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Author Topic: Shocktober 2020  (Read 29303 times)

Antares

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #30 on: September 19, 2020, 05:37:19 PM »
A Page of Madness (1926) 65/100 - This must have been a hell of an experience to view in 1926. Some truly amazing camera work, but without the use of a Benshi narration, it's just a series of rapid fire edits with no narrative. As I was watching I thought of someone with a deck of cards, rifling through them with one finger and they all had pictures of insane people on them.

- Slightly Scary
« Last Edit: September 19, 2020, 05:38:54 PM by Antares »
Masterpiece (100-91) | Classic (90-80) | Entertaining (79-69) | Mediocre (68-58) | Cinemuck (57-21) | Crap (20-0)

1SO

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #31 on: September 19, 2020, 08:58:05 PM »
Mrs. 1SOs Not-So-Scary Selection



The Late Edwina Black (1951)
"There's nothing else you can do for her.
Nothing more you can do to her now either."


Bare-bones, very British murder mystery with everything resolved over a cup of tea. Suspicion falls on Edwina's husband and his mistress, though their own growing suspicions hint that they probably didn't act together. There's also the housekeeper and the possibility that Edwina is either not really dead or her ghost is making mischief. With 75-minutes, there isn't much time to go beyond the basics, which is fine because the basics are solid and the Scotland Yard Inspector catches the lies and follows the clues with great efficiency. And several cups of tea.
RATING: ★ ★ ★ - Okay


- Safe

Junior

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #32 on: September 20, 2020, 02:24:32 PM »
Spiral (2019) - Shudder


I watched this as an escape Friday night from the political dread I was experiencing given RBG's death. Probably wasn't a good idea to turn to a horror movie featuring two gay men and their daughter who move into a rural town which seems to have a bad history with couples like them and maybe a cult living next door? The movie is overstuffed with ideas about trauma, mental health, bigotry, and the occult, but feels oddly toothless in how the latter thing fits in with the rest. Like, the central couple is a black man, our hero, and his white partner, but as far as I could see their races never played a role in the terror they were experiencing, which rings extremely hollow to me given how intersectional identities are. If there is a cult next door, why are they only obsessed with this couple's sexual identities and not their skin color? It doesn't fit with the film's obvious political message.


It's things like this that ruin the film's chances at real relevance, and its manic jumping from idea to idea that ruins its power to really poke at the audience's horror buttons. Shadowy occult figures, or symptoms of a nervous breakdown? It's a tried and true formula, for sure, but it's also like 1/4th of what this film is trying to do at any given moment and it all feels too underdeveloped to really make any kind of intellectual or emotional impact. There's one truly terrifying image here, and it does come at the climax, so that's nice, but it doesn't make up for the mess of the rest of the film. I hope that there's more in our future from this creative team because there's a lot there, it just never coheres into something that lives up to its ambitions.


C+
- Slightly Scary




Howl (2015) - Shudder

If Spiral was too many ideas crammed into too messy a package, this is too few ideas stretched out for too long. To be fair, it isn't until the last half-hour or so that things get too repetitive for my taste, so you could watch the film's pretty great opening 2/3rds and call it a day. Those parts of the film work because they involve manipulating the premise, small set of characters, and setting to maximum effect. The plot, a train in England breaks down between towns where it is then preyed upon by a werewolf who lives in the forest outside the train track's small open area, is a clever one. The characters are lightly sketched but mostly (more on that mostly later) not too annoying or one-dimensional to grate before they inevitably get picked off one by one. And the attacks are fun in the early and middle going, too. Following the Jaws rule of limiting the monster, they get a lot out of spooky shadows and silhouettes, glimpses of hairy, inhuman body parts from fun perspectives, and your standard sound design. This movie isn't afraid to get bloody either, as one attack inside a tiny train bathroom ends in just a flood of blood, which is always fun. But that's about where the fun stops too. Once the werewolf gets on board the train it becomes much less hidden and much more obvious what is going to happen. The design of the werewolf is pretty solid, actually, at least as long as you don't look too long at it. And it's pretty scary, at least at first.

But then the movie has an additional half an hour instead of 5 minutes and, while there is one worthwhile twist in there, it isn't enough to sustain narrative momentum nor the thrills that the first parts of the movie had set up. The more you look at the werewolf, too, the more questions you start to have about it. It feels at first like a pretty traditional werewolf, but then you start to see more of something like the monsters from The Descent in its design and you start to wonder why it looks like that. And it stops being scary and starts being kinda silly. You never want silly werewolves unless you're specifically going for silly werewolves. Werewolves are, for my money, one of the top scary monsters, but not this one! No, this one was, ultimately quite dumb. A shame.

But an even greater shame was the film's insistence on doing the selfish-member-of-the-party-is-more-dangerous-than-the-monsters thing, and honestly? I'm tired of it. This one is a corporate bro, who it turns out had once almost hired one of the other passengers until she refused to sleep with him for the honor of the job. I get it, men are like wolves, but you're not doing anything new with this idea, and so it definitely shouldn't be the center of your climactic action. Ugh. This movie had such promise and then pissed it all away. Just watch the first hour or so. You'll know when to turn it off, it'll be when you start laughing at the sight of the werewolf.

C-
 - Scary until it becomes - Slightly Scary


and ultimately becomes quite silly.
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1SO

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #33 on: September 20, 2020, 03:00:32 PM »
Neither of these are on my list, but I feel like everything crosses my view at some point.

There are a number of horror movies called Spiral, including a Japanese one from 2000 that is completely bonkers.

Your annual reminder about Alucarda, which I think is still on YouTube.

smirnoff

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #34 on: September 21, 2020, 05:20:50 AM »
I would like to see In Fabric if it were streaming somewhere here. One of the most memorable trailers in recent memory.

NedMeier

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #35 on: September 21, 2020, 06:00:21 AM »
Looks like a few people are using Shutter. Do you recommend this service?
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FLYmeatwad

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2020, 07:15:18 PM »
I would like to see In Fabric if it were streaming somewhere here. One of the most memorable trailers in recent memory.

This one I'm also super interested in seeing.

Looks like a few people are using Shutter. Do you recommend this service?

It's cheap enough and has a good collection. I definitely don't get my money's worth with it, but keep subscribing, so they have won.

Junior

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2020, 08:22:56 PM »
Shudder is a great service to subscribe to for a month or two every year. They get some good originals and more indie horror hits. And it has a solid selection of older and foreign stuff.
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1SO

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #38 on: September 23, 2020, 09:44:05 AM »
I'm letting the satisfying Season 7 of American Horror Story sit with me while I move onto my main list of 112 films, starting with FIVE I may want to share with my wife.


She also has her own list of 50 titles, which will begin next week along with us watching the animated series Gravity Falls.


Now that I have a better idea how long a Bakeoff runs, I will post the Horror list this week. The first Elimination will be Friday Oct. 2 and there will be Eliminations every Friday AND Monday.

NedMeier

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Re: Shocktober 2020
« Reply #39 on: September 23, 2020, 10:38:35 AM »
The Conjuring directed by James Wan 2016

I missed quite a few movies in the past about 6 years as life and children have overwhelmed my previously movie filled days and nights. So I'm just catching up on this horror darling (at least is seemed very well received by most). I have to say I didn't expect much, as exorcism movies haven't been my thing after watch the godfather, The Exorcist, but The Conjuring is a very effective, somewhat standard horror movie. You could see pretty much everything coming but it all still worked. The acting was pretty good and the child actors worked. I guess the only thing I was disappointed with is the lack of creepy doll through most of the movie. I'm not sure why I assumed Annabelle was more present in the film, but I guess I can just watch that movie. Overall, I'm glad to add this to my watched list.

7/10
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