Suspect's October Horror Movie Thread

Because of your review I watched "Oculus". First half of it was very good. It had many layers: unfair imprisonment, psychology vs. supernatural themes, investigation of past crime, unreconciled personal history... Second half became too repetitive and relied mostly on continuous ambiguity of reality vs. illusion. It would have been better if the movie delved deeper into themes touched on first half and kept scares less frequent and more suspenseful.

I liked that ambiguity between reality vs illusion. I agree that maybe they use it a few too many times, but it built the suspense a bit for me. I'm also a fan of downer endings.

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So glad to see some love for Oculus! I was very surprised by it too and I even watched it again where it still held up. Very well made horror/psychological thriller. The reality vs supernatural and switching timelines is brilliantly exexuted.

Oculus is awesome and Karen Gillan is hot as f*ck

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There is the potential for a decent horror flick here. Ouija is a classic game that has scared kids for generations. So to make it a prime topic for a horror film is a no-brainer. So what are the chances that the filmmakers actually took the time to write a scary story, or create a scary or intense atmosphere? One would hope so, but this isn't that type of film. Produced by Platinum Dunes, yes Michael Bay's film company, Ouija is a bland, by the numbers horror flick that lacks scares and ups the boredom factor.

I give the film some credit, it started decent enough, but sooner than later it dives into the horribleness one would expect from a rushed cash grab flick. I find this film to be a prime example of what is wrong with the horror genre these days. I can't recall any characters in this film or what they did. It had people just saying lines to the camera and each other. The scares were boring beyond comprehension. The dreaded PG-13 rating destroys any chance for anything really scary, interesting or bloody.

Ouija is a failed opportunity, one that could have given us something interesting. I'm not just disappointed in it, I'm embarrassed by it. Ouija is almost an insult to the horror community. Not even the lame third act twist (yes, I'm ruining the fact that there is a twist) is enough to give the film a decent finish.

Expect to see a sequel sometime soon, just don't see it.

I'm a really big fan of the original film. I think Joy Ride is an underrated thriller with just the right amount of suspense and horror. With one creepy villain that sends shivers down your spine. Why the need for a sequel? There is no need for a sequel. It's simply the same story, recycled with new characters and a slightly different angle. Now we have a third film in the series and I'm afraid to say that I am embarrassed to admit that I even watched it.

Rusty Nail is back, by name only. This man is not the same villain from the original. That man is terrifying, this man is a joke. Killing two junkies early on in the film in a laughable sequence that involves the two of them tied to the front of his truck. The rest of the film focuses on a bunch of race car drivers who are not in the slightest, likeable. They make a fool out of Rusty Nail and he decides to exact his bloody revenge. I didn't care in the least if any of these characters survived. In fact, I didn't want any of them to.

nor was I cheering for Rusty Nail to kill any of them. I was cheering for the end credits. Why do I insist on watching this stuff? Am I glutton for punishment? Do I secretly like bad movies, even if I know they are bad and tell others to avoid them like a plague? Joy Ride 3 is bad. It's utterly terrible. It's not worth the digital ones and zeroes it is imprinted on.

Do not watch this film. Do not look at the dvd cover of this film. Avoid at all costs. BEWARE. AVOID.

Im agree with Joy Ride 3... It's a disgrace because the first one is awesome

The Skin I Live In is not a typical horror film. Some people might not even consider it horror. Yet, what happens throughout the course of this film is unnerving, sadistic and downright horrific. Without a doubt, the film is a psychological horror film in my books. Just no scares, heck even Almodóvar has described the film as "a horror story without screams or frights".

Describing the film is also a difficult task. There are numerous plot turns that I simply do not want to divulge. The basic premise of the film has Banderas as a plastic surgeon, who after a difficult past, tries to create a synthetic skin that is impervious to damage. His test subject is an unwilling woman who desperately tries to escape at every opportunity.

The film dives into different genres. At times it can be pretty dramatic, then Almodóvar pulls the rug out from under you and you're left watching some twisted things on the screen. He leaves nothing behind and tests the viewers level of how much they can handle. There were times where I was sitting there with my jaw wide open wondering just what the hell was occurring on the screen. Points to Almodóvar for invoking that.

The performances here are pretty strong, Banderas plays against his usual type. He's subtle and menacing. Elena Anaya is our woman who is held against her will. She has tortured eyes, which are the focus point of her performance. The film is in Spanish, so maybe the actors felt more comfortable with their native language.

The film is twisted, some people will be put off immediately by the content. Rape, death, torture, the film has all of this. In another filmmakers hands, maybe this content would ruin the picture and have it fall into the realm of low grade horror trash, but with Almodóvar, he somehow elevates the material. It's mature enough to avoid falling into line with those other films.

Can I recommend the film? Sure, but with a warning. It's twisted.

The Skin I Live In is very good. Do you know there is a similarly-plotted, low-budget American film that was released the year before? Victim

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I liked Victim more, but I have to see The Skin I Live In again.

I always saw that cover on Netflix and skipped it because it looked rubbish.

Now you have my interest.

Let me tell you about a little film called Anaconda. I watched this film a dozen times as a kid, I loved monster flicks. Anaconda was bad, it was utterly bad, yet I've seen it more times than I want to admit. Now we visit it again, years later, so we can laugh at how ridiculous this film is.

We open with Danny Trejo, for some reason they dubbed his lines. He doesn't speak english, but the voice the use is so much higher than what we all know to be the gravel voice of Trejo. Just something that I found funny.

The monster effects are laughably bad at times and worse at others. When the snake is animatronic, the obviousness of it all makes it seems like a bad ride at universal. Then we have the CGI effects, which make the snake seem like it doesn't even belong on the screen. The first attack on a human, the entire thing looks like one giant blur. The first time we see the snake in general isn't with some Jaws like reveal, it's simply the thing slithering around in the jungle before it attacks a puma. No big reveal, no slow reveal...just the damn snake out in the open.

In Ebert's review of the film, which is enthusiastically gave a thumbs up, he claims Jon Voight delivers a brave and slimy performance. That I can agree with, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a great performance. It's without a doubt, memorable, but in the campy way. He glares at almost everyone on the screen, his skin is slimy like a snake and immediately untrustworthy. No one else seems to think they are in a bad movie here. Voight seems to know this from the get go. Watch this film and then watch The Room and tell me the performances from them are not almost identical. Is he doing DeNiro? Is he doing Brando? Who the hell knows. It's one wacky performance, that much is a guarantee.

This was one of the early Jennifer Lopez films that probably helped launch her career. Why? I don't know, she doesn't offer anything interesting here. Ice Cube and Owen Wilson play against their usual type, I don't think we've seen either of them in a monster flick since this one,

Suffice to say, Anaconda is a bad film that boarders on being highly enjoyable. Sit back, laugh and enjoy the absurdity of Anaconda. If you take this film seriously...at all, even for one second, then you will utterly hate it.

Anaconda is a work of art and I will not hear a word said against it.

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I can remember when this came out and Barry Norman (the UK version of Ebert) loving that sneer. It's the only time I can remember him really loving something so obviously bad.

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One day a stranger shows up on the doorstep of a young couple's house. In his hand is a box, a box with a button. He tells them, they can push the button or to leave it alone. If they decide to push the button, two things will happen. One, they will receive one million dollars in cash and two, someone will die. If they choose not to push the button, they will receive no money, but will no one will die. They have exactly 24 hours to choose.

This entry is a little bit of a cheat, since it deals more closely to sci/fi or a thriller than horror per say, but I think the decisions made in this film and the results of those decisions are horrific and do classify.

Richard Kelly really exploded onto the scene with Donnie Darko, a film that has picked up a lot of love over the years and has become a cult favourite of many. Those people eagerly anticipated his next feature, which turned out to be the utterly dreadful, confusing and all around terrible film, Southland Tales. His third attempt at reclaiming whatever glory people bestowed upon him in his debut, was The Box, a drawn out feature length version of a really great short story.

The difficult decision to push the button or not is settled within the first 30 minutes. The rest of the film is the result of their decision. I'm assuming everyone knows what their choice was because it would be a pretty boring film is they didn't. What starts off as an interesting twilight zone of a story, quickly turns into a weird science fiction flick that confuses people. The Box has some interesting ideas, but doesn't seem interested in exploring any of those. Kelly seems more focused on trying to capture the weirdness and abstract feel of his first film. He doesn't succeed.

I'm not ashamed to say that I didn't understand much of the film. Does Kelly? I was entertained, somewhat, by the film at times. It is a film that I can see disappointing a lot of people, I oddly found the end result to be a halfway decent film. Loose ends to get tied up, but the road to get there is one bumpy road my friends. One of the things that I found interesting was that when the final act hits, I was wondering what I would do in this situation. Props for that at least.

I want to see Richard Kelly direct a straight forward narrative for once. Maybe that will finally settle the question of 'is he a good filmmaker or not?" With Donnie Darko blowing people away, Southland Tales disappointing everyone and The Box underwhelming mostly everyone. The jury may still be out a bit. While he hasn't done anything since, I'm interested to see what he might do.

A girl is dying in the arms of her lover.

Dying Girl: "Everyone is...dead"

Dude: "Everyone?"

Dying Girl: "I think"

*silence*

Dude: "Billy?"

Dying Girl: "Yeah"

Girl dies.

Is this a horror film or a porno? Muck is a 2015 "horror" film in which a group of people are stuck in the middle of nowhere, being terrorized by some sort of tribe of men painted white, carrying torches and who love to impale people with axes. As I write this review, the film is still playing in my bluray player, yet I had to go to wikipedia to find a plot description because I have no idea what the hell is going on. While I wikipedia I see that it had its premiere at the Playboy Mansion....some things are starting to make sense now.

The film consists of 1/3 horror, while the rest are shots of woman, in their underwear, staring at themselves in the mirror for 5 minutes. Looking at their breasts, their perfectly toned stomachs, then their asses in thongs. The scene then usually ends with them getting naked, having a 5 minute shower in slow motion while soft core porn music plays, trying to get out of the shower and tripping....cause that happens all the time, then getting killed. One character spends the entire film in her underwear. She looks amazing, don't me wrong, but if I want to see her in her underwear, or even naked for that matter, I've got this little thing called the internet.

The opening credit sequence if unbelievably long. Maybe they didn't have enough footage to be qualified as a feature film, so they drag this sequence out to reach that running time. It also consists of one girl running around, dripping wet, topless. In one of the more laughable "horror" scenes. The same lead girl sneaks around a barn, then is attacked by one of the pale men with a pitch fork. He misses stabbing her, by a mile, instead of removing the pitchfork to stab her again, he leaves it and tries to drag her away. She is way too wet, so he can't get a hold of her. She then grabs the pitch fork and points it up. It is at this time that the pale man decides to jump on her, thus impaling himself on the forks. The sequence is so disastrously slow and un-choreographed that it seems like a parody. I assure you, it is not. The scene then ends with the woman, covered in blood, standing in front of a sprinkler for 2 minutes, getting soaking wet.

When people are attacked, the director choose to focus on their breasts in slow motion, then their ass. All the pale men seem insistent on tearing their clothes away, only the women though, the men seem to be immune to their hatred of clothes. This film is so bad, that I honestly think it could be a comedy. Yet, nothing about it appears to be so. Characters are killed and people mourn for them for about 10 seconds before they have mundane conversations about shoes and going to the bathroom. They talk about this while standing right over the dead girlfriend of one character. The direction, the dialogue, the editing...everything about this film is so terribly, offensively, bad. A true gem of horrible filmmaking. One that should and will make a list of terrible movies.

Is there anything redeeming about the film? Well, it opened interestingly enough. The characters are already being terrorized. It seems to jump in at the end of some other film, where our leads have been chased around already. I thought that was an interesting choice, to just drop us in like this. Also, the film tells the story from different perspectives at times, which replays the same situations from a different POV.

I'm currently debating about finishing the film, there is about fifteen minutes left. Which means there is probably ten minutes of credits.

Insidious is another film from the current horror 'it' guy James Wan. Wan hit it big with the original Saw film, which I'm a big fan of. Instead of directing the countless sequels, he only served as Executive Producer and went on to direct more original content in the horror genre, like Dead Silence and the Kevin Bacon thriller Death Sentence. Both films didn't do as well as his first feature, but in my opinion, are excellently directed. He has gone on to have a sort of horror comeback with both Insidious and The Conjuring which helped him land a big Hollywood production, Fast and Furious 7.

Insidious was Wan's attempt to get back in to the horror genre with subtle scares that wouldn't have to rely on gore, or quick jumps. Wan scales back here and changes up his style. Were people expecting more Saw? Who knows, but what we got was a strangely unique and bizarre take on the supernatural world. Insidious is several different things at once and doesn't simply fit into one aspect of the horror genre.

Wan likes to play with conventions and here he plays with the haunted house tropes. The famous line from the trailer gives away a bit of the story here as one character says to another; "It's not your house that's haunted, it's your son". Cue dark music. The film feels like 3 films in one and in that final third act, takes us in yet another direction.

Is it confused as to what it wants to be? I don't think so, I feel that it likes to keep the viewer guessing. Both Wan and his longtime collaborator Whannell know the genre extremely well enough to be able to play with it and make it different. They created a world here with enough possible exploration that could warrant a sequel that doesn't feel like a cash grab. There happens to be two more films in this series. I can't say anything about the third film (a prequel) but I can say that the sequel is also a good movie.

Following the events of the first film, the family has to do with a new supernatural entity that has clawed its way out of the spirit world into our own. The first film was a twist on the haunted house genre, the sequel decides to go in another direction and becomes a domestic thriller of sorts. The roots of Kubrick's film The Shinning are very apparent, with an even bigger supernatural twist on it.

The same cast is back and the film immediately picks up where the last one left off. If one were to splice these two films together and show someone who has never seen them before. It could play as one 4 hour horror flick. Interesting thought.

While the film doesn't feel as unique or scary as the first, it does manage to continue the story in an effective way, which I appreciated. I knew I wasn't going to get the same thing again and maybe too many people were hoping for that because the film isn't really looked as favourably.

Patrick Wilson is given a bit more to do here, find his inner Jack Torrence. He delivers a creepy performance, mostly with his facial features. Rose Byrne has the difficult task of being terrified of her husband. A lot of roles for woman in horror films seem to be the same. This entry doesn't really try to change that too much. She looks scared, acts scared and is believable at it.

Insidious and the sequel Insidious: Chapter 2 a good horror films. I'm a fan of Wan and eagerly await anything he'll put out. It doesn't have to be horror and that's the great thing about his talent. He's not confined to the genre. He can go out and do more, he has and he will continue to do so. Whenever he decides to dip his toes back in the genre I love, I'll be happy.

Sisters from a sorority decide to play a prank on a boy that has cheated on one of their sisters. The prank involves the girl he's making out with to pretend to overdose and die. While they are deciding what to do with the "dead body", the boy freaks out and grabs a tire iron. He stabs the dead body, uh-oh. Now she is really dead. The girls freak out and dump the body down a well of some kind, or a mine shaft and decide to keep it a secret, so it doesn't ruin their lives. Months later they are hunted down and killed by someone who knows, or someone who is back from the dead.

Never seen the original, with remakes I always feel I need to state that I've seen the original or not. Whether that plays into my liking it, or the reader taking my review into consideration or not, is still up for grabs. Sorority Row is yet another horror remake that puts good looking young teenage girls in a series of brutal murders. The spin on this is that, well, there is no spin. This is a cookie cutter of a slasher film if I've ever seen one.

The problem with the film, and there are many, is that it doesn't try to be serious, or poke fun at the genre. It for some reason falls bizarrely in the middle. Thus, I wasn't really able to enjoy the funny bits, or the serious ones. The girls end up killing one of their best friends and after 5 minutes of some tears, they throw the body down that hole. Great friends? Only one seems to want to report this to the police, while another just keeps crying. We are instantly given our character archetypes. The bitch who is fake to everyone, the slut who sleeps with everyone, the smart one who is treated like a friend but really isn't, the conceded girl and finally the one we are suppose to connect with, our heroine. The girls stick to these archetypes throughout the film and never change a beat. Do I care about anyone? No. Am I suppose to? I think so? This isn't Freddy, Jason or Michael Myers, in which I'm rooting for the bad guy to kill every single person.

The kills themselves aren't anything special. In the words of one of the characters, the weapon is a "pimped out tire iron". Get it? The girl was killed with one, so the killer is killing them with one as well. The "pimped out" weapon has a harpoon hook at one end, a knife at another, then two handles I'm guessing. The killer throws this weapon everywhere. Great accuracy. With the exception of maybe one kill involving a bottle down a throat, everything else has been done before. Stabbing here, stabbing there, not even the one death with a flare gun was shocking or cool. This film severely lacks originality in the kill department.

The film never really gets you guessing as to who the killer is, not like Scream or any other "whodunnit" films. The reveal is eye rolling and ludicrous, along with the killer's motive. Why they decided to be crazy all of a sudden is beyond me, but if any slasher film knows, it's always the person who has the least amount of screen time. I was hoping this film would throw in a twist and have it be one of the main characters, silencing the others so she could live her life with the secret knowing it will be safe. But nope, they went the old generic route. Oh...mild spoilers I guess. Or not, I don't care. This film is pretty bad.

Sorority Row tries desperately to be a throwback to the 80's slasher films, but it fails horribly at it. It forgets what the goals were about 20 minutes in and the film tries to modernize itself with the inane dialogue. Do they have to mention facebook so many times in the beginning? 5 years from now will people still remember facebook? Who knows. But I know that 5 minutes from now I won't remember this movie.

*drops mic*

Muck truly is a terrible mess of a film. It received some of the budget from a successful kickstarter campaign. It pitched the film as a old school slasher flick that true horror fans will love. No CGI and realistic kills. The film has nothing going for it. Stars a bunch of playboy playmates and one notable horror icon, Kane Hodder.

AVOID!!!!