The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Never Cursed]

A version of A Night to Dismember with commentary by Doris Wishman (apparently a very good and enjoyable track) has popped up online (if you Google "a night to dismember commentary" a result should show up very quickly).

Edit: The twitter user who spoke highly of this track has very different tastes in commentaries than I - it's an exhausting and not particularly informative or entertaining listen. It is a little funny to learn that Doris Wishman sounded basically identical to Thelma Ritter, but not so funny as to justify listening to her scream at her camera operator for an hour

[domino harvey]

I have the DVD (not that I think it’s a film that needs more than a YT-level encode), I should give it a listen as it presumably comes from that

EDIT : Or maybe not, based on that edit!

[Never Cursed]

The setup is as follows: the commentators are Wishman and cinematographer C. Davis Smith (with whom it is suggested Wishman had a romantic relationship). Smith is kinda old man-ish and doesn't really remember the movie all that well, and a lot of the commentary (or at least the half I listened to) is Smith remembering what's about to happen and Wishman saying variations of "shut up, stop spoiling the movie!" to him. They're also both very proud of their work and ultimately fairly happy with how the film turned out, which is... not really a position I think any of us are open to meeting (as an example, Wishman lavishes a lot of praise on the lead actress, but doesn't actually get into the specifics of why she liked her other than "she took direction really well"). It definitely wasn't for me, but maybe I'm off-base there

[Mr Sausage]

My Halloween viewings:


Night of the Living Dead (Tom Savini, 1990)

Gus Van Sant ought to’ve watched this shot-for-shot remake before embarking on his version of Psycho. He might’ve felt less of a perverse need to drain the effectiveness from a piece of classic horror for the sake of adding colour and modern special effects to it. Tho’ how the filmmakers managed to make this one less gory than the 1968 original is a mystery. And with Tom Savini helming it!

Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green, 2021)

Despite wishing to pump Michael Myers up to near mythological levels, the film doesn’t much understand what makes him scary. Confronted by a line of firefighters, if Michael had simply walked right past them as if they weren’t there, following some mysterious purpose we’ll never know—that’s creepy and in line with the first film. Having him tighten his grip on his weapon and then walk forward to massacre the group of them…silly, and not much like Michael Myers. More Jason from Freddy vs Jason. Much as the 2018 film, the sheer talent and pedigree make the flaws and dim spots more pronounced and aggravating. This is still a better slasher film and a better Halloween film than has been the case historically. But, still, it’s a less successful version of the only intermittently successful 2018 film. And yet, as with the 2018 film, there is one part of this that does live up to the original: the score. It’s terrific.

Dr. Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019)

Tho’ a poor writer, King early in his career had a talent for larger images of horror: a kid chased through a hotel by his murderous father; a small town infested with ancient vampires; a young girl murdering an auditorium of fellow students; a father bringing his family back from the dead; a clown dragging children into the sewers. But he doesn’t seem content with that; he wants to build large metaphysical structures that explain and explain and explain, if not the nature of evil, at least the endless workings of it. Kubrick’s film zeroed in on King’s strength, those images. Flanagan’s film is born of King’s weakness. The strongest part of The Shining wasn’t the ghosts and psychic phenomena, but the family unraveling into madness and murder. The metaphysical stuff helped amplify the horror. Here, in Dr. Sleep, those ghosts and psychics take centre stage. This is the story of The Shining’s less interesting pieces. What the ghosts are up to following their eviction from their haunted house. But for what it is, the film is put together with skill. Flanagan doesn’t have the same pedigree as Green and co., but he has a surer grasp of what’s creepy and unsettling. He can build on and amplify Kubrick’s imagery in a way Green couldn’t with Carpenter’s. Think: the footprints on the bathmat. If the film had had more small scale, personal terrors, it would’ve been something. But as a follow up to Kubrick’s film, this is no embarrassment.

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (Cattet & Forzani, 2013)

Controlling, obsessed men who know, or suspect, or imagine, or dream, or even fantasize that their women have succumbed to a sexual violence they may, in part or in whole, have enjoyed and welcomed. The film delights in a purely aesthetic, sensory, tactile expression of baldly Freudian ideas, the exact Freudian ideas that delighted directors of giallo cinema. Sex and death swirl around each other, fracturing time, place, identity, and the mind. Ideas are embodied in fetishism, but not the fetishism of the giallo killer; the fetishism of giallo cinema itself. The very perceptual resources of the cinema become an erotic object, a sadistic and masochistic erotic object. The elements of cinema are pulled apart, the film threatening to collapse under the strain of fetishistic worship as each part is separated, isolated, and luxuriated over; the pleasures of the style step constantly over into painful excess. Cattet and Forzani reach down to the very bones of exploitation cinema. In my limited judgement, theirs is as interesting and vital a creative project as you’ll find in cinema today.

[knives]

I really strongly disliked Halloween Kills. Which is a mess that as you say doesn’t understand what is interesting about the underlying material. Below’s what I wrote on letterboxd.

It’s shocking just how base level incompetent this is in every way. I suppose at least we get what we’re promised. This takes place on Halloween and there are (way too many gorey) kills. What makes me even more frustrated with the film is that it has two really good ideas that could have made for a genuinely great entertainment. At the start it looks like Green is returning to the Gialli roots of the franchise with a flashback structure to the first film focusing on the police search during the first film. It’s not a well written section, but it at least is interesting and has some tension. Alas that is quickly disposed of and we return to Green’s first movie in the most trite way possible (here’s a hint you can’t emphasize that Myers is only human while having grandpa do that).

Well after all hope for the movie is lost it does manage to come up with a second good idea which leads into the absolute best scenes of the film suggesting using series expectations for social commentary and humor. Spoiler though: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil did it better.

In short there’s another maniac running around and his basic premise gets the town into a Fury as they with all the stupidity in the world try to hunt down and kill Myers forming a lynch mob far more terrifying than the boogeyman. This is great and suggests a version of the film starring Curtis, which seems a contractual must, without getting bogged down in a boring murder every ten seconds. That leads into the films worst aspect which is pointless, boring cameos from whom I only assume are Green’s friends that go on way too long since we know they only exist to get murdered. It seriously bloats the film’s runtime, there’s only maybe 80 minutes of real film here, and is just not entertaining.

Returning to what I liked about the film, I am really annoyed at it, Green even ruins this because he has no clue what he wants. Is this a funny parody where we are supposed to laugh at death, is it a serious take on how we become monsters when fighting perceived threats, is he film in full agreement that mob justice could be good? What does this stupid movie want? If I had to hazard a guess it would be that it doesn’t know what it wants, but it’s makers need money for other things so they threw together what ideas they could muster and called it a day.

[therewillbeblus]

I don’t know if Doctor Sleep works so much as a conventional horror movie, or a follow up to Kubrick’s, but it’s implicitly connected to the themes of the books (the sequel I haven’t read, but regardless of the quality of writing, The Shining’s first third is still the most naked confession of an addict mind on the verge of bottoming out- reading that in early sobriety, without any substance to mask the guilt and shame, was like reading my own thoughts written down- far eerier than the ghosts!) - Doctor Sleep is more squarely focused on recovery through 12-step programs- it’s almost comical how frequently I’ve heard this book recommended over the better part of a decade in those halls. Anyways, I wrote more about it here but I think it’s a masterpiece in its own right.

I’m curious, Mr. Sausage, did you watch the widely-recommended Director’s Cut, or the original version half an hour shorter? I can’t comment on the original cut, but the DC breathes- and I have to wonder how much of the recovery themes, or Rebecca Ferguson’s own mirroring behavior of a addict gang leader in the dangerous throes of antisocial self-preservation, come through in a rushed version of what is an expansive spiritual journey superficially disguised as merely a supernatural horror blockbuster

[Mr Sausage]

I saw the director’s cut, as recommended by a friend of mine.

[Mr Sausage]

I really strongly disliked Halloween Kills. Which is a mess that as you say doesn’t understand what is interesting about the underlying material. Below’s what I wrote on letterboxd.

It’s shocking just how base level incompetent this is in every way. I suppose at least we get what we’re promised. This takes place on Halloween and there are (way too many gorey) kills. What makes me even more frustrated with the film is that it has two really good ideas that could have made for a genuinely great entertainment. At the start it looks like Green is returning to the Gialli roots of the franchise with a flashback structure to the first film focusing on the police search during the first film. It’s not a well written section, but it at least is interesting and has some tension. Alas that is quickly disposed of and we return to Green’s first movie in the most trite way possible (here’s a hint you can’t emphasize that Myers is only human while having grandpa do that).

Well after all hope for the movie is lost it does manage to come up with a second good idea which leads into the absolute best scenes of the film suggesting using series expectations for social commentary and humor. Spoiler though: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil did it better.

In short there’s another maniac running around and his basic premise gets the town into a Fury as they with all the stupidity in the world try to hunt down and kill Myers forming a lynch mob far more terrifying than the boogeyman. This is great and suggests a version of the film starring Curtis, which seems a contractual must, without getting bogged down in a boring murder every ten seconds. That leads into the films worst aspect which is pointless, boring cameos from whom I only assume are Green’s friends that go on way too long since we know they only exist to get murdered. It seriously bloats the film’s runtime, there’s only maybe 80 minutes of real film here, and is just not entertaining.

Returning to what I liked about the film, I am really annoyed at it, Green even ruins this because he has no clue what he wants. Is this a funny parody where we are supposed to laugh at death, is it a serious take on how we become monsters when fighting perceived threats, is he film in full agreement that mob justice could be good? What does this stupid movie want? If I had to hazard a guess it would be that it doesn’t know what it wants, but it’s makers need money for other things so they threw together what ideas they could muster and called it a day.

Can’t disagree. The film’s a mess, but it has some good ideas latent in it. I spent a lot of the run time imagining a better film using the same materials. There’s a good movie in there, it just needed someone to coax it out. Someone who understood that Michael Myers becomes pretty boring if he’s endlessly bursting out of places suddenly. Remember those beautiful tracking shots that used to follow him around as he watched people? Whatever happened to those? Green ought to rewatch the original, get a sense for how to craft a full suspense sequence instead of repeat Paul’s death scene endlessly.

[Mr Sausage]

I don’t know if Doctor Sleep works so much as a conventional horror movie, or a follow up to Kubrick’s, but it’s implicitly connected to the themes of the books (the sequel I haven’t read, but regardless of the quality of writing, The Shining’s first third is still the most naked confession of an addict mind on the verge of bottoming out- reading that in early sobriety, without any substance to mask the guilt and shame, was like reading my own thoughts written down- far eerier than the ghosts!) - Doctor Sleep is more squarely focused on recovery through 12-step programs- it’s almost comical how frequently I’ve heard this book recommended over the better part of a decade in those halls. Anyways, I wrote more about it here but I think it’s a masterpiece in its own right.

I’m curious, Mr. Sausage, did you watch the widely-recommended Director’s Cut, or the original version half an hour shorter? I can’t comment on the original cut, but the DC breathes- and I have to wonder how much of the recovery themes, or Rebecca Ferguson’s own mirroring behavior of a addict gang leader in the dangerous throes of antisocial self-preservation, come through in a rushed version of what is an expansive spiritual journey superficially disguised as merely a supernatural horror blockbuster

Looking back at my post, I gave a poor account of my opinion of the film. I don’t think you can tell that I actually liked it. It’s a handsomely mounted film, far more successful than one would ever think a sequel to The Shining could be. And that scene at the bar in The Overlook is genuinely moving, and all the more so because it comes with all the baggage of Kubrick’s film.

But the movie’s let down by its source material. However well executed, it’s still the story of a band of smoke-sucking hippy serial killers in RVs who get gunned down in the woods by a pair of day labourors. Who the hell thought that was a good idea. Oh, right, Stephen King did. Because who else would hang a story on something so goofy.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, I have very complicated feelings on King. I've admittedly only read core selective works of his (The Shining, The Stand, The Dark Tower series, half of It, all of which I more-or-less enjoyed) and seen a few miniseries/film adaptations of works I haven't read where he's been heavily involved, and disliked most of those. He's a cinematic writer (who can forget the lobstrosities in the second DT book?) but doesn't know how to end books- in The Stand it's almost funny how he literally blows up his own story with the most inane and anticlimactic device, though I thought The Dark Tower's ending was existentially perfect in its cynicism for the material. Maybe he isn't always a great writer or story designer, but when he touches first-person accounts of addiction, he involves you in the experience on a very raw, visceral level, and of course I appreciate him far more than perhaps his skill sets deserve because he was one of the few celebrity artists who served as a voice of inspiration that one could continue creative pursuits with success in sobriety -vs. Lars von Trier, who famously denied hope that he would be able to continue making art sober- during a turning point for me as the devil and angel on the shoulder, so to speak.

I won't argue that the story isn't silly, but- and I don't think I'm reaching here- Doctor Sleep's subtext (well, it's not exactly hidden in most parts!) is all about the innerworkings of active addiction and the power of recovery/spiritual mindsets to combat addiction. Whether or not the surface-story is silly feels secondary to the metaphors and literal action involving application of recovery principles that hit so many right notes, but again, I'm well aware that this is a film/story that is impossible for me to be subjective about. I also thought Rebecca Ferguson's group was a ridiculous superfluous set of villains (which, yeah, to some degree it is) until I realized what King was doing with it, and I'm curious if the source treats the antagonists with more complexity since the film keeps things on the surface level, even if there's clear depth to be mined there. The whole thing is so esoterically woven into 12-step culture that I've been tempted to write a book about it, but even I don't think the movie/story is good enough to warrant that much time and effort!

[colinr0380]

I'm really glad that you enjoyed The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, Mr Sausage! I keep thinking that they made the kind of film that is worth going back and revisiting over and over, especially after seeing more and more classic giallo titles, as it rewards the viewer for getting deeper into its subgenre's preoccupations. It feels both supernatural and mundane simultaneously. About a strange world that temptingly feels both just about understandable and yet utterly inexplicable at the same time (especially strange seeming to the male characters, who need to interpret and often end up at the mercy of events, rather than the female ones who just appear to go with the flow and at least participate in their sequences more), because a lot of the wilder sequences feel as if they are taking place inside the heads of the characters as they ponder out the possible reasons for things being the way that they are, and not how they 'should' be.

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, I have very complicated feelings on King. I've admittedly only read core selective works of his (The Shining, The Stand, The Dark Tower series, half of It, all of which I more-or-less enjoyed) and seen a few miniseries/film adaptations of works I haven't read where he's been heavily involved, and disliked most of those. He's a cinematic writer (who can forget the lobstrosities in the second DT book?) but doesn't know how to end books- in The Stand it's almost funny how he literally blows up his own story with the most inane and anticlimactic device, though I thought The Dark Tower's ending was existentially perfect in its cynicism for the material. Maybe he isn't always a great writer or story designer, but when he touches first-person accounts of addiction, he involves you in the experience on a very raw, visceral level, and of course I appreciate him far more than perhaps his skill sets deserve because he was one of the few celebrity artists who served as a voice of inspiration that one could continue creative pursuits with success in sobriety -vs. Lars von Trier, who famously denied hope that he would be able to continue making art sober- during a turning point for me as the devil and angel on the shoulder, so to speak.

I won't argue that the story isn't silly, but- and I don't think I'm reaching here- Doctor Sleep's subtext (well, it's not exactly hidden in most parts!) is all about the innerworkings of active addiction and the power of recovery/spiritual mindsets to combat addiction. Whether or not the surface-story is silly feels secondary to the metaphors and literal action involving application of recovery principles that hit so many right notes, but again, I'm well aware that this is a film/story that is impossible for me to be subjective about. I also thought Rebecca Ferguson's group was a ridiculous superfluous set of villains (which, yeah, to some degree it is) until I realized what King was doing with it, and I'm curious if the source treats the antagonists with more complexity since the film keeps things on the surface level, even if there's clear depth to be mined there. The whole thing is so esoterically woven into 12-step culture that I've been tempted to write a book about it, but even I don't think the movie/story is good enough to warrant that much time and effort!

Is it subtext? My impression was those things are outright text. Before taking him to the program, that one guy outright asks Dan: do you believe in a higher power, something you have no control over? If nothing else, that right there sets the real terms of the stakes. Addiction is a battle for the soul.

And you for sure should write that book. If it’s this personal for you and means this much to you, who cares if the object isn’t a Bernini sculpture or whatever. Go for it. I’d read it.

[colinr0380]

It might have been inadvisable to go through these videos at the current time given that we are supposed to be following the emergency reports on the media that are providing more than enough doom laden pronouncements, but in the wake of that I did find myself drawn to a few interesting YouTube videos that seem to be a new wrinkle in the found footage subgenre, which seems to be getting classed as "Analogue Horror". These take the form of American cable TV broadcasts that regularly get their signal hijacked for emergency messages in all sorts of forms, suggesting anything from wartime conditions to alien invasion to even more Lovecraftian things. I really like the stylistics and in their best moments it can feel like they are a somewhat updated take on the 1938 Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast.

With thanks to the Nexpo video for bringing it up, the source of all this appears to be the Local58 channel, which in just eight videos over just over two years has managed to hit all the beats of found footage horror films such as GPS devices in cars driving through the dark to pre-determined meet ups with loud jump scare aliens through to indoctrination videos and worrying exhortions to action (in Contingency which is perhaps the ultimate "oopsie" moment of accidentally broadcasting something to rival the War of the Worlds broadcast panic, only it might not be so easily apologised for after the fact!). It is all something to do with the Moon apparently. I particularly like the most recent video, Skywatching, for all of its sound work involving the wind against the microphone and the technological clatter of different pieces of equipment being swapped in and out.

I would argue that really the final section of that video is unnecessary (much as I did not really need the monster at the end of "You Are On The Fastest Available Route") because the quiet, more grounded part of the videos were the most enthralling parts about them. I'd love hours of slow pans across the surface of an alien planet, or a dispassionate GPS voice guiding through a driving thunderstorm without the payoff! But then again I love 'slow cinema' so I'm biased!

But that is probably the difficult balancing act that these videos (and all found footage films really) have to walk, because with their focus on trying to present a 'real event' it is so easy to tip over into absurdity with just one or two missteps. For example I quite like the other series that tried to do what Local58 was doing, Channel 7, but that is occasionally pushed over the edge by the inclusion of actual people and voices in its footage (really the strange disturbingly lonely power of "Analogue Horror" appears to be scrolling text boxes and on screen text interrupting late night unmanned TV broadcasts rather than the presence of actual announcers or news readers), especially when it seems that there is only one person doing all of the different voiced roles.

However the same people behind Channel 7 have started a new, Lovecraftian seeming, series of videos under the Eventide Media Center channel, which starts off relatively low key with a discussion of Penrose shapes before coming out with perhaps the best of all these Analogue Horrors to date with the slowly encroaching threat shown almost entirely through an oscillation between a weather update screen and radar view of the incoming storm front in Oceanview Forecast, a video that really seems to have learnt the lesson that the lack of a human voice to guide the action only adds an extra level of scariness to things! (It also with the lighthouse setting makes me think of John Carpenter's The Fog!)

EDIT: And Gemini Home Entertainment seems to be the other channel to keep an eye on.

Two years to the day from Skywatching Local58 is back with the most upsetting possible take on an analog to digital switchover!

And visiting the associated linked website? :





My pie in the sky interpretation of this is that after whatever malevolent forces coming from the Moon have been reaching out and/or brainwashing the population in Weather Service were countered by the remains of unaltered humanity (by governmental attempts to maybe defuse the brainwashing in Real Sleep?) that led to a reciprocal fight back in Contingency. And perhaps somehow the forces are at their most powerfully distributed through the Analogue signal, which is both why digital switchover of Local58 was artificially delayed until 2021, and we are seeing another fight back in turning the signal off now, leading to the angry message that they might have 'cut the throat' (of the man in the Moon?) but 'there are other receivers' (such as those seen in Skywatching and You Are On The Fastest Available Route?) that can be utilised for mind control and conversion instead?

I am not entirely sure how that idea would tie in with the jumping across the space of decades of time though! Maybe we are in X-Files territory of the threat being a epoch-spanning one and we are just seeing brief flashes of both a cosmic horror beyond our comprehension and a resistance counterinsurgency battling those forces on the fringes of the television broadcasts? As in They Live?

Either way its a fascinating and evocative series of little shorts (and the sound effect design on all of them is particularly good). Plus this latest short has tied the world together with Kris Straub's Candle Cove series by namechecking Ichor Falls.

[therewillbeblus]

I won't argue that the story isn't silly, but- and I don't think I'm reaching here- Doctor Sleep's subtext (well, it's not exactly hidden in most parts!) is all about the innerworkings of active addiction and the power of recovery/spiritual mindsets to combat addiction. Whether or not the surface-story is silly feels secondary to the metaphors and literal action involving application of recovery principles that hit so many right notes, but again, I'm well aware that this is a film/story that is impossible for me to be subjective about. I also thought Rebecca Ferguson's group was a ridiculous superfluous set of villains (which, yeah, to some degree it is) until I realized what King was doing with it, and I'm curious if the source treats the antagonists with more complexity since the film keeps things on the surface level, even if there's clear depth to be mined there. The whole thing is so esoterically woven into 12-step culture that I've been tempted to write a book about it, but even I don't think the movie/story is good enough to warrant that much time and effort!

Is it subtext? My impression was those things are outright text. Before taking him to the program, that one guy outright asks Dan: do you believe in a higher power, something you have no control over? If nothing else, that right there sets the real terms of the stakes. Addiction is a battle for the soul.

Yeah, well moments like those are the ones I backpedaled on, as they're obviously text. I'm thinking more about the intricate manner that specific steps within the 12-step fellowships are not outright stated but demonstrated in an apt progression mirroring Dan's movement through his program (without, say, showing him sitting down with a sponsor and working said steps, or making clearly-stated connections between the behaviors and programmatic work), as well as Ferguson's group's function, which isn't necessarily a dense allegory but still not pronounced along the lines of addiction. I'd bet most audiences read them as your typical power-hungry set of villains, and although there's not a ton of nuance that fulfills a more complex interpretation along the lines of addiction (i.e. if there was a bit more meditation on a tragic element regarding the impetus of the group being to avoid dysphoria a la the 'self-medication hypothesis', widely agreed upon in addiction research as the motivation for addicts to engage in substance use because of unbearable cognitive-emotional pain, vs. the stigmatized false assumption that addicts are selfishly seeking more pleasure/fun..), I still think it works with a soft undercurrent of tragedy in watching this group of thinly-veiled characters as only unidimensionally-goofy due to how active addicts do sacrifice their visible dignity and worth- to the public eye but also to themselves- by revolving all thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a vacuum around the object of craving, demonstrating complete ignorance to others' utility, and exhibiting a "spiritual loss of values" signifying one's bottom in the process. This group can both resemble a cartoonish gang of power-seekers and also tacitly embody a delusional collective of active addicts who have committed so many atrocities that they continue to move further away from the potential of reaching a vulnerable space of looking at their behavior and owning it, and instead engage in rationalizing, harming, and enveloping into 'self' deeper and deeper. It's a pretty accurate depiction of that progression, and devastating to watch and relate to in its own right.

And you for sure should write that book. If it’s this personal for you and means this much to you, who cares if the object isn’t a Bernini sculpture or whatever. Go for it. I’d read it.

Thanks for the kind words, but to clarify, I meant that I'm not as personally invested in putting in all that effort, rather than the quality of the film/book impacting that decision. There are several films, TV shows, albums, etc. that I'm more enthusiastic about the idea of writing a book about, but Doctor Sleep would probably be a lot "easier" for me to do so. Maybe one day!

[Orlac]

My Halloween viewings:


Night of the Living Dead (Tom Savini, 1990)

Gus Van Sant ought to’ve watched this shot-for-shot remake before embarking on his version of Psycho. He might’ve felt less of a perverse need to drain the effectiveness from a piece of classic horror for the sake of adding colour and modern special effects to it. Tho’ how the filmmakers managed to make this one less gory than the 1968 original is a mystery. And with Tom Savini helming it!

MPAA cuts I believe.

[Boosmahn]

Anyone here a fan of Them (David Moreau and Xavier Palud, 2006)?

SpoilerShow

I just watched it. I found that the twist did add that generational fear, even if having the children's identities be known from the get-go would help with that specific theme more. (For the film as a whole, it works better at the end, of course.) The only issues I had were the occasional yet frustrating lapses in judgement and… the whooping in the forest. On one hand, that would be terrifying. On the other, it felt a little silly. Did nobody stop and think that during the production process?

I was not prepared for that final scene in the tunnel. The shot of Clémentine sticking her arms through the bars as cars drive by… crushingly downbeat. It becomes even more painful when you recall Clémentine is a schoolteacher!

…and that it is one of the key films in that 'hoodie horror' subgenre of the late 2000s, that covers things like Eden Lake…

Them reminded me so, so much of Eden Lake. The latter plays with the "hoodie horror" subgenre a bit, though, considering

SpoilerShow

the adults were suggested to be at least partly responsible for their children's behavior.

The only other "hoodie horror" movie I've seen is F, also known as Expelled. I remember it being decent (and also having a bleak ending), although I mainly recall the "hoodies" being professional acrobatics when it came to sneaking around!

[colinr0380]

Maybe that was an attempt to mix hoodie horror with the other short lived youth trend of the late 2000s and early 2010s of parkour antics, as shown in Die Hard 4 and the District 13 films!

I think that trend promoting people running around the urban environment somewhat fell by the wayside once there were actual real life incredibly dangerous videos of crazy Russian people free climbing tall buildings in manners that would make Tom Cruise quake at the knees! Jumping around a park in free flowing movements looked a bit passé after that!

[domino harvey]

Did the fact that Chris Eigeman wrote and directed a second film four years ago pass us all by? Perhaps because it was made… for Blumhouse… and it is a dreadful looking horror movie called Seven in Heaven? WTF?

[colinr0380]

This is quite a nifty 'liminal horror' short: The Backrooms.

Apparently it is part of a big internet project similar to the SCP Foundation.

[therewillbeblus]

À l'intérieur aka Inside (Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, 2007): This is a pretty affecting European Extremity horror flick, slight and terrifying- where the fantastical departures and elasticity in subjective ventures the camera dives into prevents a one-note sustaining rhythm of claustrophobia. There's a lot to admire here: the New Wave art-film applications blended into paint-by-numbers Home Invasion Horror, the aggressive alien sound design applied to violence, the dream sequences both literally and questionably inserted as to whose perspective we're aligning with- or why... Unfortunately, the back half lost some of the momentum the first half's novelty accentuated to the point of hitting a ceiling (a high one, at that!) in part because

SpoilerShow

the uncertainty towards who this mystery woman/home invader was crafted so well that resolving that provocative puzzle negated its power. In the first half hour- easily the film's greatest section- I wondered if she was a supernatural presence (the relentless photo-taking of her put the idea in my mind that maybe she'd come out invisible in the pictures), a satanic cult member with an ominous agenda, or whatever the fuck- but was so on-edge by her disturbing behavior (the smelling of the baby's clothes was arguably more unsettling than the stabbing of the belly!) that these musings were continually disrupted to heightened effectiveness. The setpieces spilling into one another in a messy stumbling trajectory mimics the bloody scarring of our heroine's face and body, and the filmmakers' ability to contain this slippage into a tight thriller was admirable, with precise and perfectly-timed editing aiding the pace eloquently.

A great example is the heroine stabbing her own mother in the neck, which would have been egregiously obnoxious had there been an overlong honing in on the devastation of this mistake, or if it was sidetracked with a quicker cut to ruminate on the pornographic theatrics of the gory interaction to exploit the terror. Instead, it's a balanced moment of hypervigilant awareness to the error equitably held with the fight/flight state of self-preservation that does not extinguish upon a tragedy when the threat is still looming within reach. The ultimate reveal of who the killer is in relation to the protagonist was a bit of a letdown, transforming such an intentionally-pronounced enigmatically menacing presence into corporeal form, and providing a clearcut, rational (yet obviously deranged) motive that leaves a wide-open window for audience identification.

Still, a relatively strong entry into this type of horror subgenre, which is admittedly not a favorite of mine.

[colinr0380]

I think (Martyrs aside, which towers above everything. And I do like Vinyan too, though I have not really heard it mentioned as part of the subgenre) Inside is my favourite of the extreme French horror subgenre of the 2000s. It is sort of the horror-themed version of Panic Room, and Inside feels especially overwhelming because all the action happens at a such a breakneck pace that there is barely time to get one's bearings in the story. If there hadn't been that (unfortunately tipping over a bit into being somewhat comical in its number, although the scene with the mother you mention is the most impactful of all of them) series of unexpected guests to the home in the mid-section to create a number of ten minute diversions (including one involving a pre-A Prophet Tahar Rahim!) then the heroine probably would not have been able to put up much of a fight in her condition (It was amazing that she managed to get to lock herself into the bathroom in the first place after the first attack!) Which is only emphasised by the final one-on-one section being rather one-sided, in a terrifyingly single-minded way.

Bustillo and Maury also re-teamed with Béatrice Dalle a few years later for a segment of The ABCs of Death 2 (NSFW), which could be a semi-sequel to Inside! Whether it is or not, it still suggests that Dalle would not exactly make for a good babysitter! (And I do wonder if they are cheekily homaging the end of the "Dawn of Man" sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey there!)

[domino harvey]

This is quite a nifty 'liminal horror' short: The Backrooms.

This seemed more indebted to the kind of indie horror video games Markiplier has made a good career out of playing online (no idea why these started showing up in my algorithm either), in that we’re in a weird 3D render of a quasi-liminal space, punctuated by jump scares and hidden details that constitute “lore” (plus a dash of the finale to Cube at the end). As such, I don’t really recognize this as a short film at all, just a demo for a game you can’t even play!

[Never Cursed]

Well, I never thought I'd see the word "Markiplier" in a domino harvey post...

[colinr0380]

domino does make a good point, as with its impossible spaces I had been thinking of it as a bit like Control (though that is definitely more riffing off the SCP Foundation, which itself has an official game with dedicated YouTubers to it) meets Cabin In The Woods! The Silent Hill series has had the biggest 'impossible space' influence in video games of them all, such that even the long deleted playable teaser demo for the cancelled Kojima SIlent Hill game, "P.T." has itself gone on to influence many, many recent horror games.

(I was thinking recently that whilst the ultimate YouTube-screamer bait series with jumpscares and a thin thread of lore to tie its (frankly utterly irritating) gameplay together, Five Nights At Freddy's, is in feature film development hell it probably has had a big influence behind the scenes of a number of film productions. Willy's Wonderland and The Banana Splits Movie particularly, but even the recent Child's Play reboot seemed curiously timed to fit in with the zeitgeist of out of control animatronic creations!)

But I also wonder if something like The Backrooms (and its associated videos) is tying in with that horror YouTube trend a bit too. When I get home from work I'll post up some links but I'm thinking of something like 2h32, which is a great series of disturbing imagery that I particularly like for giving me the 24-styled horror series that I had always secretly yearned for! (And I may be bringing too much to the imagery as it kind of strikes me as mining similar territory to the early avant-garde Clive Barker short films and stories in some ways) Although like a lot of the internet horror series it feels as if it is trading as much on arousing the excitement of viewers and commenters and getting them involved in creating lore to explicate the imagery rather than seemingly having much of a handle on where it is going itself as a story. Which like many of these internet horror series leaves them interestingly and creepily evocative yet potentially a little rudderless with regard to any overarching meaning to be gleaned. However that channel just posted a video a couple of weeks ago for the first time in something like a year, so they may finally have something in mind to aim towards!

(Something which does have a bit of a narrative thread to it is the one going on in the purgatorial POSTcontent channel, which itself felt like it prepared me a little for The House That Jack Built!)

[therewillbeblus]

Robert Eggers' three short films (writeups in reverse chronological order, which happens to also be ascending order of preference):

Brothers, Eggers' most recent short, is a slight series of temporally-jumping snapshots exhibiting the dynamic of two brothers separated by a significant age gap. There are jarring moments spliced in that don't reveal much by design, but in neglecting urgency of the material (partially vis an all-too-brief runtime stunting development), the gravitas of the punchline is unearned, uninvolving, and not particularly 'scary' either. It's well-shot and edited but that's about all it has going for it.

The Tell-Tale Heart is a more deliberately-paced twist on the Poe adaptation, seemingly made for the sake of experimentation with gorgeous candle-lighting. Despite using its momentum intentionally, the payoffs are not very effective, though this film 'looks' very much like Eggers' later works and was good practice for The Witch. There is one wonderful, unexpected bit, where

SpoilerShow

after a long austere buildup, the central principal offers the visiting constables brandy, and Eggers abruptly cuts to these previously-cold and self-serious figures drunkenly laughing.

I found that hysterical, and another example of Eggers demonstrating his skills at composition with editing, but outside of that winking destruction of established mood, I can't say I enjoyed this much.

Hansel and Gretel, his first short, is the best of the lot, and the biggest departure from his usual style. It plays like a Guy Maddin-inspired version of the classic Olde Tale, which was extremely effective once the children found themselves in a horrific predicament, since the experimentally intrusive camerawork lent deserved sensations of powerlessness to the surrogate experiences of these trapped children. Even those who don't like Maddin might enjoy this though, since it finds a balance between the basics of his technique and a forward-momentum that resists stewing in the drowning, at times disengaging chaos his aesthetic can yield. Recommended.