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

So I watched A Tale of Two Sisters and Night of the Demons '88 this week. Guess which one I liked.

Speaking as someone who's less in love with A Tale of Two Sisters than everyone else (it's fine. fine, I say), but also understanding the flaws of Night of the Demons (another movie that's "fine"), I actually can't guess which way that tease is implying.

I wish I could like everything. Nah, I just didn't care for a ATOTS. It didn't help that I knew the twist going in thanks to The Uninvited (2009), and somebody linking them together for me. I guess I'm just burned out on "elevated" horror and I just want some fun horror like my new go-to Halloween movie Night of the Demons.

Night of the Demons had been talked up for years as being such a blast and a good time, and I thought it was just okay.

I had hopes when it slightly subverted its male gaze to have Linnea Quigley , which is a hilarious and killer moment visually and just, like, conceptually. But then it was like, "Nah, that was the one idea we had."

Maybe my expectations were too high. Or maybe I'd just been watching too much good horror that month (watched it during the Halloween Challenge).

I think I'm about to be sad.

It was just what I needed, man. I instantly ordered the Scream Factory bluray after watching it. I guess when it comes to horror I'm pretty hot or cold; either it works or it doesn't. I had no expectations, I just wanted to watch something from the '80s that I hadn't seen and I was blown away at what I had been missing. Seriously, Trick 'r Treat & Night of the Demons every Halloween from now on.

LOVED that! And the ending of the movie made me cringe, which I normally don't do, ever.

Instant classic for me.

Both TOTS and NOTD are groovy.

MKS has spoken. It is now law.

The Hall of Infamy

Trog (1970) -

Not much to get mad at with this one. Heck, aside from the design of Trog, there's not much to find campy or cheesy about it either. Rather, it's a fairly well-made film. It clearly knows what it wants to say and presents its themes relatively well. At its heart, the film is about the dangers of science when it's conducted at the expense of other people. Dr. Brockton wishes to look after the creature as, with the right care and trainers, she believes she can get the creature to not be violent, but barely anyone else supports her. This theme might've fallen apart if it was too one-sided, but fortunately, the characters are balanced enough so that you can see both sides of the argument. While it's clear that Trog behaves well under Brockton's care, the unpredictability of Trog and the damages it causes throughout the film are made as clear as day. Granted, I do think the writing of Murdock, the main person who was opposed to Brockton, could've been handled better as his sexism and constant interruptions during the courtroom scenes felt like ham-fisted attempts to get you to dislike him even more. Still though, the film gets more right than wrong with the characters. Also, some of the horror sequences were rather memorable. The scenes which took place in the caves looked really nice and came with some cool shots such as the cavers disappearing into the darkness in the opening. I also think the final act has some cool touches, like the presence of the young girl having parallels to an earlier scene of Trog playing with a doll (for the most part though, the final act is fairly unsatisfying since it takes a bit too much from Frankenstein to breathe). As I stated at the start, the design of Trog is the only cheesy thing I noticed about the film as you can clearly see it's just a person wearing a mask (also, was it wearing slippers?). However, I'd describe the design of the creature more as campy rather than bad. So, while this film doesn't break any new ground, I think it worked reasonably well and I could even see myself revisiting it sometime in the future

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Is AToTS considered elevated horror? It was a common one people loved/cited as one of the better ones during the rise of various Asian horror that followed the Ring in the early 00's. And that genre mostly seemed to have the reputation of psychological, creepy atmosphere. But I don't know if it really amounted to much that would make it considered elevated (a vague term, admittedly, that I seemed to start hearing more of this past decade to refer to the A24 stuff, which I always just prefer calling prestige horror - to mean horror who's target audience is the arthouse crowd, not mutually exclusive, but can also include people that don't necessarily go for more standard horror genre entries. For the record, I do really like the A24 stuff). I know they both rely on a more psychological horror and suspect style on average, but I don't think AToTS ever gave much pretense for trying to do something deeper. But I might be off on where/when "elevated horror" started to get used as a phrase.

I do feel like AToTS's style kind of ruined The Babadook for me when that became big.

Night of the Demons is an 80's, teens go to a haunted house and get killed by demonic creatures one by one. Also the apples book-ending the movie was a fun joke. I felt it was fun and above average in that subgenre, and it delivers what it promises. I have a friend who just felt it was too by-the-numbers, minus a couple of things here and there.

Anyhoo, while I did sit out most of the Asian horror craze so I guess I technically didn't have a lot of examples to compare it against, I did sense AToTS was an above average entry (and as a general recommend, would still recommend it to people, even if I don't love it like others do).

ETA: It's been decades, but the part of AToTS that did feel like a letdown was the ending. Which is a bad part to feel like a let down, but it is what it is.

Now if you wanted to break all of our hearts, you could end up being disappointed by Messiah of Evil.

Mr. Mercedes, Season 1

I only thought that the book was okay, and I think that this is a case of an okay book being turned into an okay series.

I'm pretty ride or die with Brendan Gleeson, so he was enough of an anchor to keep me on board with it all. It helps that the season is just 10 episodes long.

Harry Treadaway has the kind of angular features that make him look pretty creepy when he leans toward the camera, something that the Penny Dreadful people used to great advantage and it's used well here. His character is twitchy, but human enough that you believe people might like him.

The supporting cast is pretty good, especially Breeda Wool as the killer's gay and indifferent co-worker at the electronics store. Jharrel Jerome and Justine Lupe are charming, even if the writing for their characters is a bit weak. Likewise Holland Taylor shows good timing as the main character's assertive neighbor. Robert Stanton is wonderfully hatable as the horrible manager of the electronics store.

Just like in the novel, there are some plot points that are just frustrating, like the fact that no one tries to figure out how someone could steal a car without having the key, or the fact that the main character makes no effort to record the communications he receives from the killer. Or the fact that a character's pet is threatened and he does absolutely nothing to keep it safe.

Much like in the novel, this felt like a story being stretched past its natural length.

I had some mixed feelings about the way that the killer's character is changed. I feel like the series makes him more sympathetic, erasing his racist and homophobic inner monologue, giving him a somewhat real friendship with his gay co-worker, and emphasizing the abuse he suffers at the hands of his alcoholic mother. Just to be clear, the abuse is horrific and it was horrific in the book, but giving it so much proportion feels like an attempt to build sympathy for the killer. They also really pull back on the plot point of .

The horror is decent, with the most upsetting sequence probably being the .

All in all okay, but nothing great.

Yeah, I think back in the day we called it arthouse horror, which to me, is the same thing as elevated horror. Horror is an amazing genre of film; it's so vast.

Night of the Demons is 90 minute rock concrete, man. I'm kind of glad I waited so long to see it because I really needed this boost. I've been striking out with so many first-time-viewings, this kind of makes all that other time spent worth it. I just watched the making-of feature and wow, that was fun too! FX artist Steve Johnson is my new hero. What a great group of filmmakers on this movie.

AToTS did feel like it overreached a bit there at the end.

That was just recently added to my watchlist.

Is it a popular one around here?

Universal acknowledgement of its obvious greatness may be our sole binding agent. Any criticism towards it will throw us into primeval chaos.

There are only two types of people in this thread: those who love Messiah of Evil and those who haven't seen it yet. The rest? Well, we sent them off to catch a film at the local movie theater . . . that's right, front row . . . eyes on the screen . . .

So the Treadaways are more lopsided when it comes to horror than I thought. I'd thought that Luke was the one in Attack the Block and Honeymoon, but turns out Honeymoon was one of Harry's.

I guess Harry currently wins Creepiest Treadaway.

Uh-oh. I don't think I dare to watch it if the stakes are that high.

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