A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I was gonna say I liked THOB significantly less than HHLLC but then I found that I rated it four stars?? I don't even trust my own recommendations at this point. It's been about 10 years since I saw it, so who knows.

Anyhow, I remember some cool images but also some annoying bits. It indulges in one of my found-footage pet peeves, which is that "we don't know how to resolve this scene, so we'll just add some static and cut to something else" thing. Porcelain doll-girl was creepy, so I guess that was enough to give it an extra star.

My prediction is that you will like it neither more nor less than these other films.

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Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead -

Is Don Coscarelli the Christopher Guest of horror? I ask because it's as if he made this movie just to get his usual gang back together and have a good time. That's not a bad thing, though: if you also enjoyed the first two Phantasm movies, you'll probably enjoy this one as well. You'll also likely enjoy it if you're a George Romero fan because it has the same appeals of his Dead movies. The devastation of the Tall Man's little experiment is leaving entire towns empty, so it's up to Reggie and Mike to encourage whoever is left in them to join the fight.

Reggie Banister does the heavy lifting here, and even though he is hardly a conventional leading man, that does not mean he is not up to the task. He is convincing as an ordinary man thrust into a pretty extraordinary situation and who has relatable, umm...preferences. That brings me to Rocky (Henry), a survivor and veteran whose toughness amazes and whose rebuffs to Reggie's advances are never not funny. At the other end of the spectrum is Connors' Tim, who brings genuine pathos as a young man who experiences too much loss too early. As for Scrimm, he continues to chew the scenery as the Tall Man and he clearly had a great time doing it. In the cat and mouse game between him and Reggie's ragtag crew, there's plenty of combat with zombies, mausoleum crawling and of course those glorious silver balls, all of which rides that fine line found in the most fun horror of being equally thrilling and hilarious. Also, for being over 30 years old, the special effects, especially the morphing ones, hold up very well.

There is a good bit of worldbuilding here, especially when it comes to the iconic balls, but it still ends up being a lateral move for the series overall. The ending also left me wanting for how it makes the whole thing seem like setup for the next entry. It keeps the franchise distinct from all other horror movie franchises, though, and it was simply nice to see Reggie and company again. It's also nice to gain another recommendation from a decade that is not exactly replete with horror classics.

Oh boy, watching a Phantasm not number 1 or 2. I vaguely remember 3 and 4 feeling like entries in a TV series and quite underwhelming. Part 5... actually tried to do something interesting which brings it back around to the grief theme of the first one. I just don't recall it working as a movie overall. I think it was just one of those, "lost the low budget feels of the late 70s/early 80s and got the low budget feel of the 2010s," the latter of which... don't appeal greatly to me.

By the way, I'm like two thirds of the way through The Substance. I think it's pretty good, although it feels like it's not content to make its point. It feels like it has to highlight it, underline it, bold it, italicize it and put it in 100 print.

Sinners (2025) -

If there's one area this falls short in, it would be how its commmentary on which path in life offers true freedom/happiness doesn't feel consistently in the foreground throughout the film. In the first half, it mainly exists in the background with Sammie's dilemma on whether he should embrace blues music or religion (a conflict which mostly exists in the opening), while this theme manifests in a far more direct way in the second half. As a result, it awkwardly feels like the film is transisitioning into this commentary. Still though, everything else about it is pretty great. Some felt it started out too slow, but I found the community portrait and the relationships/conflicts with the various characters pretty engaging in its own right, especially since it never feels like it's repeating its points and is consistently introducing us to new characters as it goes on. It makes the shift to horror in the second half all the more surprising since I began to forget it would even be a horror film. As for the horror scenes themselves, blending musical/horror in such a seamless way (one musical sequence which literally transcends time and space is nothing short of breathtaking), placing a considerable emphasis on suspense over gore/nonstop action, and maintaining a high emotional resonance with the Ku Klux Klan conflict/post credit scenes ensures the film remains fresh among so many other survival horror films of its ilk.

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Did you folks see VHS Beyond? I just did and man, it's an interesting one. It's looser in structure than the usual one, and it seems less concerned with the found aspect, seemingly shooting from spots that just don't seem to have any camera, or having downright unrecoverable footage.

I loved it more than most others, for the most part. The framing device was super neat and every short aside from the dog one had something to offer. The skydiving segment by itself makes the movie worth it. It's one of the best they ever made.

I think that the question of independence versus conformity/assimilation runs through the whole film.

My students and I just did a mini exploration on the path to equality (for Black citizens, workers, and women in the early 1900s) and the different approaches advocated by different activists/scholars. Some advocate for money/economic power, while others put more emphasis on political rights. I thought it was really interesting how many of those ideas popped up in Sinners in various forms.

And I loved that music/dance were the medium to express so much of those ideas (from "This Little Light of Mine" being sung in the opening moments to the musical performance that closes the whole thing out).

The vampires dancing and circling around Remmick while their eyes are lit up in the darkness was a great scene
Michael B Jordan was great in this. The music was pretty good too. I felt the movie shoudl have ended maybe 10 minutes earlier, and the ending was unnecessary in terms of the film itself, but those are minor quibbles.

I get that, but the commentary still feels like text in the first half and surface story plotting in the second half. Maybe 'transition' was a bit unclear, but I definitely feel there's a shift from the commentary existing in the background and then the foreground. I found it a little awkward.

Oh, I see what you mean.

I guess I felt that all the way through the film sometimes laid it on a bit thick (like one of the twins saying that the club will be "for us, by us", or later one of the creatures saying "We believe in equality!"), but it kept me engaged with the more subtle ways it showed those ideas.

Yes, I would very, very much agree with that.

Oh well, that's too bad it doesn't end well. Then again, even if everyone was just sitting around playing cards in the last two movies, I'd finish the series anyway. That is one advantage this horror franchise has over other ones: characters in every entry besides the main villain worth giving a damn about.

Well, keep in mind, I really didn't care for 3 and 4. Five seemed like a step up from them. So if you liked 3 more than I did... you might feel the series ends on a strong note. It's probably been close to a decade since I've seen them though.