The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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domino harvey
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2226 Post by domino harvey » Fri Aug 14, 2020 3:52 am

I think that particular detour was probably just further misdirection from the real progression of the film. But there was already plenty of it in what we got in the final film, so an easy minute to slice off

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2227 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Aug 14, 2020 8:23 am

What a strange coincidence, my UK blu arrived last night, and it’s currently in my player waiting to be finished after work- I’ll check them out.
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Part of the draw of the film is the slow unveiling of her guilt and the discomfort of this small world, or any world, revolving around her. Of course this becomes exacerbated by her existential crisis in realizing that she is the killer(!) which nobody wants as their brand. But yeah, initiating accountability for the arrival at this nightmare looped milieu would suppose that as the source rather than the details of items and familiar design of the ship continuing to stand out as significant. I’m not sure when that reveal comes though, so maybe the context wouldn’t ruin the movie as much as I think it would.

Always Points North
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2228 Post by Always Points North » Tue Sep 15, 2020 5:04 pm

knives wrote:
Sat Apr 25, 2020 11:33 pm
Embarrassingly, it's because I misremembered the name of Straight on till Morning which is what I mean to vote for. I do like Fear in the Night a lot though.
Rayon Vert wrote:
Sat Apr 25, 2020 11:44 pm
OK, makes more sense! They both came out together as a double bill, but yeah Straight On has something special going.
I've only recently seen Straight on Till Morning myself and I was impressed by it too. The opening sequence with its monologue really grabbed me, I think partly because I'd been finishing off watching the TV series Shadows (1975–78), many episodes of which have that same juxtaposition between the everyday and a dark fairy tale. I liked Shane Briant's performance and I knew I'd seen him somewhere before, finding that it was playing Jack Palance's son in Hawk the Slayer. Interesting that he played Dorian Gray shortly after Straight on Till Morning.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2229 Post by Always Points North » Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:35 pm

terabin wrote:
Tue Apr 21, 2020 11:46 pm
In particular, I need to levy a defense of 6 of my orphans which are all made-for-TV movies from the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series, mostly based on MR James short stories. Will expound more tomorrow, but whenever I watch one of these gems my wife comes in the room and says I thought you were watching a horror movie? And I usually say, the British figured out how to do it without screams and blood. And she usually says, that’s not a horror movie. And I try in vain to make my argument: uncanny, quiet terror is horror too!
I love those and I'm glad that the revival is continuing, though last year's Martin's Close was abysmal. Of the new crop I'd say Whistle and I'll Come to You has been the strongest. I like The Signalman very much. Stigma's a strange one because I would class it much more as horror, and effective horror at that, than a ghost story.

I'd like them to look at A. M. Burrage's work as he's my favourite, especially Playmates, the ending of which really sent the hairs up on the back of my neck.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2230 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:39 pm

Lake Placid: A blast from the past- I actually liked this when I was a kid (and I wasn't a fan of horror back then, so that makes sense since this is more of a comedy!) but all I remembered was the cow dangling, so revisiting it was a brand new experience. I appreciated the character dynamics and intimacy of sets more than anything, and as domino mentioned in his defense this is in the mold of early code screwbally adventure films, like a blend between Hawks' comedies and his gung-ho jobs-as-platforms-to-explore-identity flicks, with the latter genre in structure retaining the at-odds interpersonal relationships of the former. Even though this takes place physically in the open space of a lake, the way it's shot feels contained, with the gang almost always occupying what appear to be close quarters amongst the brush in the woods or even framed on the shore or boat or beached helicopter when on the lake, which is comfortably low budget in the spirit of those earlier films. The camaraderie developed between the four leads, who are very different people, is rhythmic without the need to colorize the characters with overstated depth. Ideologies clash but each personality is softly inspired by another member, with perhaps the film's best moment being when Pullman calls Fonda out on having fun after she's been in hysterics- a kind of surprise reading that demonstrates affinity, fluctuates the dramatic action back into a lighthearted social jab, and breaks the wall in a Brechtian move to nod at the vibe of the film. The film is a whole lot better when you realize the croc only exists as a prop to exhume old frameworks and temperaments.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2231 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Sep 30, 2020 12:25 am

The Slumber Party Massacre: Corman's initially puzzling choice to reveal the killer at the start removes the sole obstacle that might deviate our attention from enjoying the superficial pleasures of nudity, violence, and silly exploitations of familiar dynamics. In its essence, the decision functions as a gift of permission. I didn't know or care about whoever this guy was, and instead of invoking fear through a enigmatic disguise as a brand to reflectively cause us to align with the victims, it's a wholly objective endeavor that follows him and them equally in the early stalking scenes, negating suspense and reveling in pleasures of setpieces, ridiculous weapons, sex, and the basic idea of fear as attractive rather than the psychological experience. Aside from that move of desensitization (that in a coy move inevitably leads to the loosening of inhibitions toward unrestricted indulgence of sensations!) everything else is wisely played just straight. The key to the film's success isn't that it reinvents the wheel but uses this simple alteration of one ingredient to accentuate the rest of the pot, and by cramming in all that we expect without any dead air, we can enjoy all flavors at face value.

I also loved how this was partially stripped of the expected nondiagetic musical cues too, with typical 'jump scares' happening at obvious times without the score or sometimes with a delayed trigger of music to yield maintenance of the tranquil vibe. On the other end of the spectrum, the girls humming Carpenter's Halloween score in unison as a self-reflexive gag was an inspired bit of diagetic sound to add another playful illustration exemplifying its liberal implementation.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2232 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Oct 26, 2020 2:51 pm

Rayon Vert wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 8:59 pm
I was delighted by it the first time I saw it and I've never tired of it. More of an occult neo-noir mystery thriller than an actual horror film, but it's got enough of the trappings to count. As Polanski says in the commentary for it, it’s an enjoyable film for book-lovers since that’s what the mystery is about and it's a big reason why I love it. It’s quite a lot of fun following the assembling of clues and the exotic locales and characters we travel to throughout the way, made that more enjoyable by Polanski’s characteristically masterful stagings and framings. Along said way, there are resonances to all kinds of things from Polanski’s oeuvre. Perhaps a minor film in its ambition, but for me always very pleasurable.

North By Northwest is an apt comparison in many ways, I never thought of that.
Revisted The Ninth Gate and it still never ceases to provide wholesome comfort entertainment, a suspense-lite entry in the director's canon that has no interest in playing with our anxiety with the kind of aggressive force that would be effortless for Polanski to execute. Instead he has a blast jumping from setpiece to new plot development with total control over composing this blend of ideas in the most passively pleasurable ways imaginable. The ending was always a bit of a letdown, but it's forgivable- and in a sense totally in step with the film's perspective -because the dissipating energy marks an intentional deflation by Polanski to reveal the silliness behind the entire narrative.
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Starting with the cult ritual led by Lena Olin, we expect Depp to continue his spy-mechanics after escaping, but then Langella bursts in, gives them all a talking to and easily takes back 'his' book rendering the entire group and their faux-worship cause impotent of value. Then comes the ridiculously-pat final 'showdown' where Langella straight-up immolates himself. Depp is emasculated from any opportunity to be heroic or actualize merit in his role as audience-surrogate, instead relying on the Devil-obsessed villains to self-destruct. Pathetic defects cause the climaxes, not admirable courage. It's all a clever and anti-cathartic shrug at signifying how, whatever Devil exists, it's not something that our agency has any hope in battling with, or even comprehending, much like the joke of an idea that any one character 'owns' the Devil's book(s). Pretty lightweight, cheeky nihilism.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2233 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Nov 01, 2020 12:53 am

This year's Halloween viewings, in the order I watched them. Things started off rough but happily got better and better as the day went on, culminating in my favourite of the bunch. A happy accident, and a good contrast to last year where things started off poorly and never really let up.

Suicide Club (Sion Sono, 2001)
Flippant and comical in tone. Sometimes it comes off as a parody of the cold, serious horror coming out of Japan, at other times seeming a straight forward example of it, and at still others being a splatter film (sometimes grim, sometimes gleeful). Adding to the confusion, the movie alternates between documentary/cinema verite style, a Kiyoshi Kurosawa imitation, and surreal Rocky Horror style burlesque (there’s a musical number by Eddie Izzard’s Japanese doppelganger). It’s all over the place. This is not a serious examination of the widespread problem of suicide among the young in the Japan. It’s more exploiting the issue for shock effect. That doesn’t preclude long, lugubrious shots of tired, overworked office drones and school kids riding the trains with blank, thousand yard stares as sentimental music plays over top. Or weird surface level commentary on how Japanese pop culture (Jpop groups especially) serves as a distraction from important institutions like the family, or on how flippant and uncaring the Japanese youth have become. It’s rather moral and hectoring in a conservative manner. You could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that young people and their music and tattoos are the ones responsible. But then why those lugubrious shots of the overworked zombies on the train? Is it corporate culture, bad schooling, callous youths, tv, pop music, cell phones, tattoos? Who cares. The film is not doing commentary, its repackaging whatever received ideas were around at the time with no thought behind it. A movie boring precisely because it’s trying so hard to seem interesting.

Sea Fever (Neasa Hardiman, 2019)
A small Irish fishing vessel plus one marine biology grad student comes to a sudden halt in the open ocean as though run aground. Soon, the wooden hull becomes spongy and leaks green sludge, strange glowing lamprey-like creatures are discovered eating away at it, and things just get worse and worse. The film excels in its atmosphere. It feels cold, sea-worn, and rust beaten, with a cast that fits the working class context. Even Connie Nielsen, a beauty you wouldn’t expect to see within a hundred meters of a fishing trawler, feels an authentic part of the crew. It has a couple effective and shocking moments to complement its atmosphere. It’s done well enough that you wish it ended up being more than it is. Plot-wise, it’s a lot like an extended X-Files episode.

The Gate (Tibor Takács, 1987)
The kind of thing Stranger Things aspires to be the apotheosis of. There’re some effective shots, like the tree house in the moonlight, or something roiling behind the walls. There’s plenty of cheese, tho’, like a shot of a kid hugging his mother in a dream that looks right out of the Total Eclipse of the Heart video, or the fact that the kids learn about the demon infestation from a heavy metal album (at least playing a metal album backwards tells you how to battle satan rather than join him). Plays on many childhood fears, like hands grabbing you from under the bed. The latter half of the film is a cross between the Evil Dead and Critters. Probably best approached as camp.

Daniel Isn’t Real (Adam Egypt Mortimer, 2019)
Malevolent entity, “Daniel”, attaches itself to Luke as a child. It goes dormant shortly after, only to resurface in college. It poses as helpful, much as it did when Luke was young and enduring his parent’s separation; but its stream of helpful advice slowly and imperceptibly becomes manipulative and destructive. A movie like this depends on you knowing the outcome and watching with dread as it slowly comes to pass. And it works. I enjoyed the movie. It’s an assured production.

Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004)
So nothing here is particularly new if you’ve read any sci fi. It’s the elliptical and impenetrable manner of the telling, the way it forces you to fill in the gaps as it provides the bare narrative information, that renders it tense and exciting. You feel within each narrative ellipsis the endless, incomprehensible zigzagging of competing interferences and motivations. No one is in control, and what the two achieve at the end with the party is petty. The moment they stepped into the box they ceased to have control over anything they would do. They are perpetually playing catch up with actions made by themselves that they do not understand and also didn’t make. Nor do they seem to much understand each other. Their identities fracture endlessly; in many ways, they have ceased to exist by proliferating themselves and then interfering with those proliferations.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)
Peele has such terrific visual instincts. It was a pleasure watching him craft suspense and terror with inventive timing and camera movements. It’s tempting to see this as a response to Funny Games (after all, both fathers are incapacitated with a blow to the leg, tho’ perhaps that’s coincidence). Anyway, the metaphor seems blunt: an underworld of have-nots rising up against their privileged doubles to take what they feel they deserve. Not sure what the intended take away of this metaphor is, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I don’t feel like analyzing the movie all that much. I'm fine sticking with its surface pleasures for now—on that level alone, it’s an exemplary horror film.

The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2015)
An exercise in growing discomfort transforming into dread then horror. A group of old friends get together, two of whom were once married and shared a son, now deceased. Such a masterful display of low-key paranoia. It’s an intense movie for one where so little happens. It’s all suggestion. I wholly recommend this one. Had I seen it for the project, I'd have stuck it on my list. For now it'll have to stand as the best of this list and one of the best horror movies I've seen in a good while.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2234 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 01, 2020 1:23 am

The Invitation has possibly the most unsettling and inspired final shot I’ve seen in a horror movie. I enjoy the suspicious dinner party subgenre in general, but that grand revelation that pulls our focus back from the chamber setting into a powerless relationship with the milieu beyond is what makes it worth revisiting.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2235 Post by Finch » Sun Nov 01, 2020 3:23 am

Saw His House the other night. Well written, directed and acted though I found the monster's design underwhelming. Matt Smith is reliably excellent in a crucial supporting role. I'm not on board with the raves the film is getting from some quarters but it is absolutely worth seeing.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2236 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Nov 27, 2020 3:46 am

Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence is the scariest movie I've seen in years, precisely because
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right to the very end, we are left in the dark as much as the girls, whose mental imprisonment is far more dastardly than any physical restrictiveness.
There is so much detail that can signify subjective connotations, but these specifics also exist separately as disturbing enigmas. We are treated to the crippling feelings embedded in our own nostalgic memories of being young and curious without the ability to discover, to witness sights that are unclear and will remain as such without catharsis for decades, to be watched and praised by strangers, to cope with disappointment, lost in mystery over the fatalism of the adults in our lives as well as what's in store for ourselves, and so on and so forth. This is a film that brings me back to the real-life horrors of childhood through the limitations of perspective, and the confusing discord between delayed cognitions and emotions trying to comprehend the rapidly-evolving physiological developmental milestones, that trigger these new lines of thinking and feelings in turbulent psychological chaos. I wanted answers not because I'm incapable of appreciating the abstract, but to cure my own prepubescent self's desperate need for them. Hadzihalilovic's strategy at delivering what she does is riveting, challenging, and ultimately perfect for the tone and themes she's trying to strike, and boy she cut deep.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2237 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:48 am

Finally caught up with the Breck Eisner The Crazies remake, which was surprisingly much better than the Romero (not that I love that film). Like many horror films of its period, it's incredibly aggressive, but in a break from the normative methods of careless exploitation that eliminates substance in the process, it's executed with intelligent precision, and there are plenty of moments to ruminate in awe at the signals of helplessness these characters feel deeply as their expected support systems and laws of order dissipate. It's also a welcome combination of blockbuster entertainment and stark realism during relentless instances of fight/flight situations, where Olyphant spurts amoral jargon out of character to best an opponent (why more protagonists don't briefly fake a betrayal of character when their backs are against the wall, I've never understood) and his partner exhibits erratic behavior that may not be functional for Olyphant's cool-headed hero's idealized union, but also reflects a logical trauma-based paranoia, and his ability to be swayed into conversations demonstrates that the character isn't spoiled so much as terrified with three-dimensional dysregulation. Olyphant, for his part, is the perfect actor for this tonal blend, playing an incarnation of Raylan Givens, who was able to be complex without needing to spell out his psychology for us, and here continues the trend of quietly pausing to reflect on his character weaknesses yet not breaking from his strengths in the process (I genuinely appreciate when characters in horror films don't act like idiots, which is sadly rare enough to have to say this). domino wrote up a much more interesting sociopolitical reading that I can cosign, though even outside of the smart treatment of these oppressive stakes, the technical skills at achieving an economic approach to the formula while leaving room for surrogate-head-nodding-"Yeah I'd do it like that" self-preservation action-validation, is very impressive.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2238 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Dec 23, 2020 1:33 pm

The Funhouse (Tobe Hooper, 1981)
It’s tempting to see this as a transition point for Hooper between the grating, raw nerve style of his more exploitation-esque 70s films and the slicker, more traditional, more straightforwardly comical horror work of the 80s. So there’s a share of grime and shrieking, but also traditional jump scares and well-orchestrated suspense and stalking sequences. But of course Salem’s Lot was pretty traditional, so, dunno. The carnival feels authentic; there are no hackneyed attempts to make it creepy or unsettling in a filmic way. The low rent, broken down atmosphere of a real backwoods carnival is allowed to stand on its own. As slasher films go, this is a mostly restrained effort, emphasizing atmosphere, build up, and suspense over violence and gore. I’m not overly impressed with Hooper’s post-Texas Chainsaw work, but this particular movie is to his credit.

Eaten Alive (Tobe Hooper, 1976)
Seems more like a Texas Chainsaw cash-in than a follow up by the same filmmakers. Trashy, arch, and with less authenticity (it's entirely set-bound). There’s a lot of cheap sexual menace, and no less than two separate rape attempts in ten minutes. You can see glimpses of talent; more filmmaking chops are here than your average 70s exploitation film. It’s a weird, unpleasant, mostly ineffective film.

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knives
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2239 Post by knives » Mon Dec 28, 2020 10:12 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 1:51 pm
Prince of Darkness, like The Devil Rides Out, is an object lesson in how to successfully treat something utterly goofy with absolute seriousness.

By the way, knives, what scene are you referring to?
Turns out I was conflating a few different shots when I first responded to this post. The shot I was think of those is when Dennis Dun first locks himself in the closest and it’s totally pitch black for a second. I’m not sure why, but that stands as the breaking point of the tension for me. Hot dog, what a great movie though. Carpenter on his A game really was the best in town. Rarely are films so engaging I don’t take notes while watching them nowadays.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2240 Post by Dr Amicus » Mon Jan 04, 2021 6:43 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Wed Dec 23, 2020 1:33 pm
The Funhouse (Tobe Hooper, 1981)
It’s tempting to see this as a transition point for Hooper between the grating, raw nerve style of his more exploitation-esque 70s films and the slicker, more traditional, more straightforwardly comical horror work of the 80s. So there’s a share of grime and shrieking, but also traditional jump scares and well-orchestrated suspense and stalking sequences. But of course Salem’s Lot was pretty traditional, so, dunno. The carnival feels authentic; there are no hackneyed attempts to make it creepy or unsettling in a filmic way. The low rent, broken down atmosphere of a real backwoods carnival is allowed to stand on its own. As slasher films go, this is a mostly restrained effort, emphasizing atmosphere, build up, and suspense over violence and gore. I’m not overly impressed with Hooper’s post-Texas Chainsaw work, but this particular movie is to his credit.
I've only seen this once - it was shown (on 35mm!) at my University on a horror film course 30 years ago - and it was the scariest, jumpiest, most intense horror experience I've ever had. I've never gone back to it, partly because I don't want to dissipate the memory of that original screening.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Projec

#2241 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 10, 2021 8:40 am

Murdoch in 2014 wrote:
Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:38 pm
I hope no one minds me using this thread as a personal tracker this Halloween, but it's a genre I've neglected recently so I wanted to document my viewings.

Noroi: The Curse (Shiraishi Kôji) - The found footage genre has never clicked well with me - the ugly shakey cam-style, while sometimes effective, usually detracts from the film rather than create a more "authentic" experience. This film is an obvious benefactor to The Blair Witch Project, following a documentary filmmaker as he and his cameraman explore the background of a demon known as Kagutaba. I hadn't heard of it until googling "underrated horror movies" and variations on that, then finding it pop up several times under the usual hyperbole that accompanies those lists. Unlike most found footage horror movies though, which often rely exclusively on the camera held by a character or security footage, Noroi mixes up that formula by using TV interviews and talk show segments. It's a welcome diversion from the shoulder-mounted camera and makes the movie feel more like a docudrama or TV special.

Supernatural horror has rarely done much for me (so that's two strikes against it already!), but Blair Witch was deeply unsettling to me so I was hoping for the J-horror equivalent. For the most part, expectations were met. Noroi moves along very deliberately, focusing more on laying the groundwork for its demon subject in a slow series of reveals. The pacing feels somewhat like The Ring as the filmmaker is mostly gathering information about the series of odd occurrences so overplayed in horror - weird neighbors, mysterious deaths, etc. The investigation itself is quite procedural, for lack of a better word, and consists primarily of the filmmaker interviewing witnesses and victims of the titular curse.

Despite the rather slow pace, the film's explanation for its events felt underwhelming to me, likely because the climax of the film involving the same ritual performed on a boat led to little more than a shrug from me. Also, I had to wonder at a part when the filmmaker visits his wife over halfway through the movie for the first time - also the first mention of him having a wife - if she was added late in the writing process out of convenience for the narrative. Still, I will admit the reveal of a monster within the film's final minutes ranks high among the most disturbing images I've seen in this genre,
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even if it was a bit deflated by the fact that, when another character attempted to kill the child hosting the demon immediately before the reveal of the monster, the filmmaker stood idly by filming and even kept holding the camera when he was attacked! Perhaps he's simply passionate about getting all the details, but it always rings false to me in these found footage films when a character will hold the camera during the most inconvenient times just to make sure the action is within frame.
To drag this back to Blair Witch again, what I found so unsettling about that film is it felt like one of those campfire tales that you can't quite tell if there's truth behind it. My problem with this film is largely too much is shown, and the non-diegetic score and occasional CGI only detract from the experience. Much of what works with Noroi is the exploration of what's going on, and that final scene is unsettling. but it takes a bit too long to leave its point.
"Why was he trying to take it?"
"I don't know. The world is full of damn loonies."

I pulled up Murdoch's post on Kôji Shiraishi's Noroi because I have recently seen a little more of his work with 2009's Occult, which is a blackly-comic pseudo-documentary that could easily be double billed with The Last Broadcast. Occult takes the form of the filmmaker and his production team doing an investigation into an incident three years earlier where a maniac went on a seemingly unmotivated knife-wielding rampage over a bridge at a tourist location, leaving two dead and one injured before committing suicide. The first section of the film is pretty much your classic documentary investigation into this incident, with a piece of footage taken by an eyewitness being returned to over and over again to introduce the incident, and then eventually show the attacks occurring, and then going beyond that into noticing certain other details that allow the investigation to continue on a fresh tangent. I was also quite impressed by the blocking of the actors in the footage, appearing in earlier moments of the recording before the incident on the footbridge itself. Interviews with the survivors and relatives of those who died do the regular documentary thing of investigating the incident from different angles and perspectives, and trying to build up a picture of everything that happened.

Even during this more classical documentary section some of the interviewees say that the people who died for some reason felt compelled to have traveled to the spot after getting messages in their dreams to do so. The mother of one of the women killed says that she dreams of her daughter appearing at her door. The boyfriend of the other woman says that he has recent pictures in which his girlfriend appears in the background. Both feel comforted knowing that their loved ones may still be present in some way. And the man who survived the knife attack (but with strange symbols carved into his chest by the killer, similar to the birthmark they had) talks of for some reason being unable to move his legs to escape as the attack began and being left at the mercy of events.

So things are already a little strange but with a lot of interesting themes already coming up of conscious choice versus coincidence (as well as the sense that one person's serendipitous event is another's horrible inexplicable tragedy), and the strange way that witness, victim and perpetrator are all tied together in a little dramatic dance. All depending on either other to play their parts in order to fully inhabit their roles.

Then after the first section the film broadens its focus to the documentarians themselves (including Kôji Shiraishi playing himself), as after hearing the survivor speak about witnessing 'miracles' occurring on an almost daily basis in the three years since the event (despite his life seeming mundane as it ever was, living hand to mouth in temporary jobs on the margins of existence) and seeing a strange passing image on the tape of the attack, the documentarians decide to follow his life to see if they can capture any more 'miracles' on film. But mostly the documentarians find out that Eno's life is more on the margins of homelessness than they could have imagined (as in staying the night at manga cafes being the luxury event when he has the money to do so) and Eno seems to be capitalising on their generosity a little too much by asking to stay overnight on the floor in their production office for the week that he will be filming his 'miracles' for them. Eventually the filmmakers provide Eno with a videocamera to film himself with during his days, promising to pay him for every event he captures.

Whilst this is occurring we also get a digression into a manga artist doing automatic writing that results in drawing those same birthmark/carved symbols, and eventually a digression into a trip to a strange mountain outcropping that Shiraishi himself had gone to 'on a whim' also three years previously and had been left marked by. Which prompts an amusing digression into that standard scene of getting an 'expert' on Japanese mythology and the occult in to explain the significance of the symbols in the form of a cameo from:
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa!
Armed with that information about a kind of curse being passed on we then find that Eno has been capturing all sorts of 'miracles' on his videocamera. Mostly shadowy, jellyfish-like creatures floating over the city, but also Eno himself appears to be able to cause harm to others through them if he is threatened, which starts to worry the documentarians even more. Or at least enough for Shiraishi to go on a drinking spree with Eno to get him to open up as to what his true intentions are:
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which is that he has been told by these presences to commit a suicide bombing on Shibuya station at rush hour. This is where the documentarian distance collapses completely and Shiraishi (after trying to escape but seeing visions that scare him more than a madman does, and with the wounds from the bitemarks on his leg bleeding again leading Eno to note that he is destined to fulfill the 'witness' role in the situation) helps Eno to build his bomb vest.

The final section of the film is Shiraishi and Eno going through their detailed preparations in bombmaking and the last day on the run up to the 'ceremony' (amusingly Eno is often as health conscious and worried about money as ever, which seems unnecessary in light of what he is about to do!) which serendipitously includes watching the 'latest Indiana Jones film' simply because going to an Indian restaurant makes Eno think of the main character's name (and then with it of course being Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the presence of interdimensional alien beings only unfortunately reinforces Eno's sense that he is being given a message to carry out his attack!). Then Eno carries out his plans, with a promise to try and send a message back from the 'other, better world', ending up killing and injuring hundreds.

Shiraishi himself goes to prison for his complicity and the final scene has him meeting up with his old producer associate 21 years later to talk about how the world has changed in the time he has been in prison (apparently beef is just about to be outlawed in Japan after a "US mad cow disease scare"!) until suddenly the old videocamera that was lent to Eno drops mysteriously from the ceiling (along with the 100 yen coin he borrowed from Shiraishi to pay his manga cafe overnight stay bill with!) and we get to see that Eno actually did manage to take a brief clip of footage from the other world, but it was not quite as fun and better than the mundane one that he had been so certain that it would be!
Its quite an amusing film for something dealing with such dark and touchy subject matter of random murders! Occult is played straight but there is enough of a wry sense of humour about all of the antics going on that its obviously not too serious in its intent or particularly sympathetic towards either Eno or Shiraishi's characters (if anyone is sympathetic it is the other interview subjects, as well as the more sensible producer and interviewer who get locked out of the production offices in the final section!). I really like the idea that all of the 'intention or pre-destination?' questions are there but only a jumping off point for other ideas of how someone who has been marginalised from society may be the only one who can sympathise with the inexplicable interactions of others as a kindred spirit, and the danger that being 'self-actualised' or finding a purpose to your life might both be bad for the wider world as a whole and also bad for you as an individual as you get reduced into just being a madman. (And I like the random person trying to steal Eno's bag of bomb making stuff away from him for being someone who knows his intentions and is trying to both stop him and give a warning about what the other side will hold for him)

Occult is kind of the anti-K-PAX in some ways! And Shiraishi himself went on to a very similar film about a documentary crew interviewing a serial killer who needs to kill a certain number of people in order to achieve the bigger goal of saving the entire world in A Record of Sweet Murder a few years later.

But I suppose that the scariest thing about the film is the idea that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull could potentially be the last film that someone would ever see! Plus, OK it is really just this film and Bright Future that make me wonder about this so it might be a localised outbreak related to a couple of filmmakers rather than a country-wide phenomenon, but I am also left wondering exactly what Japanese filmmakers have against jellyfish? Is it just that all of the stringy, stinging tentacles make them extra-scary when they are unleashed to float around a city?

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2242 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jan 24, 2021 6:17 pm

Wow, the wonderful Isabel just got a huge upgrade on backchannels- can't wait to finally see this without the VHS rip fuzz blocking out what I imagine to be significant action. Maybe it'll make more sense!

I stumbled upon this analysis of Isabel online, and it's a worthwhile read for those who have seen the film- but definitely spoiler-heavy.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2243 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 25, 2021 5:55 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Jan 24, 2021 6:17 pm
Wow, the wonderful Isabel just got a huge upgrade on backchannels- can't wait to finally see this without the VHS rip fuzz blocking out what I imagine to be significant action. Maybe it'll make more sense!
I can confirm that the improved image quality really aids the eerie at-times subtle imagery throughout and especially in the dark scenes at the end. I also stumbled upon this analysis of Isabel online, and it's a worthwhile read for those who have seen the film- but definitely spoiler-heavy. Lastly, this feels like a title right up Indicator's alley (:wishful thinking gif:).

Has anybody seen the other two films in Paul Almond's loose 'trilogy' with Bujold, The Act of the Heart and Journey?

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2244 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:31 pm

I always assumed Isabel was fairly obscure but I discovered last night by accident that Almond was actually nominated by the DGA for it (albeit at a time when ten directors were nommed, but still)

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2245 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:18 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:31 pm
I always assumed Isabel was fairly obscure but I discovered last night by accident that Almond was actually nominated by the DGA for it (albeit at a time when ten directors were nommed, but still)
Same, the article I linked goes briefly into how the film was quite popular (Canada's "best known feature"!) before falling into obscurity:
Almond himself was somewhat atypical of most Canadian directors in the '60s. His background was in television drama and he had a penchant for a cinematic mysticism at odds with the country's traditional style in docudrama. Yet, on his own, he produced a highly-stylized metaphysical thriller that was, for a time, the country's best known feature, as well as the first Canadian film to be fully funded by a Hollywood studio (Paramount Pictures, to the tune of $250,000). The reviews on both sides of the border were mixed some like Judith Christ raved about it, while from the North, critics either praised the film with major reservations, or panned it in spite of its virtues. Still, Isabel was a modest box-office success (and a winner of five Etrogs, the Canadian Film Awards of its day), securing Bujold's status as a major talent and allowing both Almond and Bujold to collaborate on two more features in Almond's "metaphysical" trilogy, The Act Of The Heart and Journey, until their divorce in 1972.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2246 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Jan 30, 2021 12:45 am

The Loved Ones: I cannot for the life of me comprehend the seemingly unanimous praise amongst critics for this stupid piece of trash. It's not nearly satirizing itself as much as people think- This is straight-up ruthless torture porn, barely dressed up as a parody what with the 'high school drama' threads and popping-colors of pink dresses and other grab to clash with the brown physicality of victims morphed by trauma into de-colorized grime. Ohh a cutaway from POV thrills to an objective camera briefly capturing a violent struggle as a catfight- how cute. And give me a break on how the film ties the initial setup of traumatic guilt to the finale.. Besides all of the problems with this film, there is the problem that it never lingers on any of its ideas enough to make them count, and is 100% taking itself seriously. I don't know, I seem to be the odd duck here, but this is the worst horror movie I've seen in as long as I can remember, and I just watched A Night to Dismember hours before..

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2247 Post by brundlefly » Sat Jul 24, 2021 4:31 am

Luz (Tilman Singer, 2019)

Not to be confused with Juan Diego Escobar Alzate’s scenic, insular Colombian cult drama Luz: Flower of Evil or the two other movies named Luz that have been released over the past three years. But even the Luces get lucky sometimes.

This Luz is a Chilean woman who was expelled from a South American Catholic girls’ school for a pair of incidents that led to mass sickness and an alleged suicide. She’s now a cab driver in Germany and she will meet up with an old schoolmate and a much older admirer.

This Luz is a movie that puts in play over-the-top forms of control – its handful of characters include a hypnotherapist, a woman with a natural power of suggestion, and a demon that’s not just possessive, but infatuated – and complicates itself with a giddy sense of incoherency.

It’s largely built on two scenes: One series of convoluted chemical reactions in a bar, and one lengthy, ridiculous police interrogation. Both scenes relate the same story, first as seductive exposition and then as theatrical re-enactment, and still by the end there’s chance you won’t know exactly what happened. Because while the movie is anchored by a minimalism in scale and technique – the glacial dolly moves and decisive, locked-down close-ups, the arpeggios of its '80s-style synth score, the mantras of its blasphemous incantation and existential accusation – it revels in an excited pile-on of elaboration. There’s interplay between the re-enactment and the actions around it. Characters speak in German, Spanish, and English. (There’s a Japanese/English door sign, as well, and though this takes place in Germany no one has a German surname.) Words are sometimes immediately echoed by a translation, they’re sometimes simultaneously mouthed by the person re-enacting the event and the character she’s supposedly talking to in the re-enactment, and, because demonic possession is in play, quite often the people who are talking are not/were not themselves.

It’s the sort of film that offers an image that serves as a metaphor for itself: a conference room filled with inexplicable fog, a possessed, naked man staggering through carefully arranged chairs.

This was a student thesis film that apparently got out of hand, and on some level it always feels like something of an exercise. If you work at disentangling it you may wind up with a love story or an origin story or something about performance or being caught between cultures. Or just a pile of used string. But I loved it, loved how it could be both very silly and captivating, and if you’ve got seventy minutes and the urge to watch something named Luz, call this one up.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2248 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:15 am

I have unfortunately not managed to watch Luz as yet but it is worth noting that there is a Blu-ray edition of it out in the US from Altered Innocence.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2249 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:24 am

Revisited Fede Álvarez's Don't Breathe for the first time since theatres, and it's a film I liked well enough upon release that's become incredibly gratifying with age, in its formalist eclecticism, unexpected narrative development, and bold thematic inferences. What begins as a comfortably digestible heist thriller, establishing light touches of gravitas and humor into campy relationship dynamics and thriller setpieces, transforms into something far more sinister. The moral shifts don't so much alter our perceptions of the leads -who earn our sympathies despite their criminal status from the second scene- but instead offers is a punchline that serves as an especially twisted version of karma that comes with invading privacy to get without giving, consequences unconsidered.

The film also consciously recognizes the You Never Know Your Neighbors horror that is implicitly fed into our culture, and doubles down on its moral destruction by demonstrating a warped sense of justice (yet one that's being conducted in the privacy of one's own home, upholding this sense of Lockean property reinforced by our "protective" walls) that prevails whilst the decision to stay and help through empathy, rather than default into self-preservation, ultimately becomes the turning point that triggers more harm. As one character says, "there's nothing a man can't do when he accepts there is no God," which reminds me of The Parallax View's implied blunt reading of the emotionally-minded as objectively less optimally functional in our cold, Godless world. Since morality is destroyed subjectively for one character, he's undeniably the strongest principal for emotional intelligence only complicates self-protection for our protagonists. The film proposes a type of nihilism induced by apatheism, and everyone loses in the end, even if some of them ostensibly win.

The sequel seems to ask us to align with an unlikeable character as the protagonist, and I'm not sure it'll work within a "pitiable underdog" logic that the narrative appears to be asking for from the trailer, but we'll see. Without the wild turns this film took, or Álvarez's technical talents at the helm, I can't imagine anything working like the first. Plus Jane Levy (or, Hardcore Emma Stone) needs to be in everything.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#2250 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:58 am

This might be worth sharing on the horror list thread: the channel Horrible Reviews has brought together a lot of other notable horror film YouTubers to create a three hour, 204 film video called "The ultimate beginner's guide to disturbing movies" (very, very NSFW), that gives brief introductions to a lot of films along with featuring footage from some of the films under discussion that I cannot recall having ever appeared before on YouTube. Granted, I had not really seriously put time into trying to track down anything regarding Murder Set Pieces or the Vomit Gore trilogy before this, but on finally seeing some actual moving footage from these films it pretty much sates any vestige of curiosity I did have about them based on their notoriety and appears to confirm that I had always been better off spending my time elsewhere! And I did really like that the process of making this video appears to have inspired some of the collaborators to go back and add footage to some of their previous reviews: for example Cinemas Underbelly includes their extant narration for Hisayasu Sato's film Naked Blood but in this video actually shows some of the film itself rather than just describing the events therein.

I am about halfway through it at the moment but it seems pretty good both as a starting point and a great way to showcase the various viewpoints of a lot of YouTube horror creators as of mid-2021 (Its kind of an internet version of those Video Nasty guide DVD sets in some ways, just sadly with less Kim Newman!). I did want to add a few of my own comments to it as well:

- Quite a few Criterion released titles appear here, including: Salo (of course!), Man Bites Dog, Antichrist, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Sweet Movie and of course the most horrific film of them all: Watership Down! (Though I do agree with the video that The Plague Dogs is far bleaker and hopeless feeling, going into When The Wind Blows territory, if not worse because the title characters were already doomed from the very beginning of their tale)

- Heli: I really hated the utter head-slapping stupidity on display by all the characters (but especially the main character) in this film (as I went into in more detail in this post), which rather undermines any wider allegory going on about exploitation and masculinity, but I do think it is a really beautiful looking film (which is probably the strongest aspect of it, as the stunning if bleak landscapes contrast starkly with the upsetting day-to-day horrors going on in the human sphere) and it certainly deserves its spot in the 'misery porn' section of the video! The same director would go on to make The Untamed, which is kind of the same thing but with a Possession-style tentacle monster.

- Having tracked it down a few years ago Koji Shiraishi's Grotesque is a quite interesting example of a gender equal(?) version of the notorious Flowers of Flesh and Blood. Its rather tongue in cheek and whilst it was probably done because in the end it is just a film about slow torture and dismemberment I do like to imagine that the BBFC banned it because the gloriously over the top climatic decapitation and ironic comeuppance scene is all underscored to a celebratory orchestral version of "Land of Hope and Glory"! Shiraishi has moved from this notorious debut film into much more complex and interesting films (but all with a similar edge of jet black humour) that provide interesting takes on co-opted film crews and the found footage genre such as Noroi, A Record of Sweet Murder and the fantastic Occult (discussed just a few posts above on this very page!), which weirdly pre-empts some of the directions that The House That Jack Built would go in a decade later!

- Human Centipede 2(Full Sequence) is really the only entry of that series that anyone needs to see, but it really does deserve to be recognised: the first is conceptually shocking but tedious in execution; and the third is just annoying and aggravating for all of the wrong reasons. Blackly comic and upsettingly transgressive, I still feel like the second film works best if seen as a Mike Leigh film gone horribly, horribly wrong!

Whilst many of the films I have not yet seen inspired little but relief in having so far dodged coming across them, as with all the best videos of this type I did come away with a couple of films that I would like to track down:

- Koji Wakamatsu's Violated Angels has long been on my 'to track down' list, although I had not realised it had been based on real events
- the animated cat film Felidae looks astonishingly intense, like an unhinged amalgam of Don Bluth and a serial killer film!
- Splatter: Naked Blood and Lustmord - after seeing some of his later works I am really curious to see more of Hisayasu's Sato's films now, as he seems like one of the few filmmakers who worked in pink films, under Nikkatsu's series as well as independently, and from the looks of it they all seem to show a consistently bleak worldview

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