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Weird, dark movies

The Ü™

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US. I never saw the Japanese version. I heard that the US version is similar in feel.
I do own the book. Haven't read it yet.

The Japanese version, like all Japanese movies, is more funny than anything.
 

The Ü™

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Oh, and I forgot Flatliners. Definitely dark, somewhat weird, but undeniably haunting. Joel Schumacher at his finest -- that was before Batman & Robin and The Phantom of the Opera.
 
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Nice, now I can unload onto others and pick up some new ones for myself (foreign language films in bold):

Mysterious Skin
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Visiter Q
Suicide Circle
Meatball Machine
A Serbian Film
In a Glass Cage
120 Days of Sodom
Ichi the Killer
Oldboy

Martyrs
 

iwakar

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^Gah, Oldboy. :shudder:

The Dreamers continues to unsettle me. Incestual transference themes have a tendency to do that.
 

violet_crown

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Audition is on my "must see" list.

I've also had "A tale of Two Sisters" recommended, but have not yet seen it -- although apparently I've seen the American remake called "The Uninvited" (which I would say has some good parts and some bad; the acting of the sisters is good).

I'm a huge Asian horror buff, and Audition is without question a classic. It's one of those where the less you know going into it the better it is.

Heh, i think it's so good cuz it's so flawed -- they sacrificed certain sensibilities to free them up in other ways.

They definitely managed hit some sort of magic ratio of creep to camp. Not to derail too much, but they're planning to make the show into an "anthology" of horror stories where each season is basically its own universe. It sounds pretty innovative if it actually works out. Here's an article talking about it:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/american-horror-story-to-completely-ditch-season-o,67002/
 

Elisius

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Anything by Takashi Miike is good for weird. I love his work. Visitor Q is amazing in its bizarreness.
As for disturbing, The Mothman Prophecies, it may just have affected me worse, but it did keep me up alot of nights.
 

FunnyDigestion

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I'm still thinking a bit about Antichrist. It's really woefully mis-titled, looking at Youtube I can see it ended up drawing an audience of imbeciles looking ravenously around for the new gore-fest demoniac slasher kill-em-all movie where hordes of fleshy manikins are slaughtered by somebody who "got de devuhl in im"... which is a shame because this movie is sooo much higher than that. More elevated... it really has nothing to do with the devil or demons at all; the title does provide a 'deep' religious kind of ambience but that isn't worth attracting the youtube numbskulls, altho i guess the youtube numbskulls will be there no matter what happens.

The review I read of it was negative & talked about its view of "human nature as evil", but it only deals abstractly with evil & human nature only as an afterthought, it's a look at the heart of darkness which is chaos & irrationality... what it suggests is that those things are at the basis of existence itself. Yet nihilistic isn't the appropriate word to describe it because it's about struggle whereas nihilism is blankness.

Nihilism is impassivity to chaos & pain, which is why most people have an instinctive aversion to it... What humanity does is try to impose order on top of chaos, which is why Willem Dafoe's character brings them out to the woods-- he's convinced he can conquer the darkness within life by facing the woman's fears directly; he doesn't entertain the possibility that the fear is more powerful than him, that there are some things the mind can't handle. It's true-- some things are too much... I said that at one point, lol, watching the film-- "this shit is too much." Personally, if things got to a point for me where this kind of bleakness was life, I wouldn't stick around to find out what happens, I'd get out of there-- I'd kill myself. No biggie... some things are worse than death.

But back to the movie, that people had such disgusted, repulsed reactions to it only proves to me how successful von Trier was... the movie ITSELF is repulsed.. it's horrifying but what struck me more was how the movie itself is horrified by what it's showing. I think that came thru strongly. I think people who aren't constitutionally ready to accept what the movie is saying will have a strong, gut-level disgusted reaction to it... & I don't mean that elitist-ly, I mean it literally-- unless you've been mentally & physically to the point grasping the sort of darkness the movie is evoking you will probably hate it. I can imagine INTJs liking it. Maybe INTPs wouldn't like it, INFJs may be repulsed, darker INFPs would like it, a lot of ENFPs, ISTPs would probably find it ridiculous or laughable... etc. Most of my friends would hate this movie, it's definitely just for certain people.

I think von Trier is probably a really dark, troubled ENFP. Functionalogically speaking the effect of the movie is like an Fi monster coming up to crush every last ounce of Ne hope & creation in the human spirit

* dropping TC movie-response into submission box *
 

FunnyDigestion

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Eraserhead is still my favorite David Lynch movie. coolest sequence:

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwEK7onUO6M"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwEK7onUO6M[/YOUTUBE]

there's a lot of stuff in david lynch about portals, doorways, holes.. discontinuities in identity, location, people who are routinely engaged in illogical tasks. That's what I mean by strange... things not making sense is the axiom, the given background of it. What I've always thought is that what's supposed to strike you is the particular ways they don't make sense. It has a clockwork, mechanical atmosphere to it. David Lynch's movies are baffling, & that's a bad thing as well as a good thing to me.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a better example of both dark and weird if I'm allowed to talk about mainstream movies in this thread.


ALLOWED!??!

Let me think.. yeah youre allowed

The weirdest films that come to mind are some of Alejandro Jodorowsky's, such as 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain'.

I like those trailers, I hope to view the Holy Mountain soon.

[YOUTUBE="OG3PnQ3tgzY"]:([/YOUTUBE]

You're right, that was dark. That man's face reminds me of the hotel concierge in Home Alone 2 I believe. Def. a frightening face

Nice, now I can unload onto others and pick up some new ones for myself (foreign language films in bold):

[...]

Martyrs was fucking crazy. Oldboy too, though it also had that under-dwelling creepiness mood. I was wanting to see Meatball Machine but the other splatterpunk movies I've seen were super-retarded, Samurai Princess & Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. Though I watched the latter by accident. Meatball Machine, though-- yeah.

Hmm...geared for younger audiences but still weird and creepy, imo is Coraline.

Wow, that's the kind of movie that always scared & fascinated me as a kid. God, buttons for eyes.. sheesh. I wonder if kids today would be as creeped out though?
 

FunnyDigestion

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one other thing I'll recommend is 200 Motels, Frank Zappa's musical movie from 1971, a surrealistic fiction documentary movie about the band he had then.

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjYNpoS-qI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjYNpoS-qI[/YOUTUBE]

It's totally weird, funnier than anything to me, though not at all dark. It's barely a movie-- there's no story, he filmed it in a week & only got to shoot 1/3rd of the script, so there are parts that have no connection to anything else in the film. One of the members of his band quit midway thru the filming so they replaced him with Ringo Starr's chauffeur. The music is completely weird & hilarious with a few sexual rock songs thrown in.

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-T4prYMoCA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-T4prYMoCA[/YOUTUBE]

I think he undertook the entire effort as an exercise in artistic failure & garbage... I read once that he got the inspiration from seeing a used condom in a gutter in England. So many people think it's worthless but I honestly think it's the best thing he ever did. ... he never got to this frenzied place of 'transcendence in garbage' ever again, & this was relatively early in his career.

The thing about Zappa was that he was a weirdo but also completely realistic & practical.. so his fascinations are with the garbage of civilized society. There's so much you can draw from his stuff if you look into it. It's like everything is contained in the garbage-- lol, that's the lesson of Zappa.

- Stopping babbling
 

paixfleurs

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Wow, that's the kind of movie that always scared & fascinated me as a kid. God, buttons for eyes.. sheesh. I wonder if kids today would be as creeped out though?

Mine adore the movie. They don't behave as if they're creeped out but it does seem to have a very strange draw for them.
 

ZPowers

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Nice, now I can unload onto others and pick up some new ones for myself (foreign language films in bold):

Mysterious Skin
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Visiter Q
Suicide Circle
Meatball Machine
A Serbian Film
In a Glass Cage
120 Days of Sodom
Ichi the Killer
Oldboy

Martyrs

Oldboy is great. I own that one. I've seen Ichi a couple times.

I saw Visitor Q once, and maybe it was the mood I was in or maybe it was the content, but I think it's the most uncomfortable I've ever felt in a movie (saw it at a screening in college, a small club devoted to horror/disturbing films).

I've heard of 120 Days of Sodom (based, I think, on something the Marquis de Sade wrote) and I never even had a temptation to watch.

One I have lined up on my Netflix instant queue that's known for being odd and very disturbing is Irreversible. I've been meaning to watch for a while. It's an odd sensation, sometimes, watching these films. Is is a form of self-punishment? A challenge? Morbid curiosity? I'm not totally sure. I really only give very disturbing* stuff a go every few months.

*my definition of "very disturbing" is not what most people's is. The Exorcist is not "very disturbing" to me at all.
 

gmanyo

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Jacob's Ladder is a good one.

Brazil, by Terry Gilliam
Yes and yes. I don't think I've ever seen a movie as funny as Brazil. Most things directed by Terry Gilliam could probably go on this list.

The screenwriter for that movie (Harmony Korine; I mentioned him earlier) also directed Trash Humpers and Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, all of which are strange and somewhat creepy (and quite NSFW as a warning).

Mulholland drive is weird and dark
Also sometimes stupid. David Lynch always skirts the line between creepy and dumb, frequently landing on both sides simultaneously. Club Silencio was great. Random woman from behind a trash can was superdumb. I did love Eraserhead, though.

Heading into the video game realm, I'd check out Yume Nikki, Space Spy, and, of course, Silent Hill. I'm currently in the middle of Yume Nikki and it is quite amazing.
 
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I've heard of 120 Days of Sodom (based, I think, on something the Marquis de Sade wrote) and I never even had a temptation to watch.

One I have lined up on my Netflix instant queue that's known for being odd and very disturbing is Irreversible. I've been meaning to watch for a while. It's an odd sensation, sometimes, watching these films. Is is a form of self-punishment? A challenge? Morbid curiosity? I'm not totally sure. I really only give very disturbing* stuff a go every few months.

*my definition of "very disturbing" is not what most people's is. The Exorcist is not "very disturbing" to me at all.
I'm not easily disturbed either, but there is a scene in Salo (120 days) I wish I hadn't seen. And Irreversible is about as disturbing as Megan's Missing; which is not at all btw.

I'll try to find my list of movies, because I've seen weirder stuff but I have a really bad memory.
 

Nicodemus

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I'm not easily disturbed either, but there is a scene in Salo (120 days) I wish I hadn't seen. And Irreversible is about as disturbing as Megan's Missing; which is not at all btw.
I found the 'meal' harder to bear than all the other things.
 

nanook

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salo is one of two movies, known to me, that i would recommend against. one of three movies that i switched off half way, because they grossed me out. salo didn't gross me out due to gore or thrill or anything like that, i am cool - antichrist was funny (and awesome) to me, but due to the spirit of the filmmaker. the film is said to be "critical" of society, but it's not that smart.

watch "eyes wide shut" instead.
 
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