Author Topic: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011  (Read 58796 times)

Bill Thompson

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #110 on: October 08, 2011, 09:05:24 PM »
If you have no skull or spine. Sure.

I meant plausible within the film. After that the film goes for some other less than anatomically correct kills, as long as it maintains the same level of plausibility within the film I'm happy with that.

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #111 on: October 08, 2011, 09:30:42 PM »
The Devils is a horror movie like Passion of the Christ is a horror movie. The "frightening" moments consist mostly of brutal torture and nuns going crazy and having an insane orgy.

When I saw Passion, it was missing the nun orgy scene, which would've made a nice break from the brutal torture.


Its a very odd and hectic movie. There's a whole lot of debauchery and almost all the characters are batshit crazy.

You mean like this guy...



This is what I loved about The Devils. It was a very 60s take on the 17th century, which worked extremely well. And there were the odd bits of humor. ("A carrot.") This isn't a film for everyone, but as a fan of Jesus Christ Superstar and Moulin Rouge I can endorse it. Could make a nice double feature if you follow it with Hausu.

Junior

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #112 on: October 08, 2011, 11:38:32 PM »
The Changeling - Peter Medak.



The obvious comparison film here is The Shining. Both feature a scary old building with noises and bouncing objects. There's a guy and a girl and a kid. Ok, I'm stretching a bit there, but the real comparison point is in the camera. There's a whole lot of steadicaming going on. Like every shot in the house starts in one room and goes through a hallway and ends up in another room. It builds the house as being one scary place to live.

The problem is that, outside of a few moments, it's not very scary. Once you find out what the problem is everything becomes rote for the last third. There's a problem with these "dead person uses alive person to get revenge" movies: once they tell you that the scary thing is a "good guy" they get less scary and the movie falters. The Changeling partially avoids that, but only partially. The ending is, again, quite good. I just wish these movies would remember that we aren't here for a murder mystery. We're here to be scared.


This is my second Shocktober movie. I'm gonna keep track of repeated elements at the bottom of my reviews.

Returning objects: 2 (ItMoM, The Changeling)
Gothic buildings: 2 (ItMoM, The Changeling)
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Bill Thompson

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #113 on: October 09, 2011, 10:18:18 AM »
Let Me In (2010)

Quote
I’m going to let the cat out of the bag right away, Let Me In is nowhere near the picture that Låt Den Rätte Komma In is, in fact Let Me In pales in comparison to its Swedish counterpart. There are many key areas where Let Me In falls short when stacked up against the film it is a remake of (and yes Matt Reeves, your story about adapting the book and not remaking the film is hogwash. Let Me In is essentially a shot for shot remake of Låt Den Rätte Komma In, but it’s a good film so I don’t see the need for all the bullshit about what the film is based on). That being said, I’m not here to review Låt Den Rätte Komma In, I already did that and told everyone why it is a masterpiece. Let Me In is a good movie in its own right, and that is what I am here to discuss.

Read the rest at my blog.

jim brown

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #114 on: October 09, 2011, 10:41:28 AM »
In the Mouth of Madness - John Carpenter.



In the Mouth of Madness completes my watching of Carpenters Apocalypse Trilogy, with The Thing and Prince of Darkness being the other two entries. This one has, perhaps, the most promise, though in its execution ends up just being pretty good.

Stephen King's entire career is based on What Ifs. What if there was a car that was evil and ate people? What if there was a store that sold you exactly what you needed, no matter what? What if there was a place so bad it made you go crazy? In the Mouth of Madness is based on its own What If: what if a horror writer's words were so pervasive that they changed reality? Sam Neil's insurance inspector guy has to find a horror writer "even more popular than Stephen King" who's gone missing with a new book waiting in the wings. He goes on a journey to find the writer in a small New England town that features prominently in his books. It's all very meta. And this is the good part. Sam Neil is pretty great at doing the dry disbeliever (Jurassic Park!) and his little sarcastic jibes play well alongside the surreal horror. We get thrown in the middle of all of this crazy shit going on the same as Neil and it's a lot of fun.

But then they start to explain things. And all of the cool images and ideas start to join together and, as happens so often in King's work, it just doesn't add up to what it should. There is, early on, a cool black church at the center of town. The story goes that the black church consumed the old stone church which may or may not be hidden deep in the bowels of the new church. It's a fantastic idea, but nothing comes of it. When we meet the writer he's suitably crazy, but not excitingly so. There is one fantastic image late in the move which involves ripping and things, but then everything just kind of goes as you expect. Nobody believes Sam Neil, things keep coming back. It's all very rote up until the last minute or so. The very end of this movie is pretty wonderful, even if it doesn't totally make sense. It's audacious, and I'll generally like a movie that goes over the edge. I don't want to spoil things, but the ending and the first half of this movie make it a worthwhile watch. There are scares, though it's not as scary as The Thing or Halloween. It's better than a lot of things, though.

(I mention Stephen King a lot here, as he is the obvious inspiration (even the cover design of the books echo his 80's output) but there's also a lot of Lovecraft going on. Talk of "the old ones" and a lot of tentacles and textual references including some word-for-word transplants.)

Nice write-up, Junior.  I've seen it recently and I'm with you.  I would only add that, for me, the Lovecraft stuff is where the movie derails.  All that mythology is just lazy; it uses "atmosphere" as a substitute for plot.  Also, the casting of Jurgen Prochnow was problematic for me, as well as the way the character was written.   You never get a sense that Sutter Cane was once a normal person; his character comes across as always having this other-worldly omniscience. 
Kevin: Yes, why does there have to be evil?

Supreme Being: I think it has something to do with free will.

-------------------------------------------------------

Verna: I suppose you think you raised hell.

Tom: Sister, when I've raised hell you'll know it.

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #115 on: October 09, 2011, 02:46:58 PM »
the vampire attack scenes that featured some of the worst CG effects I have ever seen

That's rich considering Let The Right One In has those attack cats, possibly the worst CG effect I've seen in a great movie.

Bill Thompson

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #116 on: October 09, 2011, 07:10:31 PM »
the vampire attack scenes that featured some of the worst CG effects I have ever seen

That's rich considering Let The Right One In has those attack cats, possibly the worst CG effect I've seen in a great movie.

To each his own, the CG with the cats in Let the Right One In didn't bother me, nor was it used in a pivotal moment. The CG in Let Me In I thought looked bad, really cartoony/mid-90s bad CG, but more importantly it was present in some very important moments and that really hurt those moments.

Also, I'm just stating my opinion, you can have yours. I don't see the need for the hostility that you started out your response with, there's a lot of that around the forums lately and I'm not liking it.

Bondo

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #117 on: October 09, 2011, 07:31:21 PM »
Spoilers for Let The Right One In/Let Me In, kinda

I think the important scenes to compare and contrast, because they were actually in both films, are the fire in the hospital and the two primary vampire attacks (underpass and tree). All three of these strongly favor Let The Right One In.

1SO

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Shocktober Group Marathon 2011 - Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) by 1SO
« Reply #118 on: October 09, 2011, 10:41:31 PM »


Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1968)

Quote from: IMDB
An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past in Ingmar Bergman's only horror film

My running theme this month has been the debate of when is a horror movie not a horror movie. A couple of months ago when I discovered this IMDB description I was skeptical if the maestro of existential crisis and talky meditations on death would have it in him to make a film that fit into the horror genre. I've seen some effective dark imagery from Bergman before, but why did this one earn the tag "only" horror film? I sure as hell was going to find out.

My general feelings towards Bergman has been that I appreciate the later color films more than his black and white work. That has nothing to do with the cinematography, as ALL Bergman's are evocative in their imagery, even if the film is little more than close ups of faces. In fact, watching Hour of the Wolf I came away with a greater appreciation of Bergman as a visual storyteller. There are some incredible images in the film, particularly during the titular hour, a dark night of the soul that makes up most of the last half of the film. Bergman dips heavily into surrealism with some very particular makeup and special effects, all of which are technically flawless in their presentation. I realize this is true of all his films, but the images are especially striking this time because I've never felt him pushing so hard to create unease in the audience. The world is taken out of balance and you feel like an outside visitor to a strange and hostile world.

The first half builds up the growing unease through a series of social interactions, including a dinner party. This stuff is rather typical Bergman, acted flawlessly by the Bergman ensemble including Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. This section contains all the high minded talk about the nature of relationships that will seem familiar to you if you've ever watched a Bergman film. (Bergman  likes to speak so intellectually about such emotional subject matter.) As you can tell, I wasn't so smitten with how Hour of the Wolf started, but that 2nd half really got under my skin.
RATING: * * *

Junior

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2011
« Reply #119 on: October 10, 2011, 12:54:52 AM »
Martyrs - Pascal Laugier.



This movie is crazy. A young girl escapes her torturers. Fifteen years later, she and her girlfriend try to get revenge. Then crazy stuff happens. And keeps on happening. There are jump scares and gross out scares and utter despair. The movie just keeps getting crazier. There are plot turns later in the film that came out of nowhere but still made sense. It's a supremely well made film, and scary as hell. The ends are interesting, too. But if you are grossed out by the worst that humans can do you might not want to watch this one. It's terrible in a good way.
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