What horror movie did you just watch? (Was it any good?)

If my comment can temper your expectations enough to spare you even one iota of the despair I felt as the whole enjoyable, enthusiastic, energetic, colorful, musically astute, and all-around-clever enterprise fell apart in Fear Street: 1666, my work here is done.

-Tom

Twenty-something minutes into Part:666, and they’ve swapped over to a setting that is extremely divergent in terms of feel and texture than what we got in the first tow parts. And not at all suited to the “brightness” @tomchick mentioned.

And they’re leading with rehashing a bunch of highschool social bullshit they basically already did in the first two movies?

Boooooooooooooooring.

I enjoyed all 3 Fear Street movies, thought they were schlocky but fun. They really need to chill on the soundtrack though, 1666 has a part where they go from one Pixies song straight into another! Like this will make a good album on spotify but in movie it’s a bit much.

The wife and I watched Son on shudder last night. It reminded me slightly of movies like Babadook in that most of the movie revolved around a mother who desperately loves her child, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to protect him.

I had very low expectations, which it far exceeded. I got the rec from the NYT, so I’ll post that mini-review here, but spoiled as you might not want even the vaguest hint of the plot before you watch. Conveniently for me, I didn’t read it until after I’d watched it - my wife likes to read these things, so when it comes to horror I let her pick what we watch.

“Son” starts with a doozy of a scene: Laura (Andi Matichak), a single mom, goes to check on her sleeping 8-year-old son David (Luke David Blumm). What she finds is a room full of strangers surrounding David in his bed. The door slams shut, and Laura goes for help. She returns, and the strangers are gone. David is alive but limp, and bloodthirsty. (Kudos to Blumm for a dynamo performance as a cuddly kid and a corpse muncher.)

Laura later reveals to Paul (Emile Hirsch), the investigator assigned to figure out what happened, that the bizarre satanic sex cult she escaped from was behind the home invasion. He believes her. But should we? As questions pile up, so do doubts. Is Laura a victim or a threat?

All horror movies are about trauma, but I don’t think I’ve seen a horror movie that navigates trauma and its consequences — mental, sexual, spiritual — as shrewdly and sensitively as the writer and director Ivan Kavanagh does in his film. The twists are knockouts. But be warned (or encouraged): This one’s not for the squeamish.

Fear Street 3 got better after it returned to the present but I think it wasted too much time on the setup/reveal back in the past. The inter-town conflict was more interesting than the witch bits. The witch bits felt too much like reviewing a much older time period through modern lenses.

5 posts were split to a new topic: Ha ha, you watched Blood Red Sky!

I just watched Son last night and I liked it a lot! Much better than I had expected.

More which horror movie will I not be watching:

There’s a difference between horror and horrible.

Below (2002) - Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Willams, and Zach Galifianakis are stuck in a submarine during WWII and there might be a ghost in there with them. The central mystery of what happened to the sub captain is not half as compelling as the movie thinks it is. It’s corny and you’ve seen this done a dozen times before in better shows and movies. But for all you lovers of submarine interiors porn, this movie has you covered. Lots of scenes of cramped rooms, moving dials, brass levers, wheels turning, and closing hatches, as seamen shout out commands and responses.

I happen to think the is movie is fan-fucking-tactic and I don’t even really like ghost stories.

Put me in this camp as well. I love Below.

Well, I think that may be the problem. I don’t think it’s much of a ghost story either.

I like that it stayed ambiguous throughout whether there was actually anything supernatural happening, or if it was just hallucinations and paranoia.

I’ve never seen Below, but I want to now, because I just realized it’s the David Twohy submarine movie, and I have a lot of patience for David Twohy genre movies.

Strangely enough, it’s also a Darren Aronofsky script. Minor Aronofsky, but anyone who’s wasted time watching Noah might as well check out Below.

-Tom

Holy crap, I enjoyed something Darren Aronofsky was involved with. This is a red letter day!

It’s on the list!

I watched Await Further Instructions.
Don’t watch Await Further Instructions.

Oh that’s the one where they’re trapped in the house with the TV right? Yeah that’s not good.

That’s sat on my list for a while. I’ll scratch it off.