Horror Movie HoF

I only have Nosferatu left... Think that is going to be tomorrow; might make it a double feature night together with the original.

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/watching movies for mark f/
MovieMeditation's Cinema Reviews // Film Diary 2015 // Letterboxd Profile // MovieMeditation's Top 50 Horror

Alyce Kills

I liked the character of Alyce, her emotions, how she slowly disintegrates into a non-human state. But other than that the entire 90 minutes felt like a shallow bloodbath, in contrast to the actual blood amount it creates. Didn't get the appeal.



Phew, now I'm finally done.

Starting Rosemary's Baby in a few minutes. Excited....first time.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Awesome!

I suspect she has to move around a lot. Neighbors get suspicious of the screams emanating from her basement. The burial plots she digs in her backyard late at night. The uptick in missing persons reports that coincide with her arrival to the town.

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I'm struggling with the way the husband has been depicted here. I went into the film knowing only one thing. Rosemary has a baby and it's the devil's spawn. That's about it. So I was shocked when they visually depicted the husband having his hand in the "occult". I'm wondering why they didn't have his involvement more of a mystery. Is he involved? Does he not know? Is she safe with him? Is that mystery more unsettling than knowing that he is involved? I'll admit, that knowing he had a hand in it really leaves her all alone. Her closest relationship is a fraud, but I think Polanski could have played with the audience a bit here in regards to his character's intentions.

I knew that the neighbours would be in on it as well as the necklace being part of the witchcraft. Elements that I wonder if they were suppose to come as a surprise when they were revealed. Rosemary's Baby lacks surprise. I felt like I knew exactly where it was going at every turn. People are not who they seem, trying to take care of the baby, even the other doctor's call to the husband was no surprise. I thought that the film would offer something more, but much to my disappointment, it doesn't.

I wanted Rosemary to really descend into madness. I wanted this devil spawn to really take a toll on her. Aside from being thin and some pains here and there...nothing. I guess having the devil's seed inside you isn't that bad. Another missed opportunity from Polanski here in my opinion. I really hated how gullible and trusting she was. She seemed too nice and too naive for everything. Even when she started to suspect things, she didn't end up putting up much of a fight.

What the film did right? Well, right after she started to suspect things is when the film turned around for me. It finally got interesting, it was finally going somewhere and Polanksi seemed to have more interest in the subject matter. Maybe the build up to everything didn't interest me or that Polanksi took a bit too long to get to where I wanted the story to go, but to me the second half is a lot better than the first.

I decided to read the back of the DVD case after the film was done. It started off by calling the film the greatest horror film ever made...then went on to say that the husband made a deal with the devil for his career. So I suppose the husband being involved isn't suppose to be that big of a deal, but the greatest horror film of all time? I think not.

The last time I watched Rosemary's Baby I liked it more than I had before... But that's not saying much. I've always found this film really boring Even calling it a horror feels like a stretch. I know others talk about the atmosphere and I wish I was one of them. I love a good atmosphere and many of my favourite horror films create a great one. This? Nothing. I honestly don't know what atmosphere they're talking about, which is guess what happens to atmosphere when you're bored. It doesn't exist.

None of this is helped by Mia Farrow, who I've never liked, and that dreadful haircut.

I should have the rest of the horrors I've not seen sometime next week, so I hope to jump on them and get them seen before the deadline.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Sending my rankings in now.

Can I get a recap of what is still eligible?

Sorry, didn't see this. Look on the first post. All those films are in. There are 12.

Hello sent a list in. Just a few more and we are done.

A little too campy and weird for my usual likings, but I do enjoy such things once in a while… Mostly though, I just think the story could have been executed, much better than it was. I liked the way it handled the story of revenge and love for this twisted human being, and I liked the fact that they wanted to interplay it with a crime atmosphere as well. But personally I thought the movie was pretty uneven throughout. Sometimes it was (trying to be) funny, other times it was really serious, and the pacing shifted a bit too much for it all to feel coherent and pleasing. Overall there were too much that didn’t work for me, but the idea of the film was pretty great and some aspects I enjoyed. A shame I didn’t like it more than I did, because it really did have potential to be a classic romantic horror story of its own league…

There will be spoilers in this review… I hoped to like this, but I kind of expected not to, so I wasn’t that surprised or let down by the end of it. It pretty much played out how I expected, which was a shallow and empty piece of muddled filmmaking. I thought the development of the main character was extremely poor, and I don’t think the film dived deep enough into her mind, and her reasons for becoming the kind of person that she became. She was weird indeed, but not much more, really, at least not according to the film. That is a weak move in my opinion, to just choose not to actually develop your character or make reasons for her behavior.

The story was also pretty much non-existent. It relied mostly on coincident and wherever our main character felt like going and what she felt like doing. I didn’t feel like it progressed greatly enough, or most of what she did felt like an excuse for a bad writing. And those Alice in Wonderland references… seriously? A great idea that could have been fun and could have helped make a great story and, if used properly, it could have helped explain her character more. The way it was handled just felt unnecessary and like a last minute adding to get some laughs or whatever. I liked ONE SCENE quite a lot though, which was the very last scene of the film where she comes through her apartment door, dragging body bags and looking like a complete lunatic, and simply say “what?” That was pretty funny I must admit, and I wish it went more in that direction, honestly, since the story was so poor. If it had been totally over-the-top and completely outrageous and funny, then you would have forgot about the story.

Either I see something in Alyce Kills that hardly anyone else does, or it's the other way around. Judging by it's IMDb rating, it's probably the other way around. I wasn't trying to be funny by picking something weird; it just didn't work out. Sorry guys

Hey hey cricket, nothing to be sorry about!

In HoF's you nominate something YOU like, whether it's popular or not. You like it and that's all that is needed for it to be a fine and legit nomination. After all I participate to see all kinds of movies, I don't expect to like all of them!

No cricket, I get the impression you liked the movie quite a bit so I don't think the nomination was weird or anything. I just didn't care for it, personally, but I am glad I saw it. Hey, some of us liked it, like Godoggo and I think JJ.

Yeah, I really did like it. One of my new favorites really. HoF's are like that. You never know how something will do until you put it out there.

May certainly wasn't the runaway hit I was hoping for.

Well, I had already seen May before so I didn't get to say anything. I remember seeing it at my cousins house, like, in the middle of the night and I was just hooked. I immediately bought it. I love that movie.

Hey it was the only movie in this tournament I watched all of. And I liked it.

I thought you watched Phibes SC?

An hour of it. Which is the whole thing in SC Time. But in real time, there was still another half hour left.

You never logged it in your Anti-Movie Tab, or else I missed it.

I think Alyce Kills is a really good horror film and the type of nomination that I really appreciate. It adds appeal to this thing for me, because if everybody nominated well known, well received films we would not have the variety needed to keep things interesting. So you did well to nominate that movie, buddy.