
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I am going to be the sole voice of dissent here and say that Teeth is an alright movie that people should watch.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:00
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wyoming posted:Eh, I've warmed up to it a bit as well, I don't feel as sour towards it today. It's not a bad movie, but I still feel it's ultimately disappointing. Is this really that negative? I think one of the movie's better qualities is showing how the characters are motivated by sex without necessarily condemning them.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:05
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morestuff posted:Is this really that negative? I think one of the movie's better qualities is showing how the characters are motivated by sex without necessarily condemning them. There's a difference between being critical of some aspect of a person or society and condemning them. That said, the criticism of the male characters in It Follows is pretty much ubiquitously negative. It stops just short of accusing them of literal rape, which is the point: It's such a low standard of affirmation that it's totally meaningless. K. Waste fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 18:13
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wyoming posted:Eh, I've warmed up to it a bit as well, I don't feel as sour towards it today. It's not a bad movie, but I still feel it's ultimately disappointing. I thought she didn't want to say IT looked like her father because her little sister was there, wasn't her sister the one who asked what IT looked like? Though I suppose both implications might be correct. Something I enjoyed about the movie was the turning the loss of innocence idea on its head, as Jay says later in the movie she had sex with Gregg in high school so she has not been a virgin for at least a few years, implying that while having sex started her predicament its not really sex itself that is the cause of it
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Mar 30, 2015 18:21
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Just to continue the discussion from the last page, It Follows took in about $4 million this weekend and placed number five at the box office overall. That's a long way from setting any records but is pretty goddamn amazing for an indie film with zero marketing. No idea how the $4 mill take compares to VOD over a similar period, but I'm guessing the numbers are favorable because the movie is expanding into more markets this week.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:33
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How exactly did they find Hugh's house?
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Mar 30, 2015 18:38
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xzoto1 posted:How exactly did they find Hugh's house? Jay had seen the fake house before just didnt go in. His real house was discovered by going to the high school of the girl in the picture and asking there.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:40
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SaltLick posted:Jay had seen the fake house before just didnt go in. His real house was discovered by going to the high school of the girl in the picture and asking there. I understand the school part, but can you elaborate on the fake house?
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Mar 30, 2015 18:48
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xzoto1 posted:I understand the school part, but can you elaborate on the fake house? The house that Hugh was using as part of his plan to ensnare Jay is just a place that was foreclosed on and that he was squatting in temporarily. It's his 'base of operations,' if you will. It's more hinting that he's done this repeatedly, that he has his paranoid evasion of It down to a ritual.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:54
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E: just listen to professor horror movie.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:55
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K. Waste posted:The house that Hugh was using as part of his plan to ensnare Jay is just a place that was foreclosed on and that he was squatting in temporarily. It's his 'base of operations,' if you will. It's more hinting that he's done this repeatedly, that he has his paranoid evasion of It down to a ritual. Oh, I know this part. I don't fully understand how Jay was even able to find it. Every other house looks likes it's abandoned. How did they single out this one?
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Mar 30, 2015 19:13
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xzoto1 posted:Oh, I know this part. I don't fully understand how Jay was even able to find it. Every other house looks likes it's abandoned. How did they single out this one? She had mentioned she had seen it but didn't go inside because he was supposedly embarrassed of where he came from. It was all part of his story.
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Mar 30, 2015 19:18
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K. Waste posted:** Really, the only difference between what Greg and Paul do is that Greg is suggestively I had the opposite impression. It seemed to me like Greg was avoiding Jay, and that he dies because he never actually believed her in the first place.
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Mar 30, 2015 19:36
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 11:21 |
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SaltLick posted:She had mentioned she had seen it but didn't go inside because he was supposedly embarrassed of where he came from. It was all part of his story. I somehow missed that part. Thanks.
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Mar 30, 2015 19:46
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