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Author Topic: Building the Horror/Thriller 1000  (Read 63150 times)

smirnoff

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #280 on: July 26, 2017, 03:58:17 PM »
This is a sub-genre where the most transgressive moment in The Good Son was hearing pre-teen Macaulay Culkin drop an 'F' bomb.

Man, good reference. :)

1SO

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #281 on: July 26, 2017, 11:56:23 PM »

The Uninvited (2009)
* *
One of the more disheartening Horror trends was around this time when American films were made as if by a Horror version of store bought cookie dough. All the scares and twists would arrive on cue, sapping the genre of surprise or a memorable gut punch. This is one of those milk and cookies films, and it took me until a very particular scare to realize this was a remake of  Kim Jee-Woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters. That had mystery, intrigue and suspense right up to the shocking finale. This you can see all mapped out inside of 10 minutes. The only mystery here is who are The Guard Brothers and how did they get the job directing this film?


Friday the 13th (2009)
* ½
This series has always set a very low bar, one this remake is unable to clear. There’s no spin, no modern update, no fresh angle. Just a shiny new coat of paint – though the film is annoyingly under-lit at times – and a series of killings that have so little shock or imagination Jason might’ve just as well used a staple gun instead of his machete. He's never seemed so bored to be killing teens.


The Last House on the Left (2009)
* * * - Good
Read Review


Doghouse (2009)
* *
It’s rare for me to get an alien feeling from British cinema culture, but I’m not steeped enough in Danny Dyer (frequent Kermode target), Noel Clarke or Stephen Graham to know if the misogyny is meant to be satirical or if this is what audiences expect from these actors, much like American man-children. I kept admiring the irony of the women all being given exactly one personality trait, which is still better than the men, who all share the same outlook on everything.


The Collector (2009)
* *
Burglar breaks into a house that is wired with a series of elaborate traps. I didn’t know going in this was torture porn, which is too bad because I was liking the initial idea and the lead (Josh Stewart) is an appealing desperate criminal. (One thing this film has over the similar Don’t Breathe.) It isn’t long before the plot becomes a flimsy excuse for a sharp objects to rip through flesh.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #282 on: July 27, 2017, 02:23:26 AM »
Friday the 13th (2009)
* ½
He's never seemed so bored to be killing teens.

Great line.

1SO

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #283 on: July 30, 2017, 12:29:54 AM »

Dread (2009)
When I was in Film School, my final project was an adaptation of this Clive Barker short story. This was watching the remake of a film I wrote and directed. I liked some of the way the information was structured here, and an added subplot about a young woman with a large visible birthmark to intensify her body issues. My version was too literal, and of course has the production value of a college student’s wallet. (Though this doesn’t look like it cost much more.) I have an affection for the more natural performances of my film versus the theatrical style and look to the cast here. A strange experience for sure, and certainly not something I can put a rating to


Grace (2009)
* *
Pregnant woman loses her child in a car crash, but by sheer maternal force wills it back to undead life. Great idea for dramatic, thematic horror but the filmmakers don’t quite have the skill to make it work and unlike the similar-toned Contracted, there isn’t a great lead performance here to elevate the under-developed material.


The Horde (2009)
* ½
I’m growing tired of plots that contain the surprise, “…and then the zombie apocalypse breaks out.” There are good version of this, like Shaun of the Dead, or extending the idea to vampires (From Dusk Till Dawn) or monsters (Attack the Block). The characters here aren’t developed enough to make the transition interesting. It was a tedious revenge film before the zombies and a tedious zombie film afterwards.


Carriers (2009)
* * ½
I’d love to get another pair of eyes on this because it has a lot going for it, but there’s nothing pulling it all together. Excellent cast includes Chris Pine, Emily VanCamp and Piper Perabo. There’s a lot of good acting elevating this pandemic film above the genre. Characters make some unsympathetic decisions, but it fits the dire situation created by the world. Despite all that positive, the story seems to drift along, never cranking the tension beyond a scattered handful of moments.


Pandorum (2009)
* ½
Interesting premise – people wake to learn a savage alien race has taken over their spaceship - deserves another chance, Crashingly loud, over-edited blend of The Descent, Fury Road, Resident Evil and Event Horizon. Annoying style is compounded by characters suffering from psychological trauma that causes hallucinations, so any or all of what you’re watching might be total B.S. anyways.

1SO

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #284 on: July 30, 2017, 12:40:11 AM »
I've decided to move my non-ICM picks into my Shocktober Watchlist, getting me closer to completing this Marathon.

Here are the remaining 25 Titles:
Black Death
Byzantium
Cockneys vs. Zombies
The Dead
Detention
Evolution
Final Destination 5
Grave Encounters
The Greasy Strangler
Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack
The Human Centipede 2 & 3
I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
Juan of the Dead
Julia's Eyes
Kidnapped
The Last Exorcism
The Lords of Salem
Lovely Molly
The Lure
MegaPiranha
Mother's Day
The Pact
The Taking of Deborah Logan
The Tunnel


Titles no longer a part of this project include...
A Cure For Wellness
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Buried
Exorcist III: Director's Cut
Lights Out
Maggie
Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy
Nina Forever
Prevenge
Raw
Sadako vs. Kayako
The Wicker Tree

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #285 on: July 30, 2017, 01:53:28 AM »
So why have you dropped those films?

1SO

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #286 on: July 30, 2017, 03:56:06 AM »
The remaining films are the 19 titles I have left on They Shoot Zombies, plus 6 I don't have much personal interest in that are on an Official list at I Check Movies. The dropped titles are ones I want to see anyway, and at this point it makes more sense to save them for Shocktober.

1SO

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #287 on: August 03, 2017, 01:42:54 AM »
Entering this Decade with the first batch of the last 25 titles.



Mega Piranha (2010)
½
One of those stupid modern creature features, but this one doesn’t even understand how silly it all is, with an insanely complex plot, constantly introducing characters in the first 15 minutes, even though most of them have little to do with the story. Takes itself way too seriously to the point where the highlights seem like accidental idiocy. Where’s the fun in that?


Black Death (2010)
* *
With a cast that includes Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean and Carice van Houten, and Dark Ages period detail, this aims higher than typical genre fare. You might not categorize it as Horror until the pagans start graphically torturing the Christians. It’s like a grimy Game of Thrones knock-off, even though it pre-dates the series by a year. The coda reframes the film as a very particular origin story, raising my opinion a lot, but getting there isn’t terribly interesting.


I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
0 Stars
After 15 minutes of cute/clumsy antics by the lead while the camera leers at her up and down, this uncalled for remake of one of the most well-known terrible films had the bare minimum of my attention. This premise will always fail because as long as it’s written and directed by men, it will never earn the feminist shield it hides behind, and if it were ever made by a woman, an honest depiction of the horror would be more than any viewer could bear to sit through. This is better-acted than the original, but it also claims a moral superiority that it never earns.


Kidnapped (2010)
aka. Secuestrados
* * * - Okay
Home invasion thriller with heavy Gaspar Noe influences. Filmed as a series of long takes, events keep turning for the worst until I became torn between the intense realism of sloppy plans gone awry and the feeling that the film was moving closer towards nihilism. Manages to be as slick as other home invasion movies from this time, while also being more believable. Problem is, that level of believability is more punishing than exciting.


The Last Exorcism (2010)
* * * - Good
One of the best ways to tell the quality of a Horror film is the amount of dread I feel towards the end when the lead decides to go back and face the evil. If I know we’re at the climax, then the filmmakers are preparing to empty their bag of tricks and the situation could be worse than anything imaginable. This has one of those moments and while the ending doesn’t match the build-up, it’s still a very effective build-up. Ashley Bell is great as the possessed girl, frail and menacing at the same time, but the film belongs to Patrick Fabian as a jaded minister who sees faith as a magic show. It was a smart decision to build the routine exorcism plot around such an interesting character.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2017, 01:44:25 AM by 1SO »

Junior

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #288 on: August 03, 2017, 08:31:01 AM »
The Last Exorcism is quite good. I'd avoid the sequel, which kisses all of the interesting stuff for a more standard possession thing.
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1SO

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Re: Horror: The Final Chapter
« Reply #289 on: August 09, 2017, 10:30:45 PM »

The Dead (2010)
* * ½
Full Review


Mother’s Day (2010)
* *
Home invasion thriller – yep, another one. I had no idea there were so many recently – directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw sequels and Repo!) The twist this time is an unusual performance by Rebecca De Mornay as the overly-maternal head of the invading clan. It’s interesting, but like Serial Mom, rings false, which blunts the tension and turns the film more into a piece of theater. Well shot and edited, demonstrating Bousman may be maturing as a director, though there’s also a fair amount of torture porn and attempts to inject dark comedy fall flat.


Julia’s Eyes (2010)
* * ½
Spanish horror produced by Guillermo del Toro about a woman losing her sight while investigating the death of her sister. There are some fun scenes of cat and mouse involving blindness, darkness and flashing lights, but the overall story is often overblown, teetering on silly.


Detention (2011)
* * ½
High School comedy from the director of Torque and some of Britney Spears and Taylor Swift’s more famous videos. The story and style, thick with modern and 90s pop culture references, are a headache, but I’ll admit I’m too old for this, which is aimed at short attention spans. If I had to describe it, it would be a mix of Easy A and Ready Player One as directed by Edgar Wright, which can be understandably appealing. Oh, calling it ‘Horror’ is like calling World’s End ‘Horror’. It’s certainly there, but there’s also Sci-fi, fantasy and action.
Here is the NSFW opening scene. If you love it then this film is for you because it’s exactly 90 minutes of this.


The Tunnel (2011)
* * ½
Found footage horror closely follows the Blair Witch template, but the believable performances get the tension up there when it’s time to go exploring. Nothing I haven’t seen before and the climax delivers near incomprehensible visuals instead of shocking payoffs and jolts.