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.
I mean it starts out kind of interesting. A British take on the Get Out premise!
British guy brings his Indian girlfriend home for Christmas Eve to his total ultra-overt and completely racist anti-immgirant family…
I guess maybe not.
Tis looks intriguing.
12 seconds in and, stop, I’m sold. That looks awesome, thanks for the tip.
Phil Tippett is a Mad God.
Most recent horror film I watched was 2016’s Hounds of Love (more of a violent crime drama that serves the same purpose) about a serial killer couple in Australia. But… it’s fucking awful and I do not recommend it. It’s whole plot structure and approach is just like one of those countless and risible Lifetime made-for-TV movies (Television for Women) where the momma has to rescue her baby girl (adult woman actually) from the bad bad man/ex-bf/ex-husband, whatever, but with extra gore. No one behaves even remotely logically and all incidents in the film are designed to serve its contrived plot and not in the least bit believable way. Nicely acted though especially by the younger lead actress who looks like Jennifer Jason Leigh when she was that age. Even had the happy ending of a typical Lifetime movie. I half-expected Tori Spelling to show up and ask, “Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?”
Stay far far away from this one… unless of course you like LIfetime movies (Television For Women) in which case, I won’t judge you. Okay, yes, I will. But see The Devil All The Time with Jason Clarke and Riley Keough as a killer couple that will really give you the creeps instead of this crap.
I liked it too. It avoided the whole Marvel/DC capeshit thing with superheroes capering & flapping about in capes and rather nicely re-used the Monster From the Id idea from Forbidden Planet which you don’t see too often. Compared to toss like the last few X-Men movies it was a pleasant surprise.
Ok, I watched all three Fear Street movies. I enjoyed it overall, but I didn’t think it was great. The first two parts are just so… tropey. Every single thing that happened just reminded me of another movie that did the same thing. I think I remember reading here that people liked the third one least, but I thought the 1666 stuff was the most original part of the trilogy; and then when they get back to 1994 the mall fight was just really drawn out. I lost track of why the blood was important or why some particular person’s blood was important.
Also… I mean… some stuff was just so super dumb. The witch’s name is “Fier”, pronounced “Fear”. Really? And the guy named Goode is the Bad guy.. I mean, come on.
I don’t think they should have re-used all the actors from the first two parts for the 1666 part. It felt like a business decision rather than a creative one (we don’t have to go find more actors to hire!) I can totally figure out the parallels between the stories without using the same actors, and besides the two principals, there was no parallel anyway. It’s just confusing.
Anyway, for slasher-y entertainment it’s probably above average.
The witch being named Fier is like, the one thing that they directly imported from the books apparently.
I don’t normally care for “woman trapped in the basement” movies – it’s such a cheap trope – but I thought this one was well written and especially well acted. You’re not wrong that it has a Lifetime movie vibe, but you left out that it’s also very Australian.
And if there’s one thing that can salvage a Lifetime movie, it’s a bit of Australian nastiness. Hounds of Love has plenty of that. And such a strong cast, especially Emma Booth. She’s flat-out amazing in Hounds of Love. I would love for her career trajectory to break her out of Australian TV.
Yes, and…? :)
I mean, that was the entire point of the first two movies. They were 100% homages. But, yes, I can see how some people might not enjoy this as much as I did. They were tropey, but with some nice twists (the lesbian relationship, for instance).
Hey, they worked hard for that “Goode is Evil” reveal! And don’t tell me you didn’t spend all three movies racking your head wondering where you’ve seen that guy. (Spoiler: he was Sarah Snook’s love interest in Succession.) But I’m with you there. It got a little bit too YA for me at times, especially with that third movie.
-Tom
It took me 5 start/stop viewings to get through Hounds of Love because not only was it like a bad Lifetime movie, but it was utterly, utterly predictable and I knew almost exactly how it would end before the mid-point. Very little fun in watching a new movie that has its ending telegraphed like that and there’s absolutely no real sense that the girl is in danger and will die. Yes, the direction and the acting was very good, and it was actually far superior to most american horror films I see being produced today (another reason I was probably at least able to finish it… it didn’t look like it was shot on cheap digital video and acted by amateurs), but it wasn’t enough to save it. I typically love aussie horror but this was a real dog.
Something I saw in the same basic theme-category I did enjoy, however, was the 2016 english mini-series Thirteen with the brilliant Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) as the hapless victim who is abducted at 13, kept in a basement, and manages to escape at 26 . At least that felt mostly believable despite its thriller aspects and a few soap opera-esque family drama elements post-rescue that would do even Lifetime channel proud, but I still found her assimilation back into the real world and her family somewhat fascinating, even touching. Also, It had some psychological depth to it and why a victim may become attached to her tormentor over time. The depth in Hounds of Love was the serial killer wife shot in slow motion, swaying, and looking sad and angsty as Cat Stevens’ Lady d’Arbanville played on the soundtrack (did like the Joy Division song at the very end tho). Msg to anyone thinking of seeing this - avoid, avoid, avoid.
Wow. I had a very different reaction to Hounds of Love. That was one of the most harrowing and unpleasant viewing experiences I’ve had–and not negative way. I had an easier time making it through Salo.
i saw a few minutes of Fear Street but within the first few minutes they have a guy chasing a girl wearing a Scream costume and I lost most interest but did stick around for the witch episode which was moderately clever, using an idea I saw in a old nu-Twilight Zone episode (no, not the grotesquely bad Jordan Peele variation) but not enough to hold my interest so I switched off.
It probably didn’t help that I had watched the new American Horror Stories (anthology with self-contained hour long episodes instead of seasonal switching of premises) and it was the worst thing I ever saw in horror television so I was not in the best mood to enjoy Fear Street. Why am I watching Ryan Murphy-produced garbage after so many consecutive fails with American Horror Story??? I can’t even answer that question myself. Maybe it’s because the first two seasons of AHS were so good a naive, little boy part of me thought, “MAKE AMERICAN HORROR STORY GREAT AGAIN, RYAN! YOU CAN DO IT!” (He didn’t). Or maybe I’m just insane; or as Einstein once said (apocryphally): “Insanity is doing the same exact thing over and over again, and expecting a different result each time.” So I watched AHS, season after season, expecting a different result each time. Goodnight, Tom. Goodnight, quartertothree. Goodnight, america.
In a Glass Cage was the one I found the roughest and most depressing, made even more hideous by the fact that it was so beautifully directed, produced and acted. Salo isn’t bad at all once you know ahead of time that those were delicious, custom-made, specially molded, high quality Italian chocolates. Hell, even my sister watched that and shrugged, “Hmm, this isn’t that bad at all. What’s wrong with you, little brother, trying to scare me into thinking it’s going to be the most awful thing ever?!”
It’s just a skeleton costume. it definitely does remind one of Scream, and that’s probably intentional, but it’s not the Ghostface mask from Scream.
Yep, that was my experience as well. When Australian horror wants to punch you in the gut, it has no reservations about punching you in the gut. Which is another reason that Texas Chain Saw Massacre reminded me of the Australian horror it would inspire. American horror stupidly decided Texas Chain Saw Massacre was a fun romp about killing teenagers. Australian horror movies correctly noticed that Texas Chain Saw Massacre was about horrible things happening in a world gone wrong. Hounds of Love included.
-Tom
Probably? I’m pretty sure a Scream-ish mask in 1994 is as intentional as an axe murderer at a summer camp in 1978. :) But, yes, as you note and @rez apparently missed, they’re not the exact same. Fear Street falls under the rubric of “homage” without getting into legal trouble.
-Tom
It’s extremely likely. But without a hard and fast statement from the creators saying so, I leave a little room for doubt. :P