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

Tools    





It's always nice to see some fresh names.

And horror aficionados to boot. Yeah, you lot are alright in my book. Welcome!



Agreed. Let's just hope that Thief and Wooley can make amends.
@Yoda doesn't put up with sh*t here. They start trouble, he has no problem with that Ban hammer. Its just like Thor's!!



@Yoda doesn't put up with sh*t here. They start trouble, he has no problem with that Ban hammer. Its just like Thor's!!
In fact, all of us despise each other's guts with a fiery passion. That we've stayed together for so long is a complete mystery.
__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd



In fact, all of us despise each other's guts with a fiery passion. That we've stayed together for so long is a complete mystery.
Are you trying to be sarcastic?



Are you trying to be sarcastic?
We've all been posting together for quite a while. Some of us have been forum buddies for almost 20 years.

The smack talk is all in jest.



We've all been posting together for quite a while. Some of us have been forum buddies for almost 20 years.

The smack talk is all in jest.
I have been here far longer than any of you.



Let’s not create conflict where none yet exists.

That said, I do try to cultivate respect through crippling fear whenever possible, so I still support the sentiment.



Just to point out, none of us actually have vendettas towards each other. All our jabs towards each other are in good fun.



I just watched Horror Noire, a documentary about black people in horror. This was real good, I learned a lot while being entertained throughout. I liked that in addition to traditional talking heads they paired up some of the people and just let them have conversations with each other about the movies. For example Ken Foree and Keith David jawing was especially delightful. The doc kind of uses Get Out as sort of a framing device too and I’m all for as much Get Out as possible.




There is a good reason that Don’t Look Now so rarely feels as if it is a horror film. It is much too concerned with going about its daily business as if nothing terrible actually happened. Opening with a traumatic turn of events that will lead to the image of Donald Sutherland rising from some primordial pool of water with the body of his drowned daughter in his arms, face dripping with an anguished howl, it will only be a brief acknowledgement of the terror that lives at the heart of this film. By the next scene he will be busy at work, seemingly unaffected as if we have skipped over the entirety of the grieving process. The child is simply gone, as if his memories of her have been loaded down with stones and allowed to sink out of view, back to where he found her.

It’s in this twilight of emotion that Don’t Look Now resides. It seems to deeply understand one of the great horrors that comes with living through a traumatic event: that no matter how devastating it is, it will never be enough to stop the next day from coming. The shops on your street will keep opening every morning, and the same faces will still be found at the bus stop waiting to begin their morning commute. If you turn on your television, the local weatherman will somehow still see a future to forecast. Maybe with rain, but also maybe not. And as the night comes, if you look up at any window, you may find the light of other lives still daring to be lived shining down at you. It’s almost as if your pain is entirely irrelevant. At least until you realize that you too have continued going on, and whatever has hurt you, has now gotten behind you. Even if you don’t think it has any right to be back there.

Life will never entirely return to normal though, a lesson Sutherland’s character will slowly learn while trying to distract himself restoring churches in Venice. These memories he has tried to bury are what haunt the film, constantly rising in his conscience like a body rising to the surface of the water that drowned it. His past, no matter how painful, is always nearby, rippling just beneath the life he is trying to busy himself with. And as both Sutherland’s present and future also become tangled into the mix of director Roeg’s elliptical editing style, the world that surrounds him seems to become an echo of that howl of anguish he let loose in the opening moments of the film: growing fainter but returning again and again and again.

Even during moments that release him and his wife from this trauma (particularly in one of the most intimate of any love scene ever filmed by two A list actors willing to maybe actually hump on screen), will be intruded upon by scenes from the near future where they are already dressing and moving on from this tenderness. It’s as if the hope of ever living in the moment has been erased for them. They will forever be lost contemplating the fragmented shards of their inescapable memories and recoiling from their equally inescapable future.

How startling it will be then, that in a film where the past has been treated as an undertow one cannot swim themselves free from, and the future seems irrevocably fated, that we will be hit with a moment that exists almost breathlessly in the Present. There will be little preparation for absorbing its impact. Or for the audience to fully grasp what they’ve seen. It will just happen to them, and then they will be ushered out into the cold hard light of the lobby, unable to reconcile when the film they were watching suddenly became so frightening. In this way, the horror of Don’t Look Now will be delivered to those who watch it like their own personal trauma. One they can take the time to decipher, or instead bury deep inside of them, only to come face to face with it again sometime in the future of their nightmares.




There is a good reason that Don’t Look Now so rarely feels as if it is a horror film. It is much too concerned with going about its daily business as if nothing terrible actually happened. Opening with a traumatic turn of events that will lead to the image of Donald Sutherland rising from some primordial pool of water with the body of his drowned daughter in his arms, face dripping with an anguished howl, it will only be a brief acknowledgement of the terror that lives at the heart of this film. By the next scene he will be busy at work, seemingly unaffected as if we have skipped over the entirety of the grieving process. The child is simply gone, as if his memories of her have been loaded down with stones and allowed to sink out of view, back to where he found her.

It’s in this twilight of emotion that Don’t Look Now resides. It seems to deeply understand one of the great horrors that comes with living through a traumatic event: that no matter how devastating it is, it will never be enough to stop the next day from coming. The shops on your street will keep opening every morning, and the same faces will still be found at the bus stop waiting to begin their morning commute. If you turn on your television, the local weatherman will somehow still see a future to forecast. Maybe with rain, but also maybe not. And as the night comes, if you look up at any window, you may find the light of other lives still daring to be lived shining down at you. It’s almost as if your pain is entirely irrelevant. At least until you realize that you too have continued going on, and whatever has hurt you, has now gotten behind you. Even if you don’t think it has any right to be back there.

Life will never entirely return to normal though, a lesson Sutherland’s character will slowly learn while trying to distract himself restoring churches in Venice. These memories he has tried to bury are what haunt the film, constantly rising in his conscience like a body rising to the surface of the water that drowned it. His past, no matter how painful, is always nearby, rippling just beneath the life he is trying to busy himself with. And as both Sutherland’s present and future also become tangled into the mix of director Roeg’s elliptical editing style, the world that surrounds him seems to become an echo of that howl of anguish he let loose in the opening moments of the film: growing fainter but returning again and again and again.

Even during moments that release him and his wife from this trauma (particularly in one of the most intimate of any love scene ever filmed by two A list actors willing to maybe actually hump on screen), will be intruded upon by scenes from the near future where they are already dressing and moving on from this tenderness. It’s as if the hope of ever living in the moment has been erased for them. They will forever be lost contemplating the fragmented shards of their inescapable memories and recoiling from their equally inescapable future.

How startling it will be then, that in a film where the past has been treated as an undertow one cannot swim themselves free from, and the future seems irrevocably fated, that we will be hit with a moment that exists almost breathlessly in the Present. There will be little preparation for absorbing its impact. Or for the audience to fully grasp what they’ve seen. It will just happen to them, and then they will be ushered out into the cold hard light of the lobby, unable to reconcile when the film they were watching suddenly became so frightening. In this way, the horror of Don’t Look Now will be delivered to those who watch it like their own personal trauma. One they can take the time to decipher, or instead bury deep inside of them, only to come face to face with it again sometime in the future of their nightmares.

Great analysis.





It’s in this twilight of emotion that Don’t Look Now resides. It seems to deeply understand one of the great horrors that comes with living through a traumatic event: that no matter how devastating it is, it will never be enough to stop the next day from coming.
I just recommended this to someone to watch and she LOVED it.

Exactly what you say here--the horrible space between normal and not-normal, where it almost makes sense to see visions or have other experiences. And the otherworldly setting is perfect.



Viy (1967) -


While this film didn't impress me as much as I hoped it would, I still appreciated a decent bit about it and I may revisit it in the future. While its story was fine, I found myself mostly taken in by its mood. Through a combination of dream-like lighting effects, colors, and camera angles, Yershov and Kropachyov crafted a handful of sensually pleasing sequences. The highlight of this was a magnificent monster sequence near the end which is so impressive, it makes you wonder whether you're still watching the same film. Certain bits of it could be argued as cheesy, but the high level of craft in that sequence made it stick out as one of the best things I've seen in a horror film in a while. With that being said, however, I couldn't help but feel unsatisfied after the credits rolled. A few reviews I've read argued that this film doesn't get going until the second half, but I couldn't help but feel as if everything was build-up towards the night three sequence, which was one of the only scenes I loved when I rewatched it. This film reminded me of my experience with Battleship Potemkin. I liked a decent bit of it well enough (though I found some parts to be a slog), but primarily loved just the Odessa Steps sequence. Like Battleship Potemkin, I somewhat enjoyed my time with a lot of this film, but the one sequence I loved had me wishing that more of the film could've been that great. When rewatching the film, I found myself less invested in what came before the night three sequence and somewhat impatient as I waited for it.



Neat. I USED to love the RT forums. I don't remember much of it at all at this point, but I remember things took a turn for the worse (IMO), when forums on specific movies were consolidated into some generic catchall forum. I spent less and less time there as a result of the restructure as it became more difficult to find the threads I wanted, then one day I heard it was gone completely. I find it easy enough to learn an existing structure or logic but difficult to re-learn once that structure changes as dramatically as I remember it being at the time. Sad. I actually wrote a few reviews back then. Not so much anymore. I hate that I have not learned of Correrieno before now.

Anyhoo. Welcome to the forums, to all of you (and welcome back to one of you?), now that you're all popping in to this thread. Just a nice trick bank shot to get this out all at once

Also, horror stuff. @cat_sidhe

Never got the notification for this!


And to everyone wanting assurances, this site has been going for 20 years. Enough of a reassurance for you?



Just saw the finale of Lovecraft Country, not sure if anyone else has been watching. It was fine, but at least for me the series seemed at it's strongest when it was playing into the history and racial tensions rather than the supernatural. Most of those subplots got resolved in the penultimate episode so this was left wrapping up the supernatural parts so while not bad it felt a bit of a whimper compared to the previous couple episodes. I found the show to be a little inconsistent in quality but it's highs were good enough to make me glad I watched it.