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

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Motion Detected, 2023 (C)

A Mexican couple moves to a house in California after a traumatic event happens. The surveillance system in the new house starts acting real weird.

It's far from the worst movie ever, but it's pretty stupid and it feels unfinished. The surveillance system is basically magical it seems, and that's how it becomes such a big problem. Not recommended.



To reduce my issues with Malignant down to its core, it is designed to be a bad movie. It desperately wants to be a cult oddity. And....it doesn't work that way. What makes bad movies actually good is their earnestness. What makes cult movies important is that they actually are created from within the creators own eccentricies and passions. We can find a kind of communion with them when we realize they come from a personal place that we recognize in ourselves. That we maybe thought other people didn't share with us. But these kind of movies are a testament that they actually do.
This pretty much sums up my issues with the majority of these new, wannabe B-movies. I'm glad that someone else sees this thing the same way I do.
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Evil Dead Rise, 2023 (A)

I'm not usually a big fan of violent movies, but this one takes it so, so far that it doesn't even register as violence from a pretty early point.

The mom's actress absolutely carried her role. She was insane, intense, unpredictable. Her face alone did so much for the movie's imagery, which is plentiful all around. Very striking film. I haven't seen the other Evil Dead movies and probably won't, because not my style, but this wasn't a waste of time at all. Real good stuff.



I'm so torn on whether or not to see Evil Dead Rise. I feel like it has pretty good word of mouth, but I'm also really hit-or-miss these days with downer horror.



I'm so torn on whether or not to see Evil Dead Rise. I feel like it has pretty good word of mouth, but I'm also really hit-or-miss these days with downer horror.
It has downer elements, but as the movie progresses, this is emphasized less and less. I'm not usually super sensitive to these kinds of things, but, by the end, the movie is campy and over-the-top gory that you forget all the heavier emotional beats that came earlier. It doesn't end on those.



It has downer elements, but as the movie progresses, this is emphasized less and less. I'm not usually super sensitive to these kinds of things, but, by the end, the movie is campy and over-the-top gory that you forget all the heavier emotional beats that came earlier. It doesn't end on those.
Good to know, thanks.

One review (in praise) wrote "it really puts the kids through the ringer". And I was like . . . mmmmm, pass.



I wasn't a fan of Evil Dead Rise but, then again, I don't particularly like any of them besides the first one. I (re-)watched the whole franchise recently and rated them as follows:

Evil Dead

Evil Dead II

Army of the Dead

Evil Dead (2013)

Evil Dead Rise


I'm binge-watching Ash vs Evil Dead now and it's kind of mediocre, too.



Caught up on a couple horror comedies from this year last night.

Renfield - While I found Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's performances all fine and some of the comedy was pretty funny it mostly felt like a bit of a tonal mess. It wasn't over the top enough to maintain a level of absurd fun but when it went over the top it kind of took me out of the more dramatic and horror elements it was going for. Add to that some moments that contradict elements from the story of Dracula, I'm looking at you burning in sunlight vampires, and it just never really clicked for me, probably about a 4/10.

Cocaine Bear - I had a lot more fun with this one, I found it pretty consistently funny and most of the main characters were relatable enough to engage me. The Bear is mostly believable but occasionally the special effects drop the ball a bit, still I could be both terrified of what it will do and also at times root for what it will do so I'd say it works. All in all an effective little man vs coked up nature film, say 7/10.



Caught up on a couple horror comedies from this year last night.

Renfield - While I found Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's performances all fine and some of the comedy was pretty funny it mostly felt like a bit of a tonal mess. It wasn't over the top enough to maintain a level of absurd fun but when it went over the top it kind of took me out of the more dramatic and horror elements it was going for. Add to that some moments that contradict elements from the story of Dracula, I'm looking at you burning in sunlight vampires, and it just never really clicked for me, probably about a 4/10.

Cocaine Bear - I had a lot more fun with this one, I found it pretty consistently funny and most of the main characters were relatable enough to engage me. The Bear is mostly believable but occasionally the special effects drop the ball a bit, still I could be both terrified of what it will do and also at times root for what it will do so I'd say it works. All in all an effective little man vs coked up nature film, say 7/10.
We are very much on the same page here. I liked Renfield maybe a hair more than you, but overall it felt like a colossal waste of talent. I'm not sure what Cage was doing, and I felt like Hoult and Awkwafina were fighting the mediocre character arcs and writing they'd been given. I did like the absurdity of some of the fight scenes, but they were only a temporary reprieve. Plus it felt like it was about 20 minutes too long and really redundant in many parts.



I'm not one much for listening to critics, but Red Letter Media's total dismissal of Cocaine Bear moved it from a movie I had no interest in watching to one I want to actively avoid

And I don't even agree with them that much



I'm not one much for listening to critics, but Red Letter Media's total dismissal of Cocaine Bear moved it from a movie I had no interest in watching to one I want to actively avoid

And I don't even agree with them that much
The thing about it is this: movies that want to be "bad movies" are often really grating. Because there's no genuine joy or quirk to them.

At times, Cocaine Bear is guilty of this.

But in quite a few of the sequences there is some genuine humor and joy (like the entire sequence with the paramedics). The actors look like they're having a good time. I enjoyed it for the most part.



Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1977 (B)

Weird movie, but with a lot to offer in its weirdness. Visually, it's great. Vibe-wise, it works. The climax is whatever and the movie doesn't need to exist, but all that can be forgiven.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side, 1986 (B-)

Even less of a reason to exist than Exorcist II, but with, again, a vibe. Gets some credit fir having the creepiest old man ever put to screen, and I enjoyed the Native Healer plotline

Poltergeist III, 1988 (D)

Absolutely nothing movie. Zero proper justification for existing, an ice theme for no real reason, and just feels disconnected from even itself. Bleargh.



I'm not one much for listening to critics, but Red Letter Media's total dismissal of Cocaine Bear moved it from a movie I had no interest in watching to one I want to actively avoid

And I don't even agree with them that much
I’d be shocked if you didn’t hate Cocaine Bear with a passion. Though, it’s more incompetently made than a James Wan joint so maybe you’d appreciate that it’s not very good at trying to be bad.



I’d be shocked if you didn’t hate Cocaine Bear with a passion. Though, it’s more incompetently made than a James Wan joint so maybe you’d appreciate that it’s not very good at trying to be bad.

There can be shallow incompetence as much as there is shallow competence, and if choosing between the two, I prefer to at least have competence to go along with the shallowness.



My problem with competence isn't that someone knows how to do their job. It's that it allows artists to get lazy and use that as a crutch.



And I assume I'd hate something like Cocaine Bear much more than anything Wan has done (except for maybe Saw, which is his only truly unforgivable sin)



There can be shallow incompetence as much as there is shallow competence, and if choosing between the two, I prefer to at least have competence to go along with the shallowness.



My problem with competence isn't that someone knows how to do their job. It's that it allows artists to get lazy and use that as a crutch.



And I assume I'd hate something like Cocaine Bear much more than anything Wan has done (except for maybe Saw, which is his only truly unforgivable sin)
Why is Saw unforgivable?



Unlike Malignant or Conjuring, I don't even see why this needs to be explained.
I think it’s got a ton of obvious issues but it being done on a DTV budget and managing to mask that virtually none of its named talent likely filmed for more than a couple of days yet manages to change the landscape of contemporaneous horror (arguably for the worse) would earn it some forgiveness.



I think it’s got a ton of obvious issues but it being done on a DTV budget and managing to mask that virtually none of its named talent likely filmed for more than a couple of days yet manages to change the landscape of contemporaneous horror (arguably for the worse) would earn it some forgiveness.

I don't find it masked any of those things particularly well. While I never knew the history of the filming, or how long they had to film with their cast members, none of what you say here surprises me since I always found the performances in the film to have a weird disconnect about them. Knowing they may have potentially been shooting a lot of these scenes separately from each other would actually make some sense to explaining this. And this would be just one of the elements I found so off putting about the movie(and there is no shortage of those, I struggle to think of one think I don't outright hate about it).


And, yeah, it managed to shape where horror went for a couple of years. And, yeah, it was for the worse. Which is one reason why it is unforgiveable. It opened the door for the laziest shittiest shit the genre has probably ever known. Influence isn't always a good thing. Especially when this influence really seemed to have very little to do with the actual filmmaking and more to do with its crass approach to horror.



I don't find it masked any of those things particularly well. While I never knew the history of the filming, or how long they had to film with their cast members, none of what you say here surprises me since I always found the performances in the film to have a weird disconnect about them. Knowing they may have potentially been shooting a lot of these scenes separately from each other would actually make some sense to explaining this. And this would be just one of the elements I found so off putting about the movie(and there is no shortage of those, I struggle to think of one think I don't outright hate about it).


And, yeah, it managed to shape where horror went for a couple of years. And, yeah, it was for the worse. Which is one reason why it is unforgiveable. It opened the door for the laziest shittiest shit the genre has probably ever known. Influence isn't always a good thing. Especially when this influence really seemed to have very little to do with the actual filmmaking and more to do with its crass approach to horror.
It’s a bit like Blair Witch, in that it’s a little indie film a larger distributor picked up and after test screenings, realized they had something that would break into the mainstream. Wan and Whannell (do his films Upgrade and the Invisible Man share your disdain?) made a truly independent short film as a proof of concept, then got a 1 million budget, which is a bit low even by DTV standards, before Lionsgate caught wind. When you watch it through the lens of a DTV production timeline, its a fairly clever approach to seem larger and grander in scale than its budget should’ve allowed. It’s certainly Wan as his stylistic roughest but I feel he even uses that to his advantage, making everything rough, ugly and abrasive.

I admire anything that can shift the culture one way or another. I don’t think it’s responsible for its imitators any more than Jaws deserves criticism for Tentacles, but it’s similar ability to touch on SOMETHING in the public id with virtually nothing but determination is pretty cool.