Letterboxd 5019o universzero

Trim Season 3h4x68 2023 - ★★★

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 08:58:08 +1200

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🩸 Horror 💎 Gem ⛤ Witchcraft (2024)

"Control of the [cannabis] plant can only be earnt through blood, force, and sacrifice."

Trim Seasons feels like a stoner slasher remake of Suspiria's remake. An oddball bit of slow-burn horror with a slightly skewed quality-to-weirdness ratio, when this becomes fun, about 50 minutes in, it's fun.

Before that, it's hit-or-miss, with some iffy acting, no horror outside the opening, and a lot of camp that you'll want to be in the mood for. Regardless, there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.

The ending is satisfying and it reminds me why I want a sequel to Suspiria 2018 so badly: what happens after the credits start is tremendous fun to imagine, though in this case, I'm not sure how you'd write it. The ending style makes, honestly, very little sense transplanted into this context, and it's only vaguely set up (see 6m55s after you finish the film), but whatever. It's worth it. The last act in general is a great time.

Trim Seasons prominently features some horror veterans like Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes), and it's a happy thing to see her on screen again, albeit in a less stellar role. If you go through the credits you'll likely recognize all the leads.

To be honest, I'm not going to forget this film, and I'm not fully satisfied with it either. It should be a forgettable supernatural slasher, but it has an entertaining premise and it's a little ambitious. Some of the opening scenes are a slog to watch, and the lore is basically Suspiria 2018 but cannabis—I'm not exaggerating. But it's sort of nifty, so I'm content that I gave it a viewing.

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Midsommar 4o2h4t 2019 - ★★★★★

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 09:05:01 +1200

🩸 Horror 🏕️ Folk A24 (2019)

"I'm very lucky to have you. I love you."—Dani, to Christian

How does Midsommar leave me happy every single time I watch it? That's what struck me during the Director's Cut IMAX screenings.

It's rare I can watch a film four times and still find the same transcendent peaceful beauty beneath the horror, and where a fairytale ending that unjust and grotesque feels like justice and a homecoming.

Spoilers follow—new viewers skip the blockquote please!

Midsommar reads as a film about finding a family and a place where one belongs, and that's the feeling I'm always left with, despite the creeping reality of Pelle's motivations that make the quote "Do you feel held by him? Does he feel like home to you?" sinister underneath how effective a rubric it is for revealing one type of abusive relationship. At the same time, it reflects the start of another with a prettier face. And how seductive is that sense of belonging, especially when there's no obvious way out?
But the pageantry and the musical beauty and the psychedelia along with the liberation from a destructive relationship always makes the fairytale read appealing, and both readings have something of value to say. Dani's apologizing and excuse-making for the abuse in her relationship at the start of the film transforms to something elating, vengeful, and dissociated, but in the hyperbolic language of a myth it's cathartic and freeing. I always leave with that, despite that everything actually horrible rather than gaslighting and mildly abusive is performed by Pelle and his commune, and despite that one form of trap is substituted by a worse but brighter one.
The reality is that much of the arc that is shown on screen in the film is written to read as Dani's liberation from an abusive relationship surrounded by pageantry and occasional violence, and most of the violence happens to people it's very difficult to like. That's probably why, no matter what, Midsommar always seems to speak to people in or freed of damaging relationships. There's a disturbing level of satisfaction there.

It's a powerful myth to write for a bad breakup and about recovery from the isolation of trauma. But then there's reality, and that reality is a warning about a poisoned escape.

Watching it with a crowd for the first time, I was also struck by just how funny it is. Mark's a brilliant character and he keeps the film lively when it might otherwise bog in overseriousness.

This is a film that's going to keep transforming each viewing, and I love that about it. Midsommar really continues to hold up. I always come away with something to think about.

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I Saw the TV Glow 1nz1e 2024 - ★★★★

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:30:21 +1200

🩸 Horror 🌈 LGBTQ+ 💡 Neon Horror (2024)

"This isn't the midnight realm, Maddie. It's just the suburbs."

A powerful and upsetting film that captures the feeling of time ing without acting while knowing deep down that you're failing to live, I Saw the TV Glow filled me with a slow dread of squandering the present. It's a bit of a wake-up call and a message to live life and to do it as yourself and not to let the years slip by, although the message chalked on asphalt—"There is still time" (you'll see)—is a reminder it's never too late and a call to action.

It's going to speak differently to different people. You're not sitting down to a normal horror film. This isn't Talk to Me—it's not buzzy because it can scare, it's buzzy because it's potent and it matters to the intended audience. If you've felt different and stalled living as yourself for whatever reason, you're probably part of that audience. But just be aware you're not going to be spooked afterwards, you're probably going to be moved and possibly uncomfortably stirred up, or it's going to resonate with you positively the way it has with some.

I want to watch this next to We're All Going to the World's Fair, because I think that had more horror content and was a bit more identifiable to me: I grew up on the internet more than growing up closeted. From the responses, this is clearly a stronger film. It's also got a great neon aesthetic and 90's-reminiscent color grading and the whole thing drips with nostalgia.

I think you're going to like this. Give it a shot.

More Lists:

🎞️ A24 Ranked

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Mad Max 3o5252 Fury Road, 2015 - ★★★★½

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 09:38:01 +1200

☣ Science Fiction 🌵 The desert is a fine place to die (2015)

"What do you suppose he's going to do?" "Retaliate first."

Preparing to see Furiosa this evening, I figured I should finally watch Fury Road. But you've already seen it, and you already know, don't you. It's that good.

In case you're a holdout like me, you might be wondering "How is this that good?" Every little decision and detail is right—It's a complusive, meticulous film—eliminating much of what I don't like about stock characteristics of dystopian films, and at the same time, it's a two hour flame-thrower-equipped road movie that is nearly non-stop action. The characters barely need to speak; the acting is perfectly clear. At rare times it's cartoonishly grotesque, but even then it's arch about it. Generally, it's gritty, well-acted, and unbelievably over-the-top, to the extent that belief stops being an important consideration.

The visual decisions make me happy. Instead of a desaturated gray wasteland they have decided to film everything in ochre and color, with fire making unbelievable pops of red against the desert background. The blue night sequence feels dreamy instead of drudgery. It looks good the whole time, and if you step forward or backward frame by frame, you can see the attention everywhere.

I had trouble getting into the original Mad Max films, and so seeing this was a revelation: George Miller's vision is great, and he needed this sort of budget and technology to make a film this ambitious at this quality. Let's see how Furiosa does.

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The Watchers 5a625o 2024 - ★★★

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:39:26 +1200

🩸 Horror 🏕️ Folk Horror 👤 Uncanny 2024

"I'm going down. Hand me my bird."

At heart a gentle story about a bird and its human on a fantastic journey into an Irish hellscape of a forest, The Watchers is also a modestly clever horror film that recombines a series of genre tropes in a twisty way that, if you're a horror fan, may give you the feeling of watching five different movies you already know in sequence. That's the extent of what is imperfect about it, and at a certain point it breaks away from all that and just does its thing, drawing on both Irish folklore and biblical apocrypha to create an interesting new story about the relationship between a group of unknown watchers and humankind.

It was pretty and foresty and spooky. Nothing here will terrify, but there's some good monster design and a couple of images (standing looking at the mirror, or from outside, or the bank of the lake, if you've seen it) will stick with me. I was fond of the film's willingness to devote some extra time to the ending and flesh out the story and elevate it beyond just a monster tale. It did this successfully. Although Dakota Fanning is not Dakota Johnson, the Dakota who led this film was just right for the part. Who knew there were several.

I think most people will find something to enjoy. You won't be scared by it, and it doesn't try hard to produce terror, just uncanny creepy wildness, but it's a better story than it is a horror film.

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Under Paris 332se 2024 - ★★½

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 11:16:44 +1200

🩸 Horror 🦈 Shark 🎬 Xavier Gens (2024)

Take a month or two off reviewing and look what happens—Xavier Gens (of Frontier(s), Cold Skin, Mayhem! (2023), and Netflix's TV show Lupin) makes a shark–Paris movie, and suddenly normal people in the actual world are talking about the work of one of my favorite new extremity directors. Surreal. The last 20 minutes are being lauded and it's true, he knows how to end a film with madness, and it's on display here, with a more entertaining and chaotic conclusion than you'd get from Hollywood. But the film itself is very watchable if you forgive a few gaps in logic. The whole thing is a bit silly, sure, but also very fun. I like this film, and I love that Gens is in the public eye.

If you enjoyed this and haven't seen his other work, I've found mostly good surprises. Go for Frontier(s) if you have a stomach for blood and want the genre classic for which he's known (kinda the lovechild of Haute Tension and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), or pick his other just released film, Mayhem! In fact, generally, you should watch Mayhem! It stars the same male lead and is weirdly under-the-radar for how enjoyable the action sequences are. If you liked the intensity of the last 20 minutes of Sous la Seine but not the goofiness, and needed a bit more bloodshed and several machete battles, you'll enjoy that film. I'd recommend both.

There's a tradition of NFE directors making aquatic attack movies, and I'm not sure what that's about, but look at Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D and Crawl. Sous la Seine fits nicely into this lineage. It is also at home in the lurking-horror-beneath-Paris subgenre (Deep Fear, As Above So Below).

What an odd film for Gens to get noticed with, but I'm glad that he did. As for this, watch it for fun. It's sharks eating people in Paris with a twist or two thrown in.

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Fascination 6y495a 1979 - ★★★★

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:41:49 +1200

🩸 Horror 🧛🏻‍♀️ Erotic Horror 🎬 Jean Rollin (1979) 🇫🇷

"It's too late now. You've stumbled into Elisabeth and Eva's life—the universe of madness and death. It's a pity. I think I could have loved you."

Fascination feels more like a pre-Raphaelite gothic erotic vampire thriller than a horror film. It’s all ambiance and mood and sex, with a minimal plot that provides just enough scaffolding to a cape-clad scythe-wielding Brigitte Lahaie and a coterie of bloodthirsty aristocrats at play.

"Our weapons are silent. You're all alone. You're in our power."

This is a classic for good reason. The scythe scene is iconic, as is the opening sequence in the abattoir. It’s a very visual-oriented film, with mostly silly or playful dialogue but with substantial flair and elegance, even if some of the stylistic decisions start a little bit over the top. The male lead, for example, is wearing tuxedo-striped semi-formal tros with this entirely berserk red jacket. He looks like a walking judgment error. He’d fit as the worst-dressed actor at an awards ceremony wearing Las Vegas black tie.

Luckily, the women are much better costumed, and most of Fascination is spent in the interior and environs of a Loiret chateau, where they fit beautifully. This isn’t exactly a supernatural horror film or a vampire film—it’s a bit different. You’ll see if you watch it.

Skip to the last paragraph here if you want to avoid (vague) plot discussion.

"Now, tell me the truth. Who's coming here tonight?" "Death."

This is barely horror, even tonally, by contemporary standards anyway. I don’t entirely understand how right next door Italy was making Suspiria and The Beyond and was making—well, whatever this is. It’s still fun. It does start and end as a horror film, first in the abattoir and then around 1h09m at the chateau when the tone transitions to horror proper. This bookends a long playful sequence of bloodthirsty aristocrats and/or maids (unclear) seducing a bandit in a French chateau, and that is the bulk of the film.

It would be hard to enjoy this without being at least mildly attracted to women, because the plot pauses frequently for long undressing sequences where there is no interest except sex and predatory beauty. I think there are probably five minutes of active aristocrat vampire undressings in an 80 minute film, and that's a low estimate. To be fair, the first half is mostly seduction or sex, so I guess this is to be expected.

Fascination is entirely unscary. I wish it had been one of my first “horror” films back when a bit of blood and a dark ending could have scared me, or just the plot of the story could frighten, but I loved it for what it was. The main reward from this one is a series of images that I am certain I’ll never forget.

Recommended

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Housewife 402y2e 2017 - ★★★★½

Sun, 7 Apr 2024 13:46:15 +1200

🩸 Horror 🦑 Cosmic Horror 💎 Gem #148 (2017)

"Are you jealous, Val? Because that would be completely unfair. We shared our home with you. We shared our bed with you. I shared my husband with you. Then you have the nerve to be jealous of your new boyfriend and me, of your new family and me?"

Now here's an actual gem. Housewife is Can Evrenol's second feature-length film after Baskin, and it blew me away. I have no idea why it has only 2.8k views and the rating it does, because it is underviewed and very strong.

I'd have a hard time saying which I liked better, but I can tell you which was more gruesome and frightening: this one. Actually, that's a lie—this is my favorite of the two, the gruesome to frightening ratio will differ between viewers, and I liked it so much that I’m having a hard time not rewatching it the day after for this review.

You're looking at a brisk 1h20 of uncanny and extremely gruesome horror with a clear personal voice. If you want to avoid spoilers, jump to the last paragraph now.

Housewife is explicitly an homage to Argento and Fulci. It's clear while watching because it has their energy. There's a single-instrument nursery rhyme melody that will immediately bring you to classic Italian horror. And, at the same time, it has a surprising cosmic horror element, and it's not foregrounded but it packs a sudden punch.

There are several scares here that are going to feel new. There is a moment that feels exactly like being pulled from one dream back into a nightmare and it is utterly surprising and chilling. All I can say is: watch this in the dark alone please and the sound is important. It doesn't mess around or try to be especially gentle—the terrifying moments work, and the jump is the least part of that scare, but also, they actually jump you. It's satisfying to be frightened in a way that is absolutely earned in every scene. No film I've watched to date has captured the horror of an actual nightmare better than this.

Housewife also has one of the more realistic threesomes I've seen on film; the director has obviously had them, because what happens on screen is exactly what happens in life. And it's actually really sort of romantic and sweet before all hell breaks loose. I love the sensitivity of the handling of relationships in Housewife paired with the depravity of the actual horror plot, which is, again, unique.

When harm occurs to these characters, if you're me at least, it hurts to watch. There's a scene that's painful near the end and it's actually emotionally painful. It's followed by a gory sequence that is straight out of hell.

This is a director with a clear vision for his work and it is absolutely different from mainstream horror. It has teeth, and the teeth have more teeth. At the same time, it's in dialogue with the history of the genre, and that's satisfying for me because it's my thing too. I love his work. And I'm eagerly anticipating his next film, SAÝARA. Can, what horror do you have waiting for us next?

Strong recommendation.

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Baskin 1j5t3q 2015 - ★★★★

Sat, 6 Apr 2024 17:11:48 +1300

🩸 Horror 🩸 Grotesque 💎 Gem #147

"Like most things in life, Baskin improves immensely once it gets to the blood orgy"—Aaron

I'm glad to be back reviewing after a bit of a vacation, and I'm even more glad to share with you this marvelous film. I love the review above, and to me Baskin is good from start to finish. Whether it improves depends on whether you like an uncanny and unnerving lead-up or a creative vision of hell.

You want to watch this blind, and I'm sorry even to have mentioned "blood orgy", but you should probably know you're in for some gore. It's actually very light in quantity but when you get to it, it is gruesome and the camera generally does not flinch away.

If, like many of us, you long for the original cut of Event Horizon and the hell dimension sequences that were lost, you'll get some of that feeling in Baskin, although it's a different take on a similar nightmare. It has some resonance with films like Fulci's The Beyond and Argento's La terza madre, but Baskin is unique.

I hope you'll enjoy this one. I've needed to watch it for a while, and it's now an easy favorite.

Recommended

Additional Lists:

👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
👻 Supernatural Horror
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years) [out of date]
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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Arrival 1je4f 2016 - ★★★★★

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:20:19 +1300

💥 Thriller ☣ SciFi 🎬 Denis Villeneauve (2016) 🇺🇸[Pics ing]

"They have names. So what are we gonna call them?" "I was thinking Abbot and Costello."

Totally blown away by this one. Denis Villeneuve has done something extraordinary: make a linguistics thriller about developing communication between two species that is as intense as anything filled with action, that but with only one explosion and the brief sound of gunshots.

Arrival is the first thriller based on linguistics I’ve ever seen or heard of, and also the first movie referencing Sapir-Whorf, which immediately has made me happy and brought me straight back to academia. It’s the sort of film where, once watched, the plot feels obvious and clear and natural, as if it were waiting to be written and just hadn’t been discovered yet. This sense of excavating a story out of the realm of all possible tales is something I get on occasion and it’s always the sign of a new favorite film.

I’m burned out of superhero-style films and enjoyed seeing Jeremy Renner in something else. He is, in fact, good. So is Amy Adams. They have great chemistry here. Same with Jóhann Jóhannsson, who did excellent work for the scores of Sicario and Mandy as well as here.

If, like I am, you’re catching up on Denis Villeneuve in the wake of Dune, you’ll certainly not want to miss this one.

Strong Recommendation

Other Lists:

1️⃣ 2010–2019
✵Index and Viewing Next
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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The House of Clocks 4c726r 1989 - ★★★★

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 18:24:01 +1300

🩸 Horror 🇮🇹 Italy 🪜 Houses of Doom 🎬 Fulci (1989)

"Parasites should be eliminated."

By 13th minute, this creepy and unsettling late Fulci made-for-TV film was absolutely unsuitable for broadcast. It could have been edited to remove the rampant eviscerations and throat-nail-spikings and other moments of excessive gore, but that would have removed some of what makes Fulci special.

And it is really good. I found it much scarier than his other late films, which have mostly been interesting for their wacky kills (eg harpooned by a ghost) and generally off-kilter nature. Here, you have a tight, well-executed supernatural horror film.

I’m pretty sure this is only not considered classic Fulci because the copy available is a poor quality DVD transfer. There’s plenty to love. The gore, this time, for some reason is all abdominal wounds with intestines pouring out rather than eye trauma, but… that was an okay break from the eye thing.

"I suppose you collect clocks, don't you." "They're just like children to me."

What was interesting was how heavily this relied on atmosphere and plot rather than gore to produce an uncanny and very unnerving scenario that I’m surprised I haven’t seen on film before. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but this I think had a much more eerie supernatural vibe than the onslaught of undead I’m used to in some of his other work. Not that there isn’t some of that too, because, well, why not.

You will have realized there is some element of time in the horror here, but it’s so much more enjoyable than normal ‘cosmic’ time-loop horror. It’s great. You’ll see if you watch it.

Oh, and add this to your list of Excellent Murder Cats of Italy. Wait, is there that list? Okay now there is.

If you can find a copy, you have to give this one a watch. There’s a restored edition coming out this July so you might wait for that—the DVD version is rough.

Recommended

Some Lists:

🐈‍⬛ Excellent Murder Cats of Italy
👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
🪜 The Houses of Doom
🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo Master List (Ranked)
🎬 Lucio Fulci
🇮🇹 Italian Horror
👻 Supernatural Horror
8️⃣ 1980–1989 📆 1989
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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Tantra 5b316f 2024 - ★★★

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 15:40:11 +1300

⛧ New 🩸 (Mild) Horror ⛤ Ritual Magic 🇮🇳 India (2024)

Tantra is an Indian horror movie that has just been released that is, effectively, a series of ritual magic duels between practitioners of dark magic.

Some of this derives, I think, from the Mahābhārata. There were references of self-decapitating gods and a bit of talk about Krishna and the Kurukshetra War.

But honestly I’d have trouble knowing if that were true. I actually just watched this out of curiosity because a theater in a strip mall near my house was randomly screening it to a totally empty theater for three days only. It was worth the time to get a bit of a sense of what mainstream Indian horror is like.

The plot involves much summoning of deities and spirits, as well as some sort of tantric ritual magic the film called Vajroli Rati that steals the energy of a victim if performed without consent, which can be used by these dark magic-workers to gain power. The battles between competing ritual mages reminded me a lot of what has been described about, for example, William Butler Yeats getting into an occult magical battle with Aleister Crowley at the turn of the 20th century (see The Battle of Blythe Road).

There was a lot of detail I’m certain I did not pick up, given the subtitles and the lack of any contemporary cultural awareness on my part past some academic work a decade or so ago.

It was structured very differently from Hollywood horror—it had an intermission and a long runtime, and the structure was nearly episodic, like six 20+ minute television episodes stitched together. There was a lot that wouldn’t work for western audiences, because the pacing was not suitable for producing sustained horror at all. There were some musical interludes, thankfully brief, and a love plot that was sweet and extraneous to the horror but that was the central arc of the film. In a way, it didn’t read like horror, it read like a supernatural romance spiritual battle or something.

In of horror content, there were maybe two jump scares, some bloodless violence, and some rituals. So it briefly startled me but otherwise really it was unscary. But it was still an interesting and worthwhile experience.

If you’re interested in a different cultural approach to storytelling and willing to sacrifice scaredness for an extended story of romances played out with ritual magical battles, you might give this a watch. It won’t satisfy most western audiences, I think. But it was fun.

Some Lists

🇮🇳 India
⛤ Witchcraft and Dark or Ritual Magic
🏕️ Folktales, Folk Horror
👻 Supernatural Horror
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2024
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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Ænigma 106b3v 1987 - ★★★½

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 09:40:38 +1300

🩸 Horror 🇮🇹 Italy 🎬 Fulci 🛌 Academy of Evil (1987)[Pics soon]

"Wait, Eva! Fred has a pretty unhealthy reputation." "Good! So do I."

Ænigma delivers the snail equivalent of Fulci’s famous storm of maggots from City of the Living Dead, or Argento’s cat–rat incident from Inferno. What a scene. You could watch it just for that.

It’s been a while since I did Italian horror, so if you’re a new reader, you’ll want to start with The Beyond or City of the Living Dead. These are absolute classics. This is slightly later career Fulci, and it has the reputation of being not as good, which is mostly undeserved: there’s a lot that’s great here. His work is way better than most people think through the end of his life. But it’s true Fulci did get looser and weirder.

It’s hard to keep “What’s the matter with you, Fulci?” from A Cat in the Brain out of my mind when I imagine him writing these scenes. The closest equivalent film I can think of might be Phenomena, which is more polished in some ways, and to me a better film, but which is also loose and weird and full of insects.

Ænigma is much less violent than usual (though it has two or three scenes with gore, despite what is said). It’s a supernatural horror film full of weird and memorable incidents. The film’s got your academy-of-evil setup that happens frequently in this subgenre, but this specific one is crawling with lusty girls who seem to be obsessed with seducing every male cast member. This sort of Italian softcore sleaze is not intrusive but it is very funny, because there are lots of supernatural jealousy revenge scenarios.

Spoilers in blockquote, skip if you have not viewed this yet.

There is an attack by a phantasm through a poster of Tom Cruise that is absolutely hilarious, and most of the incidents here have an element of humor to them. I don’t know how that actress tolerated so many snails, but I hope she was proud of that moment (and not too terrorized) because I can’t imagine anyone else has done that scene nor probably will again. There are so many great nightmare images from the hospital. The decapitation foreshadowing sequence, the painting moment in the museum, and the final showdown in the sealed-in marble mortuary all are unforgettable moments.

A note on the music: the first time I tried to watch Aenigma, I heard the title credits song and found it so intolerably loathsome that I actually rage-quit the movie entirely. I have no tolerance for those... horrid easy listening sounds. It feels like a betrayal of everything that made Italian horror sound wonderful; I expect a good prog soundtrack at minimum. But I was overly hasty: it does have that. Just mute the credits. Trust me.

This is a very fun Fulci. It won’t scare you as much as his better-known work, but Fulci’s Fulci: I’m almost always going to be happy I watched his work. There’s always some seed of brilliance there.

Recommended

Some Lists:

🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo Master List (Ranked)
🎬 Lucio Fulci
🇮🇹 Italian Horror
🛌 Academy of Evil
👻 Supernatural Horror
8️⃣ 1980–1989 📆 1987
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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The Nightingale 6l4j2m 2018 - ★★★★½

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 14:06:58 +1300

💥 Horror/Thriller 🎭 Drama 😱 New Extremity (2018)

"God. I can't stand the fucking noise of it."

After Stopmotion, I figured I should see this—Aisling Franciosi does a great job in both. The Nightingale has an earned reputation for being bleak. I found it to be very rewarding, albeit in the same horrible and cathartic way that Shakespeare’s grimmer tragedies are.

If you have the constitution to watch it, I think you will get something from it. There are some mild content spoilers that follow; nothing more than you probably already know, or at least should know. If you’re okay with any New Extremity you can and should go in blind and skip the rest of the review but yeah, otherwise you might want to know a bit about what’s coming.

The Nightingale is a lot more than a rape–revenge film, but it’s also that, and it’s a good one. Revenge is not as lurid here as in exploitation films or pure horror films, and there is a trail of rapes and murders of aboriginal Australians, not just of the protagonist. There’s a lot that is uncomfortable to watch, and it’s pretty constant. Not knowing much about English history in Australia, I’m going to assume it’s as bad here as elsewhere, and therefore this film is probably not even as bleak as the reality of what was done.

"I want you to bury them under that tree. Put her in his arms so she's safe.

This was a really gutsy film to make. It is comionate and humane in its brutality; there is so much sorrow in it and consequently so much to empathize with and connect with. I’m pretty sure I liked this better than The Babadook, but I need to rewatch that to be certain of it. It’s going to be harder to forget, and there’s a lot it’s left me with to think about.

Genre note, if this isn't horror, I have no idea what is. But it's not meant to be thrilling, it's meant to be awful, so perhaps that's why it's not labeled that way.

I have to label it what I think it clearly is: a New Extremity drama/thriller filled with a lot of horror.

Strong recommendation.

Some Lists:

😱 Horror/Thrillers I have Known and Loved
🎭 Drama 💥 Thriller
😱 New Extremity
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
1️⃣ 2010–2019 (2018)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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Cold Meat 4o132a 2023 - ★★★

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 07:09:50 +1300

⛧ New! 🩸 Horror 💥 Horror/Thriller 🖇️ Wayward #15 (2023)

"I can get you a piece of our world famous cherry pie." "World-famous, huh?" "Well, some people's worlds are a lot smaller than others."

Pretty enjoyable and diverting indie horror thriller made with a clever idea, possibly zero budget, a core cast of two, and a lot of love. It’s only had 296 views so far! I'm on the fence about how strongly to suggest watching it, but in wavering about it, I feel like I'm doing it a disservice. Other reviewers I trust like it, so you’re liable to have fun with it too.

Cold Meat is a tense, mostly bloodless psychological survival horror film. It’s more taut and interesting than it is frightening. The setup feels like Hyams' "Alone", and if you haven't read any of the description (which if you're going to watch it, you really shouldn't), you may be expecting a very different type of survival horror film than it delivers, but it goes somewhere distinctive.

It's meant to feel like a ferocious psychological showdown in an extreme and isolated situation, and when it works, that's how it feels. At those times, it's a lot of fun. When it doesn't work, which to me was once or twice, it feels ever so slightly implausible and staged. It is making a point, and it doubles down hard on that point towards the end.

This movie is so simple that any little wrong thing stands out; it would be a lot to have pulled it off perfectly. The most similar film I've seen is Bryan Bertino's "The Monster", which I didn't find very successful. I enjoyed this a lot more, though I'm not sure it's better.

If you watch it, let me know how you like it.

Reommended

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
2️⃣ 2020–2029 (2023)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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Stopmotion 49372z 2023 - ★★★★½

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 00:45:34 +1300

⛧ New! 🩸 Horror 🩸 Grotesque 💎 Gem #146 (2023) [Pics/DL]

"If you're going to make the Ash Man, you need to do it properly." "I've already made the Ash Man." "No, he needs to be made out of something dead."

Stopmotion is a treat. Delirious, psychedelic, and often nauseating, full of carrion and creeping dread, and soaked in neon and fuchsia—little about this is a comfortable watch, but it's hypnotic and comforting in its own way, like sinking into a friendly nightmare.

This is possibly the strongest horror film I’ve yet seen released in 2024. It’s horror, not just spookiness, and it’s very refreshing. Aisling Franciosi’s performance is a highlight. In of the cast, Stopmotion is her film the way The Night House is Rebecca Hall's. This film is her struggle with herself. But the way she plays off of Caoilinn Springall is especially delightful. It's one of those great younger performances, like Haizea Carneros in All the Moons.

Everyone visually creative I know has at some point had an impulse equivalent to the grotesqueness that this film settles into. It happens. You get lost in a world like this and the stakes feel high and everything becomes thinkable or even somehow necessary. It's a familiar feeling. Working alone in the arts takes one bizarre places. This film captures one of them as it interacts with her sense of identity and some form of conflicted, rebellious, enraged grief. [Pics/DL]

"It's a wonderful medium, isn't it? Bringing dead things to life?" "What happens when it takes on a life of its own?" "Are you scared?" "I'm scared of what will happen if I carry on—and scared of what will happen if I don't."

The closing sequence (1h15m+) may be a little hard for some people to watch. It's foreshadowed pretty heavily, so you may not be taken by surprise, but it is a lot. I wish I had seen this in a theater with an audience; I'd love to know how others felt.

The choral music adds a very interesting sacred counterpart to the mostly grotesque content. There's electoaccustic work that’s most noticeable in the closing credits—it's all very high quality, both music and sound design. Lola de la Mata’s new to me; I’m expecting great things from her and so I’m adding her to the Spotlight on Composers in Horror list [her webpage].

If you love horror you need to watch this. I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. And if not, at least you’ll be inspired and nauseated. Have fun.

Strong Recommendation.

Some Lists:

💧 Ghosts as Grief—Mourning horror, ancestral trauma
🎼 Spotlight on Composers in Horror
👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
🖌️ Arthouse Horror
🩸 The Grotesque
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
2️⃣ 2020–2029 (2023)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

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The Ring 4u682f 2002 - ★★★★½

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 01:57:58 +1300

🩸 Horror 👤 Uncanny 🎼 Hans Zimmer (2002) 🇺🇸 [Pics/DL]

"What is it with reporters? You take one person's tragedy and force the world to experience it, spread it like sickness."

I first heard of The Ring because my girlfriend watched it in college and had to sleep with her TV facing the wrong direction for a week. Then it came up because of a wedding on Vashon Island for the wedding of the friend she watched it with, and I got to hear all about the horse and the ferry and how beautiful and terrifying and haunting this was and that she would never watch it again.

When I became interested in horror I assumed Ringu would be better, watched it, and was totally unfrightened, although I enjoyed it a bit. Well, oddly, this is way better. It's beautifully shot, it's actually occasionally frightening, and it really is a good example of how to make PG-13 horror that scares. The Blair Witch, another darling from that era, did nothing for me except feel like a bad camping trip with rude people, so this was a very pleasant surprise.

Everything about this drips and breathes Pacific Northwest. Portland, my home for most of the 2000s, is never far from my heart. I love how much this feels like home. Well, it feels Seattle. That is sort of like home but less. But still. Home.

Let's talk about the score. It's Hans Zimmer, which I wasn't expecting, and it's lush and melodic, nearly entirely comprised of permutations of Dies Irae arranged for piano and strings. It's got a feeling of Suspiria's score at points as well—see 53m55. I loved hearing him work in horror, and I also enjoyed hearing something much earlier and much less experimental than his current scores, which, for example, have so much synthesis involved in the timbre of the sound. Here, his work sings with piano, violin, cello—not even a full orchestra. It's as spare and chilling and enchanting as everything else about this film. What surprises me is how seldom he has worked in horror. This film is the only horror film he's composed for that I'm interested in.

This Is scary while pulling its punches. It's possible to imagine a jumpscare-filled version that would have been much more startling and almost certainly less enchanting and effective. Based on the way this is edited, I know they knew how to make some sequences more startling than they did, and there is a lot of restraint used, which pays off.

"Did you help her? You weren't supposed to help her. Don't you get it? She never sleeps."

What a chilling and haunting film. I loved it. I look forward to uncanny supernatural horror that chills and unsettles with very little gore, and that has as much beauty as fear to it. This hits that tone and holds it for two hours. I don't mind the weird cool color grading in this case, despite an allergy to gray sludge tone, because the Pacific Northwest feels that way. It reminds me a little of Gamblin’s oil color series, Portland grey. It's all fine. Here, it works. [Pics/DL]

There's a new 4k release that will be out from Scream Factory, and everyone should take that opportunity to rewatch this or see it for the first time. I certainly will.

I'm very surprised to have enjoyed this as much as I did. It's very worth watching.

Recommended

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Argylle 74s62 2024 - ★½

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 10:00:43 +1300

???

... but for 139 minutes.

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Lisa Frankenstein 6f6p5w 2024 - ★★★★

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 01:47:59 +1300

⛧ New! 🩸 Horror ⏱️ Watchable fun (2023)

"Do you think anyone is coming to save you?... Wait, wait, wait! I'm sorry! Arrggggh!" [Mallet thump]

Followers is an example of why it is good to be a horror fan. A movie doesn't have to be studio made or have a budget to be fun. It doesn't even have to do something marginally close to looking polished. It doesn’t have to be good, exactly. Tell a story and I’ll probably watch it. If it’s less dull than Night Swim, I probably won’t mind the experience. If this were called "found footage" there would be an excuse for it looking this choppy, and it isn't, but to be fair, why does a movie have to pretend to be an amateur reconstructed recording to tell a story without polish?

There’s not much good new horror coming out this last week or two, so if this finds its way to you, you might be tempted to watch it. It’s scrappy and same-y and somewhat but not completely predictable. There’s a feeling of Sick and of Hyams’ previous film Alone, a personal favorite that, oddly, I read is trending this week and that I may have to rewatch. It also feels a bit like Creep, with the reliance on a wolf mask, and a bit like it could have been filmed in a Poway CA factory-farm McMansion—which it may have been. I think I recognize the carpentry fixtures and the stainless steel French press cafetière used by the killers when they are taking a break in their Killer Van.

You get the point. It feels like a project film. Well, it’s a watchable effort. It avoids a lot of traps that could make this not be a fun experience. It’s not a great film. It does share some themes I’m seeing a lot recently, like MAGA/incelesque villains doing man-cult things with American-owned guns and crossbows. The nod to dark web groups is current from films like Red Rooms and Demonlover. It doesn’t do much with these plot points at all beside reference them as context and then move on. Unfortunately, this shit could probably happen, making the wry humor behind the film slightly darker than it might otherwise be.

No I don’t suggest you go hunting for this one, but you could probably have a good hour with it if you accidentally find yourself watching it. The dialogue—how did I avoid mentioning the dialogue? Just read the opening quote. It’s like that. Whatever, it was still fun.

I’ve been meaning to rehabilitate two stars as a positive score and find a way to say that films like this did make it work and ended up entertaining. I haven’t had a chance to do it yet, so I’m doing it now.

You could watch it. They clearly had fun making it.

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Damsel v15x 2024 - ★½

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 05:33:27 +1300

🪝 Meh ⚠️ Not Recommended (2024) [Pics/Direct Link]

"Where are you hiding?" "Dragon." "That won't kill me, but it will make me angry." "Good. I'm angry too."

It’s unlikely that you are the intended audience of Damsel. I’m certainly not. This is a very same-y, poorly-written young adult Millie Bobby Brown vehicle and a downgrade from Stranger Things. I can’t recommend you watch it unless you’re looking for a feminist children’s movie version of a Metroidvania videogame. [Instagram Pictures]

For adults, may I recommend a cold open at 28m? You really won't want to watch the preceding stuff. If you do this, you start at a royal marriage and go straight into a Hollow Knight-style survival adventure movie.

Stranger Things works for all audiences—it’s complex and interesting enough that it would be hard not to enjoy, and it’s also a fun adventure. There is none of that here. Instead, some really abnormally bland stuff happens. I’d give this a good rating and say it is a good children’s film, but it’s just not a good film. It’s got tons wrong with it. Here’s an example.

The dragon is entirely unconcerned about being stabbed in the eye with a sword. It walks up to a sword and basically puts its eye on it, as if the eye were a videogame hitbox, not an actual part of a dragon’s body. Look at the dialogue from this scene in the opening blockquote. ... Really? This is how you think a creature feels about being stabbed in the eye recreationally? The dragon only has two eyes! it’s not like they’re disposable. "Careful with the eyeballs—I might get angry!"

Or look at this gem of a conversation between, apparently, Elodie and her stepmother.

"Elodie." "Stepmother." "Elodie." "Stepmother." "Oh! Thank God!"

Similarly, people who are near the dragon and about to be flambéed appear totally unconcerned. They stand there idiotically looking up at the Dragon as if to say “Burn me, dragon! I am defenseless and wish to die!” While normal people would run from fire, they… stand there and look at the fire? Don’t really care? Don’t act like living characters in a movie but rather like NPCs in a video game? Something’s wrong.

I am very certain this can be enjoyed as a YA-audience movie. It’s not a good movie for anybody else. I’d rather watch a YouTube Let’s Play video of a soulslike than watch this.

Skip it.

Some Lists:

🪝 Meh
⚠️ Recommending This Would Be Challenging: films I could not (or could barely) sit through
📆 2024

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Se7en 5o1s27 1995 - ★★★★★

Wed, 6 Mar 2024 15:57:23 +1300

💨 Noir 💥 Horror-Thriller 🎬 Fincher

"You're no different. You're no better." "I didn’t say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize. I sympathize completely. Apathy is a solution. I mean, it’s easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It’s easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It’s easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs. It takes effort and work.”

I regret watching Se7en after both Blade Runners, both Dune films, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest, because I’m stuck giving my sixth five star review this week and I like to pretend I’m discerning and selective.

No, honestly, this is as good as everyone said. I loved every minute of it. It was genuinely creepy. There was no need for any gore or violence or jumpiness to produce dread and fear and revulsion—and then there were those things also. I’m pretty desensitized to normal horror content, but this story was frightening conceptually. I’m surprised it is thirty years old because it still feels very fresh.

This is a smart, well-written story. Dialogue being unnatural is a thing that often trips me up. Here, there’s great rapport between the two leads, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. It was nice to see Brad Pitt in a role I enjoyed. I’m a bit allergic to the concept of celebrity, and a quick look at his actor page demonstrates that I had, before this moment, seen zero of his films. Here, I learned who he was, and found that he had a good dynamic with Morgan Freeman. There were scenes where it was very obvious why they bring extra value to the film: these are great performances. So many conversations between them shine. It’s a heady, talky film as much as it is a frightening one, and you’ll enjoy spending two hours of your time with this pair as they solve some gruesome-ish murders.

I also realize that I have barely seen any mainstream films. I’ve come here through the literary criticism route. I know that if I review films, I should have seen the ones people like, not just art films, horror films, and neorealism. So I’m going to watch some of the Hollywood things and learn what is good about them. To date, this is my second David Fincher film. It’s better than The Killers by, well, a lot. Andrew Kevin Walker wrote both, plus The Fight Club, and it could be interesting to consider what changed over these thirty years between these two films in his work.

I am very happy with the ending. I accidentally read a spoiler for it that was wrong, so I also had that going on, because I thought I knew the ending and it was not what I was told. It should have been predictable and I didn’t predict it, probably because I was sleepy. But it wouldn’t have mattered because this film is awesome, and the ending is outstanding whether or not you know what is happening.

I showed this review to a family member and they tell me it does not sound like I am excessively proud of not ever having seen Brad Pitt movies, about which I am disproportionately concerned, so I’m going to end it now and post it. I also just realized I saw Oceans Eleven while high but I can’t recall any of it. You’ll want to watch this sometime if you haven’t. It’s great. It is suitable for all audiences except schoolchildren and the easily disturbed, which used to be me.

This review is snarky because I am in a mood™. Substantially recommended.

Some Lists:

💨 Neo-Noir
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
🎬 David Fincher Ranked + Watchlist
🥚 Crime
💥 Horror/Thrillers I have Known and Loved
💥 Thrillers (Unsorted)
🇺🇸 United States
9️⃣ 1990–1999 📆 1995
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Spoiler Quote (skip as needed):

“Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these are innocent people and keep a straight face. But that’s the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner and in every home and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it’s common, it’s trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I’m setting the example. And what I’ve done is going to be puzzled over, and studied, and followed, forever.”

Looking for something different? Consider:

Blade Runner 2049 | Blade Runner (1982) | Drive-Away Dolls | Dune Part One and Part Two | Drive-Away Dolls | Poor Things | The Zone of Interest | To Catch a Killer | Restore Point | Out of Darkness | Navalny | Pelican Blood

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Blade Runner 2049 5d5g28 2017 - ★★★★★

Mon, 4 Mar 2024 16:27:48 +1300

☣ SF 🎬 Villeneauve 🔭 Blade Runner Primer (2017) [Pics/Direct Link]

"It was very clever of you to keep yourself empty of information. And all it cost you was everything."

Blade Runner 2049 is a Russian doll of nested simulations or ways of being, from computer simulation through different levels of replicants all the way through humans and up to “God”. It's a psychological thriller about existence and consciousness that happens to be richly depicted in image and sound. And that makes it somewhat the opposite of Blade Runner (1982) They're two visions of the same thing from the same writer, and I have loved watching both.

I said in my review of Blade Runner (1982) that I found it surprisingly silent on all the philosophical conversations that come with films of this sort, and I ired that because it made something compelling and clear and iconic, without bogging down in ratiocination or grand points. It’s a gritty, stylish and imaginative neo-noir thriller that’s intelligently written because all of that superstructure of thought can be applied to it or totally ignored. It works as pure noir thriller.

This film is different. Within the first hour it has introduced multiple models of non-human beings that may or may not be conscious or have a “soul”, and there is a fascinating interrelationship between these and the ideas of birth, a God, and what existence means. It’s a thought-piece as much as a science fiction masterpiece. It reads a lot like Battlestar Galactica, but with an $150M budget for just under three hours. And that is why it’s also extremely splashy, over the top, gorgeous contemporary cinema spectacle.

Before you read any further, if you are a new viewer, go watch the original and then watch this and read nothing, and make sure you watch the new 4K HDR transfers. If you love the original, please watch this blind, and please do not read burbs or look at the cast and crew and genre stuff because there are several big surprises and shifts in the angle of the plot, and you’ll love it more if you just go watch it.

If you are considering doing something beside watching Blade Runner 1982 The Final Cut UHD and then afterwards this, I have made you a list to clarify the situation. Thanks for your understanding of and compliance with this directive. [Instagram Pictures/Direct Link]

I’ll end the review now and clarify my thoughts in a second review to avoid risking spoilers.

Strong Recommendation

Some Lists:

🔭 Blade Runner Primer—How to Watch (for New Viewers): An Exhaustive List
🎬 Dennis Villeneauve
💨 Neo-Noir
☣ Science Fiction
🇺🇸 United States
💥 Thriller
8️⃣ 1980–1989 📆 2017
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Some lists:

Blade Runner (1982) | Drive-Away Dolls | Dune Part One and Part Two | Drive-Away Dolls | Poor Things | The Zone of Interest | To Catch a Killer | Restore Point | Out of Darkness | Navalny | Pelican Blood

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Blade Runner 1i2e6p 1982 - ★★★★½

Sun, 3 Mar 2024 22:30:47 +1300

💨 Noir ☣ Science Fiction (1982) 🇺🇸 [Pics / Direct Link]

"She doesn't know?" "She's beginning to suspect, I think." "Suspect? How can it not know what it is?" "Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. 'More human than human' is our motto. Rachael is an experiment, nothing more."

I’ve always meant to watch Blade Runner and somehow kept putting it off. Two things forced me finally to get around to it, and I’m so thrilled I did, because it’s easily my favorite of Ridley Scott’s films and a top of the class science fiction neo-noir.

The first thing that forced my hand was the following conversation in HBO’s remake of Irma Vep (if you haven’t seen this, and, like me, the original is one of your favorites, absolutely watch it). This is E03 31:30:

"So, what's the film?" "They are pitching it as 'Blade Runner'... um, but without the Neo-noir elements, or the replicants, or... the rain." "Why none of that?" "They did market research, and audiences find rain really depressing. And there's no recognition for replicants, and I think they had a hard time with the concept of Neo-noir. Actually, I think they had a hard time with the concept of noir in the first place." "Then... I mean, what's left?" "Gunnar.”” (Gunnar is the director, of course)

The second reason, of course, is I’ve run out of Dune and it’s time to watch more Dennis Villeneuve, so before I watched Blade Runner 2049 I wanted to watch this.

Blade Runner was better than I expected. Somehow all of the drama about picking one of five cuts made me think the film would be a bit broken. But The Final Cut, which has a sharp new 4K transfer, is entirely coherent. If you’re looking for a version to watch, pick this—you will not be disappointed.

This stands out amongst the science fiction I’m familiar with from this period. I expected two things: space police action and lots of hand-wringing about what it means to be conscious. Neither of these things took place. It felt nearly laconic in its total disinterest in the philosophical conversation that usually arises here. It’s not that it discounts them: Deckard’s change in stance towards one replicant would usually be accompanied by a change in belief about the possibility that they experience.

"What if I go north? Disappear. Will you hunt me?"

But this is just not in the film, and it’s so much more relaxing this way, because the subtext is there but there is no constant belaboring of a point that probably few people except me and maybe you and a bunch of philosophers of mind are interested in.

Instead, Blade Runner proceeds very matter of factly. The only real flight of fancy about consciousness and imagination is that poetic replicant speech on the rooftop about tears. Blade Runner does not feel like a wonkish work of speculative philosophy embedded in science fiction. It feels exactly like film noir, which is what it is. It’s moody and brooding and beautiful. [Pictures / Direct Link]

It also just so happens that there are replicants. And depression. And the rain.

You’ll probably love this, as I did. Give it a watch.

Strong Recommendation

Some Lists:

💨 Neo-Noir
☣ Science Fiction
🇺🇸 United States
💥 Thriller 💥 Thriller
8️⃣ 1980–1989 ⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Drive-Away Dolls | Dune Part One and Part Two | Drive-Away Dolls | Poor Things | The Zone of Interest | To Catch a Killer | Restore Point | Out of Darkness | Navalny | Pelican Blood

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Drive 5a973 Away Dolls, 2024 - ★★★★

Sun, 3 Mar 2024 18:40:43 +1300

⛧ New! 🙃 Comedy >🌈 LGBTQ+ 🎬 Cohens (2024) [Pics / DL]

”Jamie, I want…” “Uh huh?” “I—I think I…” “Yes?” “I want to make love with the Senator’s penis.”

This is my first lesbian-road-trip-of-crime film, and I don’t know how it would be possible not to have fun with it. Drive Away Dolls is so deliriously gay, with an absurd plot that plays off of staple crime genre tropes in a witty comedy of errors that at times nears a farce but that is always positive about and kind to its characters. And the endless dialogue yields so many clever moments it was hard to keep track.

It’s not a cynical or exploitative film, it’s a celebration, and from Ethan Cohen it feels almost like play. It’s very fast and loose with both realism and normal cinema, occasionally breaking into these psychedelic homoerotic interludes that make absolutely no sense but probably it’s better for them being there. [Pictures / Direct Link]

“Ladies, you’re a day late. And a dick short.”

On top of the crime comedy and the gay humor, there’s a bit of a romance story, and it’s surprisingly sweet. This is a film that starts and stays lurid but quickly grows a heart to go along with the soccer team orgies and plaster-cast politician dildos. Having grown up, like most of us now, with at least half of my friends gay, it’s still always touching to see such a carefree but also beautiful portrayal of both friendship and romance. That it is clearly written by a man who is years off his medication is just a total bonus.

It's possible to find things to dislike here, but I don’t really have the energy for it. This doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be constantly witty and also realistic about humans. It’s best if the plot is cleverly twisty and with a satisfying ending.

Drive Dolls Succeeds at all of this, so to me it’s as excellent as it needs to be. I really enjoyed it. Give it a shot; you might too.

Recommended a bit extra

Some Lists:

🌈 LGBTQ+ / Queer Cinema Ranked
🙃 Comedy Ranked
🎬 The Cohen Brothers
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2024
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Dune Part One and Part Two | Poor Things | The Zone of Interest | To Catch a Killer | Restore Point | Out of Darkness | Navalny | Pelican Blood

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Dune 3y1m46 Part Two, 2024 - ★★★★★

Sun, 3 Mar 2024 13:19:54 +1300

🎪 Epic ☣ SciFi 🎬 Villeneauve (2024)🇺🇸 [Pics / Direct Link] [Dune Part One review]

“Never give your water away. Even to the dead.”

Dune Part 2 is one of the best films I’ve seen recently. In addition to being a spectacular film to watch, this is moving and personal, with a thriving emotional core, strong character arcs, subtle human interactions, and a plot that several times veered in directions I never predicted. The events and decisions made absolute sense, and the last half of the film was much stronger as it occurred in the film than the plot I had imagined might transpire.

Despite starting with much more action, which I was concerned would compromise storytelling, everything that works in the first film is still strong here. I prefer the first half of Part One and the second half of Part Two (and look out for the title drop near the end of the film; it’s another perfect moment). However, it’s almost a nonissue. See my review of Dune Part 1 for more on that.

Timothée Chalamet’s Paul faces an emotional and personal minefield as well as a strategic one. At stake are his entire construction of self, what he can and cannot tolerate causing and becoming, and how he wants to interact with the world and the future. Multiple sacrifices are made just to find one outcome that is survivable and tolerable, and this outcome does not look like what most characters wanted.

”If I go south, all my visions lead to horror. Billions of corpses scattered across the galaxy all dying because of me.” “Because you lose control?” “Because I gain it.”

I hadn’t expected Paul’s final choices to be correct but also such a punch in the gut, and yet still satisfying and moving, and I could say this for most of the central characters. But it’s not a grim ending despite that. It is simply nuanced about what victory in this context means and what else was at stake or lost. None of this is belabored or heavy-handed—the performances are natural and easy to connect with. Consequently, this film really works.

Along with the character work, Dune Part 2 delivers the dramatic and thrilling military epic you’d expect for a production of this scale. You already know that the cinematography, production design, pacing, acting, the score, the fight choreography, and so on will be top notch. The experience of watching this in a theater is well worth the price of a ticket. And somehow it’s still a PG-13 film and that didn’t bother me. [Pictures / Direct Instagram Link]

This is another film where an individual fulfills old prophesies to become a chosen person who leads a band of rebels against an emperor to save a population, or world, or galaxy. Nothing could be less innovative than this ancient plot structure. I’m usually a bit tired of it. But here it’s so much better than usual that it almost always feels fresh and grounded.

Something about the lightness and honesty of the performances, the quality of the acting, the strong writing, and the lack of belaboring make that plot a backbone of something better. Well, and also because Paul and Jessica are tripping half the time. This mother/son hero’s-psychedelic-journey plot addition is extremely entertaining to me for reasons I had better not discuss.

”You want to fight with us? First thing you must learn is to be one with the desert.”

There are a few small things that didn’t work for me. The only relevant one is the cartoonishly villainous nature of evil, which makes some of the Harkonnen performances slightly unbelievable and annoying. I would have been more scared if they acted more human.

That is my actual only problem. Well no, it needed more Anya Taylor-Joy, but her being in the film was a great surprise, and a good portion of the cast (for example Léa Seydoux, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson) are personal favorites, so it all works out in the end. I even now tolerate “Zendaya”, despite my certainty that it is not a complete and properly-formed human name. It would be like if my entire name were actually Universzero. Moving on.

This is great. If you’re into this type of film, you are going to love it. Go watch. Now I’m off to rewatch Part One, and probably I’m going to catch this once more in theaters before it closes to check whether I agree with my first impressions.

Strongest recommendation.

Some Lists:

🎬 Dennis Villeneauve (Ranked)
☣ Science Fiction
🎪 Epics, apparently
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2024
✵Index and Viewing Next
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Dune Part One and Part Two | Poor Things | The Zone of Interest | To Catch a Killer | Restore Point | Out of Darkness | Navalny | Pelican Blood

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Dune 3y1m46 2021 - ★★★★★

Sun, 3 Mar 2024 01:47:47 +1300

🎪 Epic ☣ SciFi 🎬 Villeneauve (2021) 🏆 94th AA 🇺🇸 [Pics / Direct Link] [Video] [Dune Part Two review]

"Like sifting sand through a screen, we sift people. If you had been unable to control your impulses, like an animal, we could not let you live. You inherit too much power." "What, because I'm a duke's son?" "Because you are Jessica's son. You have more than one birthright, boy."

This is my third watch of Dune Part 1. It only gets better each viewing. If you haven’t seen this, I recommend dropping the reviews and just watching it. It’s one of those films. You won’t regret it.

After watching Part 2 I realized I needed to revisit this before reviewing it to clarify some details, and now I’m pretty sure I’ll see Part 2 in theaters a second time, which is not normal for me. They are genuinely good films. But the reason I returned to this was to see whether the contrast in tone and pacing in the first half of both films affected the quality of the character work and the psychological complexity. There is, in fact, an unmistakable difference between them, but both are successful for very similar reasons.

Twenty-five minutes into Dune Part 1, there is an unforgettable scene that demonstrates some of these strengths and why it works. [Video: Gom Jabbar test (copyright Warner Brothers)] [Pictures / Direct Link]

Skip the next three paragraphs to avoid all spoilers.

For those who know this film, you’ll know I’m discussing the gom jabbar test, where Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides is tested, very likely fatally, by the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, head of his mother’s order. His performance is excellent: watching him overcome fear and pain and master himself and survive is a turning point in the book and the film. And the sound in this scene is extraordinary. But that’s not quite what I’m after.

Watching Rebecca Ferguson's otherwise unflappable Lady Jessica quietly lose self-mastery locked outside the room, knowing everything that Paul is innocent to, and having intended most of it but not this—watching her struggle to regain composure, reciting for the first time the Litany against Fear, and nearly turning the tables on the Reverend Mother in their subsequent conversation, the fear and anger having switched through a quick range of intermediary emotions to something close to proud defiance, where she asks: was she wrong to violate protocol because her son might be the Kwisatz Haderach? Both women already know the answer. This switch from terror through a spectrum of emotions to self-surety against the highest leader of her order is most of what you need to know about Lady Jessica in a seven minute primer. It’s masterful acting.

As mentioned, Paul, aware of barely any of the stakes, fights and wins a similar battle for control and dignity. These two in parallel are magnificent. It is one of the best mother/son dynamics in recent films. But Ferguson especially reminds me of the best of Toni Collette in Hereditary, as an example: it's that caliber of acting, and the emotional stakes and character dynamics seen here are those that are sustained and developed through the span of both films.

(Restart here as needed).

Even if you’re new, I strongly recommend just watching this video discussion of the above, because if this doesn’t sell you on Dune, it’s probably the wrong film for you. Gom Jabbar test and subsequent conversation, as well as this interview about it with director Denis Villenue.

The fact is, the first hour of Dune Part 1 is a series of interactions between mother, son, and a very small but interesting subset of the cast, focusing as much on psychology and emotions and personal connections as politics and intrigue. Nothing violent on a large scale happens within the first hour. I respect the confidence in storytelling to let this breathe in such a way rather than burying nuance under spectacle to appeal to an audience of the easily bored. For me, Dune makes an hour of conversation in space and on sand as riveting as any of the action that follows.

"So, the Emperor has taken sides. What says the Judge of the Change?" "The Emperor forbids me from saying anything at all." "And yet you risk your life to help us."

Even when the story becomes intense and violent, I found the character work consistently moving and emotionally effective based on the strength of their writing and these performances. Each time I revisit this film, in fact, this works better, stands out more, and has more of an emotional impact.

Part Two, I was worried, would be different: it dives directly into action sequences that are nothing like the nearly meditative clarity of the first half of Part One. I was briefly afraid that it would replace this with intensity and violence. Luckily, it did not. To me, the first hour of this film is more the way I prefer it, but now I have to revisit Part Two to check that! At some point, I will have to stop watching these, but not quite yet.

And the second half of Part Two is as good as any of this in a different way, as they loop back to Paul’s visions and fears of a holy war in his family’s name. Both together make for very good cinema. I’ll discuss this more in my review of Part Two, which I should have to you soon.

Don't be frightened. Don't resist. When you take a life, you take your own.”

The fact is there’s a lot more to say that I’ve barely gotten to discuss. If you have the energy, go listen to the music at 1:29.30 and 2:07.15 and then be thankful to have dodged several paragraphs on it—let alone the sound design during the scene above.

But I think this is a good place to wrap up this review. I can always loop back to it. In the meantime, this is a great film; you should watch it and then head out to watch the second half.

Strongest recommendation.

Some Lists:

🎬 Villeneauve
☣ Science Fiction
🎪 Epics, apparently
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2021
✵Index and Viewing Next
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

🏆 (94th) Academy Awards:

Best Picture
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Original Score 🏆
Best Cinematography 🏆
Best Production Design 🏆
Best Costume Design
Best Sound 🏆
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Best Film Editing 🏆
Best Visual Effects 🏆

Looking for something different? Consider

Dune Part One and Part Two | Poor Things | The Zone of Interest | To Catch a Killer | Restore Point | Out of Darkness | Navalny | Pelican Blood

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Poor Things h1a2a 2023 - ★★★★★

Sat, 2 Mar 2024 14:34:48 +1300

🙃 Comedy ☣ SciFi 💭 Imaginative/Experimental 🎬 Lanthimos 🏆 96th AA (2023) [Pics]

”We should certainly never marry. I am a flawed, experimenting person, and I will need a husband with a more forgiving disposition.”

Every once in a while—not terribly rarely but rare enough to be noteworthy—a film comes along that is unforgettably visionary, novel, and creative in image and plot. Poor Things is that film. This is a familiar and simple story—a coming of age story, a picaresque, some romantic misadventures, a bit of Frankenstein here and there—that is made new and rich by the artistry exhibited to the extent that it feels wholly fresh and new.

It's hard to know exactly where to start. The cinematography and production design are extraordinary. The number of ways this film has for composing a shot and for coloring, framing, and lighting leads to a captivating and dreamlike sequence of scenes and scenarios that are all full of detail that is never reused but that would be enough many entire films. The choices are bizarre and yet all fit the mood and content. [Pictures here; Direct link]

"It is not all sunshine I bring. I also bring beady eyes and hard questions."

The writing. My god. This dialogue is hilarious, and I can't believe someone is allowed to write something this interesting and off-kilter and creative and still have a popular audience. As Bella grows and matures, her style of conversation and her style of thought shift totally convincingly, bringing out a series of new and strange conversations and interactions as she educates herself about the world.

She shifts from broken and infantile dialogue through to clear articulate adult speech in phases (consider the repeating synonyms phase, her discovery of anger and aggressive language, the philosophical engagement with empiricism, and a range of other such small shifts until the final scenes). Nearly every scene has something new and strange and insightful emerging from her.

Of course there's Emma Stone as Bella. Her costumes are delirious and doll-like, and her appearance shifts as much as her language while still feeling absolutely her. I expect Poor Things will take academy awards in costume and production design at least, and I’d love Emma Stone for Best Actress in a Leading Role, not that I’m confident that one will come about But without her performance and her ability to bring something this unique and challenging to life while having no moment stand out as unnatural is why this film exists, and without her (or someone like her) as lead, none of it would survive.

"As God my father says, it is only the way it is until we discover the new way it is. And then that is the way it is until we discover the new way it is, and so it goes, until the world is no longer flat, electricity lights the night, and shoes are no longer tied with ribbons."

Most of this film does feel like a picaresque, which is rare enough and when it happens, I’m always into it, and this fits the genre choice of comedy that I at first found so odd on seeing it after watching this blind. But yes, this is a comedy, and a very good one, and it had me laughing throughout without noticing.

That said, something else extraordinary happened: with thirty minutes left, this turned on a dime and had me weeping before I knew what hit me. The final sequences are evocative and touching—well, perhaps except the human/goat experiment, and I’m happy it kept the characteristic blend of dark humor to the end.

There is so much I want to share related to dialogue and music—and it says a lot that I’ve exhausted seven paragraphs without even getting to the score, which is as good as any other part—that I know I’ll need a second review, so I’m putting out these impressions without belaboring it.

"God, you are walking!" "I have taken five milligrams of heroin through the toes for pain, amphetamines for energy, and cocaine because I am partial to cocaine. I've come here to walk you down the aisle."

Until then, there’s only one thing you really need to know before deciding whether to watch Poor Things: you don’t have a choice. This is essential viewing. I’m joking but also kind of not, which is in keeping with the last two hours I’ve spent.

This just recently had its home release, so if by some chance you’ve missed it, now’s the time to watch.

Strongest recommendation.

Some Lists:

🎬 Yorgos Lanthimos
💭 Imaginative, Innovative, Experimental
🙃 Comedy Ranked
☣ Science Fiction
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
✵Index and Viewing Next
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

🌟 96th Academy Awards

est Picture 🍀
Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Best Actress in a Leading Role (Emma Stone) 🏆
Best Actor in a ing Role (Mark Ruffalo)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Cinematography
Best Costume Design 🏆
Best Editing
Best Makeup and Hairstyling 🏆
Best Production Design 🏆
Best Original Score*
(🏆 = my vote, not prediction):

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The Zone of Interest 6i3s51 2023 - ★★★★★

Fri, 1 Mar 2024 20:32:21 +1300

⛧ New! 💨 Noir 💥 Thriller 💍 Gem #16 (2023) [Pics]

"They brought me in because they thought I'd understand you. That I could empathize." "Finally. I kill 200 people, then someone gives a shit."

To Catch a Killer is a tense and fascinating neo-noir thriller set in Baltimore about an FBI investigation of a mass shooting. It’s somewhat slower paced after a stellar beginning and will occasionally lag, but it sets up the last thirty minutes for a taut, memorable, and surprising conclusion.

I lived and worked in Baltimore for a decent amount of time so this was effectively a must-watch for me. The review has been on my to-write list for quite a while, and since it has similar energy to Restore Point (but 50 times the number of views), I decided to do it now. I was slow to write this because I was trying to figure out if there was a pacing problem. I’ve decided that this is a memorable film that benefits from the slightly longer runtime and that has several jags in the plot that depend on it, and so if there was an issue, it’s basically irrelevant because I have positive recollections of it. Unlike “Restore Point”, this is a pure noir police procedural with no speculative or futuristic elements. It’s shot beautifully. [Instagram pictures]

“29 victims. Every shot found its mark. No casings, no brass. Not a single stray hair or fingerprint. This guy is thorough. He didn’t come here to die, and he does not want to be found." […] "These people, they're just born plain evil." "Evil is cutting off a bird's wing just to see what happens. This guy is swatting mosquitos.”

The leads are great. You’re likely to enjoy Shailene Woodley as Eleanor, a beat cop with a rough past and (as you’d expect) a history of drug use ["'Have you ever tried any illegal substances?' 'Yes.' 'Which ones?' 'All of them.' That didn't help your [FBI] application."] who is drafted into the FBI investigation because of her astuteness and neutrality. She has a long acting career but she’s new to me and I hope she’ll be in other films I watch.

Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn (the FBI agent) collaborate together well. Their dialogue is well written throughout, with a ton of memorable quotes and conversations that are interesting enough that it’s been tough to limit the quotes in this review.

"I can think of two reasons why you might be getting a good read on this guy. One: You're potentially a good detective. Two: You're as fucked in the head as he is. Either way, I'm doing everyone a favor by keeping you off the streets."

The opening twenty minutes is a dark and intense mass shooting sequence, and the film is at its best in moments of action like this. As I mentioned, the ending was surprising: it had a conversation that was more intense than any action that preceded it, though it also had the standoffs you’d expect. I was very impressed that it pulled off that conversation, because frequently you’ll have a final conversation that is absolutely stupid (think of a villain monologue of how they have achieved their evil that delays things until there can be a rescue). This conversation was chilling and believable and humane, but still full of terror. It was well written, and the ending really won me over.

Overall, this was exciting, intense, and believable, with some great moments. If this sounds good to you, give it a shot.

Recommended

Some Lists:

💍 Slightly Hidden Other Gems (Thriller, Documentary, Drama)
💨 Noir
💥 Thriller
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
2️⃣ 2020–2029 (2023)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
✵Index and Viewing Next
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Bonus quote:

"People make so much noise. Year after year, shouting at some stupid fireworks, as if silence and darkness were enemies to defeat. Go back to your fucking caves. At night, there are so many lights on you can't even see the stars. I want time. I want space. They want things. Fuck them. You've either got to be very stupid or very asleep to find this game entertaining."

Looking for something different? Consider:

Restore Point | Down a Dark Hall | Indigo | History of Evil | Hell Fest | Out of Darkness | Halloween Kills | Navalny | Flowing |
Monolith | Double Blind | Banshee Chapter | Haute tension (High Tension) | Pelican Blood | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person Red Rooms

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Down a Dark Hall 10625x 2018 - ★★★

Fri, 1 Mar 2024 14:08:47 +1300

🩸 Horror 🛌 Academy 🔥 Burning 💎 Gem #144 (2018) 🇺🇸 [Pics]

"Do you two mind killing each other somewhere else? Some of us are trying to hate this place in peace."

Down a Dark Hall didn’t horrify me. But what it did, it did well: tell a spooky story in an old gothic building full of unnerving signs of the dead and hold that creepy nearly campfire-story tone for almost the entire runtime. I would recommend this as young adult starter horror—unless you have raised little gorehouds, in which case you need something heavier.

That’s the thing. When a film like this gets such bad ratings and then I see a great score from someone reasonable like Tony the Terror, I always wonder what's going on, and I think it's frequently an audience mismatch.

I wouldn't tell my friend who just finished Suspiria to watch this to be frightened. It’s just not right. But I also wouldn't take a preteen to watch Saint Ange, which for me is a nearly perfect version of this story that won’t work for many youngish people. If Saint Ange’s early aggressive jump scares didn’t frighten young kids away, the long arty dreamy sequences that I find so beautiful and elegant might bore them away. (If you haven't seen Saint Ange, Pascal Laugier's first film, go watch that first. It's secretly a masterpiece.)

"If things get weird here, just call us, okay?" "It's already weird here." "This is going to be good for you." "Even with my aggressive mental state?”

This is both on the arty end for young adult PG-13 horror and on the unscary end for adults. It makes an effort to be erudite. For me, watching just for myself, I appreciate a film that can live in the nearly sublime uncanny and then take a nosedive into hell, so my version of this story is Saint Ange. That ending is great horror and, as you’d expect from Pascal Laugier, has some brutality to it. But your version of this story, if you are more easily scared, might be this one.

The trouble is, I would live in this place even with the ghosts. What happens to these kids would be recreational for me. It seems to me to be a remarkably effective educational environment, where kids are learning Proust in five days and mastering the arts like watering the garden. It seems, frankly, like too much to ask. So when I see them being scared where I would yell “Bring on the ghouls!” it’s a little… you know. Unscary.

"My may seem harsh, but the price of an extraordinary life is an extraordinary effort. And make no mistake, each one of you is quite extraordinary."

I have to note the acting has some dubious moments and something about the color processing bugged me. There is a lot of 18% gray instead of black in the interior night sequences, and I know they can do black, because there are other scenes with it. I don’t know why that choice was made, since it was clearly a choice, and it damages the beauty of many shots. But frequently this is a very beautiful film as well. [Pictures here (trailer-level spoilers)]

I was recommended this at the same time as Boarding School, which is a much more complicated and mature horror story. It’s a better film, but once you get past the acting and some of the narrative contrivances, this was good in its own way. I watched Zombi Child in parallel, and it’s a similar theme, so look at that as an option. I’ll have that review up soon.

Casually recommended.

Some Lists:

🔥 Burning Down the Set
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
🛌 Academy of Evil
👻 Supernatural Horror
⛤ Witchcraft and Dark or Ritual Magic
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2018
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Restore Point | Indigo | History of Evil | Hell Fest | Out of Darkness | Halloween Kills | Navalny | Flowing |
Monolith | Double Blind | Banshee Chapter | Haute tension (High Tension) |American Star | Pelican Blood | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person Red Rooms

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Restore Point m2h6c 2023 - ★★★½

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 23:02:31 +1300

⛧ New! 💨 Noir 💥 Thriller ☣ SciFi (2023) 🇨🇿 [Pictures]

"Anything you say can be used as evidence against you." "Everything we say and think is used against us every day."

Restore Point was a great surprise: a sleek and clever Czech neo-noir thriller with strong lead performances set in a near future where humans have the right to be restored from backups when victims of violent deaths. You should consider watching it.

The plot’s interesting and twisty, driven by the tension between human rights and business and government interests as they affect an investigation of a series of ‘absolute murders’ where backups were destroyed. It’s moderately paced and driven as much by conversation as by action, and it held my interest the entire runtime.

A highlight: Andrea Mohylová. This is her first film performance and I don’t know why because she is great in this role. It’s the sort of film the leads have to carry, and she really does a good job. She and Matej Hadek are natural together, which is good since you spend the entire film watching them.

I haven’t seen some of the classics (Blade Runner, Minority Report) that people say are influences so I can’t tell you how it compares, and it’s probably time for me to have watched those. But this stands up on its own.

Somehow this one’s gone under the radar. It’s ridiculously under-watched for how good it is, so If this sounds like your type of film, give it a shot.

Recommended

Some Lists:

💨 Noir
💥 Thriller
☣ Science Fiction
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
2️⃣ 2020–2029 (2023)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
✵Index and Viewing Next
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Indigo | History of Evil | Hell Fest | Out of Darkness | Halloween Kills | Navalny | Flowing |
Monolith | Double Blind | Banshee Chapter | Pelican Blood | Haute tension (High Tension) |American Star

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Indigo 143x5b 2023 - ★★★½

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:51:52 +1300

⛧ New! 🩸 Horror ☦ Possession 💎 Gem #143 (2023) 🇮🇩 [Pics]

"I just had a dream. There will be chaos, and I don't even know if we will be able to stop it." "What do you mean?" "A dark age." [...] "There will be a child of the unseen born into this world. There will be a new age from the world of the dead."

Just out this week: a strong jump-scare based supernatural exorcism/possession horror film from Indonesia that you should consider watching. It stands up to well-known films like Satan’s Slaves and Impetigore, but it’s substantially more frightening while perhaps more derivative. And somehow, only 200 people have seen it.

Indigo has got everything you’d want for a PG-13–feeling supernatural horror film: lurking spirits that feel threatening and dangerous, that appear by surprise and stalk characters in a truly unnerving manner, and that cause many of the characters in the film to become dead or nervous wrecks as they try to sort out how to manage the predatory evil that has emerged in their lives.

This is a sleek, well-produced, and polished film with effectively written characters and multiple plot arcs that work together. It has some very beautiful scenes [Pictures here]. Indonesian horror for me has always been hit or miss in one area: they rarely actually scare me. This managed to scare me repeatedly despite myself for the first hour, and I loved that. As the film settles in to the last act and there is more demonic possession and less stalking by spirits, it becomes meaningfully less frightening and a bit more goofy, but nothing that should prevent enjoyment. The final plot twist makes me hope for a sequel, because I could enjoy seeing what is now waiting for the characters.

Youll recognize Sara Wijayanto, Amanda Manopo, and Nicole Rossi from other Indonesian horror and I think they do a great job. I am honestly not familiar yet with director 🎬 Rocky Sorayaor anything from Hitmaker Studios and it’s a blind spot, so I’ll be catching up a bit.

If you’re looking for something spooky and interesting but not very gory, I think this will work nicely for you. Give it a shot.

Recommended

Some Lists:

🪞 Jump Scare Horror
🇮🇩 Indonesian Horror/Thrillers (Ranked)
👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
🎬 Rocky Soraya 🎞️ Hitmaker Studios
💧 Ghosts as Grief—Mourning horror, ancestral trauma
☦ Exorcism and Possession
👻 Supernatural Horror
2️⃣ 2020–2029 (2023)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Veni Vidi Vici | Pelican Blood | Kneecap (2024) | The Seeding (2023) | Haute tension (High Tension) | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Before I Wake | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person |Red Rooms

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Lovely 603t6g Dark, and Deep, 2023 - ★★½

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 22:37:40 +1300

⛧ New! 🩸 Horror 🎞️ XYZ 💧 Grief 🖇️ Wayward #14 (2023) 🇺🇸 Instagram Pictures

"I owe this land a body.”

This should have really worked for me, and I struggled with it. That’s not a reason for you not to give it a shot yourself, because I think it will work for others.

Let’s start with the good. There’s actually a lot of horror content here. There’s some decent gore, a brilliantly designed monster (that we only see for three seconds, sadly, because it was the most frightening part of the film), and a surprising amount of violence and even cannibalism. The film goes weird and dark places, and it really will probably be a scary experience to casual horror viewers. It’s also shot in a beautiful location, and Georgina Campbell of Barbarian puts in a solid performance as the protagonist, Lennon.

There’s some stunning landscape shots as well, and several surprising details. My favorite is a shot of blood in a bathtub that for a fraction of a second breaks into tree branch patterns (see pictures). I won’t include a shot of the monster to avoid spoilers.

Where this worked less for me was the pacing. I expected this to be a lot more haunting and frightening, scarier, and at a faster clip, and in fact my enjoyment of the film improved greatly when I realized this and increased playback speed to 1.1x to 1.2x. When this corrects my enjoyment of a film, which it did here, it’s fair to assume it really was a tempo problem for me: by the time the film was ready to reveal the next surprise, it had sat and mulled it over and regurgitated the previous ones and made it obvious what would happen, so it didn’t quite land. That’s rare that I feel this way; usually I am just fine with slower pacing in horror.

There is very unsubtle foreshadowing and telegraphing of the main plot, so that one entire arc of the film (minus some details) you will understand and predict within the first five minutes. This makes how frequently the camera returns to dwell on this just a little bit heavy handed. I’m talking about the missing sister plot. It’s just not subtle that from the beginning of this film that this will be the type of film that tries to surprise you by making the horror personal and a part of the life history of the protagonist, and that everything will tie back to understanding what happened to a lost sister. I found this obvious and not terribly interesting. Also, this is a topographic horror film and I’m not really into the loop topography / being trapped in a location that is menacing or evil. I’ve seen it a lot. It stopped working.

I’m sorry that I had a mixed response to this film because I really wanted to enjoy it. I think a good number of people will enjoy it. It didn’t work for me, and that’s just how it is, but it’s a creative first feature film from the director and it has enough ideas that I will be glad to watch her next film and see how it goes.

If you do watch this, I’m very curious to hear how it lands in you. I’m wondering if I’m wrong and just in an off mood, or whether it is actually a bit unscary. Let me know in the comments.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
💧 Ghosts as Grief—Mourning horror, ancestral trauma
🖇️ Wayward and Lost Horrors
🎞️ XYZ Films Horror
👻 Supernatural Horror
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Veni Vidi Vici | Pelican Blood | Kneecap (2024) | The Seeding (2023) | Haute tension (High Tension) | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Before I Wake | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person |Red Rooms

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History of Evil 2o4m1i 2023 - ★★★½

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 18:11:57 +1300

⛧ New! 🩸 Horror 🎞️ XYZ 💧 Grief and Trauma 💎 Gem #142 (2023) 🇺🇸 Instagram Pictures

"Last call, last chance to drink the last drop. The old bastard wants to go home. The old lady's waiting; he'd rather kiss Satan. The old bastard wants to go home. Drink up, drink up, drink up."

Part The Shining, part MAGA dystopia, History of Evil is good horror. It’s a slow horror film about mental unraveling under the pressures of segregationist history and toxic masculinity. It went someplace I wasn’t expecting and gave me a few moments to .

I think this is getting a lot of shit because it’s so overt in its political message and it’s a bit cartoonish. This is fair and it didn’t bother me at all as much as it did other reviewers. Yes, this could absolutely go further if it’s really going to dig into the idea of a January 6th insurrectionist militia-run country. This dystopia is present as a possibility in all of our minds and it is frightening. History of Evil really does not go beyond the surface there; this was the less interesting part of the film to me. The arc related to the mother figure who is leader of a resistance movement because of her (honestly not very) inspirational writing was a little hard to believe. But it was fine. It is just the setup. It’s a serviceable framing narrative that the rest of the film plays out within.

When they reach the safe house, the story becomes much more interesting. Yes, this is a “haunted house” film. (Pictures; very mild spoilers picture two and three) But it captures fear and delirium in a way that really does remind me of The Shining. There is a very creepy set of character interactions during the last half of the film that delivered something familiar and always welcome: the horror of a family splitting apart as lose their grounding.

"Who are you? What makes you happy?" "When I'm in complete and total control of every aspect of my life." "Well, there you go, good. You need to do that. Be selfish. Take back your power."

I’m not sure whether most of my readers will like this, because this film is getting roughed up a little in reviews, so you’ll have to make up your own mind: I frequently have a response that’s different from others, and I try to make sure always to present my own response. In this case, where some people are saying this felt repetitive, I found it to be a fairly fresh encounter with a disturbing and familiar plot, and that works for me.

There is a lot of KKK related content here in the history of the house, and I suppose this makes the title fair: this isn’t just post-MAGA dystopia, this is also the damage of a history of certain forms of white male culture, and it is as much about that past and its effect on the present as it is about the contemporary dystopia it portrays.

This is Bo Mirhosseni’s first film, and I don’t recognize anyone else listed as crew, except XYZ released it, which you all know I’m fond of because I think they aren’t afraid to take risks on weird cinema. This seems like a fresh group. I think it’s a promising start for something that must be a micro-budget indie film, and I look forward to seeing more from them.

If you give this a try, I’ll be curious to hear if it works on you. I found myself genuinely creeped out at about two or three moments. It’s not the most terrifying, but this does have a few horror moments that I will .

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with this. Somehow there are only 800 viewers, so onto the Hidden Gem list it goes.

Recommended

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
💧 Ghosts as Grief—Mourning horror, ancestral trauma
🏝️ Colonialism, Globalism, and Geopolitics in Horror
🎞️ XYZ Films Horror
👻 Supernatural Horror
💥 Horror/Thrillers I have Known and Loved
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Veni Vidi Vici | Pelican Blood | Kneecap (2024) | The Seeding (2023) | Haute tension (High Tension) | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Before I Wake | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person |Red Rooms

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Hell Fest 49u19 2018 - ★★★

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 15:02:05 +1300

🩸 Horror 💡 Neon 🔪 Slasher (2019) 🇺🇸 Instagram Pictures

“I’m sorry I’m so shitty at ring toss. I think my game of choice is the one where you’re like, “Here’s five dollars.” And the guy is like, “Here’s a pretzel.”” “So paying for things.” ”Yeah, but at an incredibly fast rate.”

Hell Fest is a fun film and a bad slasher. It’s fun almost separately from the plot: this is just an over-the-top spooky carnival that I think most people watching this film would want to visit in reality.

The stalking and horror that happens within it, on the other hand, does not stand out from the pack of slashers, with very little memorable violence and only one kill that I found upsetting. So Hell Fest was both much better than the reviews suggested and also exactly as bad, depending on what one is hoping to get out of it.

My favorite shot happens early on, when the group of teens has just entered the festival and the camera pulls up to reveal them walking into a massive valley of the dead, with partygoers and rides stretching as far as the eye can see. Instagram Pictures This level of spectacle is so enticing, and it makes it very desirable to forgive the reality that nothing about the slasher content stands out anything like the scenery and the constant saturated neon color of all of the shots.

This is something I forgive, because there are many great slashers and only one poor slasher in an entire haunted theme park. I’m sure I’ll watch this back to back with Haunt some Halloween, and possibly Hell House LLC. For years I ran a haunted house every Halloween—an amateur thing, but very well attended. I love to revisit the feeling of that in movies, and this has it.

The acting is as good as it needs to be. This isn’t fine art, this is a group of friends having fun and then being murdered. They have fun, act like humans, and then die, which is what they have been paid to do. So the acting is just fine. The dialogue isn’t noteworthy but none of it feels fake or forced. They talk like people and act like people. That’s enough here.

The killer is not memorable—that is, until the final scene, which is really a strong close to the film. Yes, it’s nearly obscenely direct in the point it’s making, but it is also possibly the first surprise the film has in store, sadly at the last possible moment. I would watch a sequel, and I don’t think, unfortunately, we’ll be getting it. But the last scene, as blunt as it is, was a high point for me.

I wanted to like the soundtrack more than I did. Bear McCreary has been a favorite of mine since Battlestar Galactica, where his Wagnerian use of leitmotifs and brilliant composition brought to television soundtracks something I have rarely seen before or since. This, on the other hand, offered very little that stood out. It felt a bit like he was phoning it in, which he might have been. There was a sort of modified Dies Irae vibe to the main theme and it’s the only memorable musical moment.

Realistically, this is a good time. It would take commitment to being grouchy to watch this and find zero enjoyment from it. But you’re not getting a classic slasher. You’re barely getting a slasher. Unlike Haunt, which is exactly the opposite: that is a great, fiercely violent, surprisingly compelling survival hell movie that performs both as a haunted house film and as a quality slasher. Is it the best? No, but it’s certainly better than this as slasher horror.

I think the best contrast to be made is between the final setpiece here and the conclusion of Terrifier 2. Terrifier 2 did this right. It’s a damn good slasher. Everything about it is horrible to watch. The kills are so brutal that a casual viewer unused to horror would probably have trouble surviving the evening. It’s a great haunted house sequence and a great slasher at once. That is more what a movie like this should aspire to. It’s okay not to have the nauseating brutality of Terrifier 2, but it would be better to have some of the intensity.

This wasn’t very scary. It had a few scary moments. But for how aggressively mediocre it is in places, it was visually enchanting and memorable enough to be a film I’m sure I’ll return to in the right mood.

Give it a chance. Recommended.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⚠️ Recommending This Would Be Challenging: Horror I could not (or could barely) sit through
💡 Neon Horror
🔪 The list where I learn to love slashers
🇺🇸 United States
✵Index and Viewing Next
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2019
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

🤯 Putin Problems Cinematic Universe:

Navalny
Porcelain War
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia

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Out of Darkness 494s5z 2022 - ★★★

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 12:45:04 +1300

🩸 Horror (2022) 🇬🇧

”This land is old and dark. The danger in bringing light to a dark place is that you might find out what lives in the darkness.”

The most impressive part of Out of Darkness is that it is filmed entirely in a conlang. The cast speak a language created by a linguist for the film, and the dialogue is therefore only comprehensible with subtitles. It’s a very fluid and natural sounding language. I’m a big fan of films like this and Prey that take a chance and use a language that is either never used on film or totally artificial.

This is a unique enough film to warrant recommending. It’s not a perfect film—in a lot of ways, it could be better. The story itself, separate from the novelty of the historical setting, is only mildly interesting: a group is hunted by a shadowy monster. They are picked off. There’s a lot of struggling to survive. Various moments of betrayal and horror occur. There’s a very strange final showdown in a cave system, and there are northern lights, which really confused me about the location, which is purported to be “west and across a sea”. Then it ends.

Out of the entire range of novel stories that could be told set in this period of human history, this is a fairly meager one. In addition, the setting is not very informed by the anthropological literature and the knowledge we have of what human life was like at that time. I’d never considered that a film could be set then, so I wish others would make an effort to produce new work about humans in this era that, like this, can be enjoyed somewhat seriously by adults outside of children’s cartoons, but that also represent it more accurately. Setting this before written history in a small band in the middle of a vast new territory adds substantial novelty and interest to the way this is told; without that setting there would be nothing to watch.

If you decide to watch this, I recommend waiting until there is an UHD HDR option, because the 1080p Amazon encode that was just released is bitstarved and it’s noticeable, and it could use the increased difference between highlights and absolute black that HDR will provide. There’s a lot of spectacle to it, so you’ll want it to look the best it possibly can.

There’s not much more to say. This is a simple and imperfect film that is more sad than horrifying with an interesting and novel setting that is worth seeing at least once.

Casually recommended.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
✵Index and Viewing Next
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2022
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

🤯 Putin Problems Cinematic Universe:

Navalny
Porcelain War
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia

]]>

Halloween Kills 5937x 2021 - ★½

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 16:05:46 +1300

🩸 The Horror 🔪 "Slasher"⚠️ Not Enjoyable (2021) 🇺🇸

"He creeps, he kills, he goes home." "Then that's where we're going.”

You all warned me. I watched it anyway. This was differently more bad than anticipated, and since it’s a studio film and there’s no way I could hurt the pride of anyone involved, I have no concern telling you what I think made it so terrible.

This needed to be called Halloween Talks, and the catchphrase should be “Evil chats tonight”, because there are frankly four minutes of horror content at absolute most. The rest of the time it was people wandering around regurgitating their expectations and hopes and fears related to Michael Myers and going on long tangents before acting erratically and then intentionally dying.

Honestly this is almost entirely a writing problem. The issue is down to the script. The dialogue is aberrant. Jamie Lee Curtis is totally innocent, and how she delivers her lines and still makes them sound impressive I genuinely don’t know. Whoever wrote this wrote it problematically because the dialogue is so inhuman that it was difficult to watch any conversations. I will give you an example. This dialogue happens immediately before the death of the relevant characters.

LJ: "Big John?" BJ: "Yes, little John?" LJ: "Someone's in our house, and it's not a child." BJ: "Fuck that." (Picks up a knife; looks at it) "I got this knife." LJ: (Same) "I got this knife."

They stand there looking stupidly but profoundly at their knives while Michael Myers has broken in and is presumably preparing for some murdering. Humans don’t talk this way. Let’s look at later on that evening.

LJ: “Little John—study's clear". (Looks for BJ, finds corpse, kneels at corpse) "Big John. No, Big John." (Looks up at Michael who is facing away from him and unaware of his presence: "Michael. You've come home." (Calm) "Something's wrong with the road."

Those are my notes. Here are the problems. First, he announces himself to a serial killer while kneeling at his partner’s corpse. Second, I can’t tell whether “Something’s wrong with the road” is actually part of the conversation or if my notes have an error, and that I can’t immediately tell you that this is not in the film is a very bad thing because it’s obviously a non-sequitur. But I can’t say for sure because I jettisoned the film from my computer at the first chance possible after finishing it. Genuinely I have no clue. Probably not from the film let’s hope.

Now, another problem I have with this is the nature of the conversations in general. People keep announcing themselves to Michael Myers, talking to Myers, about Myers, it’s just some sort of congenital claptrap disorder in Haddonfield. They try actively to draw his attention while assuming vulnerable positions and then dying.

The worst part is that they yell these terrible quotes while running towards corpses and kneeling by them while looking away from every point of access to the room except probably up through the floor.

Here are some real phrases from this film:

LS: "Now It needs to die." "It needs to die." LS: "And I'm the one that needs to kill it."

“Do it! Do it! Do it!” (Myers is aiming a dagger at her) "I'm an innocent woman just like your sister was"

One time they pause in the middle of killing at him to say:

"Hey, Michael. It's halloween. Everyone's entitled to one good scare." [CUE SYNTH OF EVIL]

Also:

“It is the essence of evil.” (Like a soap commercial)

And:

"If they don't stop him tonight, maybe we'll find him tomorrow. Or next Halloween when the sun sets and someone is alone."

Alright then, you wait for the someone to be alone, that makes very much sense thanks.

None of this even resembles what a human being does when threatened or scared. One time I thought there were people in my forest with a shotgun and I froze, panicked, said “WHERE IS THE SWORD” at no one in particular while falling flat on my face and trying to where I hid a sword I had been given as a child from some reason. And then I hid behind a wall.

Trust me. You are not going to be having long dialogues and yelling “Evil dies tonight!” inspirationally if there is a possible serial killer around. What is this joke of a film.

Honestly there were three good parts. First, the music before I associated it with this film, because that theme is timeless. Second, Jamie Lee Curtis. Third, ing watching the film Son that I just reviewed, which had the same lead and actual horror content.

To summarize, I did not like this film at all and I’m sorry that it was made. I will now pretend it doesn’t exist forever. Thanks for reading this review, honestly, it was much more fun writing this than watching that.

Absolutely unrecommended.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⚠️ Recommending This Would Be Challenging: Horror I could not (or could barely) sit through
🔪 The list where I learn to love slashers
🇺🇸 United States
✵Index and Viewing Next
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2021
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

🤯 Putin Problems Cinematic Universe:

Navalny
Porcelain War
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia

]]>

Tiger Stripes 66536b 2023 - ★★

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 15:49:15 +1300

⛧ New 🩸 Mild Horror ⚠️ Not For Me (2023) ✈️

I've been looking forward to this film for like a year. It's finally available and honestly it's barely a horror movie. The only genre listed is horror, so it should be horror. Nothing happens except there are humans in trees with really bad CGI purple glowing eyes and a girl has her period and is bullied about it. The most horrifying part is how she dances for TikTok at the beginning and ending. I do not like TikTok. I do not like the music she dances to. I do not want to any of this exists. I do not like preteens. I do not like menstrual horror. Why is this film. [This is banter; I'm not really upset, just miffed a bit. It's not *that* bad.]

I'm sorry, I'm just... I can't. I really try not to leave negative reviews. People keep saying it's good except for the terrible CGI, but without that, there's no horror. And why does it keep changing aspect ratios like it's switching between a movie and an iPhone?

I'm just not the audience this film needs. I can't identify with any of it. If this works for you that's awesome. Sorry about the get-off-my-lawn review. This should totally be my type of film; I feel like an ass about this one. I donno, you might love it. It's probably cute and exotic or something.

If you want tiger horror go watch Tigers are Not Afraid, an actual horror movie containing horror.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⚠️ Recommending This Would Be Challenging: Horror I could not (or could barely) sit through
✈️ International Master List
✵Index and Viewing Next
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Protest Putin instead!
🤯 Putin Problems Cinematic Universe:Navalny

Porcelain War
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia

]]>

Navalny 315r2l 2022 - ★★★★★

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 15:42:10 +1300

🤯 Putin Problems Cinematic Universe 📜 Documentary 🏅 Top Films 🏆 Academy Award (2023)

"My message, for the situation when I am killed, is very simple—do not give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong."

There has never been a better time to watch Navalny together on Letterboxd than now, four days after his murder in a Siberian penal colony. That’s because the sequel has just been announced: It’s called Navalnaya (2024), and it’s being written in real time by his wife and daughter as they take over opposition to Russian kleptocracy.

Putin is not as strong as he seems, but he is strong enough to continue to fuck up international relations until he is dead or deposed. Please do your part and help this happen without ever leaving the internets by watching and reviewing this extraordinary film. That’s all you have to do. It’s streaming on Max including via Youtube and Amazon prime, so I’m sure you will have no problems finding a copy on the internet.

Let’s talk about the film, although the five star rating is really for his life. The documentary merits it as well. Watching Navalny ask his assassins why they wanted to kill him and discussing with the chemical weapons scientists what went wrong in his own assassination attempt is hilarious and ballsy and also the sort of thing you would think a national government would do, not this plucky opposition figure and a small team of open-source intelligence collaborators.

If you’ve been on the internet for more than a decade, you’ll probably the V for Vendetta obsession and the protests against Scientology. Well, this is that except now it matters and it’s not just a goofy cult, it’s one of the most damaging global actors, and he is so proud and frivolous that he ordered a ten-person hit squad to follow around an opposition candidate for years before trying and failing to assassinate him with his stupid chemical weapons.

Here is the reality: Putin is a washed-up KGB agent who managed to ensconce himself in the Kremlin while telling rambling narratives about Russia that consider exactly the wrong part of Russian history. This is the country that gave us Tolstoy and Gogol and instead of being the country of Anna Karenina they are the country of soviet pipe dream. Unfortunately, soviet pipe dream has very damaging implications for the rest of the world until it ends.

Navalny states that if he is killed, it is because the opposition in Russia is stronger than anyone believes, and this is the case. Putin ordered an assassination so incompetently that the victim was able to call the assassins and ask why they wanted to assassinate him. He created a war so ineptly that it left a massive logistics nightmare barely able to enter Ukraine during the first assault. He is burning national wealth at an alarming rate to cover up other problems. Now he is worrying about nuclear sattelites instead of finding a way to create a country that is stable and a respected global actor.

It can change. Help out; watch this. Putin asks: “Who cares about that guy?” um, well, he does. He really really cares. And if it weren’t killing innocent people, that would be super hilarious.

Watch this. Review it. Thanks.

Strongest recommendation.

🤯 Putin Problems Cinematic Universe:

Porcelain War
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia

Some Lists:

📜 Documentaries Ranked
🏅 Top Films
🏆 Academy Award Winners (Ranked)
(2023)

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Flowing 1ss44 2022 - ★★★

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 21:13:32 +1300

🩸 Horror ⚠️ New Extremity 💧 Grief 🖇️ Wayward #14 (2022) 🇮🇹

”You are now a failure. You are the void.”

There was something black beating at the heart of A Classic Horror Story. If you wanted to know what it is, here you have it.

Slow as death, bleak, like reading divorce documents before selling your childhood home. It is hard to guess how depressed the director must be. I am going to go with morbidly depressed—realistically, though, writing this film may have been free therapy, so perhaps now he is okay. This feels more bleak than Lars von Trier’s depression trilogy. It’s also nowhere near as good, but it contains some scenes that will be grimacing around the inside of my skull for some time.

I did not enjoy about half of this film. But there is something so dark and enchanting about the last act that it retroactively casts a spell on the first hour and makes me very interested in the experience I just had, which I had not really liked up until the ending gave it such bitter context.

It really is more disturbing than frightening. This is very much a grief-horror film, and I realize I’ve never made a list for that, and I should have done, and this is the film that is so griefy that it made me to do it. If you are going to do a horror film about grief, this is probably how to do it. The result is unforgettably depressing.

”He is dead. Do you want to know the last thing he said before he died? Your name.”

I’m not really recommending that you watch this film because I’m certain you won’t have a good time. But I haven’t seen anything this bleak in a while so if you want to see a family torn apart doing bleak things while a city fills with some sort of depression mist that makes everybody into broken versions of what they should have been and then we all try to kill each other and cry together, this is certainly the film I suggest you watch for that.

Oh, and on top of all of it, unless you speak Italian, you’ll be stuck with subtitles, which may be so poorly translated that it produces gems like the following:

”Which video?” “Make me a video.” “No.” “Come on, do it, Gianlu’!” “I don’t vomit in the middle of the pool!” “Come on, do it!” “I don’t vomit—” “We used to do everything together.” “What the fuck were we doing together?” “All!” “What the fuck is everything?” “All.” … “Keep your hands off me. You look like a psychopath.”

To be clear, these are subtitles I just found on the internet. They’re clearly machine translated. The movie is not to blame. But it was very funny. Next time I’m in a bad mood I’m just going to go around yelling “What the fuck is everything?” Thanks, film.

I’m very unfamiliar with contemporary Italian horror, which is odd given the history. I wonder what’s going on. This is new extremity, there’s no question, and I’m not used to that tone out of this country.

This was a fucked film. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s not scary, it’s grim and brooding and slow, and after 55 minutes of moping and delinquency there is a nightmare sequence of climactic emotional and physical violence and a lot of dissatisfaction with life. Have fun.

Kinda not unrecommended.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
💧 Ghosts as Grief—Mourning horror, ancestral trauma
⚠️ New Extremity
🖇️ Wayward and Lost Horrors
🇮🇹 Italian Horror
🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo Master List (Ranked)
✈️ International Master List
🐌 Slow Horror
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2022
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates
✵Index and Viewing Next

Looking for something different? Consider:

You Are Not My Mother | Double Blind | Pelikanblut | The Beekeeper | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Irréversible | Antichrist | The Sadness | When Evil Lurks | Lux Æterna | A Cat in the Brain | Bliss | Before I Wake | ...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (The Beyond) | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Red Rooms | Livide | La terza madre (The Mother of Tears) | Tin and Tina | Profondo Rosso(Deep Red) | Requiem | Deliria (Stage Fright) | DellaMorte DellAmore (Cemetery Man)

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Monolith 6l1g5q 2022 - ★★★

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 13:10:26 +1300

⛧ New! 🏷️ Review 🖇️ Wayward #13 🩸 Horror 💥 Thriller ☣ SciFi (2022)

"This is a clickbait podcast made for bored, lonely ballbags with IQ levels below a lobotomized monkey. Enjoy."

I’m mixed about this. On the one hand, it’s clever. It’s basically a one-person bottle movie that is entirely the strong performance of Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise). The writing is often sharp and smart, and there’s a lot of tension with very little. On the other hand, everything about it feels arbitrary, as if the authors picked two or three concepts out of a hat (bricks, runic alphabets, mimetic cultural transmission) and decided to build a film out of them as a challenge. It reminds me of a horror/thriller writer’s version of an improv comedy exercise (which sounds much harsher than I mean it).

It is impressive to make a movie this watchable about a brick. But then it’s also a movie about a brick. There’s real virtuosity behind making a movie about a podcast about a black brick with only one actress filmed in one location and having it be this tense and watchable and interesting. But then it feels a bit like a writing exercise. Nothing much about it feels tied together by logic. Why is the brick not a supernatural baseball bat, or an alien tattoo that appears on household pets when their owners are bad? That would be as logical, but here it’s an alien brick. Why? I don’t know, nor does the film, and nor, perhaps, do the alien bricklayers. At one moment, a brick appears in the sky. Why? I don’t know and I guess I won’t ever know.

This is very watchable for what it is, but I wish I loved it more than I did. I’ve seen this compared to Pontypool, and there’s logic to that. It’s a very similar film. But when I personally compare the two, there, the supernatural element is conceptually brilliant. Here, it’s a brick. Pontypool has some intense action, albeit off screen and verbally described. Here, they talk about a brick. People become very weird about the brick. Then bricky things happen. I think you get the picture. Pontypool is a treasure, in my opinion, and this feels closer to a clever curio.

I am not so interested in black bricks. I am interested in well-made horror/thriller films. That’s why I’m miffed about this one, because it’s both. I am not sure whether I’ll ever rewatch it, but I can also see how some people will really enjoy this. I’m on the fence entirely about whether to recommend it, but it would be very hard not to as well. There’s smartness to the writing. There’s something very brave about making a movie with so little. And yet, I really would have preferred more.

If you are interested, you should watch it. It’s not my favorite but that’s no reason to skip it—most people like it and I did enjoy it, so perhaps it will become a film you love.

Recommended if you are still interested after my review.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
🖇️ Wayward and Lost Horrors
☣ SciFi Horror (Ranked)
💥 Thriller
😱 Horror/Thrillers I have Known and Loved
👥 Doppelgängers, Changelings and Similar
✵ List Index and Viewing Next
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2022
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

You Are Not My Mother | Double Blind | Pelikanblut | The Beekeeper | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Irréversible | Antichrist | The Sadness | When Evil Lurks | Lux Æterna | A Cat in the Brain | Bliss | Before I Wake | ...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (The Beyond) | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Red Rooms | Livide | La terza madre (The Mother of Tears) | Tin and Tina | Profondo Rosso(Deep Red) | Requiem | Deliria (Stage Fright) | DellaMorte DellAmore (Cemetery Man)

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Son 536t2q 2021 - ★★★★

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 01:04:47 +1300

🩸 Horror 🏷️ Review 💎 Gem #28 (2021)

"Mom, I was dreaming, I was flying and I was looking down at everyone, And I could see you and my school and everything. It was so cool. Then I raised my hands like this, and the world cracked in half."

Next, apparently, on the list of movies I forgot were extremely good: Son. This is so creepy and enjoyable. Next time you feel like watching The Omen, watch this instead.

Ivan Kavanagh has made a killer little film here. It’s extraordinary this was only 90 minutes, there was so much interestingness packed into it. No other movie that has done this plot has had moments that actually scared me. This had one or two. And another few that were nauseating. And then there is the scene with the pimp, which… well you’ll see if you watch it. That was quite a scene.

The lead, Andi Matichak, plays Allyson Nelson in the most recent Halloween trilogy. She's really good, and here she has material that matches the quality of her acting. She's charismatic and attractive and her performance is believable, and this movie is as strong as she is. I did not recognize Emile Hirsch while watching, but he’s Austin in The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Great in both, obviously.

I was a little bit put off by The Canal, Kavanagh’s second horror film, and I think I need to revisit it, because perhaps I was mistaken about it. Either way, I’m glad to have rewatched this.

... Okay I see that in The Canal, ghosts have footprints and I seem to have spent most of my review ranting about this. I still don’t think ghosts have footprints. I am still done with ghost feet. But this film was good and there were no footprints whatsoever.

Recommended

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⛤ Witchcraft and Dark or Ritual Magic
✵ List Index and Viewing Next
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2021
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

You Are Not My Mother | Double Blind | Pelikanblut | The Beekeeper | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Irréversible | Antichrist | The Sadness | When Evil Lurks | Lux Æterna | A Cat in the Brain | Bliss | Before I Wake | ...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (The Beyond) | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Red Rooms | Livide | La terza madre (The Mother of Tears) | Tin and Tina | Profondo Rosso(Deep Red) | Requiem | Deliria (Stage Fright) | DellaMorte DellAmore (Cemetery Man)

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You Are Not My Mother 5s3y2o 2021 - ★★★★

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 17:10:34 +1300

🩸 Horror 👥 Doppelgängers 👤 Uncanny 🏷️ Review 🎼 Die Hexen 💎 Gem #141 (2021)

"There is a place where there is no pain. No sadness. Don't you want to see your mother again?"

You Are Not My Mother starts creepy but, with about 40 minutes of film left, becomes genuinely harrowing and also moving. It’s as good as I thought my first watch.

I watched this to follow Double Blind because I was so impressed by Die Hexen, who composed the music for both. This is great music, although she’s only improved in the interim. I’m not sure I would have noticed this in the same way—there are some musical ideas in Double Blind that just stand out. Here, there is the same quality of music but it doesn’t stand out quite as much, it's just there doing the work, which it does very well. I won’t the tunes here in the same way, but I also think this was a great soundtrack for a strong movie, and I’ll be tracking Die Hexen as well as the people involved in this film, no question.

You will not be surprised to hear that this is a horror movie that has family and grief at the core of the plot. Luckily, however, instead of devolving into some sort of allegory where the message is more important than being frightening, You Are Not My Mother remains supernatural horror through the end and the horror is the horror, not a metaphor for grief. And there is plenty of horror to be had when this gets down to business. You’re free to think about what it might mean in addition, which is exactly how it should work, but when it’s scary, it’s pretty scary.

The daughter in this film does a great job, and she has a friendship arc that reminds me a lot of the Kim Kelly arc in Freaks and Geeks but in a horror film. Again, not suggesting there’s a relationship, it just has a similar tone.

There are a few films I watched when I had COVID that I thought were strong and then later I dropped their rating because, apparently, I was too sick to why they were that good, so there are a few more films like this one I’m going to need to rewatch.

In the meantime, this is great. You should watch this.

Recommended.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
👥 Doppelgängers, Changelings and Similar
⛤ Ritual Magic
✵ List Index and Viewing Next
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
🎼 Spotlight on Composers in Horror
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2021
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Double Blind | Pelikanblut | The Beekeeper | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Irréversible | Antichrist | The Sadness | When Evil Lurks | Lux Æterna | A Cat in the Brain | Bliss | Before I Wake | ...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (The Beyond) | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Red Rooms | Livide | La terza madre (The Mother of Tears) | Tin and Tina | Profondo Rosso(Deep Red) | Requiem | Deliria (Stage Fright) | DellaMorte DellAmore (Cemetery Man)

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Double Blind 3p1e4w 2023 - ★★★★

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 01:48:30 +1300

⛧ New! 🏷️ Review 🩸 Horror 🎼 Spotlight on Composers in Horror 💎 Gem #140 (2023)

"Close your eyes, little girl. Go to sleep 'til the morning."

I loved this film. This is not the review I was expecting to write, at all, but it won me over so much. Double Blind is a perfect anticapitalist paranatural horror heist film with outstanding sound design on an indie budget.

Yes, I invented the word paranatural for this review (UPDATE: I didn't, see comments, but now this is even more amusing), but the writer just invented all of the medical content in this film in a flight of lunacy, so we’re even.

Nothing about the science or medicine makes any sense whatsoever, and the clinical trial structure starts underpowered, broken, and illegal. Even in the early days it breaches ethics and statistical reason to the extent that they might as well just start shooting the IRB board that approved it because it doesn’t matter—this film jumps so far past the shark so early that it’s basically in its own arena just being awesome.

Here's the thing, and I don’t quite know how to say this. There are some fundamental problems here that are so problematic that they basically don’t matter anymore. I was honestly going to write a negative review for this film because of the problems that, at this point, I would feel are counterproductive to mention in a review retrospect. I was going to this over but then something strange happened. I grabbed some popcorn and I noticed I was having so much fun with this film in a way I haven’t for at least the last week or two of studio-grown commercial horror.

This has the propulsiveness of Bliss without any of the graphic violence. I don’t think there was any gore or a single jump scare. What there was: a soundtrack by Die Hexen that is so excellent that I don’t think I will forget it. And the problem is, I’m not sure anyone knows who Die Hexen is, so I looked it up, and now I will tell you: whoever it is, she did the score for You Are Not My Mother and I would like her to keep making soundtracks please because she is doing it correctly.

And, to get to the fundamental problem with this review. I should not have loved any of this, but I did, and I have to rate it honestly based on how much I enjoyed it—which was a lot more than a bunch of the sterile studio horror products I’ve seen churned into the market lately.

This is the creative product of someone so creative that in the first fifteen minutes he abandoned all of western medicine to write this delirious little chestnut from hell, and it crystallizes the fears people have about the interface between capitalism and medicine that are honestly justified. If I could tell you who I am, you would see an irony here that I absolutely cannot share, but I come from a scientific family and this was just delusional.

Last night I watched “Boarding School”. In it, the killer used “three drops of tricyclic amitriptyline” as an instrument of murder. There is such a thing as amitriptyline, it’s a tricyclic antidepressant, and I occasionally use it as a sleeping pill. And that abortion of medicine offended me so much more than a conversation here that treats smelling salts as a disposable resource and the phase three clinical trial so underpowered and ill-designed that within the first 20 minutes they just start megadosing their human guinea pigs with a medicine that could never exist that does something that makes absolutely no sense in a timeframe related to sleep that is physiologically impossible. But unfortunately, if you set aside western medicine and the whole of consensual reality, it is totally awesome.

And that brings me to the next point. The heist film.

This reminded me a little bit of Firefly’s heist episode, which is one of Firefly’s best episodes. It’s structured very similarly. It’s basically telling that story but horror version.

You can skip the blockquote if you don’t want spoilers.

Here you have a group of underdogs who need money trying to get it from the research funds of a pharmaceutical corporation and they have staked their lives on it. They are trapped underground and they need to break out of the vault the way a heist film needs you to break in. Of course, there’s frequently a breakout too. There’s the same narrative beats, the same moments of tension. Replace in with out, reality with fantasy, and throw in a demonic figure and some levitation for the sake of awesomeness and you have Double Blind. Firefly Episode 9, Ariel, is essentially a medical horror episode involving smuggling someone into a hospital the way you would break into a casino vault and then smuggling them back out again. This is a plot structure you will see here used identically. This has got some of the same rebellious energy, the same distrust of human experimentation, the same pirate band survival feel, and I liked the reminder of it.

Let’s talk about the lead actress, Millie Brady. She’s great in this role. She takes utter gibberish and makes a gem out of it. She is so convincing in her part. So is Akshay Kumar as Amir. Look at this dialogue that makes absolutely no sense:

”We could use our momentum. Methyl iodide poisoning basically mimics the effects of an ischemic stroke. A strong enough dose would stop the blood flow to our brain almost completely, which would normally cause brain death, but with these side effects... there may be a grace period. We take a shot of tPA right after the dose and there'd be just enough time for the enzyme to catalyze the clot to break down before the effects are irreversible."[They stare wide-eyed at each other]"But is that a plan or just gibberish?""I don't know, you tell me!""I'm so tired, it's hard to tell if this makes sense or not.""Yes, yes! It sounds like a winner. Let's catalyze the enzyme. I'm on board. Let's catalyze that shit.""I'll tell the others.""Okay."

Every word of this is totally incoherent but they still sell it, and that is the point of acting.

But I know the moment that actually won me over. Beside the music and the acting and the incoherent chaos. It was when, twenty minutes into the film, I realized it had basically exhausted the entire possible contents of the medical plot and would have to do something else and I had no idea what.

Heist film. Heist horror? With GBP 30K and death at stake if they don’t survive.

Then there is the humming moment, where Millie Brady for some reason, I have no clue why, tries to survive being attacked by literally humming at a corpse. I don’t care, it’s such good music, I have no idea why she does this and it works. The sequence starts at 1h19:40, but the humming starts around 1h22:10. I’m a musician and this is good music. Whoever composed the music for this sequence and did the sound design, they got it right. Absolutely right.

Does any of it make sense? No. Is it hypnotizing and beautiful? Yep. I have no clue what happened and I’m there for it.

In the end, horror is a sensory experience that is nearly musical itself, with pacing and tempo and energy. This had that energy. So I just don’t care that everything else about it is incoherent. That’s what I love about Bliss: it just spirals into a total nightmare and who knows what or why but it’s kenetic and bloody and hypnotizing. I look for that energy and it’s here.

So. I have to give this an honest rating. This feels like the product of creative people working on a shoestring budget to make something they put a lot of heart into, and I enjoyed it so much more than Night Swim and I don’t know, any of the recent movie-industrial horror products that I have to respect the indie spirit and good pacing and writing and the actors’ willingness to spout nonsense compellingly and rate it the amount stars that I enjoyed it at.

And now I will rewatch You Are Not My Mother because I loving that film and I want to hear Die Hexen some more. Thanks for making this. And guys if you don’t like Double Blind, just give me a on this one: if I’ve lost my mind, so had it—I had fun and I do not care about anything else.

Strong recommendation.

Well that’s not at all what I expected to write.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
✵ List Index and Viewing Next
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
🎼 Spotlight on Composers in Horror
☣ SciFi Horror (Ranked)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💥 Thriller
💥 Horror/Thrillers I have Known and Loved
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2023
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Bonus quote:

"How many [smelling] salts you got?"
"None of your business"
"C'mon man, don't hold out on me now,"
"Jesus, get over it, Ray."
"Just give us one, will ya?"
"Vanessa, can you spare a salt?"
"NO!"
"What is it the Bible always says? Blessed art thou who shares. Ah that's not very godlike. Marcus! You have salts, I know you do. Hey, just give me one, will you?"
"No, I'm sorry."
"Come on, just give me a salt, man, I'm just asking for one salt. Just one salt."
"Leave him alone, Ray! We all got the same amount of salts. It's not our fault you're a goddamn hoover."

Looking for something different? Consider:

Pelikanblut | The Beekeeper | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Irréversible | Antichrist | The Sadness | When Evil Lurks | Lux Æterna | A Cat in the Brain | Bliss | Before I Wake | ...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà (The Beyond) | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Red Rooms | Livide | La terza madre (The Mother of Tears) | Tin and Tina | Profondo Rosso(Deep Red) | Requiem | Deliria (Stage Fright) | DellaMorte DellAmore (Cemetery Man)

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Boarding School 474mb 2018 - ★★★★

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:05:31 +1300

🩸 Horror 🏷️ Review 🛌 Academy of Evil 💎 Gem #139 (2018) 🇺🇸

”If I help you now, will you let me help you again?”

Well that was a new take. I have not seen that story exactly that way before. Awesome.

I’m going to need to rewatch this, because it is so stylish, so saturated in color, and with such a warm, nightmarish slurred double bass theme for the score that it basically would be watchable without any narrative content. It’s phantasmagoric and ghoulish and delightful.

This isn’t Saint Ange or El orfanato, and it’s very different from Down a Dark Hall as well. Both were recommended to me at once, and I watched them in a row. It’s interesting that two films of this type came out the same year. Down a Dark Hall is splendid young adult gothic horror that resembles the other stories with a spin of its own. It’s not perfect—there are some acting and color issues, and it wasn’t frightening to me, but often that’s the case. Two Academy of Evil films in the same year with, I think, slightly different intended audiences.

Boarding School has resonances of Suspiria. It’s not Suspiria, it’s something new. I don’t want to oversell it, I’m not saying this is Argento quality—while it’s more violent than its PG-13 twin brother it’s not, on the whole, extravagantly frightening. But it’s got a bit of the same spark of life to it.

If you don’t watch the trailer, this will not be spoiled even by the blurb. It has something interesting in common with Let us Prey, but it also feels at times like Bertolucci fell asleep making The Dreamers and had a weird, transgressive little nightmare. In fact, if you watch this and you’ve seen The Dreamers, tell me if you agree there’s no way it’s not a direct reference.

Don’t blame me if it doesn’t frighten you or if the acting feels off, because yeah, probably you’ll notice that. Just enjoy the story and the color and the tone of the film. I can’t wait to rewatch this.

Oh, and and look at the dissolve 20m27s in and the way that whole sequence is paired with music is dreamy. I love it. And then it has this pastel daytime color story separate from the saturated reds and blues of night…. Okay, whatever, enough words. Camp out on the floor and look at the glowing stars you’ve stuck to the ceiling with your friends and watch the ghouls come in.

Recommended

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
🛌 Academy of Evil
🖌️ Every Frame Exquisite
🇺🇸 United States
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2018
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Veni Vidi Vici | Pelican Blood | Kneecap (2024) | The Seeding (2023) | Haute tension (High Tension) | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Before I Wake | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person |Red Rooms

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The Wretched 4fy6k 2019 - ½

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 22:03:11 +1300

🪝Meh 🏷️ Impression 🩸 Horror ⛤ Witchcraft (2019)

Skip this. 50 minutes in, the most horrifying thing about this film is that I am still mortal and will not get the last fifty minutes of my life back. And now I finished it to make sure. Yep, no.

The music is so horrible—I feel very cheap and overwrought just listening to it. Nothing scary is happening, and it's just sort of made-for-TV leftover feeling. The gore is sterile. It's not that it's bad so much as that it makes no impression.

You could watch this, and you might become scared during it, but why would you when there are other films in the universe that do that and are also clever and more worthwhile?

(Is it useful for me to leave a review when a film is bad? I usually have just ignored these instead to avoid being spammy, but I'm thinking it might help others avoid wasting time.)

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Somewhere Quiet 2u354c 2023 - ★★½

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 11:58:19 +1300

⛧ New 🏷️ Impression 🖇️Wayward 🩸Horror 💥 Thriller (2023)

Engaging new horror thriller released to streaming this week. DIdn't love it, didn't hate it. It's a fine watch. I liked the subtle use of music and the slow delirious build of tension. I didn't find it fully convincing or coherent and was irked by the protagonist's legitimately bizarre behavior but she's meant to be traumatized and other reviewers are enjoying it.

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Everybody Dies by the End 54416f 2022 - ★★

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 11:32:46 +1300

⛧ New 🏷️ Impression 🖇️Wayward 🩸Horror Comedy (2022) 🇺🇸

"One day an alien's going to find this movie. It'll all make sense to him."

Newly streaming this week: a lovingly made indie horror comedy with some good performances. This will not work for many of us (for me it was marginal) but there's an audience, so I didn't want to it over without a note. You'll recognize the leads from Morehead and Benson's work—Vinny Curran (Resolution, The Endliess, Spring, and There's Something in the Dirt) and Bill Oberst (Resolution, Synchronic, and Rob Zombie's 3 from Hell). Curran gives one hell of a funny performance as an unhinged director at the end of his career and it makes this film very watchable.

It feels authentically made and believable as a behind the scenes documentary. The twist is predictable, making this sort of a zero-budget hybrid of The Menu and Irma Vep with a director as head chef. There are enough good quips and moments of lunacy; if I had to guess, this will probably bring a smile to some people in the film industry or as a midnight watch.

There's a reason this has four star reviews split with one star reviews from people I trust. They're both right. Watch the trailer, see if it's your thing, otherwise it over.

Cautiously not unrecommended.

NB.

I've needed to start doing shorter reviews again to clear out a backlog, hence the 🏷️ Impression tag. I've also needed to start using the 🖇️ Wayward and Lost Horrors list for films that are not my thing but someone will like. Hopefully this is useful.

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The Hunted 25524a 2024 - ★★★

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 20:49:09 +1300

⛧ New! 🏷️ Review 🩸 Horror 💎 Gem #139 🗡️ Hunting Humans (2024)

"One favor I have to ask, please. No blood on the piano. It means a lot to me. Have fun." "We're going to play a little game, okay? It's called hide-and-seek." "I'll go get the knives."

New this week: a sharp and bloody (albeit slightly predictable) new horror film about the perils faced by migrants and about the dehumanizing and predatory rich was just released online, and it’s enjoyable enough to be worth your time if you like this sort of thing.

I'm hidden gem-listing it even though it's brand new because at the moment only 27 people have watched this. It deserves more viewers. This is tense, well-filmed, and violent enough to be attention-grabbing and easy to watch. The acting’s solid, it’s fast paced, and in the last act it ends up feeling a lot like a revenge film. You could compare it with Revenge (2017) or Battle Royale, except about hunting migrants instead of sex or, well, I guess the Japanese.

The boat horror in the beginning is realistic enough. I hope the people-hunting horror is not realistic, but there is human trafficking and exploitation done frequently to migrants, and this is about that type of exploitative dehumanization. It’s cool to see a horror film about contemporary migrants escaping across the Mediterranean.

I suppose the downsides of this film are that it’s predictable and that the level of social commentary intended is so extreme that it feels like a caricature. The Hunted does not try to hide the moral message about the horrors of migration, war, and social inequality, and it’s blunt and cartoonish about it at times. But the hunt itself is tense and the characters are memorable and grotesquely behaved.

Something’s in the air about the bored rich hunting humans to offset the humanitarian good they do otherwise, what with Sundance 2024’sVeni Vidi Vici and now this.

Interestingly, the production company, Black Swan Tales also gave us Deep Fear (2022), which is pretty okay, and another of theirs, Nightman (2023), looks worth a shot.

There’s not too much more to say. It’s a satisfying watch. You needn’t go out of your way to see it, but if you feel like it, you’ll have fun.

Recommended.

Some Lists:

🩸 Horror Master Index (Ranked)
⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years)
🗡️ Hunting Humans and Related Survival Horror
🏝️ Colonialism, Globalism, and Geopolitics in Horror
⚔️ Revenge
✈️ International Master List
2️⃣ 2020–2029 📆 2024
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates

Looking for something different? Consider:

Veni Vidi Vici | Pelican Blood | Kneecap (2024) | The Seeding (2023) | Haute tension (High Tension) | The Beekeeper | American Star | Last Night at Terrace Lanes | ☀️ Sundance 2024 Reviews | May the Devil Take You | Destroy All Neighbors | Before I Wake | Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person |Red Rooms

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🧹 Witchcraft and Dark or Ritual Magic 6n1v1y

Sun, 3 Dec 2023 13:15:24 +1300

In progress, not quite ranked yet, and meant to be broad with the category.

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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2️⃣ 2020s Ranked 6e7145

Mon, 1 Jan 2024 20:08:44 +1300

All great films regardless of genre, plus the best of the decade's horror and thriller films.

Not even vaguely ranked yet except a few bests are near the top. List in progress.

Update Jan 2024: Still catastrophically unranked.

...plus 130 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems 1b1966

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 04:30:07 +1200

✵Index 🩸Horror 💎Gems ⛧New 👁️‍🗨️Rec

Horror films that I don't hear enough buzz about, that seem to have been overlooked, or that just have very few views here. Sort by reverse order for new films please!

Related lists:
💎 Horror Gems 🌱 Candidates 🖇️ Wayward 💍 Other Gems

To be on this list, a film either has to be under around 30k views or more than half of my friends have missed it, and in general it needs to be a contemporary film (2000+ as a rule of thumb) not an old classic.

It also has to be a film I would enjoy rewatching once. This list is not padded with mediocre films. Those go into Wayward and Lost Horror if I think there's an audience that would like it but I don't.

Ideally you'll find something new you like! As of 2023 there is no list order; I will be working on that and the list notes.

I don't usually consider anything horror unless the viewer either experiences something horrible or believes something horrible will or might really happen. Plot immunity films not included. I'm also only listing films that are fairly contemporary to avoid scrounging too deep in the past. I've put some films that I can't quite say are gems but may be of interest in Wayward and Lost Horror. Hope some of this becomes useful!

Liverleaf
Frontier(s)
Metamorphosis
When I Consume You
Get In
I am honestly stunned at this having a low rating. The plot's timing is very much like Resurrection (2022). There is a narrative separate from the horror content, and that is the narrative of a woman and her husband struggling to keep hold of their relationship when desire has waned but love is still there.
Then there is the extreme violence. That ending is just so good.
Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps
What can I say. 1.2k views at the time I have listed it. I suppose it's another slow burn issue, but this has an entire second half of excellent horror. The leisurely pacing in this case is refreshing.
Bedevilled
Calvaire
Vinyan
The Afterglow

...plus 139 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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📆 2024 6i3u15

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:47:02 +1300

Destroy All Neighbors

Last Night at Terrace Lanes

Night Swim

In the Land of Brothers

Damsel

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🩸 Horror Master List 6z54e

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 14:01:55 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror 💎Gems ⛧New 👁️‍🗨️Rec

📽️ Viewing Next (4-Feb 0h30): The Borderlands (2013)

New to horror? Start here:

⛩️ Gateway Horror for Brave Beginners
🙀 Gateway Horror for Scaredy Beginners
✈️ International Horror Project

Moods:

👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime
Grotesque (soon)
Sublime (soon)

US/UK:
Ari Aster
David Bruckner
🎬 Mike Flanagan
🎬 Christopher Nolan
🎬 Eggers Ranked
🎬 Jordan Peele
Ben Wheatley
Alex Garland
Ti West

French:
🎬 Alexandre Aja
🎬 Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury
🎬 Gaspar Noé
🎬 Xavier Gens
🎬 Fabrice du Welz

Italian:
🎬 Lucio Fulci
🎬 Sergio Martino
🎬 Lamberto Bava
🎬 Michele Soavi

Production Companies:
🎞️ XYZ Films Horror
🎞️ A24 Ranked
🎞️ Epic Pictures Group

Actors:
👸🏻 Samara Weaving

Decades
2️⃣ 2020s | 1️⃣ 2010s | 0️⃣ 2000s | 9️⃣ 1990s | 8️⃣ 1980s | 7️⃣ 1970s

✈️ Countries
🇮🇹 Italy

🎬 Lucio Fulci
🎬 Sergio Martino
🎬 Lamberto Bava
🎬 Michele Soavi

...plus 64 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🎞️ Ranked 48441u A24

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 17:31:18 +1300

Ranked by enjoyment. If you have suggestions for others I should see, let me know in the comments. Very much in progress.

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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💡 Neon or Strong Color in Horror 2x6c4d

Sun, 3 Dec 2023 14:35:29 +1300

Very early progress.

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🌈 LGBTQ+ / Queer Cinema Ranked 466e27

Sun, 3 Mar 2024 17:43:49 +1300

Only films I've seen! So far anyway. Not ranked yet.

I'm unsure about all films past 31 and need to double-check. If you please let me know.

Thanks to MundoF for 🌈Pride: A Chronological History of Queer Interest & LGBTQ+ Cinema, which I've treated aa authoritative.

...plus 49 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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📆 2015 354f1x

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 09:34:28 +1200

Baskin

They Look Like People

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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☣ Science Fiction 2l551t

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 19:52:13 +1300

✵Index

...plus 46 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🌵 The desert is a fine place to die 2c3o3m desert horror

Fri, 2 Feb 2024 21:15:10 +1300

Horror, thriller, and similar films that are desert-based.

Ranked by how well it fits the theme of desert and horror, not necessarily absolute quality.

Recommendations welcomed!

Some Reference Lists:
boxd.it/1dicq
boxd.it/lDQoi
boxd.it/fuB5o
boxd.it/2Ok0O

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🏕️ Folktales 3k3i Folk Horror

Sat, 2 Dec 2023 21:30:02 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror

Folk horror, some folktales with horror motifs

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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👥 Doppelgängers 163i Changelings and Similar

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 17:05:28 +1300

In progress.

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling w621s Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime

Sat, 3 Feb 2024 16:28:52 +1300

📜 Horror Master List
Ranks one through about twenty I'm confident in from recent evaluation. The rest are from my notes, in progress.

Suggestions very welcome!

Definitions:

Wikipedia:

"The uncanny is the psychological experience of an event or individual being not simply mysterious, but rather frightening in a way that feels oddly familiar. [....]
Uncanniness was first explored psychologically by Ernst Jentsch in a 1906 essay, On the Psychology of the Uncanny. Jentsch defines the Uncanny as: being a product of "...intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always, as it were, be something one does not know one’s way about in. The better oriented in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it."[4] He expands upon its use in fiction:
In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.[4]
Jentsch identifies German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann as a writer who uses uncanny effects in his work, focusing specifically on Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" ("Der Sandmann"), which features a lifelike doll, Olympia.

tate.org.uk:

The term was first used by German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch in his essay On the Psychology of the Uncanny, 1906. Jentsch describes the uncanny – in German ‘unheimlich’ (unhomely) – as something new and unknown that can often be seen as negative at first.
Sigmund Freud's essay The Uncanny (1919) however repositioned the idea as the instance when something can be familiar and yet alien at the same time. He suggested that ‘unheimlich’ was specifically in opposition to ‘heimlich’, which can mean homely and familiar but also secret and concealed or private. ‘Unheimlich’ therefore was not just unknown, but also, he argued, bringing out something that was hidden or repressed. He called it 'that class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.

Closely associated with the idea of a double or 👥 Doppelgänger see link.)

Further Reading
Freud, "The Uncanny" (1919)

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🐡 Fishy fishy bite 2g3a3l water horror, ranked

Tue, 9 Jan 2024 22:38:31 +1300

Up Next: Sea Fever, The Abyss, Jaws, The Bay, Evolution, La Llorona 2019, Meg 2

Reviewing soon: Cold Skin (2017)

Suggestions welcomed! Sorted by best fit to genre, followed by preference.

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🎬 Xavier Gens 3ll4h

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 18:28:22 +1300

Seen 1 through 6 (ranked). The rest is a watchlist.

Back to main list: 😱 Horror / Thriller Master List

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🧛🏻‍♀️ Erotic Horror 171tk

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:30:07 +1200

Well, thanks Jean Rollin, I guess this is a thing.

Ranking is by how interested I am that a film falls on this list.

Suggestions welcomed!

Reference lists:
letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/jlalibs/list/erotic-horror/
letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/serenditpity/list/horror-sub-genres-erotic-horror/
letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/b_rollbanshee/list/erotic-horror/

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🎬 Jean Rollin 4x484u

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:39:56 +1200

Mostly a watchlist.

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📆 1979 4g3n31

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:34:17 +1200

Fascination

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Alien

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1️⃣ 2010s Horror and Thrillers Ranked 3v3c1j

Thu, 7 Dec 2023 15:13:00 +1300

Now with actual ranking! Almost. Okay it's messy.

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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📆 2017 1tt18

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:33:12 +1300

Ranked.

Notes: Before I can be confident in my ranking of "Get Out", "Gerald's Game", and "Terrified", I'll need a rewatch. Those are usually rated much higher than I have.

Every film here is watchable.

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🪐 Cosmic Horror 3d4w39

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 02:41:45 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror

Ranking pending.

I made some unorthodox picks, so if something seems not to fit, I probably thought it through and it has themes that work or evokes a similar fear. I'll get around to explanatory notes eventually.

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🩸 The Grotesque 36695t

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 00:40:33 +1300

Currently a plug.

Counterpart list to 👤 Unheimlich—The Uncanny—Chilling, Haunting, Ghostly, Dread, Sublime

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👻 Supernatural Horror 5xe2a

Tue, 5 Dec 2023 18:32:29 +1300

Not yet ranked!

...plus 107 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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✵ List Index and Viewing Next 214v6f

Sat, 4 Nov 2023 07:46:59 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror 💎Gems ⛧New 👁️‍🗨️Rec

Viewing Now 2-Mar: Blade Runner ->> Blade Runner 2049
Up Next: The first 15 or so are up to date. Including Perfect Days, Cold Copy, Se7en, Megalomaniac, Sibyl, Sicario, Nightsiren
Writing up: Dune Part 2

Genres:

🖍️ Animation
🖌️ Arthouse Horror
🙃 Comedy
🦑 Cosmic Horror
📜 Documentary
🎭 Drama
😱 New Extremity
🏕️ Folktales, Folk Horror
📼 Found Footage
🪬 Giallo
🃏 Horror Comedy
😱 Horror/Thriller
🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo
💨 Noir
💨 Nordic Noir TV [External List]
⚔️ Revenge
☣ Science Fiction
☣ SciFi Horror
🔪 Slasher
💥 Thriller

Reviews that need writing: Antichrist, Melancholia, Murder Rock, Bodybag, Trauma, The Hallows, The Borderlands (2013) (2.5* for the first 70% but made unforgettable by a very strong and bleak ending), Ghostwatch (1992), Ghost Stories (3.5 stars), Come True (3.5 to 4 stars). Brujeria (3*). Good Manners (3*). Phoenix Forgotten (2.5 to 3, watchable with good bits), To Catch a Killer (2.5-3, well made but had potential to be better, last 30 minutes caught my interest again).

Lists that need revising: all new lists for the past three days out of date; Argento lists also ready to update. Master lists need work.

Lists
Other Lists (if I notice I use a list to find new films frequently, I'll stick it here. if you want me to look at your list just let me know. I am especially always hunting for new horror that is actually frightening)

Tony the Terror—that real dark shit

...plus 156 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🪜 The Houses of Doom 2h1w5f

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 18:20:18 +1300

A series of made-for-TV films that were not aired because... well if you watch The House of Clocks you'll see.

diabolikdvd.com/product/le-keychain-houses-of-doom-cauldron-films-limited-6-disc-cd-blu-ray-all-region-preorder/ <-- thank goodness, there will be a 1080p restored edition because the DVD I've seen is not ideal.

Only seen the first so far. Ranked eventually.

Credit to Jamie Cornwell-Craig’s list as well.

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🐈‍⬛ Excellent Murder Cats of Italy 6z3p

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 17:59:17 +1300

I needed this list for... reasons.

Help me please!

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📆 1989 2r502m

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 18:03:06 +1300

Only films I've watched, naturally.

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🇮🇳 India 6t284m

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 15:34:26 +1300

Indian horror—I know very little about it. This is all I have for now.

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🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo Master List (Ranked) 3k6154

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 21:37:00 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror

Inspired by this list. There's so much overlap between these two genres that it was getting awkward to separate them. I will maintain the original lists too, so if you only want horror or giallo, you can find one. This is a viewing project of mine and not meant to be comprehensive. Recommendations always appreciated.

I have the habit of quitting ones I think aren't going well, so if it's here, I found it at least worth watching. Nothing listed is bad yet.

Viewing next: Trauma
Reviews pending: The Stendhal Syndrome

Lists:
🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo Master List (Ranked)

Subgenres:
🇮🇹 Italian Horror
🪬 Giallo

Directors:
🎬 Dario Argento
🎬 Lamberto Bava
🎬 Lucio Fulci
🎬 Sergio Martino
🎬 Michele Soavi

Series:
🪜 Demoni (Demons) Series—Argento, Bava, Soavi
🪜 Le tre madri series (The Three Mothers) [Argento, Cozzi, Guadagnino]

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🇮🇹 Italian Horror I have known and loved—a ranked list 111x6r

Sat, 2 Dec 2023 19:43:40 +1300

In progress; ranking is by best quality as horror.

Main Lists:
🇮🇹☠️ Italian Horror/Giallo Master List (Ranked)
🇮🇹 Italian Horror
🪬 Giallo

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🛌 Academy of Evil c4e6g

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 22:02:35 +1300

Boarding schools, art institutes, and the like. If tutelage goes bad or living spaces demonic, the film goes here.

Unranked so far. Watchlist starts at "Down a Dark Hall". Midnight Club is a plug for The Midnight Club. I like that series honestly.

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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1980s Horror/Thrillers Ranked 4t71z

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 23:27:32 +1300

As usual, only the ones I've seen. Ranking subject to frequent change and/or incorrectness.

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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📆 1987 5k4y61

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 09:35:24 +1300

Where Is the Friend's House?

Opera

Stage Fright

Hellraiser

Ænigma

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Raising Arizona

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🌱 Hidden Horror Candidates 543s1t

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:11:42 +1300

🎥 𐫰 Index 🩸 Horror 💎 Gems ⛧ New 👁️‍🗨️ Rec
These are all films that are in line to watch for Slightly Hidden Horror Gems. Being here means something about them interested me. I haven't watched these yet and can’t say if they are good. Maybe you’ll find something new here too! (More beyond the blockquote)

Related lists:
💎 Horror Gems 🌱 Candidates 🖇️ Wayward 💍 Other Gems

I use this list when I can’t figure out what to watch and want something different.

If anyone wants to collaborate screening new horror, that could be cool, let me know. There is a ton of stuff.

...plus 219 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🏆 2023 Ranked 5ho6t

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 18:18:31 +1300

It's very close between Humanist Vampire and Red Rooms. It may come down to which message about humanity I prefer. It could be considered a tie.

I don't tend to make it through films I really dislike, so the films here are all worth enjoying. Well, I didn't like Maestro.

Lists: 💎 | 🌱 | 𓍝 | ⛩️ | 🏆㉓ | 📽️ | 𝄆 | 🗞️ | 🩸

...plus 39 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🖇️ Wayward and Lost Horrors 1q1d

Mon, 1 Aug 2022 13:38:28 +1200

Slightly Hidden Horror Gems ' scruffy little companion list. I'm frequently on the fence about this list, but I want to keep everything on the main list films that are good enough that I absolutely recommend them.

I am glad I watched all of these. Some are good and others a bit awkward or imperfect.

Related lists:
🎥 𐫰 Index 🩸 Horror 💎 Gems ⛧ New 👁️‍🗨️ Rec
💎 Horror Gems 🌱 Candidates 🖇️ Wayward 💍 Other Gems

They are not all super high quality, but if they are here, I made it through and liked it. Some of them are much stronger than the title suggests. Essentially, if I think it's going to be liked by a decent but smaller fraction of viewers, it goes here. Watch at your own risk/reward.

I feel sometimes that this list is impolite, but I want to keep every single film in the gems lists films that I would happily rewatch or share.

Because You're Dead to Me
Feels like a play and sounds like a play; static indoor set with some very amusing occurrences. It made me feel I was in a 1/3 full community theater watching the life work of some close friends. I did not feel I was watching a movie. However, it is sincere and it tries. You can tell that this mattered to the people who made it. There are, in my view, pervasive flaws, but that's why it's in this list.
When I added it here, it had four views. That's always fun.
So Cold the River
So close to great; set is outstanding. Wise budget choice. The acting is pretty solid and the plot is interesting. It has scares. It's a pretty solid film. Somehow I didn't find it to be fully cohesive. I haven't thought it through.
The Scary of Sixty-First
This film is awesome. Another case of me feeling like I'm hanging out with old NYC artist friends binging on drugs and being radicals or feminists or usually both. It's almost good with some just ragged edges. Coin flip whether I keep it here or it goes in "gems" list.
Black Mountain Side
The Horde
Veneciafrenia
Sacred
Herd
Brightwood
Wintertide

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🖌️ Arthouse Horror 5sr56

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 11:13:53 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror 💎Gems ⛧New 👁️‍🗨️Rec

🩸 🖌️ Arthouse

It turns out I need lists for arthouse and indie horror so I can evade the term 'elevated horror' entirely. I'm trying to put some structure to my genre lists. Suggestions and reminders always welcome.

Resource List (sorted by name):

MelissaBrattoni—Arthouse Horror
Shane Barlow—Arthouse Horror

*If you don't want your list referenced here, ping me! If it's here I've been using it to double-check my work. I'd much rather give credit than clone reference lists. And to everyone else, check these lists; they have seen more films than I have and there's a lot more to discover there.

...plus 72 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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💧 Ghosts as Grief—Mourning horror h6v4r ancestral trauma

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 21:06:37 +1300

Ranking is vague, emphasizing films that are very focused on grieving and films that don't usually top my other lists. And not really ranked once you 20 or so.

...plus 44 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🎼 Spotlight on Composers in Horror 3f3vf

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 19:17:40 +1300

Films in blocks by composer, organized by when I noticed I should do them. There may be notes.

40: Lola de la Mata: Stopmotion. Wonderful electroacoustic score paired with choral music.
39: Hans Zimmer, The Ring. Gorgeous piano and strings permutations of Dies Irae, one of his only horror films.
36–38: Die Hexen. Double Blind, You Are Not My Mother, Uroboros.
31 to 34: Trent Reznor: highlights include the subtle and atmospheric score to Bones and All, as well as multiple David Fincher films.
29 and 30: Jocelyn Pook: Eyes Wide Shut (note especially the minimalist piano use toward the end) and Tin & Tina.
28: Danny Elfman, The Nightmare Before Christmas—songs, score, and song voice for Jack.
27: Milo Machado-Graner, interpretations of two études for piano, Anatomy of a Fall.
20 to 26: Fabio Frizzi, longtime collaborator with Luciano Fulci in some of his most important films.
more carefully next time I watch those.
15 to 19: Raphaël Gesqua, early career spent composing for video games; wrote a score for A L'Intérieur that was rejected by producers; subsequently is composer for almost all Bustillo and Maury films. His work on Aux Yeux des Vivants is stellar.
10 to 14: Joseph LoDuca composed one of my favorite themes in film for Saint Ange, but, to my surprise, before that he was the composer for Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, and Brotherhood of the Wolf. I will be listening.
7 to 9: Colin Stetson—Hereditary, The Menu, Color out of Space
1 to 6: Andrew Gush and Taylor Stewart—Long term collaboration with Mike Flanagan

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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🇺🇸 United States 2r1n2a

Mon, 8 Jan 2024 17:39:14 +1300

Currently this is a placeholder list. Only newest and absolute favorite films are here right now. In progress.

If I have any incorrectly placed let me know.

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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2000s Horror and Thrillers Ranked e2r1w

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 14:22:36 +1300

Brand new; only vaguely ranked yet.

...plus 33 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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📆 2002 3n541e

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 01:44:55 +1300

Somewhat ranked. What a great year for horror. The only film from this year I've seen that I don't love is Dark Water, which I found catastrophically unscary. The rest on this list? Watch all of them—including the little-known Maléfique, by Eric Valette. It's worth your time.

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🎭 They Make Theaters for This 473pf

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 04:01:11 +1300

I should leave the house and see it, shouldn't I. I always forget to go to the movies.

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⏱️ On the contrary 655h9 watchable low-scoring films

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 01:41:27 +1300

Lower-rated films I still enjoyed go here. I've been wanting to use two stars as a positive review score. It's time.

Followers

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⛧ New Global Horror Home Releases (All Years) 6g1w6d

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 12:48:39 +1300

✵Index 🩸Horror 💎Gems ⛧New 👁️‍🗨️Rec

Please sort by reverse list order (click here) This list contains only films that are newly actually available and I've verified you can watch them. See below.

Resources:

Including Forthcoming:
2024 Horror Movies (horrormika)
Screaming Soon 2024 (Horrorville

At bottom there is a list of new films not yet added to letterboxd. I'll check them again or add them myself when I have spare time.

Why this list?

Well, the simplest explanation is that if we all work together, fewer new small films will be inadequately reviewed. I like to try to catch good horror films that fell through the cracks because they weren’t d well or weren’t broadly accessible, but the past alone I’m 200 films behind. The new ones flood me. Sometimes people may not know what is newly available. Multiple forums and lists track accessibility but it’s decentralized and the listings are usually country and service specific. For older films, my lists Hidden Horror Gems and Candidates track interesting films I’ve found that are already available, but it’s backward-looking and depends on the time and energy I have for watching. In the present, there are these new ones every day. My hope is that if they appear on this list, it will make reviewers curious to find them, if they are available to that reviewer. A lot of trash comes out nearly daily, but frequently there’s something great hidden there too.

This list tracks and aggregates first streaming (and occasionally physical) releases of horror films from multiple sources, updated weekly to daily. Frequently they are region-restricted, and with physical releases some of it is just people saying they have found something. It would be overwhelming for one person to track where, so I won't have that information on hand. First release here means first time that I am aware of it becoming accessible for streaming or purchase, so some may not be formally first release. If you have watched any that seem rare, please mention their quality in the comments section! There is a lot, so information on if the film is worth reviewing would be great.If you only want to see new 2024 releases, not new releases all years, check the link above.Consider sorting the list by rating and filtering by year to see if anything has had good reviews. Usually there are so few reviews on small films that this may not be available or accurate.

Films that I know were released that are missing from Letterboxd:

Flesh [2017] by Iannis Aliferis (New)
The Bogman [2023] by Mitch Laing
I'm Sorry, I Tried, I Love You [2021] by Goldie Jones Ek Thriller Night [2015] by Pradeep Mistry
Khaufnaak Shikanja [2004] by Suresh Jain
Khooni [2004] by Kanti Shah
Karma Chakra [2019] by B. Sudhakar Sudarshan Rao, Milind Rokade
The Beautiful Killers (2022)
PANDÆMONIUM 2022
Zhowtime Presents: Siren Stories [2023] by Nolan Ramos
Power Cut [2023] by Mark Spayne
Blood Hunter: Revived and Enhanced [2023] by Chuck Ellis, Jack Shrum
Mr Ghost [2023]
A Haunting in Appalachia [2022] by J. Sean Collins
Blood in the Dark 2 [2022] by David Mankey (New)
Scribbles from the Crypt: A Journal of Terror [2023] by Brad Case
Winter Wasteland [2022] by David Mankey
Everwinter Night [2023] by Adam Newman
Horrorathon Volume 3 [2024] by Various Directors
deleve [2022] by Roma Glova
Screature [2021] by Jake C. Young
Static: An Anthology [2024] by Andrew Lillion
Aathmika [2023] by Damodharan Selvakumar (New)
Devil May Care [2023] by Sam Mason-Bell (New)
BlackOut [2024] by Luca Zanlorenzi (New)
Cholo Zombies [2024] by Eric Rafael Ibarra (New)
The Nexus [2024] by Various Directors (New)Bookmark
The Sluagh Awakens [2022] by Eddie Lengyel (New)
Methgator AKA Attack of the Meth Gator [2023] by Christopher Ray (New)
Blood Thirst [2023] by Christopher McCleod
Which Witch Won? [2023]
Qie Tian Shu Zhi Wu Tou Jiang Jun [2023]
Vinegar Syndrome's Lost Picture Show [2023] by Various Directors
Abduction Chronicles [2024] by Jacquelynn Wolfheart (New)
Devil's Void AKA The Devil's Void [2022] by Thet Win (New)
Vanity [2021] by Fabrizio Spurio (New)
Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door [2024] by Michael Feifer (New)
Evil Building [2022] by Various Directors (New)
R.I.P. Van Winkle Part 3 [2023] by Jeff Kirkendall, Mark Polonia (New)
OGOPOGO: The Mythical Snake from the Lake [2022] by Richard Mogg (New)

...plus 208 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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⚠️ Recommending This Would Be Challenging 1p2o2f Horror I could not (or could barely) sit through

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:45:00 +1200

Everything I've abandoned ship on too early to feel comfortable writing a full review. Turn on notes view for an explanation.

York Witches Society
Watched the first ten minutes. I am having trouble understanding the impulse to make this movie and am struggling with the feeling I already had watched a better and darker version 20 years ago.
Originless
Wintertide
Black Mold
Night Swim
Tiger Stripes
Halloween Kills
Damsel

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🪝 Meh 4m481h

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 21:26:49 +1300

Hooks you by being not noticeably bad but either never becomes good or takes so long to do it that you you're mortal and will never get that 45 squandered minutes of lead-up back.

I don't like leaving mediocre reviews so I haven't made a list like this yet: not bad enough to rant about, just not really there.

If it's here I felt it strung me along waiting for it to become good.

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🔌 1995 5p1927

Wed, 6 Mar 2024 15:50:45 +1300

Sorry "La Haine".All three are great.

A plug so far. Only films I've watched.

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🎬 David Fincher Ranked + Watchlist 6nu6x

Wed, 6 Mar 2024 15:45:33 +1300

1–3: Ranked.

The rest is a watchlist.

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

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