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Wraith of J.O.I.
Jan 25, 2012


I just saw this yesterday and thought it was really good. However, I thought it was more of an allegory about dealing with sexual trauma/rape/assault/etc than about STIs, though passing it along like an STI is a good way to describe it. Or "The Ring" but with sex instead of a video. Do others get the sense that maybe her dad did something to her sexually? And then the movie is about dealing with that and like I said before sexual trauma—it follows you and you never know when it'll come back but with luck you learn to "kill it"/move past it, and live with it, and have healthy relationships. I guess that's my "theory" behind the "meaning" of it.

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Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
Well I just saw it again, this time alone, and I had a MUCH better experience. I think knowing when the scares were coming and knowing how it ended actually allowed me to enjoy the film more. I suppose since I wasn't constantly wondering what was going to happen next I was able to stay in the moment. Or something. Anyway I thought the movie was great. I'm still not entirely sure whether she got gangbanged on the boat or not because the dialogue in the scene afterwards in the bedroom is really unclear. I wonder if the boat scene was written and filmed after the scene that followed and that's why they don't quite flow together.

Also I was on the lookout for foot scenes and frankly I just didn't see much emphasis at all. There were way more closeups on hands.

Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Mar 29, 2015

Grem
Mar 29, 2004

It's how her species communicates

I don't know, the way she was crying after the boat scene is what makes me thing nothing happened. She knew that shoving It off on three strangers would only buy her minimal time, and get three people killed for no reason. Then her crew comes up with a plan the next day and she never acts like she has a little extra time.

Anyways, I want to see a prequel where It just goes around and fucks people up in public. Like if Hugh never played Jay's game and just got beaten to a pulp in a crowded movie theater.

j. alfred moonrock
Nov 15, 2014
I think she did have sex with the boat guys. It's already been said, but what's the point of those scenes without that implication? Her crying in the car immediately afterward felt like an expression of shame for the act itself but also guilt for choosing those guys' fate for them. I also got the vibe that a decent chunk of time had passed between the boat and Paul's visit, since none of the girls (Jay or her sleeping friends) were manically "keeping watch"- as in, they knew it could show up eventually, just not necessarily in the immediate future.

I really loved the use of the beach / shore. It's a beautiful way to represent the edge of the world and heads off the viewer's armchair strategizing ("could they beat it by running further?").

Wasn't a huge fan of the pool scene as I was walking out of the theater, but I can appreciate it more after thinking on it. Specifically, if we are running with the idea that to be followed is to be awakened to sexuality and all of its associated fears, then Jay and Paul returning to the place of their first kiss for one last showdown with the monster could be seen as trying to fight the worldly horror of adult sexuality with the innocent earnestness of childhood 'romance.'


Really glad it made its way into theaters. I was surprised to see the post about it not doing so well, because my small market theater was packed for a 2:30 matinee.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
To be fair it would make perfect sense for her to be crying in the car in that scene. She is both mentally and physically scarred and after whoring herself out to 3 strangers out of sheer desperation to ward off the specter of death her life is completely broken by fear and shame. There isn't any subtext here, her innocence and young adulthood is shattered.

That being said I still don't think she did it because of the dialogue in the bedroom. It heavily implies that Greg was the only person she slept with since she literally says "I did that once and it didn't work out" after Paul asks her if she wants to spread it.

Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Mar 29, 2015

axelblaze
Oct 18, 2006

Congratulations The One Concern!!!

You're addicted to Ivory!!

and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...

Grimey Drawer
I took the "I did that and it didn't work out" to more be referring to her sleeping with a friend to spread it and thinking they would be able to handle things better. Like I said before, I just don't see why the movie would be shy about telling us if she's didn't have sex with the boat dudes? Like what purpose would e movie being vague about it have? It doesn't even change all that much other than making the movie sort if lamer.

Sarchasm
Apr 14, 2002

So that explains why he did not answer. He had no mouth to answer with. There is nothing left of him but his ears.

j. alfred moonrock posted:

I think she did have sex with the boat guys. It's already been said, but what's the point of those scenes without that implication? Her crying in the car immediately afterward felt like an expression of shame for the act itself but also guilt for choosing those guys' fate for them. I also got the vibe that a decent chunk of time had passed between the boat and Paul's visit, since none of the girls (Jay or her sleeping friends) were manically "keeping watch"- as in, they knew it could show up eventually, just not necessarily in the immediate future.

I have to believe this is the correct read on this. As for why she wouldn't talk about it with Paul, why would you ever tell that story to anyone? "Yo by the way I got gangbanged on a boat and left those guys for dead. But I still have you as a backup lay, right?"

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.
Much like the possibility that Paul made it with a prostitute, whether or not Jay finally did have sex with the three men on the boat, this gives expression to the unique challenges the characters have in 'passing the curse.' Hugh is dead wrong when he says it's easier for girls because they get it easier. Jay can only use the curse of sex against other men in the sense that she is 'given up to them' [the mechanical, though eventually respectful and amorous, sex scene with Gregg]. The only counterpoint the film presents to this is through Paul, who takes a submissive role in receiving the curse, and even this act is underscored by their exchange right afterwards, where they admit nothing has changed - referring both to the feeling of the 'curse,' as well as their feelings towards one another. Again, this sex act, when it's not totally debased and overtly coerced, is still presented as perfunctory and mechanical. It's a way to attempt to assert power over this haunting specter of total sexual disempowerment (a phantom that can take any form, even your loved ones, family and friends) that literally rapes its victims to death.

edit: And Jay 'catches' this curse after a consensual date turns into her being taken advantage of.

K. Waste fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Mar 29, 2015

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


Just saw it and thought it was pretty decent. Just like the Babadook, I think the hype train hosed it for me a bit and was expecting too much.

Someone on the last page was saying that it lacked an ongoing sense of dread and I'd agree. I think that whole aspect could have been handled better. Also, I thought at times the soundtrack was really annoying and overbearing. The parts with nothing going on and wailing synths were just grating. I think I'm already getting tired of throwback synth soundtracks in horror movies. Other than that, the concept was pretty good and the characters weren't incredibly stupid with a few exceptions.

One thing I thought was really odd was the whole aesthetic. Not good or bad, just odd. It's like they wanted to set it in the 80's but didn't have the balls to pull the trigger on a full on period piece. So they just filled it with as much vintage stuff as possible and randomly threw in modern items and that weird clam tablet thing.

Edit: In regards to the boat guys, I seriously have no idea what happened personally If she did have sex with them I don't see why it wouldn't have passed the monster on to them. If she didn't I don't know what the point of that scene even was.

veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Mar 29, 2015

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
I think the synth score hurt my opinion of it more than it helped, as well. I'm tired of that shorthand, I think.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.
I don't really get that, because the film's score isn't even really typical, minimalist synth score. It's often so abrasive and cacophonous that it almost qualifies as musique concrète. 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.

edit: It's more comparable to the sound design of '70s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, anyway.

axelblaze
Oct 18, 2006

Congratulations The One Concern!!!

You're addicted to Ivory!!

and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...

Grimey Drawer
Yeah, the score wasn't really doing what synth scores typically do. It wasn't trying to invoke a retro feel or there to give it ironic an ironic edge. It was just sort of abrasive and otherworldly, constantly overhitting emotional cues. I thought it was kind of unique and sort of awesome.

The Chad Jihad
Feb 24, 2007


Regarding how the curse works, I don't think it would pass to all three on the boat, just one of them. I thought the monster started at the bottom and worked it's way back up the chain, so Hugh couldn't pass it on again until it was back up to him. I could have completely misinterpreted though

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
What happens on the boat stays on the boat.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.
Honestly, this film reminded me of a lot of the films (Blue Velvet, Donnie Darko, Shivers, The Tingler, The Thing, Halloween, The Beyond), but with its score, it reminds me most of A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness.

edit: A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness rules, so see it.

Coolie Ghost
Jan 16, 2013

sensible dissent dispenser
Did anyone else notice that despite being set in Detroit, there were pretty much no black people in the film? and that with the suburb/city dichotomy it opens up the possibility that the real curse is you, for thinking I was going to say black people you racist


But actually I would like to discuss the dichotomy, I don't think it was an unintentional choice, but I can't wrap my head around why. For example, the sleazy dude who gives her the curse lived in the city, and the climax of the film happens in the inner city pool, so, I don't know, what do you guys think?

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


axleblaze posted:

Yeah, the score wasn't really doing what synth scores typically do. It wasn't trying to invoke a retro feel or there to give it ironic an ironic edge. It was just sort of abrasive and otherworldly, constantly overhitting emotional cues. I thought it was kind of unique and sort of awesome.

I'd say it was a mix. The parts where not much was going on just sounded like cannibal holocaust or something to me. At least it changed up a bit but I still didn't like it most of the time and it definitely gave me an ironic vibe. Some of the more booming parts during pursuits and stuff were allright. To me in general the soundtrack made the movie feel more gimmicky than it needed to be.

Maarak
May 23, 2007

"Go for it!"

Coolie Ghost posted:

Did anyone else notice that despite being set in Detroit, there were pretty much no black people in the film? and that with the suburb/city dichotomy it opens up the possibility that the real curse is you, for thinking I was going to say black people you racist


But actually I would like to discuss the dichotomy, I don't think it was an unintentional choice, but I can't wrap my head around why. For example, the sleazy dude who gives her the curse lived in the city, and the climax of the film happens in the inner city pool, so, I don't know, what do you guys think?

It's very hard to avoid the de facto segregation of MI culture. Might be one of the reasons why the film resonated so hard with me, as it's got a very deep sense of place.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Coolie Ghost posted:

Did anyone else notice that despite being set in Detroit, there were pretty much no black people in the film? and that with the suburb/city dichotomy it opens up the possibility that the real curse is you, for thinking I was going to say black people you racist

But actually I would like to discuss the dichotomy, I don't think it was an unintentional choice, but I can't wrap my head around why. For example, the sleazy dude who gives her the curse lived in the city, and the climax of the film happens in the inner city pool, so, I don't know, what do you guys think?

There's definitely a pervading theme of social segregation and class privilege in the film. There is a point at which the characters explicitly discuss when they first realized just how thin a line there was between their secure, suburban realities and the growing decay of urban Detroit all around them. Remember, though, that Hugh doesn't turn out to actually live at the address the group first investigates - this turns out to be a phony address, an abandoned house where Paul of all people finds a mattress in the attic and stacks of pornography, with a photo of Hugh and his high school cheerleader girlfriend inside; which is fitting metaphor, this quaint, naive nuclear couple (the jock and the cheerleader) squished between pages of pornography. Another geographical and class motif is the characters constantly going 'to the beach,' whether it's to wait for death, try to run away from it, try to overcome it... These are things that the majority urban poor and people of color of Detroit don't have the privilege of. Again, the 'rape virus' of the movie is very self-contained, and as such is more lethal (but also less persistent and, thus, receives less attention) within a geography of a greater concentration of people with less mobility. So it's not a coincidence that a foreclosed house is Hugh's 'base of operations,' or that after fleeing the kitsch old fashioned theater he takes her to the back of a blown out factory building and metaphorically rapes her.

These kids associate death and disease and rape with the poverty and ethnic heterodox that their suburban lifestyles have kept at bay. But this is a facade. These threats proliferate within the suburban community, but are sublimated within a social discourse that justifies it, and is more concerned about social perceptions of the victim, rather than the punishment of the attacker (the former high school sports star, no less).

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
So in that attic was 'Hugh' jacking off like a dynamo in an effort to rid himself of the curse?

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

So in that attic was 'Hugh' jacking off like a dynamo in an effort to rid himself of the curse?

Yep.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

Figured. So has anyone made a list of the familiar forms that It takes?

You got Kelly in the kitchen, Yara at the beach, Greg's mom, Jay's Dad, and possibly 'heels' from the intro? And was that Greg in the white Long Johns breaking into his house?

Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Mar 29, 2015

resurgam40
Jul 22, 2007

Battler, the literal stupidest man on earth. Why are you even here, Battler, why did you come back to this place so you could fuck literally everything up?
Don't forget the kid next door that spies on Jay in the pool. I think all the others are strangers, such as the Old Woman and the Tall Man.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.
We don't actually know how many of the 'strange faces' are strangers. They're strange to us. But Hugh does say that It will gently caress with you if it wants.

Hibernator
Aug 14, 2011

I think the flick is very much about the fear of growing older/mortality.

It is death, which is inevitable and unavoidable, and the movie explores how young people, afraid and unwilling to accept that, try and stave off that feeling of mortality through action. Through sex, through travel, etc. It's not only sex that buys you a reprieve, it's movement. Standing still is certain death. Must. Keep. Moving. I think the only way to really "defeat" it is to accept it and stop worrying about it - which most of the characters never do.

When Paul asks Jay why she passed it to Greg, she says she thought he'd be ok because "he didn't seem afraid." But it's not that Greg wasn't afraid of death, it's that he didn't actually believe in it. He thought he was invincible. Of course in the end he wasn't; no one is. Similarly, the act doesn't provide her any peace because all she's really thinking about is it.

I do think Jay has sex with the guys on the boat. I think that's why we see her pool smashed when Paul arrives. Swimming was something she had always enjoyed, but now she associates it with a terrible sexual experience she engaged in just to stave off her fears. When they go to the pool at the end they are trying to reclaim their childhood innocence, to return to a time before they understood the unfairness and cruelties of the world like socio-economic division and crime and death.

This, again, doesn't work because they are still trying to move backwards. They're trying to defeat death instead of accepting it and moving forward with their lives. They're still letting their fear of it consume their actions.

At the end when she has sex with Paul, it's not an act purely for the sake of survival. This is after the pool sequence when it is unclear if it still lives (though I believe it does). They have a history of attraction to each other that they have denied the entire movie, until this scene where they accept it and move on. In the following scene where they both admit that they don't feel any different, it's the realization that this thing they thought was so enormous was ultimately just another experience. That they'd built it up to be much larger than it actually was.

So at the end of the film I think it's significant that they don't look back at the figure behind them. The ambiguity of whether or not Paul slept with a hooker is meant to make us wonder in that final moment: have they come to terms with their own mortality or are they still living in fear? Is this them moving on with their lives or is this a facade not unlike Greg's veneer of invulnerability?

If Paul slept with a prostitute then it's a facade, if he did not then they have accepted their fate, and I think the unspoken rule of this movie is that if they stop looking for it, it will follow much more slowly.


Far from a bullet-proof reading. I'm still not sure what to make of the way It uses sex with a parent to kill but I feel like there's a lot to back this up. Also the director seems very much in love with the dream-logic, abstract quality of the film, so I kind of think it's deliberately contradictory with itself so you can never feel like you have the answer.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
Anyone else have to stifle a laugh when It gracefully tumbles through the broken window into Greg's house like an Olympic gymnast?

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
edit: wrong thread

Wraith of J.O.I.
Jan 25, 2012


Hibernator posted:

I think the flick is very much about the fear of growing older/mortality.

....

At the end when she has sex with Paul, it's not an act purely for the sake of survival. This is after the pool sequence when it is unclear if it still lives (though I believe it does). They have a history of attraction to each other that they have denied the entire movie, until this scene where they accept it and move on. In the following scene where they both admit that they don't feel any different, it's the realization that this thing they thought was so enormous was ultimately just another experience. That they'd built it up to be much larger than it actually was.

Far from a bullet-proof reading. I'm still not sure what to make of the way It uses sex with a parent to kill but I feel like there's a lot to back this up. Also the director seems very much in love with the dream-logic, abstract quality of the film, so I kind of think it's deliberately contradictory with itself so you can never feel like you have the answer.
Wouldn't you say the girl who gets killed in the beginning has accepted her death too though? How would that factor into this reading?

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.
Jay ending up with Paul is not nearly the acceptable reconciliation with fate and fulfillment of love that a lot of folks are reading into it, I don't think. While it's not a particularly good movie - I'm sore to re-discover - the relationship between Dawn and Tobey in Teeth is basically the equivalent of what Jay and Paul have at the end of It Follows. Basically, one can think of It Follows as a prequel to Teeth... though it works much better, though less explicitly, as a prequel to Antichrist.

Antichrist shows what happens when Jay is no longer encumbered by this regressive Judeo-Christian paradigm of merely 'accepting fate and death,' and the coercive and repressive relationships this implies. What happens to Her in Lars Von Trier's film is what happens when a woman realizes that death is not merely an arbitrary, guileful demon, but a means of exerting power, control, and privilege. The reason the ending of It Follows is bad as opposed to merely 'ambiguous' is because Jay has yet to discover that she can break the power of the nightmare by becoming death, something that is featured in William Castle's quite influential The Tingler ("Can you see it! Point at it! It's in the theater! It's right over there!") with the theater-owner's wife coming back from the dead to kill him.

edit: http://music.disasterpeace.com/album/it-follows

K. Waste fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Mar 29, 2015

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
I can't help but feel disappointed that this wide release wasn't the success it deserves to be. I was hoping/expecting this to break and take in something north of $50 million overall. So what happened? And how much do you think it cost for the movie to expand to 1200 theaters? Any chance they lost money because of that? Maybe should have just done VOD so there was no overhead.

Anyhow think this gets a Criterion release?

Hibernator
Aug 14, 2011

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

Wouldn't you say the girl who gets killed in the beginning has accepted her death too though? How would that factor into this reading?

Possibly. But I would argue that her actions are built more out of fear/resignation than acceptance. There is plenty enough gray area there for my take not to be rock solid, though.

@K. Waste:
Yeah I'm not 100% that they're a couple at the end of the film so much as they are a team. It's not the relationship itself that I think wards off It, but the recognition that the sex they had, something neither of them had been brave enough to attempt out of fear, was ultimately not a game-changer in their lives. It's something they essentially "get over" immediately after it happens. If they can do the same with the concept of death, they can finally go about their lives without fearing that it's constantly around every corner.

CRINDY
Sep 23, 2010

forget about ur worries and ur strife

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I can't help but feel disappointed that this wide release wasn't the success it deserves to be. I was hoping/expecting this to break and take in something north of $50 million overall. So what happened? And how much do you think it cost for the movie to expand to 1200 theaters? Any chance they lost money because of that? Maybe should have just done VOD so there was no overhead.

Anyhow think this gets a Criterion release?

With digital files being used instead of physical reels these days in theaters, the cost of expanding out to those screens is much less than it used to be. 1200 theaters is a tiny wide release in context, most mainstream horror movies are on between 2,000 and 3,000 screens. A big part of keeping costs down is that the marketing was tiny - the launch was 80 percent word of mouth (I personally watch a lot of TV that would fit in this movie's target audience and only saw one commercial for it).

I said earlier in the thread that the release is underwhelming only because big buzz is always assumed to lead to big grosses, but it was a last-minute expansion of a small-budget film. Of the $4 million they take in this weekend, that likely already pushes the film to profitability, and it can now take advantage of a few more weeks in theaters, a wider word of mouth spread and a bigger video release.

It was never going to do gangbusters, and the fact that people wanted/expected it to do so doesn't make this performance a failure. A top-5 box office weekend is an outright success here.

Edit: just saw that the film as a whole cost less than $1 million, and Weinstein likely picked it up for about that, so everything past this point is pure gravy

CRINDY fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Mar 29, 2015

weekly font
Dec 1, 2004


Everytime I try to fly I fall
Without my wings
I feel so small
Guess I need you baby...



Coolie Ghost posted:

Did anyone else notice that despite being set in Detroit, there were pretty much no black people in the film? and that with the suburb/city dichotomy it opens up the possibility that the real curse is you, for thinking I was going to say black people you racist


But actually I would like to discuss the dichotomy, I don't think it was an unintentional choice, but I can't wrap my head around why. For example, the sleazy dude who gives her the curse lived in the city, and the climax of the film happens in the inner city pool, so, I don't know, what do you guys think?

This works with the idea that the monster is a part of "the real world," with the dialogue about their parents not letting them go too far from the suburbs.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Hibernator posted:

@K. Waste:
Yeah I'm not 100% that they're a couple at the end of the film so much as they are a team. It's not the relationship itself that I think wards off It, but the recognition that the sex they had, something neither of them had been brave enough to attempt out of fear, was ultimately not a game-changer in their lives. It's something they essentially "get over" immediately after it happens. If they can do the same with the concept of death, they can finally go about their lives without fearing that it's constantly around every corner.

But living without fear is not the same as living with purpose or meaning or dignity. We can call Jay and Paul a couple, we can call them a 'team,' but ultimately what they are, since the film is totally non-explicit as to whether they really have overcome It, is just a new articulation of the overarching, nightmare-order. There's no ecstatic, liberating, 'waking up' in It Follows. Everyone is still 'asleep' to the creeping terror and decay that is not just represented by It itself, but the entire crumbling infrastructure of dreamland Detroit.

People keep alluding to Paul and Jay's intimacy with each other, but the problem is that this intimacy is never substantiated sexually until after the climactic moment of Its tentative destruction. Yes, they are physically intimate, but I feel like folks are jumping the gun and equating amorous feelings and physical intimacy with expressions of repressed erotic desire. In the conversation during the sleepover*--you know, the night after Jay was potentially raped--it conspicuously ends with Jay reminding Paul that he didn't just kiss her, but her sister. Paul isn't that different from the peeping toms boys or the more socially extroverted Greg, it's just that Jay and their mutual friends recognize that his obvious physical attraction and insecurities don't make him a bad, or predatory, person. But him being in 'the right place at the right time' to temporarily make Jay feel better about her traumatic experiences doesn't make him the ideal teammate, second-in-command, or romantic partner. It's like when people complain that The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink don't end with the nerd getting the girl, even though the only difference this really makes is that the women as objects are now possessed unrealistically by the meekest character. But just because Paul is weaker doesn't mean he doesn't have power or privilege within the coercive scenario that It Follows presents: Have sex, or you'll die. This 'marriage contract' between Jay and Paul hasn't fixed the problem. Them 'feeling nothing' after having sex is also a statement of the act's being entirely unrelated as to whether It is still following Jay. The myth persists.

Compare and contrast this with, say, David Cronenberg's Shivers, where the conclusion is that the would-be heroes lose and everybody is consumed in a sexual frenzy that will now sweep the globe. This is also the 'becoming of death,' an accelerationist conclusion where the characters make the decision, "I rape you, you rape me, we rape each other, and we do this until there's no more rape and we live in endless ecstasy; without power, without dominance or submission, just a self-consuming cycle of sublime chaos." This is also the dark irony of Night of the Living Dead/Dawn of the Dead - the Living Dead are ironically more united in death than the living are in their struggle for survival. Everyone is so keen on making contracts and binding ties and enforcing chains of command, but nobody listens when the priest says, 'The killing will stop when we stop killing'

This accelerationism isn't in any sense idealist, but in its ceaseless thrust, it inevitably points up the hypocrisy of survivalism and reactionary conservatism. "It" is repetitively used to justify the casual exploitation of women, implicitly coercive sexual relationships and encounters, as well as the quasi-paternalistic submission of (St.) Paul. These survivalist motives all implicitly stem from the idea that It can be overcome when Jay once again takes command of her life (as opposed to a child whose father helps it to drink), symbolized through varying degrees of dehumanizing and emotionally alienating sexual intercourse. This concedes to It the ultimate victory... That sex isn't about living or mutual compassion or love... it's about power. This is what rape culture is, if nothing else, a culture in which sexual validity is attained through the strategic (even if coerced or compliant) implementation of sexual power over another person. The truth is that It - this all-consuming specter that will gently caress you to death - sees all people, the entire chain of sexual victims, as equally debased. There is no power or dignity, but a chain of conscious and rationalized exploitation.

edit: This chain can only end when 'the killers decide to stop killing,' when the characters make a tacit decision to not have sex because the social system is FUBAR... and they don't do this.

*I can't wait to watch Mitchell's first feature, the veritably Larry Clark-meets-Richard Linklater-looking The Myth of the American Sleepover

K. Waste fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Mar 29, 2015

Raskolnikov2089
Nov 3, 2006

Schizzy to the matic
I really want to see a horror movie where they make a serious effort to kill the monster. Shoot the monster in the pool? Great. Now start throwing appliances in until the power goes out.

I liked it. Good atmosphere. They didn't go for cheap scares.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.
Being able to kill the monster is nearly always an awful idea in a horror movie.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Being able to kill the monster is nearly always an awful idea in a horror movie.

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.

Grem
Mar 29, 2004

It's how her species communicates

Saw it for the second time tonight. Each time I noticed all the younger kids saying it was horrible, and people 30 over just kind of quietly get out of their seats and walk away, discussing it on their way out. I don't go to a lot of movies, but does that happen in every movie, or just this one because, sure it may not be the biggest high budget OMG WHAT'S BLOWING UP NOW blockbuster, but if you take the time to ponder it, there's a lot to think about in this film.

Fhate
Feb 15, 2007

"Appended to its own quotation is false" appended to its own quotation is false.
If she did sleep with the guys on the boat, it wouldn't kill them all, but only the first one she hosed, because once she hosed him, she'd be off the hook and It'd be after him. So, unless she hosed the first guy, who then hosed the second guy, who then hosed the third guy, and exactly in that order, It would only kill the first guy she hosed.

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ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

Maybe she made sure those dudes touched tips during the gangbang.

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