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

Oh for gods sake.

I can see your opinion on this movie going all sorts of ways.

Good info

It did keep itself wide open. I found myself a bit flat while watching it, but it really wasn't my kind of thing, this horror/romance blend - so I felt borderline bored during all the Lee/Maren scenes. I wanted to give the movie it's due though, and not rate it poorly because I was making myself watch something a little outside of my range. Maybe that flatness was because it wasn't all that great - I thought mixing the flesh eating with adolescence and coming of age was interesting. I don't know - sometimes I try so hard to see the best in every movie I watch, or at least not let my personal taste sully what was going on. But you've got a fair point there - it was all very wide open to any interpretation and didn't stick to anything.

No, I never bought his self-representation as ethical, but yeah his first interaction with Maren did raise the subject (she often does throughout.) But he was obviously lying about just about everything - that creepy, ominous and just all-round wrong character. I didn't see the pathetic turn he takes coming, but I always knew this one was a monster of the lowest order. He had sadist, liar, and all-round monster written all over him. I kept feeling an impulse to scream "run!" at the screen when he popped into the story. I loved Mark Rylance's performance (I do most of his, if not all) but in the last scene his character had changed in a radical way. His was a cool and confident character, blessed at putting on disguises and lying - I don't know where his pathetic stalker persona came from all the sudden.

I didn't have a really solid appreciation of the last 10 minutes either way. It wasn't really my kind of movie. David Gordon Green and the campfire scene was great - and we didn't get enough of that kind of stuff. I thought it was probably a pretty good movie to a lot of teenage horror fans. I don't know. Sometimes when a film isn't quite in my wheelhouse I try to take my feelings out of it if they might sour it. It was kind of dull, some decent horror, some great minor performances. It's not going to hang around my collection, and I'm guessing the Camille DeAngelis novel is a teen thing? I didn't see it at the movies, but the DVD from the library was free - I couldn't say no, because it was a high profile one from last year.

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Silence of the Lambs. Got a little sick of doing Cabin in the Woods every Halloween, so this year I substituted it for maybe the greatest movie ever made. The movie that every CSI show will rip off until the end of time.


Cobweb. This was great. Lizzy Caplin and Antony Starr play the creepiest parents. I was rooting for their demise long before anything scary even started. I love how everything is heightened to portray a child’s perspective. But man this Peter kid can’t catch a break.

I watched 16 movies that I thought would be fit for Halloween season, but not all were. Here is the order that I favor them in and my rating for them on IMDb:

Dracula (1931) 10/10
The Shining (1980) 10/10
Night of the Living Dead (1968) 10/10
Dark Shadows (2012) 8/10
Poltergeist (1982) 8/10
Terrifier (2016) 7/10
The Tingler (1959) 6/10
Renfield (2023) 7.5/10
The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) 6/10
Final Destination (2000) 7/10
Interview With the Vampire (1994) 6.5/10
Ringu (1998) 5.5/10
Village of the Damned (1960) 5/10

Shutter Island (2010) wasn't a horror, but more like a psych thriller and doesnt belong on a Halloween list.
Death Race 2000 (1975) wasn't either, although bloody, contains ridiculously dressed cars and a costumed man, and shows a nude Sylvester Stallone punching a nude woman. Not a halloween horror, IMO.
Lost Highway (1997) has many elements of horror but doesnt seem like one to me and I wouldnt place it in this category. I would say its more scifi/xfiles than halloween.

I might also add that Mr. Stallone in this movie is nowhere near cut and ripped like the carved statue he became for the Rocky movies, so I guess you can say he didnt have to be that way to become an actor. He was an actor first.

I also managed to sneak 2/3 of an episode of Project Runway in there.

I'm sorry I'm such a Halloween disappointment.



You said nice things about it, so I'm curious. Though admittedly the premise makes me very uncomfortable, because my social anxiety makes the idea of people showing up to my house and not being able to ask them to leave terrifying.

I would love to see Pumpkinhead on the big screen.

I think that the premise is very engaging, and I think that monster stuff mashed together with coming-of-age themes can be really good (see Ginger Snaps). But this movie has almost too many ideas and so to me it all came off very superficially.

I think the most coherent thread for me was the question of being an "ethical monster": you get the Sully character whose insistence on remembering his victims walks a line of morality and sadism; Lee, who we see target a mean guy at the grocery store, putting kind of a Dexter/killer-who-kills-killers spin on him; the , and the two guys at the campfire, who are basically using the monsterhood as a base for what is some sort of, like, kinky partnership.

But ultimately, it didn't feel like the movie actually had a point of view on the question and neither did Maren. In the end when asking myself what I got out of watching the movie, I felt like I got one great sequence (the campfire) and some decent performances (all of the leads and supporting actors), and that was it.

I do appreciate your inclination to give films outside of your wheelhouse the benefit of the doubt. I came at it on the opposite side: expecting to love it.

Saw Halloween III for the first time ever this Halloween, fantastic seasonal spooky movie. Went in directions I wasn’t ready for, maintained a constant sense of unease, just great fun.

Obviously I'll say more when I write it up for real, but The Town That Dreaded Sundown is, like, offensive. Right?

Marrowbone is a horror film full of secrets, and as such it's hard to talk about the plot other than to say that it begins with a family of five, a mother and four kids, who are being hunted and haunted by an unnamed entity. When the mother dies, it's up to eldest son Jack (George MacKay) to bury her secretly, and wait until he turns 21 so the four kids aren't permanently separated. In the meantime, all the mirrors in the house are covered for fear the spectre will show up. Other performers are Anya Taylor-Joy and Mia Goth. This one has a The Others feel to it - very isolated, ghostly and tense. I was hoping for something different when I watched it, but there are a few things horror-wise I liked - even though the film isn't at all very horrific. Some things I saw coming from a mile off.

Skyman, 2019


From the director of Blair Witch Project, who is clearly a one hit wonder. This is a complete non-movie, and it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It's set up as a mockumentary by one guy filming a guy and his wife, mostly the guy. The issue is the number of cuts, camera angles where you saw there was no camera two seconds earlier, and the acting. You never believe this isn't acting. Zero documentary feeling anywhere. Nothing happens at all, except for a short section at the very end. The main character is not interesting enough to center a movie around. Nor is the plot.




The Company of Wolves


Loved this one. It's charming and funny and has some absolutely insane werewolf transformations. Terrence Stamp has a neat cameo too. Very nice fairy tale feel with some memorable dramatic moments as well. Kinda like Grimm's tales.

Has Captain Terror seen Wilczyca?

And if not, why not?

Well, people are murdered, so that's bad.

I own it! Haven't watched it yet, though. Your review sounds promising.

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Are we talking about the new Town that Dreaded Sundown or the old Town that Dreaded Sundown?

Happy to report that Mr @Wooley and I have finally met in person, and that he is an awesome dude, but you all knew that already.

And it happened in the most epic way possible---



This is probably only my 3rd time watching this one, and one thing that struck me this time is how little set-up there is. There is absolutely no foreplay here. Weird guy hands out tickets, we meet our heroine and friend, and before the 7-minute mark we're at the theater. Mayhem follows. (I tried to convey this to Wooley last night but I'm not sure he heard me over the high-volume metal riffage. ) There is no fat to be trimmed here. It's like the Fury Road of demon movies.

One line I'd never noticed until now is when there's complete chaos and panic in the theater and George yells "THERE HAS TO BE AN EXPLANATION!!"

Sorry, George. There is none, and there won't be. Good luck, chief!

With the annoyance of daylight savings time, it could be one of many.

You are the main person I thought about while watching it.

The 1976 version. The one that sets itself up with a documentary tone and then inexplicably decides that what this film about murder and women being terrorized and mutilated needed was about 28% comedy hijinks with a Barney Fife-esque character.

Yay!


Also, any of ya'll seen Witch in the Window? A friend recommended it to me but I haven't heard anything else about it.