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2019 HORROR MOVIE THREAD


Dolfan in NYC

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31 DAYS OF HORROR UPDATE #3

Movie #6 THE EVIL DEAD

This is apart of my wife's education on horror films. We're probably going to go through all three movies. I think my favorite weird effect they did was having fog emerging from a pile of dead leaves. It's so SIMPLE, but it looks so cool. Ash getting owned by book shelves will always crack me up. It's almost like there was one book shelf, and he broke it, and the deadites rebuilt it just to throw it on top of him again. My wife loved this and is eager to see more.

 

Movie #7 SIGNS

This one was for the family. My son is becoming a big M. Night Shyamalan fan. He loved Split and Glass, and we've gone back and watched Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, and he's like this dude is amazing, Dad. I'm probably going to avoid breaking his heart with some of the really bad ones- though I wonder if he'll enjoy something like The Village because the hype isn't there for him.

Signs is a mixed bag, that I like. Shyamalan, who I like, is a very sentimental and precious film maker. Sometimes this serves him and sometimes he falls into these holes where the content doesn't match the execution. It's like he shoots whole scenes like verbal "Spielberg Faces". Sometimes I'm in the mood for that and sometimes I'm not. However Signs feels like a hopeful response to 9/11. The movie was supposed to start shooting on 9/12/2001. So the event had literally just happened, and I wonder how much that shaped the script and tone as they moved on. The idea of people glued to the TV, obsessing over their own possible destruction felt very much like the weeks/months following that particular tragedy.

Acting is mostly great, and Joaquin/Mel are actually really good together. And the restraint of showing the aliens really benefits the movie, considering CG wasn't working the way they needed, and it's allowed the effects to age pretty well.

SHYAMALAN CINEMATIC UNIVERSE CONSPIRACY THEORY: Is David Dunn from Unbreakable really part alien? They have super strength and share the same weakness. 

 

Movie #8 EVENT HORIZON

You know this movie is fucking great until the last 15 or so minutes when it fucks itself up in a mad dash to get to the end. The set design is incredible, and if you grew up on the internet in the 90's you'll get a kick out of that techno industrial style. The fucking concept is pretty incredible too, with wormhole travel resulting in punching through the space that separates the material plane from hell. Sam Neil and Larry Fishburne hold it down, but Jason Isaacs(Malfoy's dad from Harry Potter) kind of steals the scene everytime he shows up. This movie and The Mist are my one and two biggest disappointments in horror. Both could have been something special until they shit the landing.

MOVIE #9 THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT

The family in this is pretty much garbage. You don't buy they're a family - instead they all look like actors in between movies or TV gigs. They just don't seem real or invested in anything. I didn't want to root for the badguys, but I kinda did at first just to force these people to give a shit about each other. There's a running gag with music that feels kinda like a studio note - because it works once in one scene and is then shoehorned in several others poorly. There are two good scenes in this movie that I feel make this a solid recommendation. The best one takes place at a pool, and it's fucking fantastic. Truly.   The other is pretty much the climax of the movie, which I thought looked cool as fuck. Other than that you get some decent Carpenter style lighting, fog, and synth score. And the use of shadows is pretty fucking brilliant in places. Check it out, for sure.

 

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Yet another reason I hate that movie. Long, bloodless, and boring.

EDIT: Scarecrows (1988) is on Comet right now. They use the same shot of this one scarecrow whenever they show the faces of all the scarecrows just hanging out, waiting to kill someone, and it creeps me the fuck out. 

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When you watch it you can tell there's someone breathing there. REALLY creepy.

Edited by Curt McGirt
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The Banana Splits Movie was really stupid but really gory. I guess it wouldn't be bad for a watch if you're nice and toasted. No children get killed which is the one thing that might've given it some real edge*; for hardened sickos like myself it's pretty standard stuff. Not a patch on Meet the Feebles by far.

* Not saying I actually wanted to SEE that. Just saying, I thought it was going to be really fucked up from the preview and it ended up standard fare. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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Oh God lord 1989 was rough. All 3 of the major slasher franchises released what ended up being the lowest grossing entry up to that point. Halloween 5 actually remains the lowest grosser of any of the three series entries.

F13 8 has the lowest RT score in the franchise. ANoES 5 and Halloween 5 both the lowest up to that point, third lowest overall for their respective franchises.

It's just brutal.

But i survived. Now I've got coming up... 

Aw fuck

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On 10/11/2019 at 11:46 AM, Curt McGirt said:

Yet another reason I hate that movie. Long, bloodless, and boring.

EDIT: Scarecrows (1988) is on Comet right now. They use the same shot of this one scarecrow whenever they show the faces of all the scarecrows just hanging out, waiting to kill someone, and it creeps me the fuck out. 

 

When you watch it you can tell there's someone breathing there. REALLY creepy.

I listened to the Director's Commentary on the Scream Factory Blu-Ray and the director is lying his ass off because he swears up and down it was just a scarecrow with no actor inside of it. He had to be joking though.  

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8 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Halloween 5 had some good gore though, and Nightmare 5 is actually one of my favorites of the series. 

...but yeah what Jae said

It's been a long time since I watched them, but my memory is preferring FD:tFN to 5. Which is faint praise, indeed.
 

Of course, after that is JgtH, which... At least New Nightmare is there to briefly alleviate the pain.

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See, I'm the weirdo who doesn't like funny Freddy so I never cared for 3 or 4 much. 5 has a darker, more Gothic undertone to it that I like. Freddy's Dead is just kinda there. 

Incidentally I begged my neighbor to buy the Freddy's Dead movie magazine at a grocery store we went to with his daughter one night and got in trouble from my parents who had promised they'd buy it for me later. Despite that memory the movie isn't special to me. 

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I much prefer scary Freddy, but I think part 5 he's nothing but overlit with bad jokes and ridiculous kills. 3 is really good, but it started the weakening of Freddy. 4 is am obvious stepdown, but there's still something there. 5 is just worthless.

If I remember right, FD just goes ahead and becomes a Looney Toons movie, and at least embraces that Freddy isn't scary anymore.

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Some of my preference is a very specific age thing.  Nightmare was just a little too late, and I a little too old when it showed up, for it to have the same mystical fascination that Halloween and Friday had.  I would just not have those memories of being terrified by it (as I was by Halloween's first network t.v. showing and by Halloween 2's commercial) or of literally fleeing the room to escape the sound of it's trailers when they snuck up on me during SNL (like F13 parts 2-4 did to me).

If I was maybe two or three years younger, I might not have any memories of Halloween in particular and have been highly traumatized by Freddy and who know what I would think of Jason if all my first memories of that series were of parts 6 or 7 or 8. It amazes me when I hear people who love the Friday movies and will then say "Yeah part 8 was the first one I saw and I loved it!"  I cannot fathom that. It is unfathomable.

I still think that the Friday series is the most consistently amazing in capturing a frightening mood and Halloween is by far the best individual film of them all...but I can't guarantee that those opinions aren't just from that added personal impact.

Edited by piranesi
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Halloween is a virtually perfect film. But by '88 when they brought it back, they were basically doing as much a knock off of Friday as it was a sequel to Halloween. Which is fine by me.

The Nightmare movies had so much more budget, so much more ambition. Which was great until it was terrible.

I'm young enough I didn't come to any of them until into the 90's (the fact that cable didn't run down our road until 94 plays a role there as well) 

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My main exposure to these movies was video boxes before seeing them on TV. When I was in kindergarden I would run around tormenting girls pretending to be "Freddy Cougar" all because I saw the cover of part 2 at the gas station or possibly saw a commercial on TV, who knows. 

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