2016 Horror Roundup Thread

There’s another recent horror anthology called Holidays that’s mostly not good. The forced theme is that every short is related to a different holiday. I wouldn’t bother bringing it up, but a segment for Father’s Day directed by Anthony Scott Burns is fantastic. And by fantastic, I mean a lot of people will hate it and they’re all philistines who don’t appreciate when horror does something different, mysterious, heart-wrenching, and perhaps unsatisfying, which is arguably the whole point.

-Tom

absolutely agreed

The thing is I liked the Cell novel, up until the ending which I thought really sucked. So I felt there was a chance the movie might be good AND even improve on the ending like they did with The Mist. Further more, Cusack and Jackson were together in 1408, which I think is a very good King adaptation. So on paper this looked like it had potential. Instead it’s worse than Maximum Overdrive, it’s just as terrible but without the charm.

We migrated! So I did some updating.

I didn’t add Conjuring 2 since it wasn’t as well received as the original but I probably still should. I will go ahead and spoil everything for everyone and say to avoid Cell, which comes out soon (no, I did not see it. No, I did not hate the book, but early returns are not promising and it’s not the greatest premise ever). If someone likes it I will put it on the list though, because criteria for inclusion is (1) 2016 (2) someone likes it OR (3) looks interesting.

Still h ave a few to add, I think I missed some 2016 suggestions in the thread. I personally am looking forward to Don’t Breathe. Lang is a really terrific actor who strikes me as being one of the five scariest people ever (labeled by a panel of scientists and philosophers) and has been by far the best thing in some wretched movies (a Segal Flick, Avatar). Dark Signal looks intriguing.

Cell has 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, I think reviewers are being generous.

@peacedog The grammar nazi in me insists that you change all occurrences of Don’t Breath to Don’t Breathe… pretty please?

Added Lights Out which comes out this weekend and is off to a surprisingly strong start (17/1 RT). Basic premise is nothing special - something living in the darkness so scary. I urge people not to watch the Trailer because it reveals something interesting about the plot, although I don’t think it’s going to spoil the movie. One to keep an eye on. I hope Tom reviews it.

I saw Dark Signal recently, it does a couple of interesting things towards the end of the movie but otherwise it’s a largely forgettable ghost story. Fortunately The VVitch just turned up on blu-ray so I’m really looking forward to giving that a watch.

I haven’t seen Holidays mentioned yet. Do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s up and down in quality as anthologies go, but from some directors of smaller horror films that you might have heard of (Starry Eyes, The Pact, some others of lesser skill) and one from Kevin Smith, which unfortunately provides the one major bum note in the whole piece.

The far and away best one is a brilliantly creepy and strange short about Father’s Day that makes the whole project worthwhile. The director of that one (Anthony Scott Burns, fact fans!) hasn’t made anything of note before other than a few short films, but I’m putting his name on my list of directors to watch for sure.

It’s on Netflix now. Worth the price of admission.

You mean besides here? :) The only reason I did that movie was because this was at the 60:60 mark:

https://forum-cdn.quartertothree.com/uploads/default/original/2X/d/dacae77ab1319328824100186c8eeb109789455c.jpg

How fortuitous. That’s such a great shot.

By the way, do you have any interpretation of it? Of the first shot of aligning planets or who/what was sitting in the chair or the way it wound up? I’m not sure I do, and frankly I’m not sure it needs it, but I’d love to hear what others think.

-Tom

Also, this just came out today:

(Aw, rats, I was hoping the link would include the cover art. Since it doesn’t here’s the mock-up of its VHS cover.

Spoiler-free enthusiastic review here.

-Tom

Whoah, what year is this, 2003?

Worst thing you’ll see all week candidate: Viral, which was just given a limited release in theaters and also VOD at the same time. t stars Sophia Black-D’elia (Project Almanac, The Night Of) and Analeigh Tipton (Crazy Stupid Love, That weird movie about being snowed in with Miles Teller) as sisters, bookish and rebellious respectively. It was originally going to get a wider release earlier this year, but it was bumped and stealth released instead, a situation which generally tells you all you need to know.

This movie covers similar ground to Hate-Watch favorite Fear the Walking Dead. That is, we get to see an outbreak right as it starts to spiral out of control. The outbreak in question is titled “wormflu”, because of the barely flu-like symptoms and because worms are involved. Quite literally. The movie’s problem is that it’s of two minds. The first mind is a movie about two sisters (our stars) who don’t get along and are watching their parents’ marriage crumble around them, with the outbreak serving as a backdrop. The second movie is a half-baked creature feature. While there’s no reason these two things can’t intermingle they don’t intermingle well here.

The first mind’s movie works well for a period. You find out the source of tension between them (although this is a little clumsy). You feel Black’s characters increasing dread as she starts to question whether the outbreak is going to be contained. Oh, and the infected people go crazy and start eating everyone. The movie blends internet footage and conspiracy stuff with news broadcasts, and it’s not uneffective. Early on Black’s character watches a video of a man in an elevator getting attached and the infected vomits blood in guys face. So even though a Quarantine of their town has been announced (after Dad - a game Michael Kelly who doesn’t have enough to do - has run off to pick up mom from the Airport), most people are unconcerned while she is more worried.

The second movie feels tacked on, weirdly so. Black’s love interest pops in and out and eventually shows up with advanced knowledge of the infected because someone realized they had gotten this far into the movie and only spent maybe 10 seconds of screen time establishing how they work. So he does an exposition dump in snippets while they deal with a potential home invader. It’s very clumsy.

The movie’s biggest problem isn’t that the two halves ultimately don’t mesh (although they don’t). It’s that the stakes don’t work. On paper where the movie goes has potential. But it just doesn’t work in execution. All the more so because the climax teases that the infected aren’t merely here to eat everyone. Well, they are here to eat everyone (In a small variant on the usual, the eating part is in fact crucial since this is a parasite we’re dealing with and it apparently requires a lot of protein). Or infect them. But there’s no further explanation given, and then all of the kids (spoilers: some of the kids) escape and then the movie ends unceremoniously.

Random dice roll determined that this is what I would do Sunday afternoon. Let it serve as a warning to you all. Not even putting it in the master list.

Ha ha, you saw Viral.

For an uneven but infinitely better variation on that theme, check out Into the Forest with strong performances from Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood. It’s basically what Viral should have been.

-Tom

Sadly, Viral deafeated Into the Forest with that dice roll. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune strike again.

Any thoughts on Don’t Breathe? The director, Fede Alvarez, said he made this movie as a response to critics of his Evil Dead remake. Specifically, he wanted to get away from gore and the supernatural.

Plus, Stephen Lang as a blind killer!

Sort of, not really.

[spoiler]Clearly the moon was supposed to be in a certain alignment to allow the door to open to the other world or whatever mumbo-jumbo. I assumed the thing on the chair was the “Him” that Daddy was crossing over to meet. But it could’ve been Daddy, I suppose.

I’m not sure I cared all that much about the details…it was an exercise in mood-building and it was wildly successful. The sequence with Jocelyn Donohue walking down the lonely, ruined street under overcast skies with the voice of Mr. Keaton and her younger self in her head was fucking brilliant and desperately creepy.

The only fuck-up was when she was looking through the door and turned her head for a second and they couldn’t seem to help but do the hackneyed “some unseen person walks across the foreground”. Stop it, horror directors. We’re not little children.

Otherwise, it was a perfect 10 minutes. [/spoiler]

I am plenty interested in it. I think I said it elsewhere in the thread, but Stephen Lang is the scariest, meanest old mother fucker. Blind Stephen Lang probably used to bully Zatoichi when they were both younger.

I hope it maintains good reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, and maybe I’ll go see it on the weekend it comes out.

I think Stephen Lang is great. Seems like he only gets cast as bad guys these days, probably because he is the scariest, meanest looking old mother fucker. Still, this does look good.

A little bit of a mess, but I rather enjoyed They’re Watching. I found it kind of pleasantly bonkers, even if they have a problem figuring out what tone they’re going for. By the end, you’re left going “uhhh, what did I just watch?”

It’s no great masterpiece, but it’s a nice Grade B first effort.

(It was made by the guys behind the also-pleasantly-bonkers kids cartoon Phineas and Ferb.)