2018 Horror Roundup Thread

I haven’t seen the other two, but I liked Black Swan way more than Pi.

It’s dark. It’s … sultry. The psychological train ride combined with the sex scenes builds to something like a thriller style ending. Art becomes life and everything gets dark.

I enjoyed it because I like fucked up movies like that, but to be fair I felt a little dirty afterward since the initial draw was Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

‘Apostle’ on Netflix is a recommend: like John Buchan/Wicker Man/The Witch.
Like a bbc period drama gone brutal torture porn.
It’s good !

CLIMAX by Gasper Noé. Ultimately upon reflection I rate this. Is it horror ? Yes in that it is horrific - maybe the cast was too big and thus it felt maybe spread a little too thin. And as for rhyme or reason ? Forget it - however it is still quite the cinematic experience !

So this 15 minute short evidently hit the you tubes last year, but it is one of those that @tomchick should see if he has not already. Nice production values. Russian language nice to know, but certainly not required as intelligible dialog is at a minimum.

I watched a couple horror movies on Netflix this week.

Truth or Dare: Why did I watch this? It’s terrible. There’s not one single good thing in it. Everything is stolen from either Final Destination (well, actually Final Destination 2), or Saw. Now, I liked both of those movies, but this is just stolen ideas and nothing good. There’s once scene where one of the characters asks “Why is this happening to us?” and another character says they’re being punished for their flaws. A third character says “But I don’t have any flaws”, which is literally true since there is no character development at all in this movie. Then the character with no flaws is killed by cockroaches.

As Above So Below: This started out strong, with a very Tomb Raider vibe, but then it gets all Blair Witch and has a lot of jump scares and a bunch of random stuff happens. It’s well made, the cave sets are great, the actors are reasonably good, and I even kind of like the ending, but it just doesn’t come together as a coherent story. Still, much better than “Truth or Dare”.

I found this one interesting only because it’s loosely based on Dante’s Inferno. The levels of the party’s journey roughly corresponds to the levels of Hell. But yeah… It’s still a found footage PG13 horror movie.

Been meaning to catch this for awhile and watched it tonight. Not sure it’s horror but a nice send-up of rape-and-revenge exploitation tropes. Very stylized filming, phenomenal sound editing, lots and lots of satisfying bloodletting, some dubious medical procedures. I give it 0.75 Cabin in the Woods elevator scenes.

Yeah, it’s maybe not horror-horror. It’s horror-adjacent, anyway.

Just saw the Suspiria remake tonight (at the Drafthouse, natch) and was reasonably happy with it. There are a number of elements I found pretty surprising, not least the epilogue. But…boy. Have a strong stomach. There is some rough shit in that movie, particularly an early dance sequence.

You might be thinking, what’s so disturbing about a dance sequence? yeah. well. You’ll see.

SUSPIRIA (2018) - if liked it a great deal - it’s it’s own animal - not so rough or gory but well done.

If, like me, Netflix throws up every new “horror” movie onto your front page and you’re thinking about checking out their new movie Sabrina…just…don’t.

So, is it just me or is the more recent round of Netflix produced titles just not up to par? That’s not a good thing for their brand. I’ve actively started avoiding comedies produced by Netflix. Please tell me horror isn’t the next one to fall.

I dunno, they seem to be on a mini-uptick as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got issues with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, but I enjoyed it. Calibre was great. Roma won the Golden Lion at Venice, quite a few people like Apostle and Annihilation. There’s still a lot of crap, but compared to their previous hit/miss ratio for movies, I definitely don’t think it’s getting worse.

Seems that Netflix’s attitude is that “if we produce enough stuff, people will find something to like” - which means that of course there’s going to be a fair bit of crap, especially if you’re into things like “good scriptwriting,” “good acting,” or “plot development.”

I think Sturgeon’s Law applies here for sure.

Noted, and thanks for those recommendations, I’ll check those out.

Not that long ago I was feeling completely opposite, that Netflix was knocking it out of the park with nearly everything. You’re right though, with the volume of what they are doing now there is not way my expectation of that would hold. Plus, I’m probably sampling the lower tier, since I browse and skip over recommendations a lot.

I don’t think that’s ever been the case for movies, outside of documentaries. Remember they first made their big splash with that Adam Sandler deal.

Of those, only Apostle is Netflix produced content I think. Thanks for mentioning Roma though; I didn’t realize it was coming to streaming in a couple of weeks. I won’t miss a Cuaron film.

Looks like Annihilation got traditional distribution in North America, but as far as I’m aware, Roma is a Netflix exclusive outside of film festivals and the Oscar window. True, they’re “only” the distributors, but that’s true of a lot of Netflix originals.

The only thing I’ve watched from Netflix recently is The Haunting of Hill House and I thought it was really good. I do want to see The Ballad of Buster Scruggs though.