Author Topic: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017  (Read 42428 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #190 on: October 25, 2017, 11:14:00 AM »
Quote from: Sam
Mother! struggles with ideas such as what it means to be a creative force. Both She and Him are creators in some ways. She creates a world for them with the house she so painstakingly recreates while he looks to her as the muse for his poetry. And yet, these things become twisted and turned every which way as the film progresses. It is a fallen, broken attempt to create.

I was thinking about this recently. Him creates the universe (and arguably Mother) at the beginning but that's where he stops. Mother picks it up from there and is responsible for building the house and taking care of it. The world takes care of itself and of God. The only thing Him produces after the first spark of life is the baby, co-created with Mother, and the Word, inspired by both.

Him is never shown to ever create Adam either, he arrives out of nowhere. You could argue Him created Adam while on one of his walks, I suppose, a bit like we are meant to understand he creates Even off-screen. So is Adam not of Him? Is he extraneous to the world? If not, why was he created in hiding from Mother/world.

Perhaps the baby was going to be some higher being. The only pure conjoining of Him and Mother, two sides of the universe, the only complete creature in creation, devoured by a lesser, envious species. Perhaps we are missing something because we are of Him but not of Mother.

Et caetera et caetera and other thoughts of that nature.
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pixote

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #191 on: October 25, 2017, 12:54:31 PM »


What We Do in the Shadows  (Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement, 2014)

I don't think I had extraordinary expectations for What We Do in the Shadows, but I suspect that having any at all worked against the film. If I'd seen it in the theater with zero foreknowledge, I likely would have touted it as a delightful sleeper. Instead, I found myself more underwhelmed by the flow and shape of the film as a whole despite a strong appreciation of its comic sensibility. The movie is a collection of good ideas and bits and scenes, but they haven't been curated well enough for my tastes. It's not an entirely shapeless screenplay, but it's awfully loose, almost as if recurring sketches from a tv show were edited together. The incidental nature of the script also limits the characters to superficial, stock definitions, which is a shame. I wish Waititi's dandy vampire Viago had remained more at the center of things; he possessed much more original comic potential than his roommates, who were more familiar and predictable types. The same could be said of their human friend Stu, though the documentary crew's casual disinterest in him is a good running joke unto itself.

Grade: C+

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DarkeningHumour

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #192 on: October 25, 2017, 12:58:16 PM »
The follow up is better.
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Junior

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #193 on: October 25, 2017, 04:23:16 PM »
I think I’ve told you already that werewolves scare the crap outta me. There’s something about the transformation and the uncanniness of the monster in most forms that really freak me out. I guess that’s why I like werewolf movies so much, too. I’ve seen so many horror movies that I’ve become harder and harder to scare. Werewolves can still raise the hair on my arms, so to speak.
I don't think I knew this. Know I'm wondering if you've seen Dog Soldiers, from the director of The Descent?

The Curse of the Werewolf is such a structurally strange movie.
And welcome to Hammer. There are things they do wrong and things they get right and because they're so consistent it soon becomes easy to brush aside the unusual structure and abrupt endings.

The werewolf doesn’t show up on screen until an hour into this 90 minute movie. It is really very strange, but it got me thinking about the symbolic role werewolves play in the pantheon of horror monsters. Where vampires are the seducers, werewolves are the violent assaulters.
Vampires are the lovers teenage boys want to be and werewolves are the freaks we fear puberty will make us.

Very interesting to read your viewing experience through the prism of current events.

I watched Dog Soldiers back in my undergrad, which started over 10 years ago now, so it's been a while. I liked it, but didn't love it at the time. Something to do with the hyper-masculinity on display, especially because I was coming off of The Descent. I think it would be interesting to watch again now with this context in mind.

I noticed but didn't write about the abrupt ending, too. This time it's two characters hugging each other shot from above. It's thematically interesting given who the characters are and all the stuff I wrote about in the review, but it's also so brief that it doesn't make much of an impact. I liked the chase that precedes it, though.

I think the puberty aspect is really interesting. It's obviously the main thing in stuff like An American Werewolf in London and even Teen Wolf, and even here it's the subtext since the first time we see the character that will eventually become the wolf he's a preteen boy and just starting to get hair on his hands and arm. The fear he has of what he could do with that power is intense but also not really focused on because the story moves at such a quick pace. I'm not sure there's been an absolutely perfect movie that has dealt with this topic yet. AAIL comes pretty close, but I'd have to think more about what the ghost/friend character has to do with it.


Vampyr

Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1932 vampire film is only the third of its kind, though saying this is like anything else is a bit of a stretch. It's closer to Nosferatu than Dracula (31), sure, but this film is so ephemeral as to almost not exist. If you read the supplementary materials and watch the visual essay included in the Criterion edition, you'll discover that there were 3 versions of the film (in French, English, and German), one of which was lost forever (English) while the others are edited together for the restoration, and that the literary "source" of the film, le Fanu's "Carmilla" is only vaguely referenced in the larger plot of the film. This haziness in the film's origins extends to its visuals and story. If you told me I made up a creepy old man that appears at the Inn at the beginning of the movie I'd probably believe you, since he doesn't show up again and doesn't seem to have any importance for either the story or the thematic elements.

The movie looks like it might disappear at any moment, too, following the creepy old man as he exits the picture. It's always foggy any time the characters venture outside, and indoors the geography of the old mansion where much of the film takes place seems both out of whack and disconnected. Dreyer's camera is almost constantly moving and it is exhilarating, especially during the film's opening and closing 15 minutes. You never know what it'll show you, and soon even benign shadows take on a malevolent malleability. For one of the few times while watching a horror film, I was actually afraid that what I was seeing might be revealed to be some dangerous other thing.

The first 15 minutes of this movie are a straight masterpiece of surreal horror filmmaking. From the eerie guy with a sickle to the strange inhabitants of the riverside inn to the walk through a nightmarish factory that seems to be the vampire's lair, the film drips with menace and style. It's also clever as hell. With just lighting and editing, Dreyer creates some fantastic images that equally delight and terrify. My favorite in the early goings is the shadow that prances along the river, but only in the water's reflection. This is the introduction of the sourceless shadow trick that Dreyer gets the most out of in the first part of the film and I loved every iteration. In the back section, he relies on a different technique to get a totally different rise out of the audience: an extended POV shot of a presumably dead man getting screwed into his coffin (with a convenient glass window for his face!) and then carried to a graveyard. It's a deeply unsettling setup and while it lasts maybe a bit too long, I can't impugn something so remarkable and new (I had seen a version of this shot before, kinda, in Borzage's A Farewell To Arms, one of the few great moments of that film). The vampire's henchman also gets a glorious sendoff that will stick with me for some time.

The beginning and end of this movie are so spectacular that it is a pretty big disappointment when the middle is so unremarkable. Perhaps it's because the middle contains the most of the typical vampyric stuff that, I understand, wasn't so typical at the time. It's one of those things where something new becomes so important to a genre or style of movie that it loses some of its impact on later viewers. But there's also a noticeable drop-off in cleverness that sets in during the middle 40 minutes or so. The only thing that really stands out from this is the beguiling and seductive look that lights up the young female vampire's face when she tries to lure her even younger sister in for a bite. The movie is sexy, to a degree, and it is also remarkable for having no male vampires on screen. For one of the few times, especially in early horror, it's all about the women. Coming off of the wonderful character study that is The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer uses his formidable talents with framing and lighting the young woman's face for maximum impact, and her performance matches his framing, even if it doesn't make up as much of the film as it does in his previous attempt. It's too bad everything around it feels perfunctory.

Vampyr is a movie that will not soon leave my mind. There's a power to the opening and close of the film that will cement some of those images in my mind for a long while. There's a whiff of missed opportunity here, given both the story and filmmaking boredom that sets in during the middle, but half of that can be explained away with the passage of time. Had I seen this movie when it first came out, or before I had seen dozens of other vampire movies, it probably would have impressed me more, at least I would lose that sense of over-familiarity. I think it still has plenty of merit, and is definitely necessary viewing for any fans of the gothic or film history or just great looking movies.

B+
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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #194 on: October 25, 2017, 08:58:03 PM »

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Charles Halloway: I know who you are. You are the autumn people. Where do you come from? The dust. Where do you go to? The grave.
Mr. Dark: Yes. We are the hungry ones. Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well.
Charles Halloway: To stuff yourselves on other people's nightmares.
Mr. Dark: And butter our plain bread with delicious pain.

This is the story of two boys and Mr. Dark's Pandemonium Carnival, which arrives during the night with sinister intent. The film opens with a good evocation of small town Americana, centered around a small town Main Street at the turn of the century. I usually like to highlight the good side of Disney's influence, but here the Disney brand ended up doing more harm than good. This is the Disney that two years later would release The Black Cauldron, so it's a more adult film than you would expect. Mr. Dark is played by Jonathan Pryce in one of the best film performances of his career. His brand of sinister is Shakespearean as it pitches between the calm tones of someone in control and the fire and brimstone rantings of a hellbound preacher. (This is complimented by his funeral parlor look, complete with top hat and black beard.) Even worse for me is the sorceress at his side, a spider-woman witch played by Pam Grier who unleashes her power in a scene involving hundreds of eight-legged freaks.

Mr. Dark: It's a thousand years to Christmas, Mr. Holloway.
Charles Halloway: You're wrong. It's here, in this library tonight, and can't be spoiled.
Mr. Dark: Did Will and Jim bring it with them on the soles of their shoes? Then, we shall have to scrape them.

The carnival of the damned is staffed by people who have sold their soul to Mr. Dark for an ironic price. (A woman who longs for beauty sees her prettier self for only an instant before going blind.) The plot reminded me of Stephen King's Needful Things and I posted the dialogue because it sounds like the inspiration for another King classic, It. (Interestingly, this carnival is nearly clown free with them only appearing in one scene as a marching band. Something that would certainly be different in a modern adaptation.) Also, the introduction of Mr. Dark is filmed in a way very similar to the library scene in the recent film adaptation of It

The movie is directed by Jack Clayton (The Innocents) and the mood is even stronger than the level of 80s cheese you usually find on a film from this time period. Before the special effects climax, there's a lengthy library confrontation that is squeezed for every last ounce of goodness. Clayton makes the words the centerpiece, but supports them with a number of great shots - Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum went on to work with Brian DePalma - and small but effective moments of shock and suspense. There's also a strong score by James Horner that my ears thought was John Williams. The finale loses out because there are a lot of effects. I'm not sure there needed to be so many effects. Even though most are adequate for the time and some are extremely well done, it only takes a couple of bad shots to throw everything off. There's one terrific death scene and one that seems stitched together from pieces and reshoots. That's still not enough to take away from the library scene, Pryce's performance and Clayton's atmosphere.
Rating: * * * - Good

- Scary

Junior

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #195 on: October 25, 2017, 09:18:04 PM »
I read and watched that a few years back. I love the vivid descriptions in the book and they mostly carry over. Pryce is great, as you say, and I love the flowery dialogue, too. I think I watched that before The Innocents, so I should do a rewatch with that in mind.

Have you read the book? It's like October on paper.
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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #196 on: October 25, 2017, 09:57:10 PM »
I have read it. Back in the 80s and 90s I used to read all the Ray Bradbury I could get my hands on. Listened to some of his radio programs too.

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #197 on: October 25, 2017, 11:48:10 PM »

Happy Death Day (2017)

Producer Jason Blum is having a hell of a year, completing a horror trilogy of Get Out and Split with Happy Death Day, which fits snugly between the two in terms of quality and cleverness and beats them both in terms of fun. Often mentioned as a horror Groundhog Day, the story more obviously takes off from Edge of Tomorrow. It's Live/Die/Repeat done as a slasher film, right down to the creepy mask.

Knowing nothing about the film, it took me a few minutes to get that it wasn't going for scares so much as laughs, or at least high spirits. I hesitate to call it a comedy because it never crosses into ha-ha funny, but there is a real glee to the story and Jessica Rothe's performance. I wasn't expecting this young, pretty blonde to do more than be young and pretty, like most victims in teen slasher movies, but Rothe hones in on that nervous humor people have during uncomfortable situations. As she wakes up from being killed over and over she becomes increasingly aware of the shallow social politics of college life that lead to her friends being a pack of (literal) potential backstabbers. There are also good suspense scenes and a solid ending. Everyone involved should be real proud of what they've created.
Rating: * * * - Good

- Slightly Scary

Bondo

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #198 on: October 26, 2017, 10:02:26 PM »
It Comes At Night (2017)

I didn't like Krisha. This is worse.

As paranoia about illness goes, The Bar was so much more enjoyable.

Sandy

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2017
« Reply #199 on: October 28, 2017, 12:20:22 AM »
Shaun of the Dead



- Slightly Scary, but more of a gross out.

- Hilarious

 

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