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Yeah, I was just recalling the line about how insect society works -- and why you never see an insect politician.
But then this brief hint of underlying loss where he's suggesting he has an aspiration to be one. Just the self-awareness of what is happening to him but he's unable to stop it.
it just hurts so much to watch.
It's why I like The Descent too, though not quite as perfect. Sure you've got the claustrophobia of the caves + the crawlers bit, but at core it's still a story about a circle of female friends, three of which have a kind of weird triangle between them. It's not just about the threat to their lives but the threats to their identities and their relationships with each other.
It's all that way for me -- the best horror stuff. Otherwise it's just body parts and mayhem, which can be fun but doesn't really resonate like the spiral out of human connection and personal identity. The Sixth Sense is the same way -- Cole and his mom, Malcolm and his wife. etc.
I finally saw Halloween straight through for the first time last year. I was kinda meh over it, and have little desire to watch any of the others. I've never been big on the Friday 13th stuff either (with Jason), although I was amused and occasionally horrified at Freddy Krueger. At least with Freddy, the mythology / rules reinforce why you should be scared of him: (1) you can't tell what is real versus fake and (2) this means you have nowhere to hide, because when you think you're safely not asleep, you could be completely wrong and (3) we have to sleep.
Halloween has suffered a bit from it's own success - it's been copied so many times that when someone watches it now, it often seem very run of the mill. It was quite original when it came out, though and the music is still creepy.
I tend to find most mainstream horror movies to be a little insipid. Independent and low budget horror movies are often much more original, even if some of the special effects are a little weak. Just use your imagination to fill in the missing details. If you can find it, "Satan's little helper" is good, even if it is as much comedy as horror. It's about an amazingly stupid kid who makes a new friend on Halloween, who turns out to be a real mass murderer. It's kind of fun to watch the kid rationalise away the trail of dead they leave in their wake.
They’re just boring and rely on the same types of scares over and over. They tend to have a low rewatch value. You have to watch a whole lot of nothing at all, oh look a door opened! Ohhh scary. The reason I enjoyed Devil’s Pass more is there were actually things happening in the background if you looked closely, like in one scene you can see the mutants moving along a ridge in the background but it’s almost a blink-and-miss-it moment and the main characters who are holding the cameras don’t even seem to notice because it’s so subtle. It reminds me of Deep Red, when the main character is in the room of mirrors and art early on and you can actually see the killer and know their identity all along, yet people usually miss it the first time watching because of how their face appears in the mirror like one of the portraits on the wall
They’re just boring and rely on the same types of scares over and over. They tend to have a low rewatch value. You have to watch a whole lot of nothing at all, oh look a door opened!
Exactly. I guess they make a lot of them because they have a high profit margin. If you make something for like 3000, it only has to make 9000 dollars for it to make back its budget threefold.
Exactly. I guess they make a lot of them because they have a high profit margin. If you make something for like 3000, it only has to make 9000 dollars for it to make back its budget threefold.
Yeah, it pisses me off. They take practically zero skill to make. They’re also flooding the genre. I will be surfing Netflix for a decent horror movie and it seems like half of them are found footage. There oughta be a law *shakes cane*
Meh. I mean, I don't disagree about a lot of it, but I'm not for blanket-dissing of a genre.
The reason found footage became so popular is because of the low cost of production and prep work. This was a benefit to filmmakers locked out of the studio system and also it was a way for studios to throw crap at the wall and if something stuck they could reap a windfall. Blair Witch (one of the first and the film that popularized this, arguably) made an astronomical return on its original investment. It's not a perfect movie but I think it had some worthwhile elements and introduced a more organic flow to popular film rather than producing poorly-written over-produced horror flicks. The concept of found footage can work but it's typically been abused by either people with no talent or people just trying to milk money out of the teen demographic because it's so cheap comparatively.
I think the first Paranormal Activity had some moments that I found freaky. YMMV. The slew of sequels were too much, but the first was okay. the REC film was okay too (the Spain version, it was remade for American audiences but I forget which name it released under]. But I could easily list ten found footage horror flicks that were crap as well, and there are many more.
There's always an attempt to explore new mediums in film. There's been films in the last year or two for example happening online / computer. (I'm thinking of Unfriended, which was actually a decent if not great horror flick that occurred entirely through chat/vid windows; and of the recent thriller starring John Cho called Searching, which I have not seen but which has gotten great reviews. I would expect this format to be regularly abused at some point, but for the right film and right production company / artistic team, the format is valid.
There's been films done on hand-held cellphone that are quite good (I'm thinking Tangerine from a few years back, it made my top 12 list of the year, but there have been others).
It reminds me of Deep Red, when the main character is in the room of mirrors and art early on and you can actually see the killer and know their identity all along, yet people usually miss it the first time watching because of how their face appears in the mirror like one of the portraits on the wall
Yeah, I just watched that last week. I was considering going back to rewatch the beginning to see. I mean, there's a flashback at end of film (where he remembers it, I assume it's the same shot), but yeah...
it was an interesting giallo flick, it had some energy, some empathy for persecuted groups, the house set was great. And those film-ending deaths were just nuts, rofl. I mean, it never scared me, but it was kind of enjoyable.
Friday, after all the talking here, I broke down and watched both "The Fly" (damn, I love that MOVIE...!) and then "Let the Right One In." I haven't watched the latter for some years, but I loved it again. The cat sequence is a little silly looking (you can tell they are fake) but otherwise... it's such a great vampire movie with subtext. I read the book after seeing the film the first time, and there's stuff insinuated in the movie that is spelled out in the book.
Eli, the girl vampire, isn't actually a girl. She's a castrated boy, she was castrated shortly before her death back in the 1200's (?). This gives extra nuance to the lines where she says, "Would you still like me if I wasn't a girl?" the assumption is that she means because she's a vampire, but it's both of these things. In the movie, when she puts on the dress and Oskar grabs a quick glimpse of her crotch, you can see that there's just a scar there and none of the typical female anatomy.
Oskar is not just a victim, he's kind of a psychopath mentality himself -- he doesn't have as much empathy for other humans, he's very detached from people in general. You can hear hints of it in the film, like about him reading books about murder, keeping a scrapbook of disturbing events, his ability to withstand being switched by the bullies without crying out, his lack of friends aside from Eli. What's interesting is that he is kind to her -- he gives her his Rubik's cube because she never has gotten a birthday present, he gives her candy because he wants her to enjoy something he enjoys. And he's okay with his mom. But in general he's been moving in a detached position to the world.
Hakan, the older guardian of Eli -- well, he isn't just an old guy. He has been with her since he was young. Basically she grooms her protectors over the centuries, she bonds with them, they serve her until they get too old, and then she has a new one ... at least that's how I recall it from the book. So in a sense our enjoyment of the 'relationship between Oskar and Eli' is marred by the sense that she won't age and is a vampire who needs to survive, while Oskar will age and will eventually be useless to her and she'll need to move on. The relationship is more pragmatic that we might envision. Eli isn't JUST a user -- you can tell when she lays a hand on Hakan's cheek, you can tell she feels affection for him and they've spent probably 45 years together or more -- but at the same time, when she drains him at the hospital window (when he offers himself as his last act of service), then just throws his body out the window to die on the ground below, like a discarded beer bottle? One day this is likely to be Oskar. Or are we romantic enough to hope for a different outcome?
(Getting back to "The Fly," I suspect one reason Gina Davis was cast as the girlfriend was because she's so tall. Basically Goldblum has to "shrink" during filming to become a kind of hunched over invalid, and because Davis is tall (I think she is 6'), Goldblum doesn't have to stoop quite so far to appear wizened by his affliction. Goldblum is so good in this film, acting wise and just well-cast for the character type. The makeup definitely deserved the Oscar that year, the fly appearance before the final transformation is just incredibly... but there's also subtlety, like when he first starts to change and his complexion becomes kind of mottled but more like scattering of acne, then increasingly worse. I.e., good makeup can make things look "normal" rather than perfect, with typical human imperfection. Cronenberg also steps into the film as the doctor who is going to provide the abortion. I also love that the publisher/bf is a possessive jerk and yet is trying to do the right thing at the end... )
Saturday, I watched my Criterion copy of "The Lure," the polish flick retelling the mermaid mythos. yes, mermaids are eating men in the movie, all with a music track which feels like watching a more serious style of Rocky Horror Picture Show in 80-90's European goth/pop. It has a pretty realistic ending too, as far as 'fairy tale' stories go. It's one of those films that you can watch and see that it's flawed in some ways, but it's so unique and so consistent a vision from the director that you have to admire it regardless. (And in fact typically the awards it won have been due to the "vision" aspect of the film.)
Sunday, I plugged through a 2:36 hour Korean film called "The Wailing." I recommend it. Its biggest flaw is that it's a little uneven in the mythology of what exactly is going on -- when you have horror, I think you have to have some general rules / idea of the film logic, and that isn't as clear here at least to Americans -- but there's some genuinely unsettling scenes in this film (which involve a plague passing through a village population that is supposedly driven by a ghost OR a demon or might just be a plague). The film might be a little too long but generally makes good use of atmospheric framing shots especially comparing nature scenes (just gorgeous!) with the freakishness of human culture. The film doesn't shirk from harsh language, I found the possession (if that is what it is, the film is kind of sloppy on how it works) of a young girl to be far worse than anything I saw in The Exorcist, which was cartoonish to me. There's also the brutality and suspicion of outsiders by locals, which is a highly relevant theme today... but you can see where it's coming from and why. Anyway, the film is pretty grounded in the human protagonist (the police captain and father), it's unclear how things are going to end until you get there. Glad Netflix has a FEW decent horror flicks on it even if grouped by clusters of junk horror.
Sleeping beauty.
Poisoned apples, white male patriarchy enforcing the rape culturey kiss-while-asleep, empowered woman being maligned and described in dehumanizing language (witch queen), little people being called dwarves .. it has it all. Horrifying.
Sleeping beauty.
Poisoned apples, white male patriarchy enforcing the rape culturey kiss-while-asleep, empowered woman being maligned and described in dehumanizing language (witch queen), little people being called dwarves .. it has it all. Horrifying.
I didn't know it would be funny.
it was a very self-aware flick that had some fun with vagina dentata trope.
Kind of the female anti-hero who makes transgressors pay. (Hey when life gives you lemons -- or in this case vaginal teeth -- make a hell of a lot of lemonade.)
I find the whole purity movement really freaking annoying, though. I kind of "missed" that wave, it was more of a thing when my kids were teens and they never really engaged it; but I was part of religious community as a teen that pushed that kind of stuff (it was the unformalized/unpackaged precursor), and I just felt sad and frustrated watching them... like, stop making your lives so complicated and horrible and self-restricted. Just live and breathe, you know? You can be centered and on a decent path without being an extremist and neurotic about everything... because when you suppress yourself so intensely, it typically makes you miserable and also just results in an eventual blowout, which is essentially what happened here.
The best song!!~ I listen to it on loop sometimes do you think Jack is one of those very rare ENTP 5s? What type do you think he is??? I've wondered this for AGES
