ok let's all shit our pants to some spooky tiktoks: horror film thread 2026-til-infinity

sorry for the horrible thread title

evil dead burn was INCREDIBLE

just sooo over-the-top anti-family in its bones. when you get married you not only get married to a person but you get embedded in all the toxic dynamics of your in-laws, and i thought of that a lot when the main character was just sort of an ancillary witness to all the (genuinely war movie-like) violence happening in the house (until, of course, they remembered she was there, the interloper!!!)

i think my favorite thing about the evil dead franchise is that the deadites somehow lock into both of the worst thoughts someone has of you and the worst thoughts you imagine someone has of you. they prey on insecurity, and idk there's no locus of insecurity more radioactive than the family

also, it's not like it did anything remarkably original or nuanced with the main character's experience of domestic abuse, but idk, after all the graham platner shit last week, i sort of needed to see an obvious movie about someone literally tearing their abuser's face apart

cathartic experience! better than evil dead rise imo bc i didn't have to contend with someone's weird idea of life beginning at conception, but also the camerawork was more creatively unhinged and unhingedly creative

Thanks for starting this new thread, Ivy.

I hate the new Evil Dead movies, the two that I have mostly seen (walked out of the first one for reasons unrelated to the film, but didn't like what I saw of the film, either, so never finished it). But I did like this guy's spider movie just fine.

evil dead 2013 is one of my favorite movies of all time but it's definitely one i don't expect anyone to like

tho i do think its last 20 minutes are extremely crucial to developing any sort of appreciation of it

They should have put that stuff at the beginning then, lol.

Don't watch much horror but liked Obsession.l, which I saw last night (bar the first five mins) and just evidently commenting on from the discussion in the previous thread.

Didn't think Bear was a "villain" or anything. They are all in their early 20s on a curve of life and making the mistakes, and building capacity to process whatever emotional upheaval are going on.

I liked Sarah a lot so having her killed was effective.

I liked that Nikki didn't die, just in the sense that there's like a small chance she could rebuild her life (even if it's a 1% chance it's not nothing)

Enjoyed how "I love you" was so emptied of all meaning throughout.

*ambiently commenting

It's insane that these studios seem to be spending so much on acquiring these meme IPs for feature adaptations, because many of them are no more than a minimal elevator pitch in the first place. That two minute "Open Door" youtube short from a couple of years ago earned the creator a six figure development deal, which ... good for him? (It's literally an elevator pitch, lol). But there is so little there to bid on they might as well go the AI route. It's very:

Step 1: Make short film about two people riding in a mysterious elevator
Step 2: Sign development deal for feature film based on two people riding an elevator
Step 3: ????
Step 4: Profit!

Related, and echoing the thread title:

After Siren Head sold to Warner Bros in a massive bidding war, another viral internet sensation from Trevor Henderson has found a home. In a pre-emptive deal, Sony’s TriStar Pictures has swooped in to acquire feature film rights to Henderson’s Cartoon Cat following. This sale marks the second feature deal for Henderson in as many weeks following the five-way studio bidding war for his Siren Head creature, which landed at WB with Zach Cregger and Brian Duffield co-writing and Duffield directing.

And

Upcoming YouTube creators set to helm features include “Portrait of God” director Dylan Clark and “Mora” director Sam Evenson.

And so on, there have been lots of these news stories the past few weeks. There's nothing wrong at all with youtube creators making their way to the big screen, it's an awesome platform for good ideas and experiments, especially for those with a modicum of creativity and ingenuity. "Blair Witch Project" totally would have been a youtube short. But a lot of these meme-movies-to-be, the whole gist is that they are essentially *not* fully fleshed out ideas, just more or less broad stroke templates that can be reused and appropriated. That's the whole creepypasta deal, isn't it? But the horror strategy for decades has been to spend less to make more. That's for sure what b-movie studios have long done, up to and including Blumhouse. One Marvel movie is, what, 30 $10 million dollar films or literally 300 "Obsession"s. But they clearly need a good idea first if they want to mint blockbusters, and a pitch that doesn't go far beyond "spooky monster" or "spooky room" isn't a magic bullet.

Scott Stuber’s United Artists, Steven Spielberg & Amazon MGM Studios Land Next Big YouTube Horror Franchise For Big Screen: ‘The Mandela Catalogue’

Jeff Barker, a screenwriter who is also the father of Obsession director Curry Barker, is set to write and direct his own psychological horror short film, Medium Rare, starring Dane Cook and Lesley Ann Warren. The film follows a man trapped inside a bar, where reality begins to unravel in increasingly disturbing ways. Production is expected to begin in Los Angeles later this summer.

I am cautiously optimistic about all of this. I’m all for lower budget movies that start as an original premise that gives the director enough wiggle room to make it their movie, as opposed to an existing franchise with established lore and whatnot.

As long as there is a good script, for sure!

The Trevor Henderson stuff is interesting if only because it will add to the list of films based on existing paintings:

Val Lewton's Isle of the Dead
The Girl with Pearl Earring
If a stage musical filmed for television counts, Sunday in the Park with George

There must be more

Mike Flanagan is rebooting "Carrie," again, as a mini series, but I am intrigued by this a bit:

Of particular note, Mike Flanagan teases in his chat with Entertainment Weekly that the series will spotlight additional characters who have their own telekinetic abilities.

Each of the show’s episodes will apparently open with the introduction of “a different, unique story of a different woman, somewhere else in the world and in time, coming to terms with their own abilities.” Flanagan teases, “Carrie’s specific place among that group of women is part of the real joy that we get to discover over the course of the season.”

I'm excited because it's going to be on Amazon Prime (since all of his TV work has been on Netflix, which I ditched a couple years back).

That sounds closer to The Power (which was already an Amazon Prime series) than Carrie, but whatever.