ok lets all shit our pants to something new: post 2005 horror film thread

So without muddying the water with all the decades of classics - what horror movies did it for you (so far) this year? It's almost halloween, and we all need some new stuff rather than watching Suspiria for the fourteenth time, right?

the fourteenth time high? it really makes a difference

well yeah

My surprise nominee (and none of these are going to be academy greats duh) is The Haunting In Connecticut which will not go down in history or anything, but was a totally capable jump scare flick. I have no idea why they promoted the movie the way that they did, the initial theatrical release campaign made it look like some sort of slow yawn slightly creepy snoozefest, when in fact it is 100% cut from the flash of CREEPY DUDE in the mirror/corner/behind the kid school of filmmaking.

plot holes? well yeah, duh, but who cares

This is prob a good place for me to fly my challop flag and say that as great as Let the Right One In is, it isn't really a horror film IMO.

i kinda want to see paranormal activity.

yeah me too! although i fear the possibility that it might be a hype triumph and disappoint.

Drag Me to Hell!

man, still haven't seen that. or even zombieland (which doesn't sound like horror).

all i've really seen in 2009 is drag me to hell and zombieland, which isn't really a horror movie either

xpost

i just watched drag me to hell last night, and as a old school Raimi fanboy it was a ton of fun (srsly sam it is amazing how much mileage you can get out of the power of people/corpses/demonwhatevers vomiting on other people). Curious to find out how it worked for people that weren't kind of the target audience, esp the classic moments of Raimi complete set up nonsense (the best of which had to be the "well duh why not use these ice skates i was about to pawn on my suspended anvil" idiot lunacy).

anybody see any of the big remakes (last house on the left, whichever one rob zombie did this year, etc)?

drag me to hell was so great -- just rewatched but seeing it in the theatre was amazing what with everyone laughing & screaming simultaneously

i think the only nasty cut-em-up flicks i like anymore come from france or asia, though the first 'hostel' and the first 'saw' were good. i have a ton of friends who are in the horror film community and they're all pretty cynical about it these days, everyone wants to turn shit pg-13.

no desire to see the halloween remake, but the trailer was fucking terrifying (i've long held that horror movie trailers are usually way scarier than the actual movie, you just get a succession of jumps and creepy images without any context or warning).

loved drag me... anyone seen paranormal activity yet?

or left bank?

the french stuff is just brutal, but its been some of my favorite stuff as well, im sure a bunch of the usual whiners are going to lump it into the totally dumb invented "torture porn" genre but it just has such a deep sense of misanthropic malice and self-loathing xpost

i have a ton of friends who are in the horror film community and they're all pretty cynical about it these days, everyone wants to turn shit pg-13.

― access flap (omar little), Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:09 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://tcmmoviemorlocks.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/famous-monsters-speak2.jpg

^^^ omar's friends

considering using my mod cheat powers to edit the title to include 2008 because so much great unheralded stuff came out last year

'inside' was just as rough thematically as it was in terms of gore imo, i.e. it's one of my favorite films of the past few years.

id make it the whole decade but i think that the hostel/saw/ring/rob zombie non remake stuff would just take over and we've talked about that a billion times already (i love all three of the originals, and will go to bat for hostel 2 as well)

me too hostel 2 is so underrated

really felt roth didn't want to cheap out with an easy sequel on that one

the saw series has turned into a joke imo

oh yeah saw 3 was particularly awful

never seen a saw movie (i am okay w this)

I didn't really feel Hostel when I watched it - though that might've been because I'd watched Wolf Creek the night before which ten times more brutal and believable. Still haven't seen any of the Saws.

martyrs was the best horror movie I've seen in years. it's french torture porn, and then again, it's not... which is what makes it so great. it totally transcends the genre and I can guarantee you won't guess where it's going.

eden park was pretty good. not the greatest film ever made but a nice patch on the "hunted by locals in the woods" genre.

Eden Lake you mean? I liked that a lot, some bits haunted me for a few days. Such a dark ending!

duh, yeah eden lake

there are a lot of recent horror films I wanted to see that I haven't gotten around to. off the top of my head: teeth, the uninvited, embodiment of evil, dead snow... and I guess the haunting in ct now...

anybody repping for inside in this thread needs to see martyrs stat

paranormal is not that great. download it and see it at home. more of a living room thing than a theatre experience.

I wanna see nightmare, too. it's an older film that just got released on DVD, kind of low budget but looks promising.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455983/

oh hey btw for the french horror heads, if you haven't seen frontier(s), thats pretty essential

Eden Lake is british, right? some great horror coming out of britain in the past few years, esp if you like a bit of comedy mixed with your gore (top recs would be Severance and Shrooms)

paranormal is not that great. download it and see it at home. more of a living room thing than a theatre experience.

― let them eat cankles (jeff), Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:33 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really? how so? i would think it would be a quintessential movie theater movie!!

I liked Drag me to Hell. Also liked Jennifer's Body actually. I think a lot of good recent US horror has been genre pastiche/comedy (I'd include Hostel ii).
The French/Asian stuff is nice because it still does well playing the eeriness/bone-gristle straight. I've only seen the first 2 Saws but had to stop because why bother when there's stuff like Martyrs out there.

dead snow is pretty half-assed tbh

theres a foreign language film that is a great companion piece to Eden Lake that i can't remember the name of right now and it is killing me.

Eden Lake is british, right? some great horror coming out of britain in the past few years, esp if you like a bit of comedy mixed with your gore

Yep, it's British. Not many laughs though.

Just grabbed some new 80s movies to watch. Can anyone vouch for these?

Combat Shock
Demented
Don't Go In The House
Night of the Demon

oh yeah wait, Ils (or Them) is the Eden Lake parallel. creeeeepy

haha yeah Eden Lake is def not chock full o' laughs

really? how so? i would think it would be a quintessential movie theater movie!!

Because...

SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
...it is pretty much just a Blair Witch clone and more fun than scary. For me, the experience was ruining by a theatre of 500 groaning teens.
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS
SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS SPOILERSSSSSSS

*ruined

combat shock is fucked up. also pretty interesting and pretty good.

thread title edit for the purposes of why not

In light of the new title I will mention Wolf Creek again.

dead snow is pretty half-assed tbh

yeah it looks totally cheeseball but I'm a huge shock waves fan so...

speaking of which, the aussies have def had a horror boom this decade as well xpost

re: the cruelty of the ending, all i could think of was how women are abandoned to deal with the aftermath of relationships like this, all the hurt and collateral damage

It made perfect sense; I think my expectations of how dark an ending will be have been upended by some more recent horror films. There's no justice; she's just completely fucked.

Yeah the building relentlessness worked. I even liked how jerk friend didn't get out of it, the billion dollars thing was ridiculous perfect comedy and then....

My kid liked Obsession a lot but she watched a pirated copy on a friends phone and I made her watch the David Lynch video where he’s cursing movies on phones.

Looks like it could be fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HjdiohVOik

possibly the only good US straight-to-YouTube horror film I’ve seen (Milk and Serial)

feel obligated to mention that joe meredith’s stuff rules:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIYy8nnsQRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCNO55DTyY8

Having just seen Backrooms: ...I...guess? But not really. A classic 'less than the sum of its parts' effort. I don't know anything about the whole creepypasta/mass-sourced setting/backstory of it all beyond broad outlines, I just wanted to treat it as its own thing. Parsons is a reasonable enough director and it's got moments but I'm kinda glad for him that he didn't actually write it; an _Us_/_Stranger Things_ graft is imperfectly handled (and Parsons being only 20? that tracks as potential influences) but if it was a shorter film (90 minutes instead of 110) it might have been snappier. Some scenes are just too damn long and if the imagery makes a kind of 'sense' later, if you don't love furniture you'll find this somewhat hard going. Ejiofor and Reinsve are plenty fine as the leads but the material could have been sharper as noted. Lowball your expectations, but it could be worse. Though I will add having a cut from Boards of Canada's Inferno on the soundtrack seemed apt.

I know nothing about Backrooms, but I could have sworn there was just another cheap horror movie that just came out, based on a video game or youtube series, about people wandering down hallways. Exit 8?

Yes Exit 8, another one scuppered by its own limitations, this time set in a Tokyo metro station. Passed the time well enough but fatally not very scary or disturbing.

Maybe someone needs to remake Last Year at Marienbad with jump scares

Exit 8 the movie really suffered from some half arsed attempt to feed emotion into its story, which left me not really giving a shit about any of the protagonists.

Backrooms is pretty successful in making its main characters' sadness and confusion relatable.

Exit 8 the movie really suffered from some half arsed attempt to feed emotion into its story, which left me not really giving a shit about any of the protagonists.

Backrooms is pretty successful in making its main characters' sadness and confusion relatable.

Sheeiiit dbl post soz

Yeah, I generally liked Exit8 but it was so over the top maudlin about fatherhood that it read to me as get-the-birthrate-up propaganda.

just agreeing with ned these days i guess, but i was kinda disappointed with backrooms. a few amazing sequences (especially the opening), surrounded by a very uh perfunctory narrative and characters that felt more like gestures than people

As time goes by horror becomes less appetizing and it bums me out because it used to be my favorite. I’m avoiding Obsession spoilers while there’s a good chance I’ll never watch it.

I think if present me tried to watch the Babadook for the first time I would quit halfway through.

Dan Akroyd: Hey, do you want to see something really scary?

me: NO.

Backrooms looks much more appealing that Obsession, which telegraphs its premise and ending in a way that tamps down my interest. i always thought the scariest part of the otherwise rather silly “House of Leaves” was the idea that the house was bigger on the inside than on the outside, so that Backrooms begins from that sort of premise make me keen on seeing it at some point

Backrooms was enjoyable in a "10 am I'm barely awake mindfuck". It's more style over substance but the style is fairly engaging.

Obsession I've seen twice. It's so much harder to watch the second time.

Tne first time I actually had spiked anxiety. Not only was it visually well done, but it really landed its message.

I get the obvious Monkey's Paw comparisons, which are accurate. But I think a key difference is in Monkey's Paw, each wish was granted in a malevolent way, and its trap is giving multiple wishes so that scared users attempt to mitigate the damage of earlier wishes and simply become further ensnared.

There's no clear indication that the One Wish Willows contain inherent malevolence. They even show a Reddit thread where one person quotes their mother as being thrilled with her wish! it felt to me more like wishes in themselves often involve depriving other people of agency. What are typical things people wish for? Yeah, money, wealth, fame, but also forcing someone else to love you, punishing someone else, or wishing someone wasn't dead anymore, etc

Bare wishes Nikki loved me more than anything in the world. That's what gets granted! It's already horrible - because it deprives Nikki of free will and her ability to consent. The latter half of the wish is the part that makes her obsessive. If he had wished to be the richest man in the world, i don't think the Wish Willow would have granted it malevolently, like killing everyone on Earth. He's punished because his wish involves stealing someone's right to consent, which they are very aware of

And that is key because for the first few weeks, when she's extremely pleasant to be around, he's in heaven . Whereas she's in Hell from the beginning. Her real persona breaks through often demonstrating this. The initial freakout when they first. Kiss. Her writing "Not Me" on a Polaroid picture of her with Bare. He chose not to see these things because HE was happy

And when she becomes unhinged, his greatest concern is still not her well-being but his own. When he calls the help line, he doesn't initially want to cancel his wish - he wants to alter it! He wants to keep the relationship but lose the crazy stuff! He only asks to cancel when he's told he can't do that. He asks if it's even real, but seems to be asking more from desiring authenticity vs actually caring about her autonomy.

The movie is obviously targeting incels as well as rape culture , because the horrible irony is he had the opportunity to tell Nikki how he felt - she did the hard work for him by asking and he lies! He's a man who can't hear "No", he's afraid if she says "no" that he can't bear to just be friends anymore...even though they, by his admission, have an incredible bond. He takes the easy way out (wishing) because then he doesn't have to hear No.

Obviously, he didn't think the Willow would work. But he was flustered enough that he pulled out what he thought was a kid's toy ti make a child's wish because he couldn't be honest and put in the work by saying how he felt. The disappointment on her face when she asks if he likes her is familiar - her circle of friends contains two men and now it appears both desire her sexually. No, there's nothing inherently wrong with developing feelings for a friend, as it's often deep-seated. But many of us know women who have lamented having men whose friendship with them contains an ulterior motive (desire), and the idea that many men find themselves unable or unwilling to be friends with women without having a romantic interest in them.

Bare is a dormant monster. He's friendly, kind, and doesn't actively seek to harm people, but when he's given the opportunity to harm someone anonymously, he does it and refuses to help her, even taking offense at her desire to die rather than being forced to be with him against her will, essentially being raped over and over. Whereas the Monkey's Paw preyed on well-meaning people, the Willows hold up a mirror to the people making the wish

otm. i've seen obsession three times!!! it's a deep text that i think unearths a lot of issues with heterosexual monogamy and patriarchal desire being imposed upon women. and idk i thought it was fucking scary

aside from the first five minutes backrooms is not scary to me, heartbreaking but true!!!!

i've seen obsession three times!!!

PVMIC, lol

it's actually exceedingly rare for me to see a movie three times in the theater, though i guess i did the same thing with the substance in 2024

I'm psyched to see "Obsession" eventually. How does it fare against "Companion" (which I haven't had a chance to see yet either, ha)?

So this year we've had "Backrooms," "Iron Lung" and ... "Shelby Oaks," all products of youtubers making the jump to the big screen? And the "Bring Her Back"/"Talk to Me" guys are also youtubes, too, right?

companion is very different though it also fundamentally about heterosexual dating. more of a suspense film than a horror movie

as mentioned upthread, director of obsession is a youtube guy too (milk & serial). overall i think this trend has been positive

though shelby oaks SUCKED SO MUCH ok just had to say that

Backrooms was definitely not scary. It was mostly just trippy visually.

Obsession also has the best jump scare in maybe 25 years, all the more impressive because it's obviously telegraphed in advance but it doesn't matter

Just read this Backrooms/state of modern horror piece on Defector -- really liked it, pretty much in line with ivy's and my criticisms but also some further observations and detail, in particular since the writer had been following the YouTube series from Parsons almost from the get-go:

https://defector.com/backrooms-doesnt-quite-capture-the-weirdness-of-the-originals?giftLink=52e683055b78f6f2080ba5d1a3a5f1a3

I saw Backrooms this weekend with my wife and daughter. It was a rare occasion where I was able to find something that the three of us were all excited about going to (kid knew the web series, wife's coworker showed her the trailer, I had just heard about the Thursday box office receipts). I thought it was very fun, although I'd agree that it's a little soft on character development and the conclusion felt rushed and unsatisfying. Chiwetel Ejiofor was great. As per Ned's review, I loved the furniture and room dividers and things.

I had been hoping to squeeze in Obsession as well, based on some fairly gobsmacked-sounding podcast reviews I heard last week. Not sure if I'll be able to make that before it leaves my local theater on Thursday, but I'm going to try.

Mr. Parsons talks with Sam Esmail. (Seriously, it's a whole chat, not a summary.)

https://gizmodo.com/learn-about-the-origins-of-backrooms-from-the-man-who-unknowingly-inspired-it-2000766037

Echoing whoever complained about filmmakers total indifference to titling their film with something others have already used. There's like 30 films called Obsession. We don't need more films called The Killer. Ask an italian writer from the 70s what to call your film.

lol

Actually there's more than 50 films called Obsession and a few more called The Obsession. 27 films called The Killer.

I feel the same about remakes, adaptions and franchises. Should have called their films The Bloody Moustache Of Nosferatu and The Arrogance Of Frankenstein.

the 2004 Crash annoyed me to no end because Cronenberg's Crash was released only eight years earlier

Backrooms was incredibly scary to me (i can't handle hallways) and Obsession not really at all, i guess it was the way the score announces every change like a second ahead of time

an _Us_/_Stranger Things_ graft

Definitely both of those, plus some inevitable bits of Lynch and Spike Jonze.

Backrooms was enjoyable in a "10 am I'm barely awake mindfuck". It's more style over substance but the style is fairly engaging.

Also agree with this. All of the parts of the movie that weren't people talking were pretty great, I enjoyed the mounting dread moving from hallway to hallway and room to room. I also thought the ending was fine. But the two central characters and their backstories were kind of a drag on the momentum. You could have approached the basic frame of the film from any number of narrative directions, and this wasn't a particularly inspired one imo. Although the furniture store was a good call, aesthetically. Just needed some richer narrative, or less narrative at all.

Also in my alternative ending Reinsve would emerge from one of the fake houses onto the fake house set at the end of Sentimental Value, and Stellan Skarsgard would be there.

the 2004 Crash annoyed me to no end because Cronenberg's Crash was released only eight years earlier

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, June 2, 2026 7:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Dave Matthews Band, also.

Ice Cream Man is Executive Produced by Grammy-winning rap icon Nas.

think this might be streaming-only

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3IZzygr-HA

Wow, this looks like shiiiiit. Remember when Eli Roth was the future of horror?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiS6TWj4nV0

god that looks awful... like one of those Grindhouse fake trailers but way worse

I dunno, I'd watch it, without expecting it to be a worthwhile use of my time of course. I suspect all the good bits (and some of the non-good bits) are in the trailer though.

Remember when Eli Roth was the future of horror?

― wipes chooser (unperson), Wednesday, June 3, 2026 9:34 PM

Did you feel this way?

Remember when Eli Roth was the future of horror?

Honestly, no. But Cabin Fever and the two Hostel movies did have something real going for them. He's been adrift ever since, though.

the Hostel movies had a fairly solid, hard to fuck up concept. While I didn’t love them, they were definitely very ok. he’s been completely lapped by the next generation of horror filmmakers in the last decade plus though, obviously.

Supposedly the full Thanksgiving film was good enough but I wasn't inclined to investigate. Though the best actual thing I've seen Roth do lately was a role in one of Glenn Danzig's attempts to make a 'film,' Death Rider in the House of Vampires from 2021, which a few of us watched one October as part of former ILXor Jeff Treppel's annual party-and-three-terrible-movies Halloween get-togethers. Said film was a clusterfuck in several ways -- one of Julian Sands's last roles before he died too, poor bastard -- but when Roth's character first appeared he had an annoying but still immediate energy that came across as the 'Gina Gershon in Showgirls' spot, ie the only person being filmed who actually knew what kind of movie it was. He went away for a bit, we all kept watching, I literally said out loud at one point that to my sheer surprise I actually missed Roth in the movie because things were just so incredibly stupid and terrible, everyone agreed, and when he came in again towards the end I think we all literally applauded. Still, when THAT'S all you have going for you...

the particular flavor of slasher/torture porn he's mostly known for seems a little dated at this point (like 'Saw'), or I guess more 'meat & potatoes' than all the folk/concept horror being produced today, but I'm a snooty jaundiced gen-xer so what do I know

thanksgiving was great. but let’s just say eli roth’s opinions about genocide will keep me from seeing another one of his movies for the rest of my life

he seems like he’s personally repugnant in a way that’s perpendicular to the way Tarantino is

I thought Thanksgiving suuuuuuuucked.

The only thing of his I think I've liked at all was the second Hostel, but I can't recall why. The only thing I liked about Cabin Fever, an otherwise pretty lazy, crap movie, is that iirc the only guy that survives is the guy that goes "fuck this" and hides in a cave with a bunch of beer. No idea how this ugly asshat keeps getting his movies made.

Re-screened Green Room, never noticed the 'they're far right - but actually ultra ultra left' line when the punk kid sends the Ain't Rights off to Lincoln City. The first horror movie about horseshoe theory!