Author Topic: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017  (Read 42395 times)

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #70 on: October 02, 2017, 03:00:07 PM »
Busy with work so I temporarily answered both posts at once.

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #71 on: October 03, 2017, 08:17:21 AM »
Interview With the Vampire
Neil Jordan (1994)

The idea of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in a vampire movie suggested something quite specific to me. I imagined cracking dialogue and fun spectacle, the dance of two big personalities, either in rivalry or union, fun action and lots of cool. That's what they do, right?

Wrong. Anne Rice rights her vampires like a romantic period author who's just finished a reread of Werther. I almost expected one of the characters to be called Mephistopheles. Main fangsy Pitt is positively angsty and a total downer. Cruise helps keeping the movie upbeat with his more colourful demeanour but he's a touch too crazy to be likeable. Still, he would have made for the better main character.

The sexual politics of the film are baffling. I have to assume the whole thing is a big fat metaphor because nothing makes sense if you take it at face value. Really, it took the girl thirty years to realise she wasn't growing up? I know kids who measure themselves every month. Rice is as at a loss as everyone else about how to write immortal characters it seems.

Anyway, about the sexual politics. So, men are for eternal companionship and love and women are children and victims, is that it? I get that all the sucking stands in for sex but still, there is like no actual sex at all in the movie. Vampire movies today are drenched in sex, it comes out of their noses. Interview has quite forgotten that it exists except on the metaphorical level. But the vampires don't drink each other's blood either…

Cruise is great in this, he gives a performance like no other I've seen out of him. The movie's much more fun when he's in it. Pitt is okay but I like Dunst more as the insane kid stuck in some weird place in her development. Some of the lines she is given are otherworldly creepy. « Beloved », brrr…

6.5/10

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Knocked Out Loaded

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #72 on: October 03, 2017, 08:55:25 AM »
Vampires easily are my favorite creatures in the horror genre because of the way desire and sex are dissolved into each other. Penetration in a way becomes superfluous.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #73 on: October 03, 2017, 09:13:31 AM »
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)



What is the power of a story? As much as people enjoy stories, it’s often easy to dismiss stories, especially works of fiction, as things that hold little power or meaning. The self-important and pragmatic will often dismiss works of fiction as “just stories,” the kind of material meant to teach children basic moral lessons or feed the minds of less high-minded people.

In the same way, Pan’s Labyrinth’s heroine, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is dismissed as “just” a child. Her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil) tolerates Ofelia’s obsession with fairy tales, dealing more with the physical strains of traveling to the countryside while pregnant. Carmen is giving birth to the song of her second husband, Vidal (Sergi Lopez), an important man given a military post with the important task of stamping out rebels living in the mountains after the Spanish Civil War.

Ofelia finds the country wondrous and claims she has seen a fairy. When the fairy comes into her room, she shows the creature what the storybook fairy is supposed to look like and it transforms into such a figure. Is this creature truly a fairy or is Ofelia’s imagination running away with her? She follows the fairy to a nearby labyrinth and meets  a creepy Faun (Doug Jones) who claims she is a long lost princess who must complete three perilous tasks to prove her soul is intact.

And while Ofelia’s dark fairy tale story begins to bloom, it is interwoven with the historical drama of Spain’s new fascist government and its attempt to squash the rebels. It’s a story even darker and bloodier than Ofelia’s fairy tale, a tale filled with its own twisted monsters and dangerous tasks.

Vidal is shaped by his own story as much as he wants to dismiss it. He carries a smashed pocket watch that he continually refers to. It is later discovered that it is his father’s pocket watch and smashed to record the exact moment of his death for his son. Vidal denies to story, but it clearly shaped him, a tale of a man who wanted to pass on the story of his glorious death on the battlefield to his son.

As the film develops, Vidal is unmasked more and more as a man who desperately wants to continue his own story. Carmen comes to the mountains to birth their child and he makes it clear to the doctor he’s more interested in saving the child, who he insists will be a boy, even if it means losing his wife. Vidal is interested in a son insofar as it ensures his story will be told to future generations.

This story leads him to do irrational things. He has his wife come to him so that he can witness his son’s birth even though it risks both their lives, he discounts women and children in his own narrative, and he uses violence with little reason other than that he has the power to wield it. He sees himself as the hero of the story perhaps not so much from a moral standard, but from the standard that since he is the one in control, he believes can shape the narrative of how his story unfolds.

In contrast, Ofelia approaches her story with much more humility. She submits herself to the task, braves situations that place her in positions of vulnerability and weakness, and seeks to do the right thing as terrifying as that might be. She’s not without flaw, but she is not controlling the story, she lets the story control her, move her, and shape her into something greater than herself.

Granted, one of the tensions of the film is whether or not the fantasy elements are the delusions of a child or, in fact, real. Writer/Director Guillermo del Toro thinks the fantasy is real but gives his audience space for interpretation, perhaps to allow those who lack the childish humility to submit to a fairy tale story to still participate in this tale.

Ofelia’s story makes her stronger, allows her to overcome her limitations and act courageously in the face of a world that is horrific and terrifying. Her love of dark fairy tales equip her to face the darkness in the world and defy the monstrosity of human wickedness. Her childish humility to submit to the work and wonder of the story is what allows her to navigate the real-world problems facing her.

Stories are integral to the human experience. Whether it's family heritage or fairy tales, stories are passed down generation to generation. But the spirit we have about our own stories can be critical. For the self-important man, a name must be made, a seed must be continued, the story is about them. And such narcissism is self-destructive.

For those who submit to the story, to accept the flow of the narrative and embrace its mysteries, there is magic and meaning to be found. Perhaps it will not be great renown or a place in the history books, but a story told in whispers on the wind, a story that require digging and looking, a story that rattles one’s bones and makes one just a bit stronger and braver than one was before.

- Scary

Sidenote: I actually don't find the horror elements of this film all that scary, but Vidal is a frightening dude.

Junior

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #74 on: October 03, 2017, 10:36:59 AM »
Sam, I'm working on my statement of purpose for my PhD applications and that hits so close to what I'm thinking about that I wonder if you're just me while I'm asleep (or the other way around). Creepy. But also, great stuff for sure. I caught up with that one recently after taking a long break and was happy to find myself just as enchanted and creeped out by both the fantastic and the mundane terrors as I was the first time through. It's a bit of genius.

Gerald's Game

I have avoided the Stephen King book this was based on because it all seemed, well, a bit basic. The story is simple, a husband handcuffs his wife to a bed in a remote vacation house to reinvigorate their sex life. Things go wrong, and she must find a way to escape before she dies from malnutrition. I love Stephen King, but this just seemed beneath him. Well, I'm an idiot, because if Mike Flanagan's adaptation is anything to go by, the story has a lot more going for it and I should have known that.

I'm more a fan of supernatural stuff than strictly realistic depictions of terror-inducing situations. A serial killer movie will interest me, but rarely creep me out as much as something like Nightmare on Elm Street. The best, however, blend the two modes and make a seemingly realistic film into something that might be supernatural or might be just out of the ordinary. Halloween is a good example. Gerald's Game is another. While much of the film could be explained rationally as products of a psychotic break that the character in fact comments on, there are a few details that will stand out in contrast. These details lie at the heart of the film's creepiest scenes (though not it's scariest, more on that in a moment) and there are a few images here--especially from the nighttime and eclipse scenes that take on a surreal quality thanks to some impressionist lighting and coloring techniques--that will stick with me for some time.

The other thing that will stick with me is the escape sequence. I don't think it's really a spoiler to say that Carla Gugino's character, which she plays excellently, by the way, tries to escape. The scene is shown in such terrible detail that I had a hard time watching it. Flanagan hasn't gone this gross in his films yet, and it's just another tool in his belt now that joins an ability to build tension and create believable characters in unbelievable situations. He'll be a star soon enough. When he gets there, people will look back on Gerald's Game as early evidence that he had it in him all along. It's good, scary, funny at time, and supremely well acted. If this is a glimpse at what is to come in this Shocktober, color me very excited.

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1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #75 on: October 03, 2017, 11:10:55 AM »
Is it comparable to 127 Hours?

Junior

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #76 on: October 03, 2017, 11:19:42 AM »
Kinda? Add in more Kinginess and take out some Boyle flair and you've got yourself a time.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #77 on: October 03, 2017, 11:35:01 AM »
Sam, I'm working on my statement of purpose for my PhD applications and that hits so close to what I'm thinking about that I wonder if you're just me while I'm asleep (or the other way around). Creepy. But also, great stuff for sure. I caught up with that one recently after taking a long break and was happy to find myself just as enchanted and creeped out by both the fantastic and the mundane terrors as I was the first time through. It's a bit of genius.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #78 on: October 03, 2017, 12:36:24 PM »
Junior's writing a thesis on Pan's Labyrinth? I sure hope he doesn't write himself into a corner or get lost in the maze of his ideas.

Vampires easily are my favorite creatures in the horror genre because of the way desire and sex are dissolved into each other. Penetration in a way becomes superfluous.

Northern Europe's moral degeneration is complete if that is what you think of penetration nowadays.
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MartinTeller

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #79 on: October 03, 2017, 12:59:18 PM »
Junior's writing a thesis on Pan's Labyrinth? I sure hope he doesn't write himself into a corner or get lost in the maze of his ideas.

Or he'll have to pay the piper