Horror Movies

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

Watched it a couple of days ago. I agree with the synopsis.

The good:
*Acting is generally decent to good. This is surprising when you learn that they filled out the cast with family and friends. The guy that played the building super was a buddy who gave them $10k for production, and he was surprisingly good in the role!
*Storyline is solid and well executed.
*Some nice gore fxs.
*The setting is a gritty, dirty one and it is a major part of the story.

The bad:
*The movie is just too dark for long periods of time.
*In addition to the darkness, the overuse of the shakey cam stuff is an issue.
Note that both of these points are budget limitations, but it could have been done a little better.
*The movie plays it straight and serious but the transformation into the creatures can come off a bit comical. I understand wanting to be a bit different but the use of straight up infected humans always plays better than major physical transformations in very short time periods to me (unless you are going full on comedy, which this didn't).

The director/writer Jim Mickle also did Stakeland, which I really liked, and We Are What We Are, which is acclaimed but I don't think I've seen yet. He has manged some pretty decent flicks on low budgets with Mulberry Street costing only $60k, Stakeland $600k, and We Are What We Are at $80k so I am mildly surprised that no one is signing him up for slightly bigger budget stuff.

6 out of 10 seems reasonable for very low budget NY rat-zombies!

Good dig & review! Page 73, back in 2016! I hardly even remember that movie. But the trailer & our reviews did spark some decent memory of it.

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

That looks horrible!! Lol!

...........but I'm guessing it has some "fan service" that @Chef99 will appreciate!

 

[returnofjakedog]

You mean like this?

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

You mean like this?

Gifs you can hear:

 

[Chef99]

That looks horrible!! Lol!

...........but I'm guessing it has some "fan service" that @Chef99 will appreciate!

Are you kidding, I'm all in!

 

[Blackshirts BLVD]

I rewatched Halloween 2018... and I found a lot more problems with it than I did before. Changes my rating a bit too. I think I had it at an 8, but now I think it belongs in the 6.5 category.

Also rewatched Jaws. Great movie, but I just don't get the horror vibe. There are some really great shots, the story works, some genuine comedy, good acting, etc... but I just don't get the horror vibe.

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

 

[Blackshirts BLVD]

Hell yea... @Chef99

So Godzilla goes Rogue... Kong is our savior? I'm sure they will just have Kong knock some sense back into 'Zilla.

The original King Kong vs Godzilla was actually scripted to be King Kong vs Prometheus in which Kong fights a giant Frankenstein monster. But the American writer sold the script to the Japanese who already had an established Godzilla mythos and a costume, so they switched it up.
*Kong is only a savior by default as he keeps getting drunk after eating fermented berries (Seriously! It happens 2 or 3 times! Kong is an alcoholic in this), he passes out and they raft him to where Godzilla is rampaging.

*In the USA version, the guy who sold the script to the Japanese retained the international rights so he added a bunch of fake news footage as a framing narrative. He also replaced all of the music. He then sold it off for a tidy profit. This is the version I remember.
Apparently there is also an English dubbed version of the Japanese version out there.

I remember watching the original when I was a kid annnnd I can't help but root for Godzilla. I never saw a King Kong movie until Peter Jacksons, but old school Godzilla was on some channel late at night all the time. They better not make Godzilla 'evil' for this. I don't know how they would do that, but it initially hits me as lazy writing.... I mean we already have 2 movies completed where he was fighting the monsters hurting the people, sort made connections with the humans, kept talking about being their savior annnnnd now I am supposed to believe he woke up and said 'fuck these guys'?

Either way, judging from the trailer, it will at least be mindless entertainment if nothing more.

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

I rewatched Halloween 2018... and I found a lot more problems with it than I did before. Changes my rating a bit too. I think I had it at an 8, but now I think it belongs in the 6.5 category.

Also rewatched Jaws. Great movie, but I just don't get the horror vibe. There are some really great shots, the story works, some genuine comedy, good acting, etc... but I just don't get the horror vibe.

Jaws... Few points here

• People get too hung up in thinking "oh that's just what sharks do".... When in reality that was not the vision for that movie. The shark's behavior was not supposed to be viewed as "normal", but rather as a true monster. To drive home that point Hooper & Quint mention their scientific & fisherman viewpoints. Again, it's about driving that "unnatural behavior" and making this shark appear to be a maniacal hunter-killer. Spielberg also wanted the shark to be of implausible, monstrous size. But due to budgetary & technological constraints at the time, they made it as large as they could. Also, lets be real here. Shark attacks do happen, but its rare... So rare that this movie plot wouldn't even be remotely feasible. I mean this shark ate what, 5 people in this movie (6 in the book)? Great Whites are only known to eat a seal every 3 days or so. So even if we tried to base this in realism that would make this shark more of a killer than a hunter. Which even further drives home the horror element. GWs are not territorial either. Again, unnatural behavior. All adds up to this shark being a monstrous killer.
• Horror vs. Thriller... Valid points here. What separates it for me is that it has more grotesque & physical elements & better sense of dread than a thriller movie.

 

[returnofjakedog]

So I posted the review of Mulberry Street the other day and noted that it was from director Jim Mikle who also directed Stakeland, another low budget fav of mine (I need to re-watch it at some point). However, I stated that I hadn't seen his 3rd feature We Are What We Are, which turns out to be untrue as I briefly mentioned it in a post back in 2015 as a good but slow moving film.

So.........We Are What We Are. I re-watched it the other day and some aspects of it really blew me away! A compact little tale of a family in south Pennsylvania with cannibal traditions that end up being their (kind of) undoing.

The good:
*Acting and character development- Ambyr Childers as the oldest daughter/main character, Bill Sage as the Dad, Michael Parks as the doctor, and even Wyatt Russell as the deputy all give excellent performances. The family character development was very good (a little less so on some side characters).
*Camera work- Wow! Mickles managed to hide the constraints of the minature 80k budget, and a lot of that was due to consistently good camera work. So many fantastic slow pans, focus on characters, etc. The transition shots alone were noticeably great!
Part of me taking such notice and pleasant surprise in the camera work is probably due to my intense anger at the V/H/S shakey cam crap. Two comments on this:
-V/H/S and We Are What We Are both used camera work to try to "hide" their low budgets. But V/H/S did it by making things an incomprehensible mess (at times), while We Are What We Are did it by providing focus, and striking "beauty".
-Mickles also used the dark, and quick-cut shakey cam to hide budget constraints on Mulberry Street, but does a 180 in We Are What We Are with lingering shots of ambiance. Very impressive change in his methods here!
*Story- the story was small but very effective.

The bad:
*Slow moving. It really isn't a problem for me since the other aspects were so well done, but some people won't like it.
*A couple of small, but unimportant, continuity errors.
So not much negative I can say about it!

I'll go an 8 out of 10 on it! Highly recommended for fans of smart, "gothic" style horror. I still can't believe he made it for $80k!

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

@FaCe-LeE-uS Was there ever plans for a sequel to It Follows that you were ever aware of? I felt like they could've done a sequel or two for it.

Yessir... But these "talks" have been made as far back as 2015. Radius-TWC already revealed that they have been discussing a follow-up film. David Robert Mitchell seems open to it. Tom Quinn, the co-president of R-TWC revealed to Entertainment Weekly that they were discussing the plot with DRM. DRM mentioned in an interview with Vulture that he is completely open to the possibility of working on it to explore the concepts deeper.

"I don't want to give away too much, but we've thought about it... Flip the title... There's so much you could do" - Quinn

DRM is currently working on another horror titled "They Hear It" based on a short film by Julian Terry. I'm assuming we won't see that one until 2021. Best case, he works on the sequel after that and we see it late 2021 or early 2022.

Well its not really newsworthy but its something... Maika Monroe seems to be pushing for the sequel.

 

[Nasty_Magician]

Is the first one worth checking out? I believe it's on HBO now just haven't committed to it.

 

[returnofjakedog]

Another one-

Ravenous (2017)
No, not the wild west cannibalism Guy Pierce / Robert Carlyle classic, but instead a low budget Canadian zombie movie..........but the twist is that this was made by those snooty French-Canadians and they decided to go with it as a French language film instead of English! (How dare they!! Lol!)

A decent zombie flick with both bad and good. It was relatively well done for the budget but in the end it just didn't stand out to me.


The good:
*Solid fxs. Zombies were decent. Some good gore and kills.
*Sppoky ambience
*The actors seemed to do a decent job, but the subtitles do make it a bit hard to get nuance.

The bad:
*The storyline was a bit incomprehensible. The zombies go into fields, stack old tvs, appliances, furniture, general stuff, into 40 ft tall structures, then they stand around them
Why? How is also a question that should be asked.
Is this supposed to be an unofficial sequel to Stephen King's mediocre Cell? Wtf??
I see theories of metaphors of politics, consumerism, etc but in all truth if you don't show or at least lead the audience to understanding what you are trying to say then you might have failed (I say "might" because sometimes the strange, ambiguous endings are intentional).

5.5 out of 10 in my book.

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

Is the first one worth checking out? I believe it's on HBO now just haven't committed to it.

My review: Horror Movies

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

1. Halloween (1978)
2. The Changeling (1980)
3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
4. Train to Busan (2016)
5. Deep Red (1975)... Just realized I left this one off my top horror list lol.
6. The Wailing (2016)
7. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)... Still haven't seen this
8. Re-Animator (1985)
9. Ginger Snaps (2000)
10. Hellraiser (1987)
...
15. Stake Land (2010)... Should be higher on this list
...
17. Black Christmas (1974)
...
19. Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse (2019)... Haven't seen this either
20. We Are What We Are (2013)

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

 

[Blackshirts BLVD]

Jaws... Few points here

• People get too hung up in thinking "oh that's just what sharks do".... When in reality that was not the vision for that movie. The shark's behavior was not supposed to be viewed as "normal", but rather as a true monster. To drive home that point Hooper & Quint mention their scientific & fisherman viewpoints. Again, it's about driving that "unnatural behavior" and making this shark appear to be a maniacal hunter-killer. Spielberg also wanted the shark to be of implausible, monstrous size. But due to budgetary & technological constraints at the time, they made it as large as they could. Also, lets be real here. Shark attacks do happen, but its rare... So rare that this movie plot wouldn't even be remotely feasible. I mean this shark ate what, 5 people in this movie (6 in the book)? Great Whites are only known to eat a seal every 3 days or so. So even if we tried to base this in realism that would make this shark more of a killer than a hunter. Which even further drives home the horror element. GWs are not territorial either. Again, unnatural behavior. All adds up to this shark being a monstrous killer.
• Horror vs. Thriller... Valid points here. What separates it for me is that it has more grotesque & physical elements & better sense of dread than a thriller movie.

Yeah, I don't think that first point translated well. Brody was the one constantly talking about it being a killer. Hooper just kept saying it was an eating machine and Hooper was the specialist, so him saying that makes it seem like normal behavior especially since at that point they hadn't actually seen the shark. It doesn't help that the perception of sharks is that they will eat anything.... so when you put people in front of them, they eat them, not shocking. Idk man, I think it is a great movie, but I just don't get the horror vibe.

I will say my two favorite shots were...

and

I thought those were really cool scenes. The 'you're gonna need a bigger boat' is up there too lol

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

Yeah, I don't think that first point translated well. Brody was the one constantly talking about it being a killer. Hooper just kept saying it was an eating machine and Hooper was the specialist, so him saying that makes it seem like normal behavior especially since at that point they hadn't actually seen the shark. It doesn't help that the perception of sharks is that they will eat anything.... so when you put people in front of them, they eat them, not shocking. Idk man, I think it is a great movie, but I just don't get the horror vibe.

I will say my two favorite shots were...

and

I thought those were really cool scenes. The 'you're gonna need a bigger boat' is up there too lol

Iconic movie all around. So many favorite scenes, but I'm a sucker for Quint's monologue about the WW2 battleship