31 Days of Horror (2020) - The October Movie Marathon

[Fancy Clown]

Did a desert road horror-thriller double feature the other day:


31 Days of Horror #14: Roadgames (1981)

Director Richard Franklin would go on to do a surprisingly sturdy job tackling the the unenviable position of directing a sequel to Psycho in 1983, and watching this it's easy to see why he got the job. Though Roadgames is more suspense than terror, and more intrigue than suspense, this road-bound tribute to Rear Window set in the beautiful Australian outback has just enough of all three to make for a compelling watch (at least until the goofy climax, which is defined mostly by inaction
as the opposing vehicles are gridlocked for what seems like an eternity).

While the amateur serial killer hunt is fun enough on its own, the film is really indebted to its lead performance by perennial weirdo Stacy Keach, who plays a still weird but quite charming truck driver (though, in the character's own, just because he drives a truck doesn't make him a truck driver) who ambles around the backroads of Australia with his pet Dingo in tow and quotes poetry. Roadgames never gets as suspenseful or terrifying as I'd like, but this was a very enjoyable watch and ends on a nicely macabre shocker that I almost didn't think the film would pay off.


31 Days of Horror #15: The Hitcher (1986)

The Hitcher, especially in its early goings, carves a wonderfully desolate landscape out of its dusty southwestern highways and the seemingly abandoned buildings that dot it. The purgatorial spirit to the film, in which a hapless young man is dogged by a relentless hitchhiker whom he has the misfortune of picking up, adds to the unnerving sensation that the film is dealing with its slasher-like premise in apocalyptic terms. Rutger Hauer's sneering portrayal of a nigh indestructible psychopath with a deathwish is more akin to an angel of death than a mere flesh and blood man. It's never quite clear or believable why he latched onto an awkward twenty-something as the alpha to his omega, but regardless Hauer is magnetic in the role, and so is the movie whenever he's around.

That makes it all the more disappointing when Hauer disappears from the film for its middle stretch, and the movie becomes a fairly conventional wrong-man thriller (albeit with very capably directed action beats and lovely cinematography courtesy of John Seale). Gone is the feeling of an abandoned wasteland that has left one man to be tested by death itself, and instead a series of predictably enjoyable beats take their place. The movie eventually gets back to the main conflict at hand, but by that point the spell has been a bit broken by all the noise along the way.

 

[More_Badass]

31 Days of Horror 2020: #16/31
Eyes of Fire (1983) - ★★★½

A folk horror-western where Old World witchcraft and colonial arrogance battle against Native American mysticism and the antediluvian devils that haunt the untamed forest. Eyes of Fire is a dark-fantasy story of frontier survival with ethereal vibes and ambitious scope. Its fascinating vision constantly pushes against the seams of its budget. Editing tricks and negative frames are often the trippy yet cheap attempts at visualizing the dark magic of the forest; the mediocre acting, along with over-used narration, consistently clashes with a bizarre folkloric atmosphere rich in mottling soil and misty woods.

But despite those weaknesses, Eyes of Fire is incredibly unique. I wonder if Robert Eggers is a fan, since this has numerous elements that echo The Witch. Pioneers outcast into the horrifying wilderness. An encroaching occult that they don't understand yet believe they can conquer. A looming clutching forest that mocks their attempts to colonize, their trust in Christian protection. And simultaneously Eyes of Fire is very much its own beast: a damned valley even the pursuing Shawnee know not to enter, devil-witch of the woods, fairy magic wards, power in the roots and dirt, tree-bound souls. Unlike any other pagan folk horror I've seen, an unsung gem of the horror-western canon.

 

[Ridley327]

A little late on the review here, but this one definitely hit me hard and needed the extra time to decompress.

Week Three (Oct 11-17): Things That Go "Hump" in the Night: Sex and Horror, Soft and Hard (Oct 12)

At long last, a Lars von Trier feature film in the marathon!

How far does the film push the line?: Boy, this wastes little time in that regard. Though relegated to just one shot, the hardcore insert here certainly is prominent in the film's opening sequence, as it bumps and grinds in all its slow-motion driven explicitness. It'd be one thing to crow about how showy it is, but considering the opening sequence as a whole, it doesn't seem anymore audacious than the rest of it. Most of the sex otherwise is considerably less explicit, though it is going to be really, really, really hard to imagine looking at human genitalia again without thinking immediately to what happens to them in this picture. Wowzers.

Could this film have worked without the sex?: This would honestly be hard to imagine without its fleeting moments of explicitness at all. Even with the gap between being as long as it is, the show of sex organs here is considerably important to the themes of the story, as sex dominates much of the underlying tension in the film until it reaches its violent apex. A striking use of such imagery, to be certain.

Does the film play at all?: It's easy to get swept up in the hype of Lars von Trier as a provocateur, as he seems to rather enjoy the conflict it inspires. Like a European art house version of Sam Peckinpah, his movies almost seem incidental to how he chooses to carry himself in public when debuting them, causing controversy even when they may not contain particularly graphic material otherwise. Had he not been such a skilled filmmaker that has attracted major Hollywood talent since his mainstream breakthrough, err, Breaking the Waves, one might even get the impression that he makes movies just to hold contentious press tours or to get the ear of an interviewer to say something truly outrageous. Contentious a filmmaker he is, on and off the set and certainly not without his own controversies to answer for, he has since become a staple of the art house scene that fans admire and detractors love to hate, with von Trier enjoying both rather equally. Announcing his intentions to make a horror film, based largely on his own experiences with depression, was certainly a reason for one to be intrigued, even if one had the opinion that it might have been an excuse to delve into some deeply taboo subject matter designed to provoke and incite. We did get that here, but in spite of the prologue's hardcore insert and the late steering into genital violence, the provocation and incitement is largely and quite thankfully intellectual and emotional in nature.

He is an acclaimed therapist, and She was a researcher in the midst of a thesis on the concept of "gynocide," a sort of reworking of the concept of femicide to perhaps emphasize the sex of the matter further, and both have had to suffer the tremendous loss of their son after a bout of passionate love making. He is trying to be rational about the grief, to the point of coldness, though his intentions do seem on the surface to support She as her grief begins to shut her down physically, suggesting a kind of depression that's far deeper and long in the works than their recent loss would suggest. These early scenes are genuinely fascinating, as the interplay between He and She (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg is bravura performances, equally) generate an incredible amount of tension before anything particularly horrific rears its head in the film. He wants to help, but is it because He wants her to get better, or is She his latest and greatest project in the world of therapy, to the point where He convinces her to discontinue her current psychiatric treatment that involves drugs? What has prompted such a dramatic change in She's demeanor that inspires such intense physical reactions, and does She even want to get better? Though some setup is laid down in these scenes for turns in the story later on, regardless of what their revelations might actually be, the sheer psychological gridlock we witness is compelling enough without the veer into exposure therapy, which is what takes us out into the woods for the rest of the film.

Rarely have the woods felt so uneasy as they do in this film. Despite being largely shot during the murky daytime hours, with rain always seeming imminent yet never arriving when one expects it to, von Trier's eye catches the way branches and trees sway in the wind, often violently, while also capturing stretches of fields that seems too wild and advance further down the makeshift trail to look too barren and too exposed for comfort. The great Anthony Dod Mantle makes beautiful use of digital photography here, capturing those tricky moments of the day in beautiful clarity without feeling the need to overcompensate the raw digital nature of the camera itself, giving even the most expressive shots of the film a very grounded feeling to them that makes them seem so real and so terrifying. Really, this film almost didn't need the trio of animals that seemingly populate this part of the forest to be unnerving, but once He starts to enter their orbit, some of the most haunting imagery captured this millennium is yours to witness, and they will be hard to shake in all of their incarnations. How effective is the atmosphere here? Even acorns figure prominently into the visual and auditory makeup to chilling effect. Acorns!

In a surprising move, the tension boils over just about the way you expected it to, as the plot devices show up somewhat unerringly to push things forward to the violent and very literal climax. For how well the film trades in the unspoken power dynamic between He and She, it's a little disappointing that elements of the narrative wind up being so straightforward and conventional on a functional level, even as their contents are anything but. Had the film not had its abrasive elements, it'd honestly not be particularly hard for this to play in a normal first run theater (remember those?) with the way it hands those turns to the viewer, which suggests some issue that von Trier had with thinking he had to find a way for folks to share his personal pain in a way that could make sense to them. It's not a bad instinct to have on paper, but as someone with a fondness for more opaque storytelling methods, it is a little frustrating to see some hand-holding here.

And yet... and yet, even with the setup being obvious, von Trier does know that some of these things aren't so easy to relate, which plays beautifully into the final scenes of the film as we reach not only the pinnacle of violence, but also the dread-soaked denouement as the one left standing tries to process all that has occurred. Had they gotten it all wrong before they even had the chance to make it right? Was there ever another outcome that was possible? What did they miss, and how could they miss it? The uncertainty is off the charts in these closing moments and, if not with a bow, at least begins the process of tying the themes of the film together in an almost extraordinary way. It's closure, but not in the way that is wanted under normal circumstances, but we are pretty far away from normal here. Instead, like much of the film, with its strong direction, incredible imagery and passionate performances, we come to the realization that what we have instead might be just about as brilliantly realized an expression of what depression is visually that doesn't use the usual signals that are ad-friendly and easy for others to understand, because it should never be easy to understand. I'm almost tempted to halt the marathon right now to dive into the rest of von Trier's works that center on working through his depression with how much this hit me, but for now, this has definitely set a high bar for the rest of the films yet to be viewed to clear.

19/38

 

[tryagainlater]

#12. The Borderlands - The found footage horror genre is fairly well worn at this point and I'm not the biggest fan. Despite essentially doing nothing new for the genre, I did quite enjoy this film. It follows a team from the Vatican investigating the legitimacy of a miracle that took place in a church in rural Britain. All the problems of the genre are there with little happening in the first two thirds but still feeling the need to throw in a few scares early anyway despite them not fitting. Of course, when shit does hit the fan it's a somewhat jumbled mess or darkness and shaky cameras. So why did I enjoy it so much? Despite a bunch of people from the Vatican hardly being the most relatable of characters, they still felt remarkably human. They all had their quirks but they weren't overly excessive and their motives for why they do the work they do became more pronounced as the film went on. What they ultimately find is a bit different from what horror movies with religious elements usually go for. It might be the most I've ever enjoyed a found footage horror film, although I haven't seen that many of them. I'd recommend it.

 

[sapien85]

sapien85 Spielberg did a lot more than "write" Poltergeist

Click to shrink...

He at the very least co-directed it, there was a crediting controversy back then, on whether he was skirting his contract with Universal (which said he wasn't to direct any other film while prepping ET). Some cast members have said he was more or less the director as Tobe Hooper was out of it on drugs at the time, but others say it was more equal.

Click to shrink...

Interesting! Didn't know any of that.

 

[Ridley327]

I know that Spielberg would almost assuredly prevent any major documentary about the authorship of Poltergeist while he's alive, but I wouldn't be shocked that when he's gone that someone is on that with the swiftness. There's more than a few accounts out there that suggest that he did a lot more than supervise.

 

[Sibersk Esto]

13. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The paranoia of the 1950s really helped usher in some great horror premises, and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is one of the best. The idea of alien pod people coming down and slowly replacing us one by one by making emotionless, almost perfect duplicates may be one of the most malleable premises in sci fi and horror. Even without delving into the handful of remakes you can view the '56 original as a propaganda piece against communism, or a critique of 1950s American conformity and McCarthyism and probably have valid points for why either interpretation works.

Beyond the premise, the film itself is briskly paced, hitting the ground running and slowly ratcheting up the tension as everyone involved, including the audience, starts to wonder who is and isn't an alien. It's shot with nice deep shadows and a huge aspect ratio (Superscope!) that helps the film alternate between the paranoid claustrophobia of the indoor locations and the vast amount of aliens we're dealing with when it goes outside.

My quibbles are about the same as anyone else's. First, the attempt at a happy ending feels perfunctory and inauthentic, especially when the sequence of Dr Hill trying to warn passerbys on the highway in vain of their impending doom feels much more appropriate. Second, how exactly does the body snatching itself work? The majority of the film seems pretty clear; pods are placed in a victim's home, absorbs their memory and personality, and then wake up and dispose of the original. But in the film's climax, a character literally turns into one of the aliens simply by going to sleep, making the pods wholly unnecessary in a truly baffling sequence.

Regardless, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a slick, exciting thriller well worth a watch.

 

[Ryuelli]

 

[jph139]

Day 13 - Dracula, 1958 (NEW)

In a sense, Curse of Frankenstein feels like a prototype for Dracula. A "dry run" before getting to the real thing. They do the same things; Dracula just does them better.

Part of it, I think, is just that the material is a better fit. There's a veneer of British stuffiness over both, that covers up the blood and sensuality of the occult. And yeah, that works for Frankenstein, with its explicit ungodliness, but Dracula is all about deviancy and desire breaking free of its restraints. The deep cleavage, the spurts of blood with each staking, Christopher Lee just ravaging those poor ladies - it fits like a glove.

Moreover, there's just iteration - the costuming is improved (like, for real, every outfit Van Helsing wears looks dope), there's a wider variety of sets and setpeices, more characters, snappier dialogue, more interesting cinematography. And, it's a tough call, but from the first movies alone I prefer Cushing's Van Helsing to his Frankenstein - they're similar in a way, both eager to cut to the heart of a conversation, but he imbues the former with a real nobility that you can't ignore. And of course, Lee's turn as Dracula is far more memorable than as the Creature. If nothing else, he just has WAY more to work with. He's a real predator in this one!

And to my surprise, the action even held up. For such a stoic character, it's a lot of fun to see Van Helsing leaping over bannisters and diving across tables in the final act. And man, what that sunlight hits... great stuff!

WEEK 1 - 100 Years of Horror
Dr. Caligari, The Golem, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde | Bonus: Häxan

WEEK 2 - Creature Features
Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Dracula, Frankenstein & Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man & The Invisible Man Returns | Bonus: The Invisible Man

WEEK 3 - In Living(?) Color
The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula

 

[atdawnwestrike]

23. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)
The movie that really sets the tone for the rest of the series. Jason gets his iconic mask, the kills are what you come to expect from the series and the final act is one of the best.

 

[Steamlord]

18. Lips of Blood (1975)

There's that dreamy Rollins quality I've been looking for. This one lightens up considerably on the exploitation elements in favor of dream logic, shadowy conspiracies, vague childhood memories, and a surprisingly touching love story. One might be disappointed to find that the majority of the film takes place in Paris, but Rollin manages to find plenty of moodily lit, ruinous locations there that make those portions just as atmospheric as those taking place at the chateau. Lips of Blood strikes a perfect balance as there's just enough narrative to keep things moving without disrupting the dreamlike atmosphere. 8/10

31 Days of Horror 2020: #16/31
Eyes of Fire (1983) - ★★★½

A folk horror-western where Old World witchcraft and colonial arrogance battle against Native American mysticism and the antediluvian devils that haunt the untamed forest. Eyes of Fire is a dark-fantasy story of frontier survival with ethereal vibes and ambitious scope. Its fascinating vision constantly pushes against the seams of its budget. Editing tricks and negative frames are often the trippy yet cheap attempts at visualizing the dark magic of the forest; the mediocre acting, along with over-used narration, consistently clashes with a bizarre folkloric atmosphere rich in mottling soil and misty woods.

But despite those weaknesses, Eyes of Fire is incredibly unique. I wonder if Robert Eggers is a fan, since this has numerous elements that echo The Witch. Pioneers outcast into the horrifying wilderness. An encroaching occult that they don't understand yet believe they can conquer. A looming clutching forest that mocks their attempts to colonize, their trust in Christian protection. And simultaneously Eyes of Fire is very much its own beast: a damned valley even the pursuing Shawnee know not to enter, devil-witch of the woods, fairy magic wards, power in the roots and dirt, tree-bound souls. Unlike any other pagan folk horror I've seen, an unsung gem of the horror-western canon.

Click to shrink...

It's not perfect, but it's crazy to me that this movie is so obscure. I've had my fingers crossed for a Scream Factory release or something to turn more people onto it.

 

[coma]

14. The Conjuring (2013, James Wan) ★★★★
15. The 'Burbs (1989, Joe Dante) ★★★★
16. My Bloody Valentine (1981, George Mihalka) ★★★★
17. Fright Night (1985, Tom Holland) ★★★★
18. What Have You Done to Solange? (1972, Massimo Dallamano) ★★★★

All were solid, but Solange was probably my favorite. One of the best giallos (gialli?) I've seen.

 

[Absoludacrous]

The Wailing is the first movie to really stick with me during my marathon. Again, not counting og The Thing (that classic sticks with everybody). But I woke up thinking about The Wailing and wanting to watch it again today. Haven't had that happen the past 12 days.

Click to shrink...

The Wailing is fantastic. The way it weaves in humor in the first half really makes the horror of the second half stand out.

 

[tryagainlater]

#13. Backcountry - A good old fashioned nature horror film. Based on a true story, a couple goes hiking in a forest and then a bear shows up. No real frills with this one but it's solid. It takes a while to get to the survival aspect of it and you have to suffer through an atrocious Irish accent but once it gets there, it doesn't let up. The bear attack is pretty damn ferocious and leaves an impression. It's not going to give Werner Herzog's bear movie a run for its money but it's not bad for what it is.

 

[JAT]

I just re-watched V/H/S for the first time since 2012. 21 year old me loved that movie. 29 year old not so much. What was a 5/5 in my memory is maybe really a 3. The first and final segments are really great, but the rest is middling.

I'm hoping 2 holds up a little better, but I'm not even going to touch 3 again. 3 was hot garbage when it first released.

 

[RyougaSaotome]

I caught Rec 2 today for the first time and I think combined with the first film, the pair makes for two of my favorite modern horror flicks.

I'm VERY picky about found footage films but these two were pretty much perfect, IMO. Great pacing, some wonderful scares and even a decent chunk of action in the second movie.

Is the remake of the first film worth watching at all? A quick look at the trailer made me think it's a pretty much 1:1 carbon copy which is pointless.

 

[Absoludacrous]

Spoiler

1. Poltergeist (1982)
2. 1BR
3. The Blackcoat's Daughter
4. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
5. Crimson Peak
6. A Tale of Two Sisters
7. Host
8. Green Room
9. The Ritual

10. mother!
11. Color Out of Space
12. The Lighthouse
13. Train to Busan
14. The Shining

I don't usually do repeat viewings for these lists, but I wanted to watch something with my daughter and she's still not quite old enough for me to let her blindly watch an R-rated horror movie. So The Shining seemed like the perfect mix of scary without being over-the-top inappropriate for her age.

Coming back to it again really let me appreciate the audio design in ways that I never noticed before. The score is downright chilling and has a lot more vocal tracks than what I had remembered. Even just the opening music during the drive to the interview was haunting in a way I didn't remember. Maybe I just pay more attention to these things now that I'm older, I don't know.

My daughter was really into it by the end, which I think speaks to how much of a classic it is. I think most of the other movies we're going to watch together this month will be things like Hocus Pocus and Hubie Halloween, so it was nice to check out at least one scary movie together.

 

[Star-Lord]

How is Rec 3 and 4? I've never seen them?

 

[Rydeen]

I know that Spielberg would almost assuredly prevent any major documentary about the authorship of Poltergeist while he's alive, but I wouldn't be shocked that when he's gone that someone is on that with the swiftness. There's more than a few accounts out there that suggest that he did a lot more than supervise.

Click to shrink...

I've always thought Poltergeist looks nothing like Tobe Hooper's other movies and in terms of cinematography and visuals has way more in-common with Spielberg's other films, especially his contemporary films like E.T. And it wouldn't be the only time Spielberg released two films he directed in the same year (Jurassic Park and Schindler's List both came out in 1993). Seems pretty self-explanatory.

 

[Scarface]

I caught Rec 2 today for the first time and I think combined with the first film, the pair makes for two of my favorite modern horror flicks.

I'm VERY picky about found footage films but these two were pretty much perfect, IMO. Great pacing, some wonderful scares and even a decent chunk of action in the second movie.

Is the remake of the first film worth watching at all? A quick look at the trailer made me think it's a pretty much 1:1 carbon copy which is pointless.

Click to shrink...

Fantastic to hear. Ive rented rec 2. I love the first one and while im still skeptical, ive heard some good things about the sequel.

 

[cake]

Busy weekend with a bunch of movies down. I thought I watched a lot of horror before, but since joining the Shudder discord it's skyrocketed.

Day 9: Motel Hell (Amazon)

Sibling farmers run a motel and smokes meats, including human, and they bury their victims with their vocal cords cut in their garden until they are ready to harvest. They are nuts and this movie is nuts and terrible but also funny and kinda ok? I ended up enjoying it.


Microwave Massacre (Amazon)

When Donald's wife May buys a new microwave oven and starts cooking fancier than he'd like, he can't stand it and in a fit accidentally kills her and eventually starts eating her corpse instead. Honestly I was expecting a movie with a killer microwave or something, but this was still pretty fun regardless.


Witchboard (Amazon)

A very 80's take on a ouija board story gone wrong. Was decent enough but I didn't find any of the characters enjoyable, didn't hate it.


Day 10: Children of the Corn (Amazon) - rewatch

I had forgotten how brutal the opening the movie is with the massacre of the adults. Isaac as the evil preacher, Malachi as the enforcer (who has clearly been 18 for a couple of years), and an innocent couple drawn into their town. It's darn good.


The Houses October Built (Amazon) - rewatch

A found footage movie with a group of friends going on a road trip to visit some of the country's scariest haunted houses. It starts out with some down to earth creepiness as they learn more about the business, but soon they search for an extreme haunt (basically using real shit to scare you) and things start to go bad cause they're assholes in a horror movie. Soon they basically find themselves as part of the haunt and can't escape it. It's not doing anything wild with the formula but I enjoyed it.


Day 11: The Masque of the Red Death (Shudder)

A Vincent Price/Roger Corman horror movie based on the Poe short story (and bringing in some other of his work for a side plot). Price stars as Prince Prospero, who owns a castle and oversees a village overcome by the plague, the Red Death. He burns the village and abducts a local girl Francesca back to his castle, where he's a complete asshole to everyone. Francesca quickly discovers Prospero runs a Satanic cult. He decides to throw a costumed masquerade, and things start to go poorly as the night progresses. This was pretty damn good, and Price is just so much fun to watch. This was also fairly timely (asshole hiding behind walls while a plague ravages).

Images (1972) - Shudder

An author starts to see things while away at a vacation home. For example, her husband will pass through one door and return through another played by a different actor, and then back again, or she'll be driving along and then see herself, or she'll have dead people talking to her. The movie's treatment of mental illness isn't great, but it does do some neat stuff with perspective and expectations (for example, one time Cathryn is driving and stops on the road and sees her vacation home in the distance and herself in front of it, and then we're just following that version, as a way of showing her disassociation from reality it's not bad. There are also multiple people she murders and just leaves on the floor while real people walk around, and at that point I had no idea what would happen) and was a pretty solid watch.

Day 12: The Void (Shudder) - rewatch

I felt like watch something cosmic and weird so put this on. It's darn good and I really like the practical effects and the feeling of how trapped and hopeless the people are.

Amityville 3-D (Amazon)

This was just bad, lol. The obvious shots intended for 3d were funny to see, and Meg Ryan was decent, but overall this isn't worth the time.

Day 13: Wake in Fright (Shudder)

As part of his agreement with the government to pay for his schooling, a teacher in Australia is working in the middle of nowhere and hates it. As his Xmas break starts he stops in a town nicknamed The Yabba, and in a desperate bid to pay off his schooling debt he ends up gambling all his money away. Some locals take pity on him and he starts down a path of debauchery. Problem is the movie doesn't really commit to John having a descent into madness so much as kinda being there (getting blackout drunk, a kangaroo hunt, and then getting sexually assaulted), so his suicide attempt feels a bit disconnected. Ultimately it was fine and mostly forgettable, but the kangaroo scene really put me off since apparently they actually hunted and killed real live ones, so fuck that.

Blood Quantum (Shudder)

A First Nations reserve in Canada trying to survive in a world where the dead don't stay dead. This started off with just hints (like salmon still moving after being gutted) and progressed pretty well from there. Their people are immune but no one else seems to be, leading to the reserve being a relative safe haven for people to flee to. It gets a bit tropey from there (the parent trying to bring a clearly infected kid in, or the person lying about being bitten), but the family was damn good to watch and it is a unique perspective that I very much enjoyed in a well-worn genre. In particular, Traylor the father having to balance his roles of father vs leader vs ex-husband I really liked. It was also smart with the use of guns and sound in a way you don't often see beyond guns = loud. Definitely worth the watch.

 

[ThirstyFly]

How is Rec 3 and 4? I've never seen them?

Click to shrink...

Both are totally different than Rec 1-2.
3 is more of a horror comedy. I really enjoyed it.
4 doesn't get a lot of love, but I thought it was perfectly competent zombie movie and a fair end to the series.

 

[Akumatica]

20. Frailty (2001)
Tense and concise thriller about a single father of two boys who awakens them one night and says god has commanded him to start killing demons disguised as humans in anticipation of the coming apocalypse. The older son doesn't believe him and the horror of his father's actions destroy their quiet lives.

Actor Bill Paxton does a good job directing this disturbing story that's well acted with a few reveals that are cliched and a weak ending imo. Minimal onscreen bloodshed, it instead goes for a ratcheting sense of dread.
= 3.5 out of 5

21. Splinter (2008)
A slightly above average low budget body horror film about 4 people trapped in a rural gas station by a highly infectious entity waiting outside.

The characters are dull, the blood looks like oil which is really distracting and the last 15 minutes are really dumb.

But it's alright for what it is and there's one good darkly comedic moment.
= 2.5 out of 5

22. Begotten (1989)
A surreal, dialogue-less, starkly black and white, low fi experimental horror film about creation myths with a droning ambient soundtrack.

The characters are credited as-
-God killing himself
-Mother Earth
-Son of Earth - Flesh on Bone

The 1st 14 minutes are interesting, but the next hour is slow and ponderous as we watch robe-clad faceless people brutalize the Mother and Son characters. It's really difficult to make out what's happening through the blown out images drowning in film grain.
= 1.5 out of 5

1- Black Swan = 3.5/5
2- Night of Body's Model = 3.5/5
3- Would You Rather = 1.5/5
4- Red Room = 3/5
5- Trick r Treat = 2.5/5
6- High Tension = 3/5
7- Excision = 3/5
8- Southbound = 3/5
9- Red Room 2 = 2/5
10- Tragedy Girls = 4/5
11- Dumplings = 3.5/5
12- What We Do in the Shadows = 4.5/5
13- Drag Me To Hell = 2/5
14- Patchwork = 3/5
15- Cold Fish = 3.5/5
16- Dead Ball = 1/5
17- The Endless = 2/5
18- Unsane = 1.5/5
19. Rabid = 3/5

 

[Z-Beat]

13. Saw II

This movie holds up a lot better than most of the other films in this series. Who knew that a series made up of 99% corrupt cops would stay so relevant. Of all the Saw films, this one probably has the most actual Jigsaw. In the others it's either a flashback or he isn't doing much talking. The traps themselves al-OH GOD SO MANY NEEDLES....*ahem*, the traps themselves are relatively simplistic in their designs and I think that it's the straightforward nature of them that make them so scary. You can wrap your mind around getting tossed into a furnace or having an iron maiden of rusty nails closed on your head. A collar of lasers or the world's largest blender aren't quite as feasible. All the acting is really good. Tobin Bell's gravely voice is iconic and perfect for Jigsaw, and I think this one establishes more than any of the others that Jigsaw's fucking nuts. The others tend to try really hard to give him justification for his actions, usually by showing the evil of the people he traps, but even though none of the victims in this one are innocent by any means, his explanation for why he does what he does is so out there he may as well have said "I just like to hear the screams." It's also a little amusing seeing this on a 2nd rewatch and knowing what's going down. Overall I think this is by far the best Saw film. It's got better acting and cinematography than the first and hasn't jumped the shark quite yet like the sequels

Hello Zepp is the shit

9/10

 

[Biteren]

i am shamed, due to work stuff i missed a bunch of days to watch movies, maybe i can watch 2 a day to catch up

 

[PennyStonks]

#13 Fright Night - great/10
First time watching. Really fun movie. I kept thinking the vampire sorta looks like Mark Ruffalo so that made it more fun. SFX were really cool too.

 

[beloved freak]

#13 - Lifeforce

Space vampires.

Part sci-fi movie, part vampire movie, part zombie apocalypse movie. Lifeforce was a weird one. Features random Patrick Stewart, a bit of overacting and a whole lot of space vampire boobage. There's some goofy material here but I can still appreciate the creativity. The vampires were fascinating, though I really wish the film didn't spend so much time explaining every little detail about them (would've liked a little more ambiguity).

Last 30 minutes or so were really cool, at least.

 

[HiLife]

13 Hell House LLC

This movie sucked ass. That's all.

 

[Jeremy]

01. 12 Hour Shift *** / ***** - Very fun and trashy ensemble horror set in a hospital. Gleefully immoral.
02. Bloodthirsty ** - Anemic werewolf movie involving a pop star producing her record on her producer's remote estate.
03. The Nightcomers (1971) **1/2 - Marlon Brando as a horny Irishman corrupting the kids from The Turn of the Screw.
04. Books of Blood ** - Love Clive Barker. Only one of the three stories is even competent (the wraparound tale from the books).
05. Deadline (1980) ***1/2 - Wacky Canadian drama about a horror writer. Features a psychic goat killing someone with a snowplow.
06. Time Of Moulting *** - Creepy German movie about life in a cloistered family unit. Unsettling.
07. Hunted **1/2 - Oddball Euro survival movie. The recent Alone was much better.
08. It Cuts Deep * - Really predictable slasher that has no slasher action besides the opening and closing scenes. Awful lead performance.
09. Run *** - Sarah Paulson camping it up in a Baby Jane riff.
10. The Wolf of Snow Hollow ***1/2 - Loved the director's Thunder Road. This is a charming, Twin Peaks kind of werewolf mystery.
11. The Night ** - Purgatorial drama in Farsi about an Iranian couple who can't leave a hotel until they face their sins. Derivative, beyond the cultural context.
12. Come True **1/2 - Synthwave sci-fi about a dream study gone wrong. More moody than scary, ultimately.
13. Bloody Hell **1/2 - Horror comedy about an ex-con who moves to Finland only to be kidnapped by a cannibalistic family. Strong lead actor.
14. My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To *** - Glum, grisly variation on We Are What We Are featuring a man who must kill to feed his vampiric brother. Slow, but ultimately moving story about familial obligation.
15. Honeydew *1/2 - Plays like a feature-length version of the dinner table scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre... but slow and not scary.
16. Def by Temptation (1990) ***1/2 - Troma classic about a female sex demon with an all-black cast. Saw this as a kid, but it's even better than I remembered.
17. Anything for Jackson *** - Capably made haunted house movie about grandparents botching a supernatural ritual in hope of raising their dead grandchild.
18. Reunion ***1/2 - Ghost story about a mother and daughter packing up the family home for sale and uncovering skeletons in the closet. Blurs the lines between reality and delusion nicely.
19. AV: The Hunt *** - A variation on The Most Dangerous Game that got my blood boiling because it deals with Turkish men hunting an adulterous woman in hopes of "honor killing" her.
20. Boys from County Hell *1/2 - Irish vampire film. Cool creature design, but attempts at humor fall flat and there are no scares.
21. Lucky ** - Home invasion film that turns out to be a metaphor for gaslighting women. Should have been a short.
22. Breaking Surface **1/2 - Tense thriller about a diving mishap. Suspenseful, but the stupidity of the characters will drive you nuts.
23. Frank & Zed ** - Gory, Grand Guignol puppet epic. Definitely visually exciting, but the plot barely bothers to have characters and the voice acting was grating to me.

Click to shrink...

24. An Unquiet Grave *** - Microbudget tale of a botched resurrection ritual. Somewhat slow-paced, but a legitimately horrifying scenario.
25. Rose Plays Julie **1/2 - Twist on the rape/revenge genre that unexpectedly becomes an opportunity for mother/daughter bonding.
26. Climate of the Hunter ***1/2 - Throwback to '70s Euro horror that involves the psychosexual manipulations of two sisters and a possible vampire.
27. Retribution (1987) **1/2 - Wild movie about a nerd possessed by a gangster. Some pacing issues, to be sure, but a few extremely inventive kills.

 

[Mariachi507]

I just re-watched V/H/S for the first time since 2012. 21 year old me loved that movie. 29 year old not so much. What was a 5/5 in my memory is maybe really a 3. The first and final segments are really great, but the rest is middling.

I'm hoping 2 holds up a little better, but I'm not even going to touch 3 again. 3 was hot garbage when it first released.

Click to shrink...

2 is automatically the best one thanks to that ONE segment. Everybody knows the one. The rest aren't really worth remembering IMO, though the might be another decent segment in part 2. I remember the last segment pissed me off pretty good.

 

[Fancy Clown]

31 Days of Horror #16: The Vampire Lovers (1970)

Very horny, but also very dated feeling in the way most Hammer films tend to, vampire movie. It begins on a perfect note, full of gothic sets and amazing (and unique!) spectral vampire imagery of one of the undead rising from the fog in a death shroud, swirling in slow-motion. The middle of the movie has quite a bit of lulls in it, as it essentially forces you to watch the same plot beats twice as Carmilla worms into two rich estates, seduces the daughters, and then feeds on them. The homoeroticism definitely gives it a fresh angle compared to the other Hammer vampire films I've seen, and I have to wonder if Coppola was thinking of this film when he introduced sapphic qualities into his Dracula. It's a bit stodgy besides the titillation and a few choice decapitations, but that's part of the appeal of Hammer flicks too, isn't it?

 

[tellNoel]

Week 1: The Unholy Trinity

1. Rosemary's Baby
2. The Omen (1976)
3. The Exorcist

Week 2: Keeping It Classic

1. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)*
2. Cat People (1942)*
3. Dead of Night (1945)*
4. House of Wax (1953)*
5. The Creature from the Black Lagoon*
6. King Kong (1933)*
7. Godzilla (1954)*

Week 3: Slasher Central

1. Sisters (1973)*
2. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon*
3. Peeping Tom*

Never trust a man that walks quietly.

Peeping Tom is about a photographer and aspiring filmmaker who gets his rocks off by capturing the fear in a woman's eyes right before they die. When a young woman who lives in his building shows interest in him, Mark (the photographer) tries to keep his distance, knowing that his hunger to capture her on camera may very well overcome him.

Peeping Tom differentiates itself from other slashers by immediately showing the killer's face. On top of that, the killer is a handsome recluse that has integrated into society by working multiple jobs to pursue his passion.

Mark has a disturbed past, and it's the main cause of why he kills women the way he does. When he meets Helen, he shows her a video of how his dad traumatized him as a child, frightening her in the process. This is when Mark would usually kill his victim, but something about Helen's warmth and attitude causes him to refrain. This is where the movie attempts to redeem Mark, but at the same time he is continuing his 'work' elsewhere.

Peeping Tom is a different kind of slasher. It rarely shows any blood, so your mind has to fill in the blanks. It's not hard to do though because one kill in particular is pretty gruesome to think about.

It's not my favorite movie this month, but it was interesting to see how the filmmakers attempt to humanize a murderer. Think of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, just no where near as graphic.

 

[Ithil]

13) Prom Night (1980)

A walk on the bluffs?

Sometimes your only thought after finishing a film is "Yep, that was a movie that exists and played sequentially on my screen".

Not much to say on Prom Night, it's just there. Started out relatively promising in its intro and melancholy early scenes, but as soon as the focus shifted to the very adult looking teens the film absolutely ground to a halt. Slow pacing is great for the right film, but not in this short, bog standard slasher. A full hour goes by with nothing but bickering teen drama happening (and brief snatches of phone calls I'm pretty sure were an inspiration for Scream, even if they're ripped off from Black Christmas), and by the time any slasher antics start there's just twenty minutes left in the film. Even then, said antics are nothing to write home about. Appearances by Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis are appreciated in any film, but neither get to do much.

I'd say skip it.

 

[Haloid1177]

11. Friday The 13th (1980): 1.5/5

So I got my Shout Factory box set of the series yesterday, and I've only seen three of these movies (2, X, remake), so I figured I'd go through these all at once. And honestly, after the first one, I do not understand how many of these movies there are. Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street started with absolute classics that have aged incredibly well, and then there's this, which up until the last maybe 10 minutes, was truly dire. The kills weren't great, the acting was truly terrible, the lighting was dogshit, and the characters were barely characters. I know that everyone tells me this is about gore and kills, nothing else, but this movie didn't even succeed on that front.

Gonna watch Part 2 tonight.

 

[tellNoel]

13. Saw II

This movie holds up a lot better than most of the other films in this series. Who knew that a series made up of 99% corrupt cops would stay so relevant. Of all the Saw films, this one probably has the most actual Jigsaw. In the others it's either a flashback or he isn't doing much talking. The traps themselves al-OH GOD SO MANY NEEDLES....*ahem*, the traps themselves are relatively simplistic in their designs and I think that it's the straightforward nature of them that make them so scary. You can wrap your mind around getting tossed into a furnace or having an iron maiden of rusty nails closed on your head. A collar of lasers or the world's largest blender aren't quite as feasible. All the acting is really good. Tobin Bell's gravely voice is iconic and perfect for Jigsaw, and I think this one establishes more than any of the others that Jigsaw's fucking nuts. The others tend to try really hard to give him justification for his actions, usually by showing the evil of the people he traps, but even though none of the victims in this one are innocent by any means, his explanation for why he does what he does is so out there he may as well have said "I just like to hear the screams." It's also a little amusing seeing this on a 2nd rewatch and knowing what's going down. Overall I think this is by far the best Saw film. It's got better acting and cinematography than the first and hasn't jumped the shark quite yet like the sequels

Hello Zepp is the shit

9/10

Click to shrink...

Saw 2 is definitely my favorite. It's like the twisted version of Home Alone, with the booby traps everywhere

 

[Deleted member 9241]

Public Domain Streaming Site Horror/SciFi

Just thought I would pass this along. Quality is questionable, but it is fine having on another device while working or whatever.

 

[atdawnwestrike]

24. House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
I enjoy this a little bit more every time I watch it. It is a total mess but it somehow works and comes together in a 90 minute bat shit crazy Texas Chainsaw Massacre on drugs.

 

[nilbog]

14. Daniel Isn't Real (2019)

Troubled Luke suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend to help him cope. Charismatic and full of energy, `Daniel' helps Luke to achieve his dreams, before pushing him into a desperate fight for his own soul.

Imaginary friend movies can be a tough sell, the top tier of them being Fight Club. But this film adds cosmic horror elements and stunning special effects to make for a good time. Patrick Schwarzenegger does a great job as the grim and charismatic Daniel. This is a dark movie dealing with a lot of mental anguish and doom, there will be no happing endings here.

👻👻👻👻 out of 5

 

[Blader]

8. Shutter Island (2010)
I haven't seen this in a long time. Having remembered the 'twist' though, it was interesting to rewatch this and see how it plays knowing what's 'really' going on (it also helps put some otherwise suspect things, like Leo's occasionally hammy performance, into context). While maybe not outright horror, it's a strong and atmospheric thriller that looks absolutely gorgeous. The color palette of Teddy's hallucinations and flashbacks is a particular visual highlight. It's true there's just a bit too much of an exposition dump at the end, the worst part about it being that the film, after building this increasingly frantic pace of Teddy chasing a deeper mystery juxtaposed with a seeming unraveling of his sanity, suddenly slams the brakes on its pacing in the last 10-15 minutes. Actually maybe the worst part is Ben Kingsley's anagrams whiteboard, which is a regrettable prop lol. It's a shame that the biggest dings about it come at the very because Shutter Island is otherwise a really strong effort from a director not exactly known for horror output (and imo this is much better than Cape Fear).
8/10

I know that Spielberg would almost assuredly prevent any major documentary about the authorship of Poltergeist while he's alive, but I wouldn't be shocked that when he's gone that someone is on that with the swiftness. There's more than a few accounts out there that suggest that he did a lot more than supervise.

Click to shrink...

You could also just watch the movie, haha. I know Spielberg had legal reasons for not wanting to be credited as the film's director, and was probably trying to do Hooper a solid too, but the movie feels so Spielberg in a manner that isn't just the director emulating him, that I don't know who they think they're fooling.

 

[Divius]

#13 - Tarantula! (1955)
Classic 50s sci-fi giant creature feature with a big ass spider terrorizing a small desert town. Pretty much a by the book effort. Nice looking special effects. At 1h20 it's briskly paced without too much bloat. Fun, well made, nothing too spectacular. 6/10

 

[Owzers]

13 Hell House LLC

This movie sucked ass. That's all.

Click to shrink...

now to move on to hell house 2 and 3. I decided to rewatch them all over the last couple days, I still liked the first one.

 

[Conditional-Pancakes]

now to move on to hell house 2 and 3.

Click to shrink...

Oh no... don't do this to yourself!

Spoiler

I do like the first one, though.

 

[MatOfTheDead]

for tonights movie im revisiting a classic late 80s wes craven flick with #14 Shocker

 

[InspectorJones]

I'm just going to consider this #1 for my own participation in this thread as I have some horror movies I watch all the time that I've seen in October that wouldn't feel super in the spirit. But since by F13th set arrived yesterday, I'm probably going to bounce between documenting those films and the Nightmare films. Some background, I've seen some of the F13th series previously (OG, X, Freddy vs Jason) and all the Nightmare films.

#1 Friday the 13th - Unrated

I've seen the original movie before in my life but I feel it was probably at least 15 years ago with my mom and brothers but I don't think I've ever seen the uncut version. Overall though I feel it's still a very effective film as I was nervous watching it late last night. The POV of seeing the characters from the forest is super effective and any time Betsy Palmer is on screen I feel like I can't take my eyes off the screen. The transfer looks very nice too, reflections on the lake especially stood out to me as looking very pristine as well as shots of the woods and rain (Rain running down the sides of cabins or posts just looks nice I don't know what else to say).

What I don't remember as a kid was the ending.

Spoiler: F13th Ending Spoilers

As a child I do remember the classic scare with Jason jumping out of the lake; but did the theatrical version of the film have the scene with Alice in the hospital? I just remember it ending with Jason dragging her under the water in the dream sequence.

EDIT: Oh yeah a rating, fuck I feel it's hard to rate classics sometimes but I will give it a 5/5. It's simple, very effective, and uhmm just good. Coulda used Uber Jason from X to make it 1 5.5/5.

Also love seeing more Tom Savini in the behind the scenes features after binging behind the scenes George Romero stuff lately (Read all the time); that was another thing I appreciated more this viewing and seeing this in the opening credits.

And a clip from the Bluray. It's the end of the film.

 

[Ridley327]

Week Three (Oct 11-17): Things That Go "Hump" in the Night: Sex and Horror, Soft and Hard (Oct 13)

Jess Franco returns to the marathon after an extended absence, and taken from the period when he dipped his toes into hardcore. What could possibly go wrong?

How far does the film push the line?: The film wastes little time getting to the sleazy parts, as we're soon treated to a mock black mass sex show for a captive audience that isn't short on the nudity and fondling. We get more of those throughout the film, along with some lighter sex scenes that spend equal time on traditional hetero couplings and the salacious-on-paper lesbian relationship between our two female... leads, I guess. An orgy does figure into the middle of the film, but anyone expecting more than static bodies with intentional covering up of the nether regions are bound to be disappointed in its lack of sensationalism.

...of course, we could not just let this be, as I took the opportunity to track down a very specific cut of this film with an actual hardcore sex sequence. Not that anyone is particularly surprised to hear that in relation to Jess Franco, who directed more than his fair share, but what makes this particular scene so notable is that Franco himself participates in it, and while it's not hard to imagine that they did wind up using a double for him in the more extreme moments of the sequence, what he is clearly showing up in is certainly more than what anyone could have expected, especially when it's opposite his longtime creative and romantic partner, Lina Romay. It's definitely a huge point of interest for the film and frankly about the only one worth mentioning, as most cuts of the film won't have it and boy oh boy I don't even want to imagine not having anything else to talk about here.

Could this film have worked without the sex?: The sex scenes are laborious and tedious, but so is the rest of the film!

Does the film play at all?: Much can be said about Jess Franco's career at least in terms of quantity, as having over 150 films under your belt is one hell of an achievement. Quality is... well, even Franco was under no illusion that he had made more than a handful of worthwhile films in his career, but there is something to admire about his sheer workaholic approach to the kind of exploitation filmmaking that he was so well-known for, cranking out at time a dozen films a year with so many people looking for product for their theaters and Franco's thriftiness of being damn near a one-man show behind the camera, and even filling in as an actor in supporting parts when necessary. Enjoying freedom by keeping budgets tight and schedules on time, one has to wonder what would have happened if his tastes weren't so given to catering to base desires all the time, as he clearly had talent to spare, but one can't fault him for not doing exactly what he wanted to do.

As a film like this proves, however, what a filmmaker wants to do can be a true mystery even as the credits roll, as Franco casts himself as the lead, more or less, as the murderous Vogel, a defrocked priest who quickly illustrates why the church may have a few or all of the problems with the way he preached. There's sin all over the streets of Paris and he aims to, well, exorcise it by himself if necessary, which doesn't amount to much more than going around, stripping women down to nothing and taking an inordinate amount of time to stab them to death. This is very much a film in which no one is any rush to finish anything, and the result is that it feels 15 hours long as the sex shows run in what feels like actual real time, Vogel stares out from his window in the apartment that houses his ultimate targets, particularly Romay, for what seems like days at a time, and even by the standards of sleaze, it should not take this damn long to torture and kill women. It's not hard to imagine how this could have turned into something a lot more campy, especially with Vogel breaking out his entire clerical wardrobe as if he was some kind of early slasher icon, but the attempts to try and take this seriously die with how content the film is at being as lethargic as humanly possible. You could build an entire civilization and burn it right to the ground well before this one finally sputters into something resembling an ending.

The lack of any substance whatsoever makes this both an easy film to talk about, which is easy since there's so little to talk about, while also being very difficult to talk about as you want something, anything, to make a note of. It's telling that the hardcore sequence is its sole point of discussion, and that's only because of Franco being in it, as it's otherwise not particularly that hot or exciting compared to what was new in porn at that time, let alone by today's standards. So if the sex is boring, the horror is non-existent, the production quality aspires to little more than base competence on all fronts and there's nothing to draw you in for the characters or the story, what was the point? This tends to be an issue with filmmakers with prolific filmographies, but even with the thought of this being only one of several films that Franco was working on at the time of its production and eventual release, what was even the through line beyond having some more skin on the screen? One might be impressed by the transparency in the mercenary effort we get here, but this is genuinely a nothing film otherwise with basically nothing to recommend.

20/38

 

[Ithil]

14) House on Sorority Row (1983)

I'm a sea pig.

After the weakness of Prom Night, this was more like it. A strong, if familiar slasher with great direction and editing, particularly for the (very frequent) kill scenes, which are well composed. The biggest standout of the film is the ever present and elegant musical score, it feels rather 1950s in style, not quite Hammer Horror but not far off. Really liked the track for the opening titles, which sound quite inspired by the Moldau.

The initial setup between the sorority girls and house mother is a little unusual in that its rare for the slasher "story" to start in real time during the film, and the movie does a fine job at keeping it ambiguous as to what's really going on. I can't say as it makes for a very sympathetic cast of victims, but it's one of those films where pretty much everyone is somewhat of an asshole. Now, if you've seen a lot of slashers like me, you will figure out the twists and turns well before the end, but hey, it's not very fair to complain about later films making this earlier effort less distinct. As it is, this is well above the mark for the wave of post Halloween and Friday slashers, and I can detect some influence of its own on later entries in the genre.

Recommended.

 

[beloved freak]

#14 - eXistenZ

I enjoyed eXistenZ, only the third Cronenberg film I've ever seen. Very much reminded me of Inception. The cast was great. Love how you never really know what's real and what isn't. Features the worst console design ever. I appreciate that this film doesn't treat games with the kind of disrespect that many other films and tv shows from that era did.

Liked the ending, made me think. Could they, simply, no longer distinguish reality from fiction? Or perhaps they really were a pair of concerned citizens, feeling that these videogame things are corrupting minds and need to be destroyed? I dunno, but it was good stuff. Have to watch it again sometime.

 

[Eros]

Day 1. Ghostbusters.★★★½
Day 2. Zombieland 2. ★★½
Day 3. Aliens. ★★★★
Day 4. Get Out. ★★★★
Day 5. Midsommar. ★★★★
Day 6. Beetlejuice.★★★★
Day 7. Hagazussa. ★★★
Day 8. Night of the Living Dead. ★★
Day 9. Ghostbusters 2. ★★★½
Day 10. Alien. ★★★★½
Day 11. Pan's Labyrinth.★★★★½
Day 12. Sleepy Hollow. ★★★½
Day 13. Suspiria (1977). ★★★

Click to shrink...

Day 14. Annihilation. Reception of this was mid from what I remember, but I loved this. Some pretty memorable and unsettling moments for me, like the

Spoiler

bear scene. Hell. Fuckin. Naw. Tessa Thompson turning into a plant/the plant people in general. The alien at the end. Freaky shit.

★★★★

 

[Akumatica]

23. Livid (2011)
French horror film about a young visiting nurse in training who's supervisor tells her that one of their patients, a comatose centenarian, has a vast fortune hidden inside her mansion.

She and two friends decide to break in that night hoping to steal enough to escape their hard working class lives only to become trapped inside.

The film takes a turn half way through and becomes a gory fairy tail as the standard "locked in a house" plot is sloughed off, going places you wouldn't expect. Nothing is spelled out for the viewer and the ending is quite lyrical.
= 4 out of 5

24. The Machine Girl (2008)
A high school girl goes on a murder spree to get revenge after losing her brother and an arm to the son of a Yakuza in this splatter film.

There's some good stuff here mixed in with the bad. About 70% of the gore (by Tokyo Gore Police director Yoshiko Nishimura) is pretty good, with some of it being inventive. There's just some dumb shit here when it tries to0 hard to be comedic.

One of the better than average movies in this genre.
=3 out of 5

1- Black Swan = 3.5/5
2- Night of Body's Model = 3.5/5
3- Would You Rather = 1.5/5
4- Red Room = 3/5
5- Trick r Treat = 2.5/5
6- High Tension = 3/5
7- Excision = 3/5
8- Southbound = 3/5
9- Red Room 2 = 2/5
10- Tragedy Girls = 4/5
11- Dumplings = 3.5/5
12- What We Do in the Shadows = 4.5/5
13- Drag Me To Hell = 2/5
14- Patchwork = 3/5
15- Cold Fish = 3.5/5
16- Dead Ball = 1/5
17- The Endless = 2/5
18- Unsane = 1.5/5
19. Rabid = 3/5
20- Frailty = 3.5/5
21- Splinter = 2.5/5
22- Begotten = 1.5/5

 

[Steamlord]

19. The Grapes of Death (1978)

Rollin's briskest film so far, not that that means it's particularly brisk. I was kind of surprised by how standard a zombie movie it was, even though the cause of the outbreak was unusual. Meaning it's generally pretty evenly paced with some legitimately tense moments and more overt and detailed violence than in Rollin's previous films. Still plenty of Rollinisms, though, and some pretty heavy-handed political allegory. With all that said, it's still heavy on the atmosphere as you would expect, and the setting is beautiful and haunting. Great score too. 7/10