Hey it's halloween, everybody should shit their pants - ilx horror crew top tens.

this cropsey news is a bummer

Sound of My Voice

I assumed this was terrible because it shares personnel w/ Another Earth. Anyone else wanna vouch for it?

i looked up cropsey and it seems to be well rated on imdb, so all i am saying is that i hated it

yeah i have the same experience w/the poughkeepsie tapes i think, its been on my shortlist of stuff i want to see but cant get a hold of, along with Noroi/the Curse and (shudder) A Serbian Film

like seriously netflix, you cant even get discs of a serbian film, but human centipede 2 is on streaming wtf

fyi, as a dude who really liked human centipede, human centipede 2 is pretty terrible

also i think mum and dad is now streaming, if you want to ruin your night and feel bad about the world

Yeah, I stopped watching HC2 after awhile. Just no fun anymore.

Anyone who's looking to watch A Serbian Film should consider also getting Tears for Sale (with which it shares a writer and themes, but is a sort of quasi-historical adventure movie/fairy tale) as a chaser/palate cleanser.

haha Thnig, if you got death bed from netflix this month, it probably had most recently been in my house, because given how long it sat in the very long wait section before i got it they only have one copy of it.

haha! that movie was so weird and i rather liked it. the disc did smell funny though, he's right.

Cabin in the Woods
The Innkeepers
The Signal
Absentia
Daughters of Darkness
Rare Exports
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
Pontypool
Dream Home
Kill, Baby... Kill!

One thing I learned today from my WI account activity: I tried to watch Melancholia on six different occasions and still didn't finish it!

It doesn't get any better.

I tried watching Melancholia a few times but fell asleep each time, so I deleted it. Does the world end?

*spoilers*

yes

*end spoilers*

like seriously netflix, you cant even get discs of a serbian film, but human centipede 2 is on streaming wtf

― I'M THE ONLY ON (jjjusten), Thursday, October 25, 2012 4:01 PM (2 hours ago)

to be fair you can buy the human centipede off an endcap at target, for deep genre atrocity it's inexplicably mainstream

yeah true

been curious about Death Bed for awhile but never picked it up

will definitely investigate Martha Marcy May Marlene

Uncle Sam is not a good movie but there are parts of it that are fantastic

Just watched The Tall Man. FUCK yeah. Recommended without hesitation. And not really possible to discuss without ruining.

Really dig how Tucker & Dale and Martha et al kinda traipse around the idea of being horror movies without quite fully committing. Cabin In The Woods does the same thing except then it just commits to being a completely different kind of horror movie. At any rate, I welcome anything that shakes off stale genre conventions while still being interesting and/or fun.

xposting, but Rare Exports is great.

Not only is Martha, etc. not anything special, I dunno what it's doing in this thread.

true. my memory of it is already fading and i was neither high nor drunk while i watched it.

the snowtown murders, otoh, ruined my saturday night... made the world seem like a sad and dirty place. *shudder*

Poughkeepsie Tapes is on YouTube, I think.

sounds like I should watch the snowtown murders huh

I found Snowtown pretty ignorable. Also, not a horror movie per se, just to be clear.

I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about this bc I didn't see it on Netflix but can we talk about XTRO? It was like Phase IV-level weird and I thought the effects were great! Kinda Cronenbergy, what with the woman giving birth to a full grown man and all.

There's a great click somewhere on http://siskelandebert.org/ of Gene and Rog flipping out over how awful and gross Xtro is. Always kinda made me wanna see it.

It's gross but not awful! I loved it.

I think I just generally love the Cronenberg/DePalma 80s batshit gross out style. This came with a bonus array of accents, face-sucking turkey legs, and pulsating alien eggs incubating in a pool of what appeared to be avocado mush in an overturned refrigerator. I won't go into the kid's magical dream sequences. The music was good too.

The Tall Man was def the year's biggest letdown for me, horror-wise. So much so that it's caused me to rethink a lot of the stuff I *like* about Martyrs.

xtro's pretty entertaining in a berserk b-movie way, there's something discomforting about its emotionless disregard of the basic requirements for cinematic engagement, it's like a movie made by cyborgs who have never seen a movie before but they did read a book on how to make a movie once

I bet "Deadgirl" could have been good given a better director and writer. There's a lot of thematic/metaphoric potential, sort of wasted.

Also, this would have been really powerful/iconic if it was made and released during the Vietnam era with the likes of "Last House," etc. But now? Just a grisly indie misfire.

fighting words

snowtown murders is a horror movie the same way henry:portrait of a serial killer is, but in some ways more bracing and effective. its a cold sad film.

Deadgirl remains in my number one spot for horror movies of the last decade so

Inside for me. I'm boring that way.

ha well inside would be prob top 5, def top ten for me.

thats right eric you are also in the "inside is better than martyrs" camp w/me. *clinks glass*

may I join you

Well, Martyrs is still top 5.

Pending some viewings of Mr. Hal's Jam.

Inside was actually scarier than martyrs, top ten for me too.

watched Inside a few weeks ago. it was good for that sort of thing, but it made me realize i've gotten a little soft in my old-er age with regards to this extreme gore stuff. i mostly just felt nauseated.

i kinda dug Deadgirl's Gus Vant Sant-esque pretty teen angst vibe, but i don't think i believed anyone's behavior/decisions in it whatsoever.

Still waiting for your point-by-point takedown of that Salon article, btw, jjj.

emotionless disregard of the basic requirements for cinematic engagement

it's like junk food for your eyes! i think that's why i like it tbh. i don't have to care about anyone or anything, i don't have to be scared or feel like throwing up, i can just enjoy looking at the people (and panthers) doing the things. it's definitely not as good as depalma/cronenberg but there's something similar enough that makes me like it. i dunno. maybe i have terrible taste.

yeah there's something gruesomely fascinating about xtro but it's not by design. depalma/cronenbeg are always in control of their aesthetics.

deadgirl def one of the better horror movies of the past few years but it didn't tip over into all-time great for me, not sure why. feel like the narrative played it a little too safe, or maybe it was the high school students who look like they've already graduated college. I know those are stupid complaints, maybe I'm partially in agreement w/ josh that these guys had a great concept but executed it in a workmanlike way. still recommend it tho.

i don't have to care about anyone or anything (...) i can just enjoy looking at the people (and panthers) doing the things.

this! I never worry about whether a movie is making me care about its characters. I think all I care about is atmosphere and vibe, in the end. A movie is an entity looking at me and I'm interested mainly in the feeling I get from it looking at me.

i mean movies of all kinds are intensely emotional for me but the emotion doesn't derive from the characters or the 'plot'...

i still think the dude who played the worse (as in most evil) of the two main characters was amazing in it, really bums me out to see him stuck slogging through tons of awful half-assed horror stuff, i was worried that that performance might make him an untouchable and i think thats happened

re: deadgirl

xpost Wow, I am the total opposite. Or at least those things are important to me. A movie doesn't need plot to move me, but a good plot needs more than atmosphere to sell it to me. And I like movies that are mostly atmosphere, or vibe, but if nothing is done well with those things then the absence of character or plot bugs me. Usually to move me a movie needs at least a couple of those things. Otherwise, I'm just looking at a screen. Def. character and plot and writing and acting elevates a movie to greatness ime. Any doof with a camera can get the atmosphere part down.

I thought the evil-er guy in Deadgirl overacted terribly, like Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume or something. Wish they had more fun with the concept, because teens so pent up they resort to sex with restrained zombies is rife for satire, not so hot played straight. Though to its credit, it's rarely outright ugly and never seemed out strictly to shock.