Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

Still trying to disentangle my enormous thesis statement regarding this film and all of the things it made me laugh at, and wonder over, and be impressed by, and be critical of. It's a marvel of a movie littered with little moments that either shine or fall flat, but somehow always remains engagingly strange, and emotionally complex. I think the secret is the lead performance by Diamond Stingely, who oversees the entire film with a steely and frequently pained eyeroll towards a world she does not fit into, and also does not want to fit into, but that still can't help ignite feelings of alienation and invisibility, even as she is surrounded by adoring friends.


This film deserves a proper critical breakdown. I've looked across the internet and have yet to find anything that really seems to do it service. Unfortunately, i don't appear to be the person for the job either.

I watched The Other Side of the Underneath on Shudder yesterday and thought this would be a movie that Crumbs would be interested in.

Yes. I watched it during my supposed horrorthon and you are correct. Very much my thing.

A film that feels like the tragedy of memory. Structured as if being hazily remembered through the fragmented recollections of an adult. And yet, its two central characters, two children who spend their summer days playing in an abandoned home one of them used to live in, spend the entirety of the film reminiscing and obsessing over broken remnants they find from the years when they were even younger. As such, the present moment is left in constant threat of dying, like some kind of ember that is fiercely burning, but not much longer for this world.


Good stuff.

This movie is a beast.


4.5/5

How would you rank it with other Miike films?

I've seen very very few, amazingly, considering you'd think he'd be my thing.


Definitely my favorite so far of the like.....3?....I've seen so far

I've definitely seen Ichi the Killer and Audition.

Maybe Visitor Q? Maybe Western Django?

I know I have a copy of Happiness of the Katakuri's and Bird People of China, somewhere here.


So only about another 90 or so to catch up.

I’ve only seen the Dead or Alive trilogy. I liked the second one enough, but found the first and third way more boring than I was led to believe.

I feel like you'd remember Visitor Q if you'd seen it.

You should give Gozu a watch. Miike at his most Lynchian.

Don't let anyone say you don't have the holiday spirit, Crumbs.

The Christmas spirit is in my blood. So much it's spilling all over the floor.

So, Terrifier 2


You already know if you don't want to see this. The violence is ungodly. I can't help but hope this is well beyond anyone's line of what is acceptable. But....I actually sort of liked it and....I also don't know if the film entirely works without that violence. That maybe it needs to go well beyond the line of violence as cathartic entertainment into a territory where the violence is simply based in cruelty and, as such, a terrible indictment against anyone who says they sorta liked it.


The violence is unquestionably dehumanizing. The victims, who in this sequel are actually given semi likeable attributes (unlike the original which never even considers the victims as anything we can truly relate to), are then suddenly turned into props for Art the clown to basically turn them into a pile of flesh. His acts of carnage have no real basis in reality. Anything he suddenly thinks to do to them, he can accomplish in the flash of a few frames. No effort, no real suspense and frequently not even much of a struggle. In this way it is easy to view what is happening as the kind of violence which might occur in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. We are meant to maybe marvel at more the insanity of it than the cruelty. And because the filmmakers don't want his canvas to be limited to just a few moments of mutilation, much like a wile e coyote, his victims seem comically immortal, always alive for whatever new thing he thinks up.


But...because there is so much viscera, because we recognize the people in his hands as being real people, we also can't shrug off how beyond meanspirited all of this is. Especially as we watch our seemingly newly minted slasher icon mug for the camera and take such glee in what is happening. It leaves the audience in a limbo where we can't possibly enjoy the violence, but there is the weird uncomfortable space where we get the sense we are supposed to be cheering it on. And maybe this is what is so...fascinating about the whole thing.


It certainly both helps and muddies the intentions of what exactly the film is aiming for when the scenes of Arr (when he isn't doing something unbelievably horrifying) are nearly (if not actually) at the level of charm and sly irrereverence Robert Englund perfected as Freddy. Except I think this performance may even be better. I saw this a couple of days ago now and I keep thinking of it and....finding myself really taken in by the whole vibe of this character. He is frequently funny, frightening, deeply disturbing and weird. And I haven't even talked about his imaginary friend yet.


So I just dont know. I hate this movie in many many ways. And the actual story that is happening around the main attraction is, while not terrible, severely lacking.


But for a two and a half hour movie that I consistently found despicable and depressed that I put it on, it was also almost always either car crash interesting or giving me some gross sugar rush of the most transgressively awful violence I have seen in a main stream film.....ever?


I can't possibly recommend, but this one is sticking with me. And that's something

Terrifier 2 is the John Wick of gore flicks and I’m here for the irreverent cruelty.

I've been trying to decide if it makes the violence better or worse in how it doesn't really linger on suffering. We can of course assume there is tremendous amounts of this, but it doesn't play up the sense of pain to the degree it is amping up the spectacle of violence. So in some ways, it makes it less upsetting to watch (a little), but ina larger sense, when you realize the film simply doesn't have the attention span to linger on the pain inflicted, and is too distracted to move on to the next bit of hell it has planned, it is maybe even more distressing in the long term. We are the eyes of Art the Clown. All the matters are the limbs that are still attached. The ones scattered around and broken are simply yesterday's news


I dont know. All that has registered is a sense of shame that I would consider this movie 'fun' in so many respects, even as it assaults all types of good taste. There is something deeply subversive about the whole thing, which I both admire and resent.

Embrace it. It’s almost in the spirit of John Waters, where it pushes the boundaries of taste until it breaks and enters the realm of the gloriously absurd. It’s a freak show but less morally questionable as all of the grotesqueries are Grand Guignol tableaus, loving the orchestrated for the mere fact that they can be created.

Leone’s background as a special effects artist is as integral to the conception of this film as Stahelski’s action choreography background was to John Wick. Do we NEED to see John Wick mow down a million guys in increasingly elaborate headshots and martial arts? Not for any narrative or thematic reason but rather for the exuberant celebration of the excess and the ability to do it in such a complex, technically difficult, and affecting fashion. And in that…

Is Art.

I think I agree, and I think it is important for some films to push the limits and exist simply to revel in confrontation. But...there are a handful of moments in this where I just don't know how to process what is happening on screen or what it means about me that this is entertainment...which it very much is clearly meant to be.


And none of that is a bad thing either. I've got loads of other films which I essentially am a fan of almost exclusively because there are elements where we become almost helpless as audience members. We don't have the proper tools to know how to react when we see things we didn't know were allowed to be in movies. and that kind of danger can be exciting even though many people wouldn't be wrong in finding it a less than noble pursuit


And sure, we could go along for the ride and just cheer it on but wrestling with the morality of these things is very much a part of their appeal to me. Being an advocate of film going as far as it wants to and having my nose rubbed in what that sometimes means is....fun....just desserts....masochism....all of the above?

Let me put it this way, both Terrifier 2 and Jackass Forever are making my “best of 2022” list and not for dissimilar reasons.

Props to Terry Hall.