Butch Cassidy posted:The Happening was a glorious classic B movie romp and I will not hear otherwise. Otherwise.
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Sep 18, 2018 05:04
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CHECK IT OUT, GO AHEAD
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Sep 18, 2018 23:31
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Justin Godscock posted:I was really surprised at how good Friday the 13th 2009 was as far as modern horror remakes go. I would recommend anyone give it a watch because it has a scary and brutal Jason who no-nonsense tears through the cast. I am really surprised people don't talk about it more because I honestly would rank it above at least half of the F13 sequels (maybe a little more). I despise that film.
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Sep 20, 2018 04:49
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Basebf555 posted:Would anybody be interested in a free blu ray copy of Christine? I'd have given it to Fran to use as a prize but I decided against that because it's a weird situation where I took the UHD disc I just bought and put it into an older blu ray steelbook(look nicer on my shelf). So you'd be getting a UHD case with a regular blu ray inside, kinda lame but hey it's free! I have access to mailing supplies at my job and I'm very willing to pay a few bucks to get Christine into someone else's hands, its so drat underrated. Gimme it.
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Sep 20, 2018 18:43
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Spatulater bro! posted:5. Fright Night (1985, Tom Holland) How do you not love Evil Ed? Or mention Roddy McDowall's loving tribute to Peter Cushing?
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Sep 21, 2018 05:16
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Several Goblins posted:I appreciate this joke. This might be the lowest score I've seen anyone give that film.
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Sep 21, 2018 13:49
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Choco1980 posted:That's because they're low on the totem pole for quality of Carpenter, meaning they're just "Really freakin good". Dude made himself a very high bar to clear in his career. It's actually because no one wanted to watch a movie about a car that kills people.
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Sep 23, 2018 19:57
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Don't make me watch Carmina just to complete a challenge.
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Sep 26, 2018 12:51
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Guy Goodbody posted:I'm watching Halloween and I had to pause it to find out the ages of these actresses because I felt like I was going insane. P.J. Soles was 28 loving years old when this movie was filmed. If 30 year olds playing high schoolers bothers you, maybe horror is not the genre for you.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:11
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Honestly if they had actual teen actors in something like Carrie it would be grotesque to watch.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:06
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:I dunno, I really sorta feel like that depends on how it's handled. Yeah, it'd look like that boring remake.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:17
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M_Sinistrari posted:I know from my description, it's probably got more than a few having that feeling. If anyone's posts here come closest to that same 'makes my eye twitch' his analysis rants he'd do, it's SMG's posts. That's why it took me so long to come to the horror threads, I read a SMG post and thought everyone here was like that. That's Cinema Discusso's problem in general.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:53
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Random Stranger posted:I keep trying to come up with a joke example of a fetishized horror movie, but they're all too plausible. Pet Sematary.
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Oct 2, 2018 22:49
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Carnosaur is a once in a lifetime experience.
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Oct 3, 2018 17:02
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The doll's name is Chunky.
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Oct 9, 2018 00:40
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There is a single attractive woman in Night Beast but she's not the one in the sex scene. Instead two very ugly people go at it.
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Oct 9, 2018 03:01
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Dr. Puppykicker posted:It's also just always fun to see the Crypt Keeper doing his schtick. There was no reason not to make a million of these, Tales from the Crypt would have been a really good umbrella under which to produce quality horror/comedy scripts that might have struggled on their own in the marketplace. Too bad. They were planning on making at least 3, but Dennis Miller ruined the second one so thoroughly that it essentially ended the entire tales from the crypt franchise.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:54
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I mean he also refused to read some of his lines or show up on set sometimes, and for no reason at all his salary was like half the movie's budget. Including him in the film basically ruined it on every front.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:20
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Summer of 84 was in production before Stranger Things even had a trailer, although I'm sure once Stranger Things came out they went "Awwww gently caress."
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Oct 11, 2018 06:22
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What kind of crazy person doesn't like Phantasm II.
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Oct 11, 2018 22:56
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Guy Goodbody posted:But then my Lake Magic theory makes sense! Jason did drown, but was preserved at the bottom of Crystal Lake. When his mom died he woke up, and the girl's hallucination of Jason attacking her in the canoe was like a psychic vision of his awakening. Then Jason waded ashore, built the shack, and grew to full size over the five years between Parts 1 and 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXz8vDjOqg
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Oct 12, 2018 03:26
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Almost Blue posted:37. Bordello of Blood - Somewhat of a mess, but an enjoyable one. Dennis Miller makes for a good rear end in a top hat but I could do without his homophobia. Everybody is a bit over-the-top, which is fun to an extent but it gets to be a bit much after a while. It feels like chunks got taken out of the movie because characters will sometimes jump from location to location with little reason why. (At the end a vampire suddenly appears in a church, even though that's the last place they'd want to be.) It's very short though. I think it's only about 75 minutes without the Crypkeeper scenes or credits. Also, Shout Factor's making of is fascinating. It gives a lot of information about how badly the production went, not all of which is evident from the movie. Chunks are missing from the film because Dennis Miller wouldn't show up when they were shooting sometimes, and when he did show up he'd often ad lib unfunny quips instead of saying his lines, which is unfortunate because they were plot critical lines. They could not get him to say them.
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Oct 14, 2018 05:47
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Spatulater bro! posted:25. They used plastic that looks like shiny metal and broke it, then played it in reverse. The simplest effects, but it's super convincing. They had a bunch of Christines, too, so they could cut to the car in various states of disrepair.
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Oct 14, 2018 19:49
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See, people who didn't watch that poo poo as a kid know part 6 is terrible. It's just like TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:21
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Basebf555 posted:Excuse me, I clearly said it was inarguable, and yet you're arguing. Did you even read my post? Don't try to argue with the authority, kid. You'll get hurt. 
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Oct 16, 2018 19:04
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Part 6 is only behind part 8 in terms of not giving a gently caress about the franchise history.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:27
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Class3KillStorm posted:Man, that first false ending had me so pumped for a hypothetical Scream 5 where the killer from the previous film is getting stalked by their own brand new copycat(s). Sort of a slasher vs. slasher scenario, which would be an interesting way to take this series instead of relying on Jamie Kennedy or his millennial stand-ins to come in and explain everything to me. But that all got tanked by the true ending, where the villain cousin is killed off and everyone from the previous movies survives, because no one can just let the power trio of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette go. I hated Scream 4 but I totally disagree with you. I love that Scream is a franchise where the killer always changes but the main characters, especially Sidney Prescott, survive every time and keep kicking. The story's about them, not the assholes who keep trying to stab them. It's incredibly frustrating when the final girl of a movie dies in the opening of the sequel, or even partway through it. Beating the bad guy should count for something, just dying to the same guy(or sometimes his brother or something) a couple years later feels like a crappy ending to the arc of someone who overcame such odds. Honestly, one of Scream's big problems is that they kill off supporting cast members from the first movie in every installment, which does nothing but force them to introduce less interesting characters for Sydney to interact with (and for us to wonder if they might be the killer).
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Oct 17, 2018 01:44
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I should probably start reviewing the movies I've watched instead of leaving it all until the last minute like last year. I'm not going to give any of them number ratings because numbers suck. 1 - Dagon Stuart Gordon's obsession with Lovecraft's work finally resulted in a proper adaptation of one of his most famous stories.... although it's not Dagon, this is an adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth. So close! This movie is really frustratingly shot, especially in the opening when you're getting to know your characters. It looks for all the world like those youtube videos where someone takes a 4:3 image and zooms in so it fills up a 16:9 frame. It's all shot too close up, the top of heads are cut off in several shots, and you generally feel like you have no breathing room to look at anything. Thankfully, once the plot starts going, things become more breathable. While the film has the usual Stuart Gordon weird comedy and creepy sex additions, the plot really is like a straightforward modern adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth, and it delivers on the atmosphere in spades. The entire movie is soaking wet, with seemingly endless rain pouring down. The townfolks are appropriately gross and fishlike, with some pretty great makeup effects and some even better acting on everyone's part to convey the wrongness of their fishy bodies trying to get around on land. The unrated cut, which I watched, has a truly revolting scene where a man is filleted alive(because fish) that has to rank on the top grossest gore scenes of all time. Macarena Gómez is stunning as the woman who haunts the lead's dreams, and while Ezra Godden is no Jeffrey Combs, his physical comedy chops and awkward nerd vibe are still up to the task of playing the downright goofy Paul Marsh. Not Stuart Gordon's best, but still worth seeking out. 2 - Demonic Toys It's a Full Moon film about toys that come alive and kill people, and for the most part it's exactly what you'd imagine when you hear that premise. The film has some interesting gore gags, idiotic one-liners, fun props, and truly gross parts. My favorite scene in the film involves children being given a dead demon baby as a treat on Halloween. There's an extended and confusing plotline involving a demon wanting to possess the lead's unborn child so he can be reborn as the antichrist which is the impetus behind the whole affair, and at times the demonic toys running around killing people feel pretty secondary to that conflict, which is kind of a negative for me. I will say that I was shocked and amazed that a young teen runaway from an abusive home is unceremoniously killed off a few scenes after being introduced. You'd think a character like that would have immunity on account of good taste, but you'd be wrong about Full Moon. The way the demon is finally defeated is stupid as hell, but the entire premise is stupid so whatever. This is definitely one of Full Moon's better productions, for whatever that's worth. 3 - Murder Party Not much of a horror movie until the third act, but definitely a Halloween movie all the way, this dark comedy has a very simple premise and executes on it perfectly. A dweeby parking attendant gets a street invite to a Murder Party, and it turns out he's the murderee for a bunch of pretentious and untalented art students. The entire film feels like the director angrily flipping off art school, and while that could be obnoxious, this is Jeremy Saulnier, so he manages to make that entertaining. The movie's characters are very well fleshed out, and while you don't really like most of them, you do understand where they're coming from. The humor is pretty understated but also very effective, and when things get a bit darker, that's very visceral and satisfying too, although anyone who's seen Green Room wouldn't be surprised by that. This is how you should do horror comedies. Also, I wish Scarewolf was a real film. 4 - The Video Dead This film is about a haunted TV and also about zombies, but the way they connect and the rules that govern them change from scene to scene. This film has completely wretched acting from the leads, who are midwest ugly to the extreme, which is unfortunate since the film has a lot of unnecessary closeups and shirtless scenes. The zombie makeup is about the only thing that's done well in this disaster of a film, but luckily, this is one of those movies where it's so dumb and poorly made that it's fun. There's a lot of great/hilarious kill scenes in the film, even though they do nothing to advance the plot, and the visuals of the spooky haunted TV are neat, even if it makes no sense. The sheer incompetence of our "heroes" is something to behold as well, and you gotta love a movie with a David Bowie zombie. This is a great example of a fun bad horror movie. 5 - I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House So I loving love this movie. I already reviewed it for the May Challenge, so I'll just quote myself here: quote:This is an interesting one. The structure of it is very similar to the glut of incredibly dull by the numbers horror films that have come out in the past 15 years - Someone is in a house, and they go about their normal business, and basically nothing happens for most of the running time, but there are strategically placed jump scares and bits of spooky exposition to keep you from turning it off, and then actual spooky events occur in the last 10-15 minutes. This could've been the script to a paranormal activity movie, if you just tweak a couple things. 6 - The Nail Gun Massacre Oh boy. This is some seriously shoddy film-making. This film obviously used whoever was around as extras, did no ADR even though about half the film was shot next to a busy highway, and has nearly no creativity in its kills. The movie cold opens on a rape, and then turns into a slasher film where the rapists get killed off one by one. Except sometimes the killer just murders random people who did nothing wrong, possibly to pad out the running time. There is a very gross sex scene in this movie, and long, interminable stretches where nothing happens. Despite all this, it was somehow a very fun experience. The sheer stupidity of the film is amusing, and the killer has an endless supply of bad one-liners, all of which are delivered in a goofy vocoded Darth Vader voice that no human being could ever have. The score is also basically nonexistent, so instead of music we often have the killer making random non-diegetic groans and yelps as our background noise. This would probably be a frustrating experience if watched alone, but watched with a group and possibly some alcohol, it's a very fun dumb experience. 7 - Splinter A mid-2000s horror movie that I enjoy? And that uses practical effects? Talk about a rare find! This movie's plot is very stripped down. Couple is on vacation, runs into The Bad People, all 4 of them end up holed up at a gas station while the spookies are outside. Well, 3 and a half of them. It's a very simple structure, but the film makes it work. Strong characters, great visual effects for the low budget, and truly creepy creature design. This movie has some seriously memorable body horror and gross-out kills, and though you rarely get a glimpse of the main creature hunting them (and when you do it's not 100% convincing), its design is so gruesome that you really don't want to see more of it. I highly recommend this hidden gem if you've never seen it before. 8 - Creeptales An 80s horror anthology from 2004. Yes, you read that right. So this movie's wraparound segment is both incredibly obnoxious and very fun, featuring a bunch of dumb monsters having a horror night together and watching their favorite film, Creeptales. Meta. The segments are wildly uneven in quality and production value and were apparently filmed from 1986 to 2003, and it kinda shows. The upside is that no one segment wears out its welcome, as the movie just whizzes by, with some of the shorts being barely 5 minutes long. The chaotic and low-budget nature of this film is very charming, and there are some funny moments and convincingly creepy monster effects to be had, as well as some laughably bad costumes and endearingly stupid props. You could do a lot worse when it comes to horror anthologies, especially ones released in the early 2000s. Creepshow 3 anyone? 9 - Castle Freak Hope you like your sexual violence. Stuart Gordon brings us a film starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton as a married couple who hates each other due to the father drunkenly crashing the car, killing their young son and blinding their daughter. And for some reason the wife just won't get over that. They unexpectedly inherit a castle when Jeffrey Combs' aunt passes away, but unfortunately, unbeknownst to all, the aunt had a freak chained down in the basement. Starving and mad from decades of abuse and imprisonment, the freak breaks loose and soon develops an obsession with the blind daughter, played by Jessica Dollarhide in her last acting role. Incapable of separating his hunger from his lust, the freak begins doing some really hosed up creepy poo poo to women, as the evidence piles up implicating the husband instead. This movie is really gross, but it probably has the strongest characters of any Stuart Gordon film I've ever seen. The Freak is at all times a pitiable and revolting creature. He doesn't understand enough about anything to know what he's doing is even wrong, but what he's doing is abominable. An uncomfortable and appropriately horrifying experience, with great locations, amazing makeup, and stomach turning effects. 10 - Project Metalbeast Ok so gently caress this movie basically. It's 5% werewolf action and 95% people in labs talking about synthetic skin. The titular metalbeast is an interesting design when it's revealed, but it's not the action-figure-y cyborg werewolf that the title suggests. Everyone in this movie is not very good at the whole acting thing, except Barry Bostwick, who does his best to steal every scene he's in as the evil military business villain who they forgot to give a motivation to beyond "bad guy". Only watch if you're some kind of werewolf or Barry Bostwick completionist. 11 - Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings I still don't know why this demon is called Pumpkinhead. So like all movies in the series, this is a waste of potential. There are some good kills, some neat setpieces, some fun creature effects, some truly unlikable victims, and an attempt at pathos, but the sum of the film is weaker than its parts. This movie is about a giant supernatural vengeance demon that looks like a cross between the xenomorph and a hairless dog, but it's structured exactly like a Friday the 13th knockoff. Other than cutting people up with its claws, the demon never does anything that a normal quite strong person couldn't do. In fact at one point it kills someone with a wrestling move. Nobody in the cast wanted to take their top off for this movie, so at one point Linnea Quigley suddenly appears in the movie to supply the required boobage in a totally pointless scene. I really wanted to like this movie more than I did, and Andrew Robinson really gives it his all as the kind-hearted sheriff trying to stop the demon from eating his daughter, but this movie is ultimately too generic for its own good. Even the completely psychotic teen who gets the vengeance curse started dies while trying to save someone else, which kinda makes it not as fun as if he'd died being a huge rear end in a top hat. At least the film had the decency to have a rock song over the credits that is about the film, which every good horror movie should have. 12 - Winterbeast  It is impossible to interpret or explain Winterbeast. 13 - The VVitch Everything's already been said about this movie. Atmospheric, wonderful period piece, oppressive, beautiful, shocking, incredibly well-directed and acted, amazing score, haunting, etc etc. I will say though, I don't love the ending. Yes, obviously Thomasin has nothing else to live for and nowhere else to go, and she's been shown that God has nothing to offer her, and it's freedom from the oppressive lifestyle her father placed us in, I get all that. But I still think she should be a little more pissed off at the forces of darkness for killing everyone and making her family turn on her. It's a very minor gripe, obviously. This movie is almost more of a tragedy than a horror film, and I do love that the most horrendous things that happen aren't even shown, but just knowing they occurred is so upsetting. A truly great film, and I can't wait to see more from Robert Eggers.
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Oct 18, 2018 00:17
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Sodomy Hussein posted:It's called Pumpkinhead because it's basically got a pumpkin head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBkc_Zf0wc0&t=57s quote:Don't be such a tease. I'm being dead serious. I would either ruin the experience or be disbelieved if I said anything about the film.
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Oct 18, 2018 01:55
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Oh I forgot, I submit Nail Gun Massacre for the Once In A Lifetime challenge and Dagon for The World is a Scary Place challenge.
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Oct 18, 2018 04:55
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Jedit posted:Not in this instance. One of the more unnerving things in the original is that Michael is so bloodless. He has more the air of a butterfly collector than a savage. Oh hey that's that movie MAO. 
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Oct 22, 2018 01:14
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How are you all watching Mandy? It left theaters ages ago here.
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Oct 22, 2018 09:01
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Franchescanado posted:Honestly, you know what would make a good cover that perfectly captures the film while spoiling nothing? (spoilered for Please put that behind a link.
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Oct 23, 2018 03:10
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; title is a separate spoiler from actual picture)|
Time for some more catch-up! 14 - Curse of Chunky This movie is just great. Almost a soft reboot to the franchise, this movie strips everything back down to the original Child's Play: there's a house, there's people in the house, and there's an evil doll killing them all off. The cinematography in this film is hands down the best the series has ever had, full of very obvious Giallo inspired editing and blocking, some wonderful lighting, and some very artistic use of blood. The entire film's structure is (nearly) a Giallo as well, as no one is aware there's a killer doll on the loose except the audience for the longest time, and when the protagonist (the extremely talented Fiona Dourif) finally finds out, no one else believes her. Despite beginning completely stripped down, the film does slowly reveal its ties to the franchise, from using footage from the original film in a flashback to bringing up many of Chunky's past victims, even featuring some awesome bit parts and cameos. The movie isn't quite perfect, there's a little bit of very bad CG here and there, and the ending is a bit convoluted, but it's definitely a very refreshing entry in a franchise that most people had written off by 2013. Definitely one of the better killer doll films out there. Watch out for Chunky! 15 - Puppet Master Oh my god. Talk about burying the lede. This movie opens on the iconic killer puppets being created, and then we barely see them again for an entire hour. Almost the entire central cast is horrible and soporific, their characters are unlikeable and not developed enough, and the plot hides itself behind a last minute twist that leaves the viewer feeling like nothing at all is happening for any reason whatsoever for most of the running time. Demonic Toys is so creative, action-packed and interesting compared to this slog. A very bad start to the little horror franchise that could. 16 - Fermat's Room A very fun and simple Spanish whodunnit escape the room situation. Various mathematicians find out the gathering they've been invited to is a death trap, and the room shrinks on them if they don't answer riddles in time. This movie has several very creative shots and flowing camera movement, appropriately frenetic acting, and great, believable characters. Due to the very simple premise, it's not quite as striking as a Cube or a Saw film, which are packed with creative traps and kills, but it's still interesting to see the cast try and figure out how to survive and escape the singular trap they're in. Also, cops ruin everything. This movie is very briskly paced and relatively tame, I recommend it to basically anyone, except people who hate subtitles. 17 - High School Ghostbusters aka High School Ghostbusters Uh, ok. So the bones of a much more interesting film are here. A shinto priestess in training, an atheltic girl with a black belt in karate, and a tech nerd into paranormal research form a high school occult club. After solving a few problems at the urging of their comic relief teacher, they become mildly famous ghost hunters, until a much more serious supernatural threat that they inadvertently released descends upon their school and threatens the entire student body. Coupled with goofy outfits, charmingly stupid low budget effects, and a lighthearted tone, this sounds like a great time, right? Well, it's not. The low budget manifests itself in incredibly bad editing and cinematography most of the time, as various scenes are shot with one or at best two flat camera angles, many of which are too far away or too low in the frame or just generally not good. Each scene goes on much longer than it needs to to make its point, not even for any particularly good reason, but mostly because people inexplicably stand around a long time between their lines or because the cuts don't happen soon enough to progress the scene. While the effects in this movie are amusing, the ghost shenanigans are really poorly distributed. There's one very short adventure early on, then a very rapid montage that consists only of newspaper headlines, then the rest of the film is dealing with the main threat for what feels like way too long. Even though I don't speak Japanese, I can tell that most of the acting in this is very bad, especially from the leads, who were mildly famous swimsuit models with little acting experience. The score's poorly implemented too, starting and stopping awkwardly and often not matching the tone of what's going on at all. And of course, there's the fact that this movie is just full of gratuitous, awkward, creepy sex and nudity. There's not as much as you might expect, but what is there is so flatly shot and lingered on that it really feels gross to watch. The entire main threat (as well as the opening stinger) comes from people and ghosts who just want to molest high school girls, so even when nothing creepy's happening there's this gross vibe in the background. Girls get possessed and turn into mega-sluts that have graphic sex, ghosts appear and fondle girls, weird penis slugs crawl up people's skirts, and a gigantic slimy monster pokes at unconscious girls' panties and breasts while cocooning them in Cronenberg bits. Add that to the camera man just randomly aiming at people's skirts during action scenes, and this entire movie feels incredibly skeevy, and no perfectly timed joke, hilarious puppet or fun costume can get past that. I get that they were going for fun and sexy, but instead they ended up with gross and rapey. 18 - Ghostwatch  Fran Challenge: Love Something You HateI despise found footage horror. I truly do. I feel like that, far from being more "realistic" than a traditional film, the found footage format is constantly drawing attention to the artificiality of the experience, much in the same way that a novel that reads "By the way this is real and not fiction" every few paragraphs would. A good film creates an atmosphere, a tone, a world that draws you in and allows you to take in the experience and feel emotionally connected to it. The handheld camera/security footage/abrupt cut style of found footage lacks any real cinematography that could pull you into the experience, the acting is rarely naturalistic enough to pass as "real conversations", the lack of score means an ambience can't be created, and the shaky cam and grainy video mean I can't see the things I'm meant to be frightened of. I think that with very few exception, making your film found footage is an excuse to lower the budget and have bad acting and not much of a script. It turns out there isn't that much of a found footage element to Ghostwatch, but lucky for me, it was still an artificial, unsatisfying experience. I'm going to spoil the poo poo out of both it and another film now, so don't read ahead if you've never watched Ghostwatch or the WNUF Halloween Special. The WNUF Halloween Special is one of my favorite films ever. It's a flawless period piece that completely pulls you into the world of 1987 small town America, and manages to use its fake commercials to both foreshadow the plot and construct the period and setting. Through the dumb political ads, interviews with policemen about Halloween safety, arcade commercials, etc. you come to learn about the character of the small town, the personalities of the news casters and more, and it all prepares you perfectly for the admittedly simple horror story that follows. Though some accuse it of leaning a bit too hard into the satirical angle and playing up the low budget and phony attitude of the news crew, I think it adds more personality and charm to the entire affair. I felt like I was truly transported to the local broadcasting scene I remembered from the 80s. By contrast, Ghostwatch doesn't have any actors playing perfectly corny and hypocritical news anchors. Instead, most of the central cast are actual BBC news staff. While I'm sure this lent much credence to the special when it actually aired, the simple fact is none of these people can act. Whenever they switch from "presenter mode" to "real person mode", it's like being doused with cold water. They're incredibly unconvincing at all times and it's incredibly difficult to suspend your disbelief even for a moment. The actual actors, with the exception of Gilian Bevan as Dr Lin Pascoe, aren't much better. They all aim for "real normal british civilian" but they instead end up feeling like people from a toothpaste commercial or bad soap opera. The mother's performance is especially horrible, as she seems to have no emotion or personality beyond mild concern. Lots of time is spent just awkwardly walking from room to room in the small two-floor house that's supposedly haunted, or running up and down the street to go talk to eyewitnesses of other paranormal events, which is both uninteresting to watch and completely shatters the illusion that you're watching a real professional broadcast. Like you didn't have anything to cut to while these buffoons jog around? You couldn't cut to them after they've ran all the way down the street? The crew is visible in almost every shot, which is once again one of those "make it look realer by making it way faker" tricks that annoys me so much. The structure of the special is basically every stupid found footage horror movie. People claim there's a spook-a-doodle, the people filming don't see a spook-a-doodle, then the spook-a-doodle manifests itself more and more and then the camera explodes or falls down and it abruptly ends. Unlike most of those films, this special does do some clever things, most of them relating to audience participation. The reason the ghost gets stronger is because broadcasting its presence and having people call in created a nation-wide seance that powered it up. There's many panicked phone calls from "listeners" throughout the program about paranormal events reaching their own house. Much is made of a person some viewers can see in the footage and others can't, and then it shows up in the actual broadcast without comment from anyone, presumably leading the viewer to think now THEY can see it. There's a few neat effects, most to do with wind, but also some fairly convincing cuts appearing on one of the girls. But overall the entire affair is poorly paced, corny, unconvincing, meandering, stupid, and very poorly shot. Very little happens and when things do happen, you're left wondering why you should care. I suppose part of it is regional differences. While I'm not American, my local news in the 80s and early 90s looked very much like what I saw on WNUF. I remember commercials for dumb local tv shows, toys, restaurants that were all exactly as stupid as the fake ads they filmed for that. But I've never really watched the BBC. Maybe the sets, incredibly bored-looking presenters, the stupid phone room and the terrible camera work are exactly how THEY were in 1992. Maybe if I'd been exposed to BBC programming as child this would bring back a rush of nostalgia. Maybe if I'd seen it live I would've believed it. But I didn't, and I don't. This was just a bad fake news broadcast with fake ghosts. I can only respect it as a prank they pulled on the nation, not as a viewing experience. What a waste of a TV license. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Oct 23, 2018 |
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Oct 23, 2018 07:15
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Justin Godscock posted:
This movie was in production before Stranger Things came out. 
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Oct 23, 2018 22:58
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19 - Children of the Corn Fran Challenge: Birth of Horror Oh boy, it's the first entry in the dullest horror franchise ever! This movie is like a bingo card of bad Stephen King cliches. The script is Mad at religion, fearful of rural communities, there's evil kids and teenagers, really weird ideas about what makes a good female love interest, there's a psychic girl, and of course, corn. If the protagonist was an alcoholic writer and there was some creepy sex stuff involving underage girls, it would be the Stephen Kingest film ever made. This movie preys on the fear that middle America has always had of their children turning on them, which is not a fear I've ever particularly sympathized with. There's two big problems with the film: one, it's incredibly slow and, aside from some bad weather early on, there's no indication of anything supernatural going on until the last 15 minutes, and most of what we see is just the worst drawn-in effects I've seen since the original star trek. Two, it doesn't deliver on its premise of evil murderous children. Despite opening with a completely brutal massacre of adults by some teens, the film really only has two evil children, and the rest of them are just "misguided". They get talked out of being in the weird murder cult they're in that made them kill their own parents in about 2 minutes. The two lead evil kids turn on each other because every evil cult needs a power struggle subplot, so the hero doesn't really kill or even defeat either of them. The movie even wusses out of its critique of religion by having a bible passage be the key to defeating the supernatural entity in the corn fields that led the children astray in the first place. This film needed to be about truly evil kids with weirdo supernatural powers that the hero has to actually kick, punch and kill, not just lightly shove and scold, then team up with. There's not even really any violence outside of the opening scene, and the blood just kind of appears on people when they get cut instead of there being any realistic slashes. The movie lacks the bite it needs to be horror and instead is just like, a movie with a bunch of kids running around. There's nothing interesting in this snoozefest, and I know for a fact the series just gets worse from here.
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Oct 24, 2018 04:06
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20 - Night of the Demons 2 This movie is very unbalanced. The first half or so of the film is meant to establish our characters, teenagers from a catholic reform school. But all it really establishes for the majority of the cast is that they really want to gently caress and that the nuns don't want them to gently caress, which is information I could've guessed from them being teenagers in a catholic school. After inexplicably wanting to go a really gross deserted mansion for the lamest party of all time, the teens unwittingly unleash Angela, who is apparently now the main demon, and all hell breaks loose at the school dance. There are some amazing visuals in this movie, from a zombie dunking his own head in a basket to a pair of tits snapping a guy's neck, and the gore effects are top notch. The movie's way rapier than it needs to be but it could honestly be a thousand times worse. The practical effects are great, even if you can sense the budget at times, and what little CGI there is is bad enough to at least be funny. My main gripe, other than the first half being kind of dull, is that at one point one of the possessed girls gets cured of her possession with holy water, but for some reason the holy water just melts the others. Was it because they were undead? Well, no, at least one of them wasn't. Was it because they were more possessed? Or maybe it was because those characters were big jerks and the writers didn't really care about establishing rules? A worthy sequel to the original, and a fun party movie, provided your friends can handle some demonic rape in their fun. 21 - Tales from the Hood 2 Fran Challenge: Fear and NowOk, two things: for a sequel made 20 years after the fact, this is surprisingly good. But the people saying it's as good as the original are dreaming. The original Tales from the Hood has some of the most memorable visuals I've ever seen in a horror film and a lot of very poignant moments. This sequel, while very entertaining and touching on similar social themes as the original, just isn't as professional a production on any level. There's some bad CG gore, some mixed messages, and some kinda bad acting. Everyone in the first one, as unsubtle as some of them were, felt like a real person, but other than the characters in The Sacrifice (the standout tale), every in this feels like a cartoon character. Sometimes it feels like the actors were going for complete farce when the tone was supposed to be black comedy at best, and I blame that on the direction. I feel like most of the stories needed a second pass at the script or a more sure handed director. Lots of flat angles, obvious bad CG, TV lighting, things like that, and unlike the original film, the punishment the characters take isn't always proportional to the crime, which kinda takes away from the social commentary. To elaborate on the mixed messages: The first tale features 3 teenagers who try to rob a museum of "negrosity" (racist memorabilia, presented to remind visitors of America's racist history and commodification of black people as objects.) and get killed by a haunted gollywog doll. That's, y'know, fine, except for how the girl who wanted to steal the golliwog to add it to her collection ends up having sex with it and then exploding with golliwog babies out of her sliced guts like a can of novelty snakes. I have no idea what that ending was going for but it feels like something I would see in a loving /pol/ comic. And then there's the third story, The Sacrifice, where a black man helping a republican politician suppress the black vote is faced by the ghost of Emmett Till, who tells him that doing such things makes his death and the death of all those who fought for civil rights meaningless. Emmett threatens to undo his own death, essentially erasing the civil rights movement, creating a nightmare present where the man's wife accuses him of raping her and a Klan Patrol try to haul him away to be beaten to death for various crimes like trying to own property. The man has an epiphany, comes to appreciate the sacrifices of those who came before him... but then still has to take Emmett's beating for him and die, leaving his unborn child without a father. Oh... cool? So yeah the movie's either accidentally or on purpose really weird about interracial unions. Then there's dumb jokes like the black teenage girl trying to do BDSM on an authentic whipping post with her white boyfriend. Still, despite these problems, it's nice to see a horror movie that even tries to be socially conscious, that very directly tells Trump to gently caress off, and features Keith David hamming it the gently caress up as Mr. Simms. Don't go in expecting something on the level of the original, but you could do a lot worse. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 13:12
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I can't sleep so I might as well review some more movies. 22 - Scarab Robert Gintyyyy! The man with the personality of Coke Zero. Despite having a lumpy face, he plays some kind of playboy journalist in this film. In fact he's such a playboy that it actively keeps him from properly reporting on or investigating anything. This movie is very strange, shot in spain with a lot of actual spanish dialogue left in without any subtitles, and with brief scenes where people speak german and french as well. The plot is incredibly hard to follow, but involves Rip Torn as a former nazi cultist trying to do... something, which causes prominent politicians around the world to commit suicide. Ginty stumbles onto this plot while trying to get laid, and spends the rest of the movie bumbling around while insane things he doesn't understand happen around him, often in languages he doesn't speak. This movie manages to be mind blowing and dull at the same time, which is quite the achievement. It also manages to look super cheap and wildly expensive from scene to scene. Weird monsters, gore, boobs, incomprehensible non-linear editing, lots of shots of 1980s spain, bad comedy, shocking special effects, drugs, arrows being psychically returned to sender... this movie has it all, except anything good. Watch this one with a crowd, and maybe a couple drinks in you, or skip it. Not a film to be engaged with seriously. 23 - Street Trash So I have very little patience for things that are offensive on purpose, most of the time. I find it to be a very shallow form of humor that makes people think they're very clever because they're doing the thing people told them not to do. Street Trash is absolutely that kind of film. But for some reason, it's so offensive that not only does it stop actually being offensive at one point, it also stops being annoying. Maybe it's the tone of the film. While it absolutely does not take itself seriously at all, it's also not over the top winking at you. It knows that you know it's stupid, and it doesn't need to nudge you to remind you. This movie's famous for its incredibly creative and disgusting melting scenes, and those are absolutely worth seeking out even if you have no interest in a purposefully shocking film full of classism, homophobia, racism, misogyny, rape, sadistic violence, necrophilia, pee, poo, vomit, misanthropy etc. But what's funny is how little the tainted alcohol that's making all the hobos melt has to do with the plot. Though the narrative constantly shifts points of view, the film's really about a self styled king of the hobos becoming progressively more unhinged and violent and coming into conflict with the less dislikeable characters in the film (I hesitate to call any of them the heroes), until he faces off with the surviving ones in a battle to the death. The fact that people are melting is really an afterthought to all that. And that's kind of great. This movie has a lot of "You have to see it to believe it" moments, genuinely funny jokes, astonishing gore, weird fighting, great set design, and it's maybe the most authentically grimy portrayal of 1980s NYC ever put to film. I dunno. I feel like if you have a tolerance for obnoxious edginess, it has to be seen at least once, especially now that it's on blu-ray. For all its problems, this film has great visuals. But I can't blame anyone who turns it off after the 12th racial slur. 24 - Gerald's Game Ok so I read the book this is based on in middle school and it kinda messed me up, I wasn't ready for the hosed up sexual content in it, and it really soured me on Stephen King for a long time. While it's not even a book I can say I really liked, I cannot believe how terrible a job Mike Flanagan did adapting it. All his films have this air of artificiality that I hate. It kind of reminds me of Zack Snyder's visual style. When you watch Sucker Punch or 300, at no point do you feel like you're looking at real human beings, everyone's a heightened character with extra detailed contours and perfectly placed shadows. Flanagan's movies have that same feeling to an extent, but just... blander. It's like 300 meets the sears catalogue. Carla Gugino doesn't look like a housewife at the start of this film, she looks like a Hollywood actress on a movie poster. Her hair is perfectly styled, her makeup is flawless, the lighting hits her just so. And once she's been in dire straits for a long time, instead of looking haggard and dehydrated, suddenly someone's cleaned up her makeup and straightened out her hair. There's an absolutely obnoxious eclipse motif in this film that I'm sure Flanagan thought was very meaningful and haunting, but it completely undermines the emotional impact of the scenes it's used in, as the red lighting and fake looking CG eclipse make everything feel like a sub-par music video. It's downright laughable. But this inability to be subtle and naturalistic doesn't just extend to the visuals. The characters in the book were very real and grounded, and in this film they're completely cartoonish. Carla Gugino isn't even the lead of the film, since her dead husband appears as a hallucination almost immediately after dying, chewing the scenery and running around and mugging for the camera incessantly, soon to be joined by another Carla Gugino that yells at the one tied to the bed and the husband. The thing that really stuck with me for over 15 years after reading Gerald's Game was the slow, agonizing hopelessness of Jessie's situation. She's tied to the bed for nearly a week, and through her inner monologue you feel the hopelessness creep in, the fear, the thirst, the loneliness, and she very slowly starts to come unglued and be assaulted with unwelcome memories of the past and hallucinations. But there's no time for that in this dumbass film. She starts hallucinating a few hours after Gerald dies (although the pacing of the film makes it feel like a few minutes after). The dog comes in and starts chowing down on Gerald's corpse almost immediately as well, and the crypt crawler shows up on the very first night. But beyond just compressing the actual timeline (which is already annoying, because being tied to a bed for 36 hours is not really as spooky as being tied to a bed for so long you literally have no idea how long it's been), the movie is too frenetically paced for the kind of story it's trying to tell. It's almost like Flanagan is afraid the audience will get bored if he slows down for even a minute. I'm not asking for a 3 hour film here, but it would've been so easy to just have one or two moments where things are still and quiet and we hear Jessie's ragged breathing, to give a real sense of just how lonely and endless her situation feels. Instead Flanagan feels that it's more important that we see spooky CG faces and imaginary dead people monologuing. The gross sex stuff in the book is still in this film, which I guess is inevitable since it's so central to the plot, but it's portrayed in a much clumsier way than the original story, which both makes it feel grosser and more stupid. So congrats on that. This is a bad adaptation of a bad book. 25 - Minutes Past Midnight So this is an anthology film, but it doesn't seem to be the kind where a single director had like a vision and guided the rest of the production. Each short is entirely different stylistically, and they greatly vary in quality and even length. Some of the shorts are so short they seem like they could be from an ABC's of death, some use fully practical effects, other use terrible looking CGI, some have great acting, others not so much... It's the definition of a mixed bag. Of note are the interminable short Roid Rage(which should be Rhoid rage but I guess they can't spell), about a man who thinks he has horrible hemorrhoids but it turns out he actually has a giant worm up his rear end that eats people, which is the only thing that relieves his rear end pain. This short feels like a Troma fan film, has absolutely abominable special effects, including what seems like plug-in effects of blood hitting the camera, and everyone in it is either the worst actor I've ever seen or acting poorly on purpose, and I can't decide which is worse. It seems like it's going to end about 5 times and then it just keeps going. Truly obnoxious. But on the flipside, there's a completely straight faced spooky victorian horror story which is done entirely with puppets. I don't mean Muppets or stop motion dolls here, I mean classic marionette-looking rod puppets, with facial expressions that only change when there's a camera cut. And while that sounds like it would be really easy to gently caress up, it does a marvelous job of it and has some truly frightening and creepy imagery. There's also a hilarious short about a man in his trailer fighting a chupacabra, and a brief but delightful one about a children's programming mascot invading a home.  This is probably the most uneven anthology I've ever seen (and I've watched a lot) but it's absolutely worth powering through the bad ones to watch the good ones. Don't let the mediocre opening segments fool you, this is a genuine rollercoaster.
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Oct 28, 2018 10:33
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26 - Deadly Friend Fran Challenge: Dead and Buried This movie has a serious tone problem. Most of the film is acted and directed like a Weird Science or ET type story, where some well meaning teens take a science experiment too far and get into some wacky trouble! And if it wasn't for the opening stinger that lets the audience know the robot is secretly psychotic, you'd have no way of knowing it's not that kind of film, up until this happens:  Why is that in the same movie as a cute little robot that goes "Beep beep vrooo diddledoop" in a gremlin/slimer voice? Your guess is as good as mine. The entire film can't decide if it's a lighthearted family film, a serious sci fi tragedy, or a schlocky horror movie, and it doesn't really work as any of those things in the end. You can't take the tragedy of an undead cyborg girl who can't regain her humanity seriously when she goes "Beep beep boop" and violently explodes heads with a basketball, and you can't enjoy the film as a violent gore fest when so much time is spent on the drama and there's such a low kill count. Kristy Swanson does a very good job as both the charming abused girl next door and the eerily unnatural cyborg girl, giving long haunting stares as the latter, but her performance is seriously undercut by the acting of everyone around her, who seem to believe they're in a lifetime movie about not doing drugs or something. I don't know who to recommend this to, it's just so strange. It almost feels like Wes Craven changed his mind about what kind of movie he was making halfway through production. Also possibly the weirdest credits song I've ever heard in my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9dwVDUHkNQ
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Oct 28, 2018 23:15
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Friends Are Evil posted:The studio actually forced him to do reshoots to change it into a horror film after bad test screenings. That explains a lot, but not why the robot sounds like that.
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Oct 28, 2018 23:22
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