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I'm in for at least 31, probably closer to 50 but we'll see how the month goes. I don't have any real plan, which is why I will probably end up with a lot of roller coaster double features like this! 1. Mandy (2018)  A man seeks revenge on a cult after they abduct his wife. Nicolas Cage is incredible, and this is Cage at his finest crazy. I know that the Suspiria remake is coming later this year, but this is probably more like the original than that remake is. Lurid and overwhelming colors and music. It's great! I watched this on VOD and now I want to go and see it again in the theater.  /52. The Row (2018)  Riley is attending college and pledging to a sorority on the row, as you do when you're a hot girl in college. Meanwhile her cop dad is inadvertently shooting another cop and facing an internal investigation. Why? I guess so he's only slightly involved in the investigation of girls getting killed and having body parts removed. It doesn't matter please don't watch this. It's all pretty sorority girls having pool parties and then getting murdered off-screen. It's over-edited, with far too many party scenes that are just cut-cut-cut-cut a-party-is-happening-but-i-can't-follow-it nonsense. Plus, the actual whodunit is so predictable it hurts. 0.5/5 graventy fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Sep 15, 2018 |
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Sep 15, 2018 19:13
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What I like about Grave Encounters 2 is that it just takes the idea and runs with it. I like meta-sequels a lot, where the first movie exists in the world, and I like the dumb things it does with found footage. 3. Ghost Stories (2017)  A professional TV skeptic begins to investigate three unexplainable and interconnected spook-a-doodles. The tales are all competent and pretty spooky but the wrapper doesn’t really follow through on the premise. I mean, he goes, hears the story, moves on to the next one, with very little in the way of follow-up by the skeptic. At no point did it really feel like an investigation. This kind of makes sense by the end, but was kind of unfulfilling during the film. .5/54. Truth or Dare (2018)  Man I really enjoy dumb teen horror movies like this one. A bunch of dumb teens go to Mexico on Spring Break, play truth or dare in a creepy abandoned church, and return home, only to find that the game has followed them. Now they have to play…or die! At first it seems like the game is mainly focused on getting our main character Olivia together with her crush, but then it gets meaner. And dumber. It would’ve been better if the dares and truths were more logically consistent, but that might be asking a lot from a movie about a possessed children’s game. Still, it was fun to watch. /55. Incident in a Ghostland (2018)  A brutal movie, which I guess one should expect from the director of Martyrs. Ghostland is the story of a mom and her two girls moving to an inherited house in the countryside, and then being stalked and abused by some local crazies. Sixteen years later the family is reunited at the house, but strange things are afoot. This was gripping, and intense, and the twists are well done and well laid out. The dialogue is pretty mediocre, at best, and the main weakness. I think it was at least 25% "Vera". Vera? VERA! Vera?! I found it hard to watch overall. I’m not really a big fan of violence against children. .5/5
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Sep 18, 2018 02:51
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Money Bags posted:Do regular Hitchcock films (ie not Psycho or The Birds) count towards the challenge and other similarly themed films such as Cape Fear and The Nanny? Watch Rope!
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Sep 18, 2018 17:53
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6. The Blob 1988 Fun, classic 80s horror flick. A mysterious object falls from the sky, and when the town hobo investigates he is attacked by a blob. So it begins. I’ve never seen a Blob film, and always sort of assumed that the creature was slow and inevitable, like zombies. Instead this Blob is quick to strike and deadly, like zombies. The movie subverted a lot of my expectations, setting up characters as potential leads and investing story time to them, only to have them get unceremoniously blobbed. I had a group of people I expected to survive until the end, and only a few of them actually made it. Plus I can enjoy a good anti-government tale. Fun to watch. /57. Contracted 2013  A woman gets roofied and has sex after a party, and catches something. It’s a slow burn of a film, as the main character slowly gets sicker and sicker. The characters don’t really behave very sensibly (GO TO A DOCTOR) about anything that happens in the movie (REPORT THE RAPE). Though to be fair the main character spends most of the movie in denial about everything so I guess that fits too. And, when she does go to a doctor he's basically Dr. Nick, astonished and confused by every symptom. Any sympathy I could have for the main character is instantly lost near the end, when she sleeps with someone else. As a PSA to the rest of you if you get an STD that slowly makes you a zombie please do not gently caress around. It doesn’t make sense from any standpoint, as the main character looks like a methhead at best. Even if the nice guy did like her a lot he wouldn’t do that. /58. Contracted 2 2015  The nice guy from the first movie returns, newly infected but not enough for it to show up in blood tests for some dumb reason. He spends the film getting sicker, and spreading his disease to others who don’t deserve to be sick because of this rear end in a top hat. I like that it continues directly after the first one left off. That's fun. I dislike everything else. Dumb characters doing dumb things. A different but still dumb doctor. A protagonist who has deep scratches on his back (not in flashbacks to the first movie, by the way) but doesn't tell the doctor for some reason. The movie ends with an after credits scene that can only be taken as a threat that more Contracted movies will happen. They haven’t yet, at least. 0.5/5
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Sep 18, 2018 17:55
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Windows 98 posted:I haven’t even picked 31 films yet Picking movies is for chumps who don't want to sit through two awful Contracted movies. ...hmmm...
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Sep 18, 2018 18:08
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9. Tales of Halloween (2015) Tales is an anthology film of ten shorts. My biggest problem with horror anthologies is that they usually try to cram too many stories into one collection. I feel like the best horror films include some build-up before or as the scares begin. Anthologies with more than three or four parts generally don’t have time for that kind of build-up. ABCs of Death just doesn’t really work for me because they just move too fast. In V/H/S (generally), or Trick 'r' Treat, the stories have a little time to breathe. I thought this fell onto that ‘too fast’ side. And, I was a bit disappointed when two of the shorts were basically the exact same plot (ghost story turns out to be true). Of the ten I think I enjoyed Grim Grinning Ghost and Bad Seed the most. GGG was one of the true ghost story ones, but surpasses that thanks to cool cameos. /5
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Sep 19, 2018 19:16
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Ambitious Spider posted:10)Dave Made a Maze Well poo poo I guess I have to add that to my list. 10. Poltergeist  A family is put to the test when a poltergeist shows up and their daughter disappears. I vaguely thought that I had seen this movie before, but I think that might have entirely been cultural memory. I liked this movie a lot. Whether or not he directed, you can feel Spielberg in the family dynamics. Mom and dad obviously love each other, both parents parent, and show their affection for the kids. It is an idyllic family unit. And then the titular poltergeist shows up. It's funny! (I think most of the Craig T. Nelson stuff is terrible dad humor though.) There is a large and obvious not-tree tree in their yard, that eventually springs to action. Mom's initial reaction to weird phenomena is to play with it. At one point one of the ghost hunters goes for a snack and pulls out a chicken leg and a raw steak. Zelda Rubenstein is wonderful. You’ve never done this before! Neither have you! You’re right, you go! There's a long conversation with a psychologist (who dabbles in ghost hunting) who explains the different between hauntings and poltergeists. Poltergeists are generally gone within a week or so, ghosts affecting a single person, no big deal. Hauntings are much worse. Of course this doesn't really turn out to be true. I like that the movie spends time telling us the audience that this really won't be a big deal. Some of the effects don't really hold up, including the tree and some flying objects later, but it has some genuinely good scares. It's a fun watch. /5(uncounted) Devil Fetus 2: The Rape After  I'm not going to count this one because I fell asleep and missed the ending, but I think I got the gist of it. A local photographer/playboy invites a model over to his place after a shoot. He tries to impress her by showing off the cool goblin statue he stole from the church, and then they get wasted. After they both pass out, the goblin statue comes to life and rapes and impregnates her. He takes her for an abortion, but you can't abort a devil fetus. Duh. She later confronts him and forces him to take her to the hospital to give birth. They fight on the way, and she dies in a car crash. Death can't stop a devil fetus though so it begins causing havoc, and the playboy enlists the help of a wizard. The wizard fails, and undead are unleashed, and some more stuff probably happens but I fell asleep. I like to think that the playboy learned some valuable lessons about stealing ancient statues from a church, or maybe about caring for other people - in between each of those events he basically completely forgets that the girl exists. But, from Hollis's description, I doubt it. That poster/image above features two of the more memorable scenes from the movie: the birth, and a bird vs man fight. I think I fell asleep before that dude at the bottom showed up. .5/5
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Sep 25, 2018 02:37
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Choco1980 posted:Sounds like you didn't last much longer than me. Last scene I remember clearly was the "autopsy" scene after the firey car crash. I must have been super tired that THAT didn't keep me awake. You missed the main scene on the cover, then, which was a wizard fighting birds and flaming birds. Kinda fun and goofy and it turns out probably sleep inducing. Choco1980 posted:So. There's one week left til the month starts, and I can actually begin my watching of stuff I've never seen. As I said earlier, I'd love if this year I would get some major goon input what to watch. This is difficult, because as you can see from My Letterboxd which is I'm sure by no means 100% accurate, (not to mention the site has a whole separate section for "thrillers" whatever that means) I've watched quite a few, so this marathon challenge of my personal rules gets harder each year. Anyways, I'm basically asking for your help. I'll let any goon command me in October to watch a horror movie I haven't. Only one title per person, so as not to make a mess of things. I'll do my best to include it in my lineup. There's no toxxing or anything here, it's just for fun, I just like the idea of you all making up my mind for me. To make things least error-filled, I guess you can go through that Letterboxd list linked above. If you name something I've already seen but is missing from the list, we both have a laugh, and you get to choose again. I don't care where you suggest the title to me; here, in the scream stream discord, in my pm inbox, whatever floats your boat. Thanks for the help! You should watch The Autopsy of Jane Doe, which I didn’t see.
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Sep 25, 2018 04:46
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11. Poltergeist II (1986) Continuing with the trilogy, it seems the family is still solidly poltergeist-ed. The movie opens with some American Indians performing a ritual on top of a mesa matte painting, which, I've got to be honest, does not bode well for the rest of the film. The Freeling family has moved to Arizona, to live with grandma while the whole "house destroyed by spirits" thing gets taken care of. Grandma dies a remarkably natural death, for a horror movie, and once again the poltergeist strikes. We learn a lot of lore and backstory, and find out that head geist here is Kane, who was a cult leader whose entire cult died on the land where the Freeling's used to live, and now that he has a taste of a living person in the in-between he just can't get enough. Our magical Indian friend shows up to offer mystical guidance, to little effect, but eventually the family prevails yet again. A big step down after the first movie, and replacing 'unknown mystical entity' with 'creepy old cult leader' was not a good direction. Though he is a very creepy cult leader. It was a mostly boring retread, and why do I need a magical Indian when I have Zelda Rubenstein? That said, the effects were neat, and the weird nightmare creatures that appear are pretty fun. /512. Poltergeist 3 (1988)  The Freelings, finally sick of dealing with Carol Anne and her poltergeist, send her to the Windy City to be with her aunt and uncle. Finally Poltergeist returns to its roots, by which I mean a mirror-filled skyscraper in a huge city. It's what the fans demanded. That dastardly cult leader tracks her down and does his poltergeisting, as per usual. I enjoyed this movie far more than I should have. Let me state for the record that I like evil mirror tricks. You want a reflection that doesn't do what you do? How about things in the mirror that aren't there in reality? Monsters reaching out of mirrors? A classic bathroom mirror cabinet open? This movie has it all! It probably should have been called Poltergeist: House of Mirrors. /5
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Sep 25, 2018 22:18
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I don’t have one in mind, but can you fill multiple challenges with one movie?
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Sep 26, 2018 12:54
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Minnesota seems pretty limited to basically just Jennifer's Body, but I might take a chance on Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan.
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Sep 26, 2018 15:51
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13. Poltergeist (2015) I enjoyed the original a lot, which probably instantly puts me on edge when you tell me there's a reboot. Why remake a classic? Why indeed. In many ways it is like the original movie only with cool updated technology. We have a giant flatscreen TV now, which...still shows static, for some reason, and iPhones which also hilariously static up. We also have a drone, presumably so the director could expense a drone to work and now own a cool drone. They take a movie that was mostly about a mother (and father) and their love for their youngest daughter, and turn it into a movie that's more concerned with making the boy not be such a wimp. Plus the boy doesn't even get almost eaten by a tree! He just gets roughed up a little bit. Boooo. The cemetery reveal was creepier and better handled in the original too. .5/514. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)  I have no real connection to Elvira. I was vaguely familiar with her as a character, but otherwise completely ignorant. But, someone mentioned it was the 30th Anniversary, so, why not? Elvira is a TV presenter in LA who receives an inheritance from an aunt. She quits and heads to New England immediately, hoping to leave with a pile of cash, but the inheritance is a spooky house and dog and spellbook. But the aptly named town of Fallwell and their Morality Committee do not appreciate her free-wheeling ways of cleavage and innuendo. It was a pretty fun and light movie, largely about female empowerment and being yourself. She gets groped and manhandled pretty frequently, but always gets revenge in some fashion. I feel like she might have an easier time with people if she didn't interpret everything that was said sexually, but, then I guess she wouldn't be Elvira, would she? For some added hilarity the subtitles I used for the movie seemed to have been translated back and forth between a few different languages. According to them, I watched Elvira, Lady in the dark. /515. Too Macabre: The Making of Elvira Mistress of the Dark (2018) Disappointingly shallow documentary about the making of the film. They talk to all the principal actors (who are still alive) which was nice, but none of them had a lot to say beyond 1. it was fun to do and 2. the release timing was terrible and killed the film. It did clue me in a bit to the widespread popularity of the character, though. /516. Dave Made a Maze (2017)  When Annie, Dave's girlfriend, returns home after a weekend away she finds that Dave has built a cardboard maze, and that Dave is trapped inside of it, and that it's too dangerous for others to enter. Because he is an "artist", or perhaps because this is kind of an affected movie, she does not question this, but rather invites over his best friend, who in turn invites more people. Eventually Annie grows frustrated with the situation and ventures into the maze and soon realizes the danger is all to real. It's neat. It's a neat movie with some pretty impressive cardboard creations and I enjoyed the artistry, though I was frequently rolling my eyes at the characters. Particularly Dave. Pull it together Dave. And occasionally, the plot: of course they eventually turn into cardboard. Of course they do. I like books and movies where spaces can't be trusted, ala House of Leaves, but I think this was too twee for me overall. /5
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Sep 26, 2018 17:54
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Choco1980 posted:#8. The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) (Commanded by Graventy) Awesome, I'm glad you liked it! This was one of my favorite flicks that I watched last year.
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Oct 2, 2018 13:42
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I'll probably do a separate count for the films I watch in October, but I still have to catch up from this weekend first. 17. Candyman II: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)  I like Candyman a lot, so I should probably finish that series up, right? Oh, boy. Candyman 2 falls into the same trap that many sequels do: let's flesh out the character with more lore and backstory! A lot of horror villains work because you can fill in the backstory, either in your mind or in your cool fanfiction versions. Too much backstory in horror is a mistake. You either reveal too much and the character becomes less scary as a result, or what you reveal is just too dumb. Anyway we already knew about Candyman's tragic love and death. This movie takes us to New Orleans, where we find out that 1. he has descendants, and 2. he's killing them for some reason. I mean, the reason is partially because they candyman'd a mirror 5 times, that's on them I guess, but otherwise...why? It was ok, overall, lots of people getting hooked. Big letdown from the first movie. .5/518. The House With the Clock in its Walls (2018)  This is like a gayer Harry Potter. An orphan moves in with his uncle and magic happens. It was ok, with a few genuinely creepy moments, but stuck very strictly to the kid movie plot outline. If I hadn't spent a good chunk of the movie mostly inventing a gay subtext I probably would have been bored. I have a different movie that I'm using but this would totally count for Fran's gay movie challenge. The kid spends most of the movie pining after a cute boy at school, and lots of signs point to his uncle being gay too. /519. Candyman III: Day of the Dead (1999)  Ahh, direct to video. A sure sign of quality if there ever was one. Here Candyman works to recruit his last living relative to be his...successor, I think? Maybe he's just looking to love someone who vaguely looks like his wife? Anyway Candyman forgot all of his flirting skills when he died, so here he kills a bunch of people and, because he is a myth, it looks like she did it. It doesn't really make any sense, and it only has two good things going for it: Tony Todd, and a bunch of nudity. /5
graventy fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 15:44
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20. The Exorcist: Director's Cut (1973) Fran Challenge #1: Love Something You Hate Hate is a strong word, but The Exorcist has never done much of anything for me. I'm not Catholic, so I don't have a history of belief in demons, and the first time I saw it I think I was mainly bored. This time I prepared. I read the book, which was good, and better written than I expected. I sought out the director's cut, which I hadn't seen before. I still don't really like it, but I have developed a respect for what it does. Everyone knows the story of The Exorcist. A young girl begins to act entirely out of character, and after exhausting the scientific possibilities her mother turns toward the spiritual, and begs a priest who has lost his faith to perform an exorcism. It is about the horrors of unexplained disease, and faith and doubt. I don't have kids, but I can imagine your child changing overnight would be entirely terrifying. And, some of the added scenes from the director's cut made this legitimately scary - loud medical devices and needles and confusion all work together to freak me out. Father Karras and his doubt are at the center of the film, and honestly, were handled better in the book. This isn't really a fault of the movie, the book just has more space to set up symptoms of possession and then knock them down. Detective Kinderman's investigation is better handled in the book, too. You really get a grasp of how nervous the mom is about the detective interviewing her daughter, particularly after the mom becomes convinced of her possession and criminal guilt. Some of that was lost in the movie. (The internet tells me that they were simultaneous creations but Kinderman is entirely Colombo in the book. It was great.) Still, I have to give the movie credit. I liked it quite a bit more this time than originally, in part, I think, because I read the book. It has some genuinely disturbing scenes, many of which would probably not be filmed today. It was pretty revolutionary for its time. I think the original cut is better than the director's cut, though. *spooky**spooky**spooky*/5 21. May (2002)  Fran Challenge #2: Queer Horror May is a weird movie about a weird girl. A sheltered girl with a lazy eye and a domineering mother, May grows up without any friends except for the doll her mother made for her. Now out on her own, she begins to try to open up, and eventually realizes that people aren't all that great. It was an enjoyable flick. It lost a bit for me towards the end, when she begins to act like a completely different (and normal) person. I think we are supposed to think that she is in her element, and, so, not anxious or shy, but it's such a complete switch that it feels wrong. .5/521 in the pre-October build up! Nice. I'll start with 1 again with my actual October movies. 1. Contagion (2011)  Fran Challenge #3: Hometown Horror IMDB claimed this took place in Minnesota, but for what is probably a global disaster I didn't really believe it. But most of it totally does! Anyway a cast of famous people either spread a new contagious disease around the entire world, or fight said disease. It's terrifying in that it feels real. My only real complaints are that I think society would probably collapse faster and to a higher degree than it does in the film, and for a worldwide contagion this film is mostly entirely US-centered. /5
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Oct 3, 2018 19:45
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2. The Exorcist II (1977) God this movie is dumb. Four years later after the possession, Regan is a mostly well-adjusted 16 year old living with her caretaker, also from the first movie. She goes to a therapy provided by Nurse Ratched, who is working on a revolutionary technique called synchronized hypnotism. Father Lamont comes to do some more investigating in the results of the first film. Lots of dumb stuff happens, and once again sequels provide faaar too much backstory for villains. We also spend time with a vaguely African tribe, with James Earl Jones as a child mystic turned locust scientist. See, Pazuzu the demon apparently targets humans with extrasensory powers. Meh /53. Slice (2018)  Someone is killing pizza delivery boys. Is it the ghosts? Is it a werewolf? A bunch of people investigate. I was going to call this the worst A24 movie I've seen, but then I looked and they produced Tusk! Oof. Anyway this is meant to be a horror comedy, but it's just not very funny, Chance the Rapper is fine, Zazie Beetz is criminally wasted. It was just a very light film, that I will probably entirely forget I watched. It's slight. Nothing particularly offensive about it, nothing particularly great either. /54. The Exorcist III (1990)  Fifteen years after The Exorcist, a serial killer who seems to have ties to the Regan possession is on the loose, and Detective Kinderman investigates. Until the reveal of the killer and his motivations, I was really into this movie. Even then it's still pretty fun. I like how it takes familiar characters and themes from the first movie without being a literal rehash of the film. It does a good job of creating a creepy and increasing sense of dread. I'm going to have to seek out the restored director's cut, or whatever they're calling it, that has as close to the original intended ending, without the exorcism. For the first few minutes I had such deja vu thought I might have seen the movie before, until I realized that Blatty was quoting himself from the first book. Sneaky bastard. /5Yes I realize I'm scoring this higher than the original. I think the original is a better movie and far more groundbreaking, but if you want to sit down and watch one of the Exorcist films? Watch 3.
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Oct 4, 2018 15:24
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Let's just catch up entirely! Unless otherwise noted, I am watching all of these via Plex. 5. The Ward (2010)  Fran Challenge #4: Worst of the Best. We see a young girl run through the woods (impressively fast, really, for not wearing shoes) and then set fire to an old abandoned house. She is arrested, and taken to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital, and placed in the ward. But some sort of monster is stalking the ward, and killing the girls off one by one. Can our new girl arsonist Kristen get to the bottom of it before she becomes a victim? Many people would make the claim that Carpenter's worst work is Ghosts of Mars. Ghosts of Mars, however, is entertaining and terrible. The Ward is just mostly terrible. All the stuff you expect to happen in asylums happens. People avoid taking pills, everyone is a little bit crazy (mostly in a hot manic pixie way, not in a legitimately has problems way), electroshock therapy. It's just..kind of boring. The acting is mediocre, the scares are bog standard, and the girls all fit into one-note archetypes for ~plot reasons~ which are mostly just an excuse to have extremely one-note characters. The only thing really notable that I remember is a fairly lengthy shower scene, of note only because of the lack of nudity. It's not designed to titillate, but to set up a mundane situation for the monster to strike. *yawn* I blame this on *checks wikipedia* Mass Effect 2, and/or Red Dead Redemption. /56. Creep 2 (2017) Netflix  Creep 2 picks up right where Creep 1 left off, with Sara answering a craigslist ad for a videographer and Mark Duplass being creepy. It follows the same basic premise of the first film (is this guy a creep or is he just weird?) but with added levels of tension because we as the audience know things, and Sara also knows things. It was pretty great, and Duplass continues to be charismatic and creepy. Possibly a little too much full frontal Duplass for my tastes, though. /57. Slumber Party Massacre (1982)  A group of high school girls has a slumber party, but alas! A killer is afoot! A driller killer, to be precise. Female directed and female written, it is still filmed entirely to meet Roger Corman's demands. I feel like this undermines the idea that this is a 'feminist' film. There is lots of ogling and pointless nudity here. (Balanced out, I guess with some female ogling of men.) It's also goofy. It was written as a parody, I think, but it's too serious to really pull that off, but it's also a movie where the killer's weapon is a 3 foot long My favorite dumb line was when the 'pizza guy' knocks and the guys inside ask "what's the damage" and he replies "Six so far". That's a cheap pizza (or a lot of bodies). Great stuff. Fun movie! /58. Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987)  The two conquering heroines of the first movie return (in name, anyway: new actors) with crippling PTSD from the trauma. Valerie, the older sister, is in a mental institution. Courtney, the younger one seems pretty well-adjusted, apart from her wild and clairvoyant dreams. What we have here is Nightmare on Slumber Party Massacre, with a dash of musical for some godforsaken reason. Nightmare on Grease Party Massacre? Courtney's in a grrl band, and Courtney has a boy she likes, and oh yeah Courtney's dreams seem to be getting worse and might be intruding on her reality. No big deal. Can't tell mom or she'll throw her into the asylum. Friends just think she's weird. Courtney pulls a *very* pro teenager move and convinces her mom that, instead of visiting her sister, she should go on a slumber party with her friends. Hey sidenote to my imaginary wife: if my currently imaginary daughter is involved in something we call a 'slumber party massacre' I don't think she gets to have those any more. Sorry. Maybe that makes me a mean imaginary dad. So be it. I'm putting my foot down on this one. A few more nightmares along the way but the slumber party finally starts, with what I assumed all slumber parties were when I was a kid: half-naked drunken pillow fights. Finally, after almost 2/3's of the film, our is-he-real-or-not guitar driller shows up. This would be a sweet as hell Halloween costume, but the guitar drill is beyond my technical skills. It was a weird and bland movie, with some terrible, terrible rock song singalongs and unremarkable drilling. Pretty great scene involving a zit though. .5/5
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Oct 5, 2018 17:39
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9. Slumber Party Massacre 3 (1990) Same poo poo, different movie. It continues in the hallowed tradition of the slumber party franchise of being entirely by the book, while taking out any of the twists that made the first one a pretty fun ride and adding things from the second that make it worse - rock sing-a-longs, for example. Jackie's parents are selling their house, and they leave her home alone (big mistake) so she has a slumber party, which in these films basically just means a themed party where the girls are in nightwear. The villain has a motivation that is never entirely explained. He has this shrine to his uncle, who he claims is a former cop. Was he fired after ignoring calls for help in one of the earlier movies? Is that entirely unrelated to the SPM "lore"? He's not a particularly good killer because the massacre starts with far too many still alive, which makes it a confusing jumble of bodies every time he attacks. It almost made me long for the rock opera nonsense of the second film. Other than the cliches that it hits with a beating regularity this movie does not tie in to the previous two at all, which is disappointing. Why make a 3 and not tie it in somehow? /510. Dagon (2001) rewatch  Paul and his girlfriend are vacationing with a much older couple on a boat. One boating accident later, and our couple winds up separated in Imboca, a weird Spanish town inhabited with fish people, though, they just seem rude, at this point. Then Barbara disappears and things take a turn. The movie works pretty well as a group watch, because you can joke your way through the slow and ponderous beginning until you get to the pretty good chase and great flashback and final scenes. Overall this was better the second time around. /511. Demonic Toys (1992)  Two cops chase some thieves into a warehouse, inhabited by a chicken-loving security guard, oh and also some demonic toys. A baby, a teddy bear, a clown snake, and a small robot all walk out of a Five Nights at Freddy's game and into this warehouse to terrorize our humans. I wasn't really a big fan. It's cheap crazy nonsense that doesn't manage to be crazy enough to make up for the cheap and nonsense parts. /5
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Oct 7, 2018 22:37
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12.Christmas Evil (1980) Fran Challenge: Birth of Horror Plex A young child witnesses Santa Claus giving his mother a kiss under the mistletoe, below the belt. Traumatized, (upon learning that Santa isn't real, I guess?) he grows up to be a quiet pushover with a markedly unhealthy obsession with Santa. Indignities increase and slowly push him into madness, and he builds his own Santa suit and heads out to give Christmas cheer to the good and Christmas fear to the bad. It is comic horror with a very slow start, but once it gets going it really goes to some crazy places. If you've never seen Santa being chased by a literal torch-bearing mob, you're missing out. Plus he does enough terrible things as Santa in front of kids to spawn villains for tens of other films. He's a villain you really grow to like and cheer for, because gently caress those naughty kids. gently caress those corporate assholes. Santa's right you guys. The movie also features the worst version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town that I've ever heard, so, keep an ear out for that. /513. Murder Party (2007)  Scream Stream A quiet, boring, foolish man picks up a street invitation to a murder party and decides to go. He bakes some pumpkin bread because that's the kind of thing you bring when you're crashing a party, I guess. Once there he finds out that murder party is a literal name, and they are all art school students planning to kill him for art. Art? Art. What follows is horror-tinged comedy as much of the cast pontificates about art and thankfully dies around him, before descending to a blood-filled finale. You get the feeling that the director Saulnier went to art school, and loving hated it. /514. The Video Dead (1987)  Scream Stream A bungling delivery crew mis-deliver a haunted television, and the whole neighborhood suffers the consequences. The consequences are zombies. There's a lot of potentially interesting lore here that is probably explored to death in The Video Dead 2, but I wish it did a little better job of establishing a story. I have so many questions! Why is Jeff the main character, when literally anyone else could have handled it better? Is the talking "hot" woman a zombie or something else? Who is the garbage man? Why do zombies come out of a haunted television? Terrible acting, terrible camera work, and mediocre effects, but still slightly charming. .5/5
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Oct 8, 2018 21:28
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15. I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) Scream Stream Unfortunately a group setting is not really the right atmosphere for this film. You want to be alone and in the dark, preferably in an old creaky house. It was ultimately too slow for me, and I found it hard to believe that someone who was so scared that she can't read a horror novel would stick around after the first spooky thing happens. The movie needed to give her a reason to still be there, and it doesn't really. .5/516. Nail Gun Massacre (1985)  Scream Stream This movie really hits the ground running, with the group rape of a girl at a construction site. Six months later, a mysterious helmeted stranger with a nail gun begins to extract revenge on the rapists, and basically anyone else who gets in their way. This is amateur hour, from the camera man zooming in on the boobs to the terrible sound levels for everything to the first-take-only-take nature of every single scene. The movie has several long uncomfortable sex scenes, and no real discernible plot except for revenge. The nail gun itself is remarkably deadly. You take a nail anywhere and you're dead. It was a terrible movie but kind of fun to watch and make fun of. A perfect movie for a scream stream. /5
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Oct 9, 2018 16:38
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Franchescanado posted:So excited that you loved this! I can't wait to revisit it for the challenge. Honestly one of your challenges should just be “watch The Lure”. It’s so great and weird and fun.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:08
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17. Cannibal Holocaust - 1980 Fran Challenge 6: Video Nasties Two months ago, a pre-VICE but still essentially VICE documentary crew headed into the darkest jungles of Africa, to get some gnarly footage of cannibals. Wicked! Those dudes (and dudette) have disappeared. Bummer! Now another expedition is being sent in to find them. It feels like a ground-breaking movie, in a lot of ways. But I didn't particularly like it. The documentarians are all straight up assholes, creating sensationalism where they don't need to. I mean, honestly, the cannibalism footage, or the "ritualistic punishment for adultery" that they capture would probably make a pretty fascinating documentary. But no let's cause mayhem and carnage and then face consequences. Much has been made of the animals harmed while making this film. Mostly they seem to have been killed relatively quickly, except the first animal, the possum thing? All, of course, were killed by the white men, providing ever more evidence for the "but who are the true cannibals" ending. Yes, I suppose if you make me choose between rich assholes faking documentaries and raping and pillaging and our innocent backwater cannibals I'm voting cannibal. Seems like you might have weighted that vote a bit though. .5/518. Under the Shadow 2016  Fran Challenge: The World is a Scary Place Shideh is an Iranian woman, who lives in Tehran during the middle of the Iran/Iraq war. The university refuses to readmit her after the revolution, because she was maaaybe just a bit too liberal and activist in her views. She regularly wears pants and doesn't cover her head, for one thing. Her husband instantly became my enemy by agreeing with the university that it might be good for her to not go back. Not your decision dude. He gets drafted, though, so now it's just Shideh and her kind of creepy daughter in an apartment surrounded by constant bombings and maaaybe haunted by a djinn. People have compared this movie to The Babadook, and I think they both do a good job of capturing the frustrating nature of parenting, but overall I think I liked 'dook better. I loving hated that kid, which connected me more with the mom and her problems. I know Shideh's going through some poo poo in this movie but her little girl isn't that bad calm down. gently caress that Babadook kid though, seriously. .5/519. Carnival of Souls 1962  Fran Challenge: Once in a Lifetime A road race ends in disaster, as one car careens off a bridge to a watery grave. Three hours after the crash, while the police comb the river trying and failing to find the car, a lone survivor, Mary, emerges from the river. With no memory of what happened, she continues on with her life, leaving town and becoming a church organist...in some other town. Outside of new town is an old abandoned carnival, that draws Mary to it like a moth to a flame. I thought it was pretty ok. It felt like a long special episode of The Twilight Zone, which I find out now is what Ebert said about the movie too. Well he was right. :spoooky: /5
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Oct 16, 2018 19:24
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Franchescanado posted:This is a little confusing, because that's absolutely what the intention of the film was. The whole point is that the documentarians take a legitimately interesting premise for their doc and instead are absolute monsters to the natives so they can get good footage. It's not a feel-good movie at all, which I guess your rating is reflecting? I get it, or at least I think I get it. It felt like Deodato came up with his cool "No YOU are the monster" ending and then made it a reality by with moustache-twirling VICE assholes. I would like it to be at least a little grounded in reality and this goes ludicrously beyond pushing lemmings off of a cliff. It felt like even these jerks would get there, see the crazy poo poo the cannibals are doing, and decide that was enough for a crazy documentary, which it would be.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:41
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Choco1980 posted:WEELLLLLLL....The thing about Cannibal Holocaust's documentary team is that they were a very pointed criticism and caricature of Mondo filmmakers, specifically the guys who started the whole thing, Jacopetti and Prosperi, who were accused (and eventually found innocent) of a bunch of heinous stuff in order to get their footage. The whole firing squad thing shown early on was directly taken from controversy surrounding Africa Addio, where they filmed their own firing squad execution and were arrested for suspicion of the same kind of abetting they depict in CH. That's a portion of the film's meanings and messages that are kind of lost on today's audience because it's such an artifact of the times. Thanks! That context is really helpful!
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Oct 17, 2018 02:45
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20. The Return of the Living Dead 1985 This movie is just entertaining goofy fun. /5First Man 2018 I don't think this probably counts, but there are some harrowing and tense space mission scenes. They work in part because I don't remember which Apollo or Gemini scenes were actually successful. Plus, there were about 100 different moments where the movie paused and I hoped against hope a monster would show up. Nope. Jerks played it straight. And Neil Armstrong was haunted by the ghost of his daughter! Lots of wasted horror potential here, unless you find men who can't talk about their feelings horrific. Also jesus gently caress when you're used to 90 minute horror romps a 145 minute movie is a drain. 4/5 scary space scenes, 1/5 everything else 21. Apostle 2018  A man sneaks into an island run by a cult to try and rescue his kidnapped sister. The first half of the movie is a cool as hell sneak-em-up, made a bit goofy by the fact that Dan Stevens glares at everyone malevolently. Who among us is a spy and traitor? I dunno man, it could be the swarthy bloke in the back who looks constantly hungover and angry. Nah I'm sure he's cool.  Those are the crazy eyes he looks at everything with! The second half of the film is where the poo poo hits the fan, and it's a bit less enjoyable because the whole house of cards collapses in multiple places all at once, in violent ways. I wanted Dan Stevens to wreak a terrible vengeance, and not be helped along by several other things also falling apart at once. Still, it was a fun ride. /5
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Oct 17, 2018 15:16
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Basebf555 posted:Yea definitely Whedon is saying that we the audience are complicit in it and need to be more demanding of fresh new ideas in horror. He puts part of the blame on us and part of the blame on the industry for giving audiences the bare minimum of what they demand and nothing more. Wasn't the movie kind of trapped in development hell for a few years? Yeah, wikipedia says filmed in 2009 and released in 2012. Timewise I can't really say that that makes it better. For maximum impact it ideally would have been put out in response to the 90s, which were a dire dire time for horror flicks. I haven't gone back to anything Whedon since he was outed as an rear end in a top hat, but I enjoyed Cabin in the Woods when I saw it.
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Oct 17, 2018 16:39
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22. Children of the Corn 1984 [timg]https://i.imgur.com/3FWRECS.jpg[\timg] How did this series get to ten movies? A small town in Nebraska gets the Logan's Run treatment, courtesy of a preacher child and basically every other kid in town as his disciples. A while later, two recent college graduates accidentally stumble upon the town and are tormented by the evil children. Evil kids can be scary, but these evil kids were mostly not. I don't think it helped that almost every one of them with a weapon had to angle the sunlight off of it into the camera in a nice slow shot for emphasis. ~Exploring an abandoned house~ Oh, there's a shot of a small hand turning a sickle. Uh oh, another small hand slowly drawing a big knife. It's cheap, and it looks cheap, and then the effects start and whoo boy does it look cheap. Overall just disappointing and boring. /523. The Gate (1987) [timg]https://i.imgur.com/XzqpI88.jpg[\timg] If I learn one thing from 80s movies, it's never ever let your kids stay home alone. They will take any opportunity at self-governance to throw parties and accidentally open gateways to hell and then you'll be stuck dealing with the consequences when you return home. It's not worth it! Just don't have kids! This movie is kind of nuts, and regular old spooky goings-on are quickly left behind and small demons crop up and the whole place goes crazy. A relatively mild crazy, a G or PG crazy, really, but still pretty enjoyable. This would have been fantastic if I was 13. A pretty fun kids movie that's not afraid to kill some kids. I got my Dourifs and Dorffs confused, and couldn't figure out how Brad was in this movie. /524. Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) [timg]https://i.imgur.com/ezvyNpc.jpg[\timg] Sleepaway Camp II wastes absolutely no time getting to the slashing. Kids around a campfire share scary stories, and a girl brings up the scariest of stories, a wikipedia plot synopsis of the first film. It happened just 60 miles from here! Camp Counselor Angela, who has some pretty strict definitions of what camp is supposed to be, yells at her for telling scary stories and being alone with the boys after dark. She tells everyone she's going to take the girl back to the cabins and send her home, but then expedites the process by just killing her instead. It's a pretty fun, goofy by-the-numbers flick, with a whole lot of people breaking Angela's rules and paying for it. Overall it handles the twist of the first movie pretty well for the 80s, I think. Probably would be better without the homosexual slurs, but, 80s teens I guess. /5
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Oct 18, 2018 15:41
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M_Sinistrari posted:I know Stephen King's a hard one to adapt to film because so much of his work's what's going on in someone's head, but they still could've worked the build up angle better with the couple figuring what happened in the town and keeping the end reveal more in tune with the short story. Yeah reading the synopsis that would be a much better ending. It just seems like too slight of a story to hold a movie together for 90 minutes. I have a bunch of the other movies, so I'll probably watch them, but after the disappointing first I might just sacrifice myself to the corn instead.
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Oct 18, 2018 16:26
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25. Pee Mak (2013) (Netflix)  Fran Challenge: Stranger Danger One of my work colleagues recommended this to me a while ago, but I always procrastinate on foreign films because subtitles demand my full attention. All this really means is that I'm probably not paying enough attention to English language films, but, what can you do. Pee Mak is a Thai horror comedy romance, in that order. The beginning is mostly horror, the middle is mostly comedy, and the end is all cheesy romance. It's based on a very, very famous Thai legend that has spawned almost 20 movies and an opera and some TV shows. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the legend, but basically, a man, Mak, goes off to war and leaves his very pregnant wife Nak behind. Nak dies in childbirth, but when Mak returns he finds his wife and son waiting for him. The townspeople who try to warn him about her being a ghost all die. Eventually he figures it out and runs away, and she haunts the town in anger. This is a comical take on that tragic story, but it still has some pretty tense scenes. The movie did a good job of playing around with that well-known tale, and teasing at possible fun and good twists before ending in pure cheesy romance. I'm sure there's a lot of Thai humor that goes over my head, and quite a bit of it went under my head (frequently too broad), but it was funnier than I expected. /5 26. Sleepaway Camp III (1989)  Much like other beloved franchises, the two sequels to Sleepaway Camp were filmed back to back, and released a year apart, audience demand being too high to risk waiting on the third film, no doubt. III is II again but faster, with very little time wasted on establishing characters other than stereotypes featuring lots of "fun" slurs. The one note of continuity is Officer Barney, the cop dad of Sean, a victim in the second film. And, of course, Angela. God she loves herself some wholesome camping. In the second movie it seemed like she had some moral code, but here she's mainly just killing to kill. A lot of the general goofiness of the second one was lost here. II had a fair number of scenes where someone would confess to a camp sin in front of Angela and she would give a weary look like 'ugh please don't say that in front of me now I have to kill you'. It's an entertaining enough watch, but the campers are one note stereotypes and I can't particularly recommend a movie with a rich white girl complaining about n-words. /5
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Oct 19, 2018 15:58
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Spatulater bro! posted:This movie seems to be under the following misconceptions: Men are disgusting and evil I don't understand. Men are disgusting and evil. Am man. Can confirm. graventy fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 19, 2018 |
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Oct 19, 2018 20:46
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27. Night of the Demons (1988) There's a school dance, but all of the cool kids are going to Hull House instead, to have a party. Local good girl Judy gets dressed in her costume and shows us her butt. Local bad girl Suzanne distracts the clerks and the grocery store with her panties while Angela steals party supplies. This movie has an obsession with asses that I can't really complain about. Meanwhile local party animal Stooge drives two people to the party who clearly lost some sort of drawing and don't want to be in the car with him. Stooge is a party dude, and as a party dude the only name he knows to call women is 'bitch'. Once at the house, we learn it's history of demon problems and things finally start ramping up, cinematographically if nothing else. A mirror breaks, and there's this cool as hell shot of the entire case in the pieces of the broken mirror. The group splits up, possessions happen, demonic chaos erupts. It was a hell of a lot of fun. /528. Slender Man 2018  Fran Challenge: Fear and Now A group of high school girls have a slumber party, lead by two girls who look entirely too alike to cast as friends in a horror movie. Anyway, because this is 2018 they don't perform the traditional slumber party act of getting naked. Instead, one of the girls is all "hey let's watch a youtube video which will summon slender man" and the rest agree. Then they get stalked by slender man. Here's the fun thing about slender man. He's a background villain who shows up in the distance in photographs, or briefly in movies, but never all that close enough to really tell if you're looking at a tree or a shadow or a scary dude. Boy does this fleeting nature translate well to a movie! There were several jump scares where there just wasn't anything there. Like, big musical sting, character jumps, I rewind to see if I missed something but still don't see anything. The movie is dark as hell, so when they head into the forest you can't tell what exactly is going on, but you don't really care because overall it's boring. They also do that fast-shaking-head thing, in combination with pulsing rooms, which makes me think that the occult girl dosed their drinks before having them summon this character. Just remarkably lame. /529. Sometimes They Come Back (1991)  A failed teacher with a remarkably bad and untreated case of PTSD returns to his home town, where the trauma actually happened. Seems like a real bad idea, right? As a kid, he and his older brother were bullied by a gang of cool greasers, who ineptly try to steal their lunch money before stabbing his brother and getting hit and exploded real good by a train. As a present day teacher, he see visions of the greasers returning to torment himself and his class of kids. Stephen King short stories do not make good full-length movies. It is too much time to fill, and here they fill it with maudlin Hallmark movie music and moping about town. It is criminally boring, and only recovers when the hyena-like greasers show up to laugh a lot and kill. At least they were having fun. /530. Night of the Demons 2 (1994)  At no point during the first movie did I get the idea that Angela was a main demon, or that she might return in the future to demon again, but here we are. This movie is the Evil Dead 2 to the original's Evil Dead: original idea, but zanier and turned up to 11. Lots of girls being randomly nude in dorm rooms with each other, an rear end-kicking nun, an amateur demonologist, and a 55-gallon drum of holy water really add up to a fun demon fighting movie. This series is a gem. At least, the first two are. /5
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Oct 21, 2018 16:21
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31. Fermat's Room 2007 Cryptic invitations are sent to invite specific individuals to a secluded party. They quickly find themselves trapped in an ever-shrinking room, forced to solve Professor Layton-style puzzles to survive. It's a pretty competent and well-acted thriller. It ends up feeling a lot like a Saw movie, as everyone is there for a reason. Just with word puzzles instead of gory traps. Unfortunately, it leaves the most confusing mystery entirely unanswered: what kind of illegal boat things were they getting up to in international waters? Sorry. Second unanswered mystery: what happened to Poseidon brand hydraulic presses? In 2007 they were at the height of press game, so much so that they obviously sponsored a movie all about how good their machines are. And yet, here, just 11 years later, I can't find any evidence of their existence. Makes you think. .5/532. High School Ghosthustlers 1995  If you are watching this, and at any minute someone comes into the room, you will have to repeatedly protest that this is not a porn movie. It isn't. Not really. Three high school girls are in their high school occult club, and they bust ghosts.  Sorry, ~hustle~ ghosts. They are on their way to local success when they accidentally release a pervy ghost who preys on their high school, causing the girls there to be overwhelmed with lust. So our ghost hustlers will have to mount up and hustle that ghost! I mean, there are ghost penis slugs and tentacles and penis monsters and nudity and maybe a little vore but again, not a porn! Why do you keep asking me if this is porn? It feels like a porn script a high school kid had to clean up so that he could film it and turn it in for an assignment. Cheap, painfully slow (impressive for a 70 minute film), and amateur, though the effects are pretty good. Still, incredibly quotable and the last 20 minutes or so probably makes it at least somewhat interesting. /5
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Oct 22, 2018 20:33
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33. Halloween (2018) I've got to be honest, if I build a house with the primary intention of eventually fighting my worst nightmare with it, it sure as hell won't have any places for inhuman monsters to hide in it. We are talking stark, bare rooms, maybe those drop-down beds you can hide in the walls, at most some folding chairs. Certainly not a room full of goddamn mannequins. This movie is tense as hell, and does a great job of getting Michael as unstoppable monster, but still seeming mostly within the realm of human possibility. There were a few contrivances that made me roll my eyes a bit sure boyfriend just throw my $1000 phone into the...yogurt? punch? but I think this is easily one of the best in the franchise. /5
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Oct 24, 2018 17:11
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34. Winterbeast (1992) Fran Challenge: Dead & Buried I might have fallen asleep during Winterbeast. I might have been asleep the whole time. Honestly I think I probably was asleep the whole time. It seems like I had vivid, nonsensical dreams that didn't make a drat bit of sense, a constant and confusing melange of beasts of all shapes and sizes attacking random people randomly. It's edited presumably by a restless narcoleptic who fell asleep at the controls. Winterbeast is like someone took a bunch of clips of your home movies over a period of 5-10 years, and spliced in shots of monster attacks taped off of late-night cable seemingly at random. There's not a lot of information about Winterbeast online, but I did find this discussion post from a friend talking about the director dying in 2015. Could he be lying? Maybe. Seems like the only place being friends with the director of Winterbeast might score you points is this here forum. Either way, I'll watch something by another dead director to be safe. It's something all right. It gets a pumpkin for sheer perseverance. /5
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Oct 25, 2018 16:53
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Guy Goodbody posted:I'm particularly looking forward to Sci-Fibruary. If this happens I am fully on board. It’s bullshit that sci-fi gets the shortest month but what can you do?
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Oct 28, 2018 17:34
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34. Martin 1978 Fran Challenge: Dead & Buried Martin is about a young man with delusions of vampirism, OR ARE THEY DELUSIONS. He drugs ladies, slices their wrists, and drinks their blood. His delusion is fueled by his uncle, who also thinks he is a vampire, but allows him to live with him and his daughter. Why? I guess family comes first even if that family is someone you are convinced is killing people and drinking their blood. It was a quiet, contemplative vampire movie, with bursts of pretty horrific and startlingly incompetent violence. Didn't really grab me, but I think I'll end up liking this more on rewatch. /535. Phenomena 1985  Fran Challenge: (Self-Described) Masters of Horror One of my favorite aspects of the horror genre is that you really never know what you're going to get. Here, we have a girl who sleepwalks through Iron Maiden music videos attempting to solve a series of murders at her boarding school, while also learning to use her newly discovered psychic influence over insects with a wheelchair bound professor and his helper monkey. Like most of the giallo I have seen, I don't think it really worked for me, but I'm still glad to have seen it. It's an interesting and at times kind of crazy film. Is the non-English supposed to be subtitled? Amazon Prime doesn't think so. /536. Street Trash 1987  Wow. An absolutely vile movie with irredeemable characters, but some incredible special effects that make it worth a watch. This one's a real Catch-22, a movie that you might want to recommend to horror fans but you honestly can't, because literally every single thing outside of the meltings is awful and offensive. You would be better off skipping the middle of the film, which has plenty of rape and racism but no meltings. The movie needed more hobos stealing more booze so that more people would get melted. /5Gerald's Game 2017  rewatch I still find this movie creepy and effective, though I could do without the dad gas-lighting her in the past, and the goofily long prologue. /537. Minutes Past Midnight 2016  I don't generally like anthologies. For the most part, they are loosely (if at all) connected stories that can be summarized in one sentence. Frequently, that sentence is something Rod Serling might have said in the worst possible season of The Twilight Zone. This had a few good stories bogged down by more bad stories, with some pretty extreme tonal whiplash between each one. I think I enjoyed 'Crazy for You' the most, about a serial killer in love, with 'Roid Rage' an obvious and distant last. The marionettes in 'The Mill at Calder's End' were neat, but the story was boring. /5
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Oct 29, 2018 23:21
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38. Premonition 2007 Sometimes you watch a movie because your podcast friends are watching a movie and releasing a commentary for it. This is generally a bad idea. Sandra Bullock wakes up to a nightmare: her husband has died. The next day, she wakes up again, and...he's alive. The cycle continues, but will she be able to figure out what's going on and prevent his death? A lot of the mysteries of this film would be solved if Sandra would just loving talk to the people around her. "Hey honey I dreamed this crazy dream where you died in a car accident" would clear up quite a bit. Or even "Hey honey what day is today?" It was bad do not watch it. /539. Friend Request 2016  Listen, sometimes there's a weird girl at school (college, I think?) and she always sits alone and looks all weird and goth. DO NOT friend her on Facebook. She can be a little clingy. Oh and also she is a witch. I should be happy with any movie that extols the horrors of Facebook, particularly of trying to close a Facebook account. This movie is so bad I found it almost endearing. It is filled with stupid and unintentionally hilarious dialogue. One (late) example is "She can't make you lonely if you're dead." The school Dean expels the main character for her Facebook posts, even though she has repeatedly demonstrated no control over the account. The villain's mother mostly died in a fire, and then the hospital kept her alive until she could give birth, or, as one characters puts it "she was always alone". This is modern trash horror, and honestly, I would probably watch it again in a group setting. It was enjoyable and remarkably terrible. /540. Night of the Demons III 1997  Fran Challenge: The Night We've All Been Waiting For Things this movie gets right: * still takes place at Hull House * still has demons * still has running water around the house * still has nudity between friends Things this movie gets wrong: * so many gun standoffs * reused footage better than new footage * gun fellatio * pretty much everything A group of teens lead by a local hothead accidentally get involved in a shootout in a gas station, and head to Hull House to hide out, only to succumb to Angela and her demons. The charm of the first two movies is lost here, and I'd be willing to bet that it is not found in the 2009 remake. We shall see! 0.5/5 41. Killer Klowns from Outer Space 1988  In typical 80's horror fashion, a shooting star falls to earth and a local drunk goes to investigate, only to find a big top, and clowns! Or, klowns. Mayhem ensues as the klowns spread through town abducting people, and our heroes work to try and stop them. This movie is nonstop absurd fun. The klowns are menacing, ponderous, and scary, while still seeming to be clowns. Just fantastic designs. Their weapons wrap people up in cotton candy, or shoot popcorn bugs. Occasionally the movie stops to think about it's absurd premise. Why are they clowns? Because they're clowns, that's why! Maybe our clowns exist because they've been here before! Dude. Duuuude. Whoa. /5Jason X 2001  (rewatch) Jason is cryogenically frozen, and then foolishly unfrozen in the horny future where he wreaks havoc. Still dumb as hell, still a Halloween favorite. /5That's all of the Fran challenges so far. I hope to get another couple of movies in but we'll see! Including the 21 September movies, that's a pretty solid month and a half of mostly good horror.
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Oct 30, 2018 03:02
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42. (63) Night of the Demons 2009 Let's relaunch this series with a less charismatic cast and a more convoluted backstory, shall we? Ugh. The remake has Angela hosting a party at a house. Not Hull House, for some reason, but some other house with a demonic past. It's a big party, it gets busted by the cops, but seven remain, and demons come and do their business. It's all rather artlessly done, with obvious and boring twists and an awful script. But don't take my word for it! Here's a quote from a scene they remade from the original, where it was effective and creepy. "She stuck a lipstick in her boob and it fell out of her pussy, ok!?" Or, even better, perhaps, here's a quote from the long exposition scene where the final girl reads the (literal) writing on the wall and understand why the demons are here and their purpose: "But there’s always a loophole. If demons could possess seven people over the course of one Halloween night, they’d be free." These demons are "too badass" for hell, see. At least the effects are practical, I guess, although not particularly great. The director sure does enjoy that "shake your head super-fast" effect! Like all horror series this one ends on a particularly low note. III is better, but avoid them both. 0.5/5
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Oct 30, 2018 15:30
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43. Unfriended Dark Web 2017 An idiot named Matias steals a laptop. Don't steal laptops, kids! He's working on a program for his deaf girlfriend that will take his written or spoken words and translate them into sign language. Seems pretty ambitious for this loser, but ok. He joins his friends online for a weekly game night, and continues to explore his new laptop but quickly uncovers some shady poo poo, embroiling him and his friends in a deadly contest with a Dark Web hacker. I like movies in this genre, if it has a name yet. On screen? Screenview? Movies that take place entirely from the screen of a computer or various connected devices. They're all pretty enjoyable. Unfriended, The Den, Searching. Fun times. Here, the hacking is taken to ludicrous supervillain level, basically CSI levels of super-hacking pretty much instantaneously. My favorite is the Watch_Dogs style "can't be seen on camera" hack. It's so ridiculous. It's fun, and there are some good scares. /544. Revenge 2017 A tale as old as time, in horror movies anyway, as a woman gets raped and left for dead, and wreaks vengeance. The whole movie made me feel like someone had played the Tomb Raider remake and decided Lara Croft would make a good vengeance seeker. She would and does, and Jen is a complete badass despite some pretty incredible wounds. There is more male nudity here than female, but despite that (and the female director) it still felt like there were an awful lot of male gaze-y admiring shots of Jen even after she is bloodied and beaten. The movie is gorgeous and colorful, and bloody. I wish it had a little more nuance, which, I guess, is probably a weird request from a rape revenge movie. The men are all pretty instantly detestable, and there is no character to Jen except sexpot before she is reborn as an angel of death. It's worth seeing, though, if only for the burning tree, the tattoo, and the final confrontation. It is what it wants to be, and that is cool as hell. /5
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Oct 31, 2018 19:13
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:56 |
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This is a super late reply but I was busy yesterday and I wanted to respond. re: Revenge King Vidiot posted:That's by design. She starts the movie completely defined by the powerful, handsome and rich man she's loving. Her "death" and rebirth turns her into a completely new person, one who sets her own rules. And she of course has to kill every one of the men who raped her, or tried to kill her, or reduced her to a sex object or just stood by and did nothing. Notice that the camera starts out by lingering on her body, because in the first part of the movie we're seeing the action from the perspective of the men. Then later it's all male nudity and her body is now covered in a thick layer of concealing blood and scars. Her killer is shown completely naked and vulnerable and the camera lingers on his naked rear end, and even though he tries to wield a phallic shotgun he's been turned into the object. He's now the victim even as he struggles to hold on to his male power. I like the idea of this, but I'm not sure that I agree. As much as she is an object at the beginning, he mostly is too. We get a fair amount of rear end and dingus in the opening scenes. More male nudity than female. He and she both represent ideals, I think. He is the ideal sugar daddy, she is the ideal arm candy. I don't really think the camera ever stops lingering on on her. Particularly after the tattoo/branding , but throughout we get lots of pans across her body. I think that can be seen as indicating how much she has changed, but it still felt pretty objectifying. He is naked at the end (that rear end you love is still in style!) but still pretty drat dangerous, even after losing enough blood to paint the whole house red. quote:Man, Revenge was so good. In a genre I mostly despise (rape revenge movies), it is easily my favorite, and the only one I would watch again. Just so beautiful and stylish and badass.
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Nov 2, 2018 16:23
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