I can never understand the appeal of horror films, although clearly its a popular genre. I don't enjoy the sensation of fright or surprise. No matter how clever the plot, if the basic premise of the film is people getting chopped up its just not entertaining to me.
So did you see this movie, and what did you think of it? (As it's a "meta" movie, although it can act as a horror movie in its own right.)
It was highly recommended by some of my buddies and I then went to the cinema to see it, I'm glad I did, and I'm glad I followed their advice and read nothing about it what so ever in order to avoid spoilers.
Yeah, it's definitely one of those movies you don't want to know much (if anything) about beforehand.
Although that said I did think it was pretty predictable, also it was every inch a Joss Whedon production, this is what Buffy was meant to be like this movie, and I absolutely loved the amount of movies which it name checked, most of them I've seen, the torture redneck zombis are based upon a movie which Stephen King mentions and defends in Danse Macabre, it was frequently cited as the atypical video nasty or splatter movie but King tries to introduce some tenuous caveats to distinguish it from the same (he'd have less trouble now because there's some terrible hackneyed productions to choose from like the wrong turn movies).
Wow, it's been a LONG time since I read that book -- maybe it demands a reread at this point. I can't remember the specific movie he was referring to, unless it was Texas Chainsaw or one of the "House at the End of the Street" style movies... Yeah, the torture-porn genre has really been in evidence over the last ten years; I went through a list on some site this past month of the top 50 most unsettling movies to watch, and I think the majority of them were made within the last ten years and were within that genre. Of course, there's some schlock too... but I've seen some pictures in the genre genre also referred to as cathartic purging of visceral emotion. I tend to experience similar emotions when I do something physically scary (like riding a nasty roller coaster).... there are these actual physical moments of terror, yet it's also a release of such emotion that is somehow liberating. I am left wondering if somehow in today's "modern" world where many of our terrors are based on abstracted anxieties (financial worries, existential angst, planning for the future, etc.) and physical dangers seem to be the least of them, whether those psychic worries have no form of real visceral release and so we are searching for ways to "trigger" them in order to provide cathartic response of some sort and purge ourselves....
What I loved the most about it was the way in which it used archetypes, no, not sophisticated ones, not Jungian ones but more movie cliches, particularly how it used the idea of "the fool",
Which is funny because later you say it is not meant to be Shakespeare, but this is an actual theme out of Shakespeare that is coinciding with one of the standard horror-flick character archetypes -- the notion of the Fool as a type of character that presents what sounds like gibberish to the rest of the characters but ends up actually being the most clear-sighted and accurate voice of wisdom within the picture. (Here, the Fool is basically a recreational druggie.) Guy Gavriel Kay's book "Tigana" takes the Fool to another level, where the Fool is actually the court fool, and visually a grotesque monster, yet we find out he is so much more, later in the story, and the key to one of the pervasive mysteries...
I really didnt expect that guy to make it to the end credits at all, I thought he was mince meat and that was the only surprise of the feature for me.
Me too. .. well aside from not quite expecting hell to get unleashed until about the time it happened. I thought that was great, that the entire film seemed pretty restrained, methodical, by the book, and suddenly chaos reigns and everything goes to hell.
I'm glad they didnt flinch from the finish,
I agree, it was a form of commentary on the viewing public and in essence asking us what we're doing or what purpose we're serving.
Its not meant to be Shakespeare and I dont think they were aiming to make a huge point with it but I liked it, I thought it was a cute bit of thinking to reflect upon with a wry smile or talk with your buds about as you pass out of the lobby.
I think someone asked Goddard after a previewing whether there would be a sequel, and the director replied, "uh, have you see the first movie?"
I was watching one of the BluRay features last night and in one of the scenes near the end (you can probably recall which one), they said they used 225 gallons of fake blood.... So over the top, but suitably so...
Its to be borne in mind that a lot of these movies, particularly those made without budgets or studio support are in the context of directors and teams trying out a lot of stuff, having fun, dressing up and playing around like a big old game at halloween only with adults. I really realised that when I thought about how the director of Lord Of The Rings was responsible for the movie Bad Taste, also watching
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Brooks-Monster-Slayer-DVD/dp/B001AU3G64/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1348399670&sr=1-1 when they include on the extras a rubbish short movie they made together before the serious one which is the DVD.
Jackson reported halted filming on parts of LotR over a period of three weeks or so to screen "Cabin Fever" when it came out.
That's actually a movie I've been looking to watch for a few years, and I found it last night on a movie-streaming site. It's hilarious because I started watching it right after finishing "The Cabin in the Woods," and the entire opening 15-20 minutes is pretty much verbatim CitW ... five teens drive into the middle of nowhere, meet some creepy rednecks at a store in the middle of nowhere, and then get to their cabin in the woods (which is a similar scene as CitW, although the "woods" in the more recent picture are far scarier and pitch-perfect), and immediately the "whore" character has sex with one of the guys....
