Yeah, I felt similarly. Nothing much happens, creepy or otherwise. And then it just kinda ends. I don’t think I quite interpreted the ending the way you did but ultimately either way it was not worth the time spent getting there.
This finally arrived and holy shit is it bad. Everything is ADRed up the wazoo. The script is hilariously awful (“Have you ever seen two chips fucking?”) and the plot is, well, next level bonkers. It’s bizarre seeing such a nominally strong cast in something so terrible in every other way. Highly recommended.
OMG. I turned on the TV this morning, and Margaux was on. It was right at the part when the one influencer gal trips on a lock of hair and breaks her neck. I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be funny or not.
Keep Watching (2017) was last night’s stupidity. It’s a home invasion movie, but the twist is that the invaders have snuck into the house beforehand and set up a zillion tiny hidden cameras everywhere to livestream the entertainment. Do you like watching scenes where half the shot is a blurry table lamp or other tchotchke in the foreground? That’s what this movie is. Also, a lot of following Bella Thorne around as she acts badly. Ioan Gruffudd (Mr. Fantastic in the Fox-made Fantastic Four movies) has the good sense to bow out of the movie early by being the first to get killed.
This is one of those movies that thinks it’s being clever in trying to tut-tut the viewers while making the assertion that by watching this you too are just like the in-movie audience watching the killings. Genius! No one has ever skewered audience participation and complicity in horror movies before! Blech.
I’ll spoil the ending because fuck this movie. The killers are survivors of a previous home invasion who themselves were forced to become killers by some dudes in charge. Now, Bella Thorne must kill the next family or her brother dies. The cycle of horror continues and you people watching the movie are part of the problem! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!
I’m trying to imagine deliberately making a movie and making this sort of point post Cabin in the Woods. The odds of doing anything other than making yourself look stupid are miniscule.
My wife asked about Cabin in the Woods last night. I know she’s seen it and just doesn’t remember it, but it’s been long enough that I’m down for a rewatch of that this weekend.
We watched “This place rules” last night, which is a different kind of horror. Andrew Callaghan really knows how to sample from the tails of the distribution.
Cabin the Woods was terrific, but the concept of telling a horror movie audience that they too are participating in the horror by voyeuristically watching the movie goes as far back as Peeping Tom (1960). Keep Watching isn’t even on the level of Friday the 13th’s killer POV shots.
I’ve tried 3 times now in the last few months to make it all the way through Halloween Kills, its such a dumb movie.
:(
Oh I know. It’s just that Cabin is such a brilliant deconstruction that I think it’s sort of definitive for this sort of thing.
Well Shaft is dumber, but in a fun way. TBH I think the Wrong Turn reboot is dumb the way/at the level Halloween Kills is (e.g. no fun at all, nonsensical and even offensive to people who can employ reason and logic; where Halloween Kills has a small leg up that it takes established characters from two previous movies and just sort of tosses them out for “TITTIES” and the least good love story ever).
Safer at Home (2022) - The movie starts with a still image of President Trump and a news voice recapping the start of the pandemic which is some choice. See, in this movie’s world, Covid lockdown got worse and everyone had to go into quarantine with a martial law enforced curfew. A group of friends decide to have a Zoom party with drugs bought from a sketchy source and one of them (accidentally maybe) kills their roommate. What follows is 80 minutes of the worst friends on Earth not calling the cops, insisting on remaining on Zoom, and encouraging fleeing from a crime scene. It’s ultra dumb and annoying. The movie ends with more Trump news footage.
Grave Encounters 2 ok what if Grave Encounters was a movie in this universe (yes, having been based on a web series or whatever), except it turns out that it was real and the producer dude just did some editing and released it after he got the tapes I can’t recall how. This is what Ben Harmon, Riley from Letterkenny, and some other future victims discover when self absorbed yet awkward student director (Harmon) drags the main pieces of his student film (a shockingly rote slasher thriller from a guy who spents a bit of time early in the movie pontificating on how garbage modern horror is) on an adventure to go to the place where Grave Encounters was shot.
It’s not good.
Bad things happen, of course. I may be forgetting swaths of Grave Encounters but this one gets a bit goofy. At one point the 3 mains (Harmon, Riley, and the gal) escape the site and spend like ten minutes back in their hotel preparing to just get the fuck out of dodge only to find themselves “fooled” by the hospital and back inside. I don’t remember anything like that from the first. The host of the show GE shows back up clearly insane and well fed on a diet of rats. Also it’s not clear to me why you need earthly agents to kill people when you can just make spirits and invisible ghosts and shit do it for you. Also did the first do a thing where ghosts where carrying cameras around to film shit half the time? I can’t remember.
Harmon “survives” so he can release Grave Encounters 2 with the producer dude.
Burial yeah so this is a Shudder movie and Amazon said it was horror: allied soliders carrying Hitler’s body back to Russia so Stalin can see it get ambushed by Nazi Werewolves. Unfortunately, despite a quasi fake out early, this turns out to mean “the guerrilla forces called Werewolves” and not “literal werewolves”. It’s not scary, or especially interesting. Tom Felton and Charlotte Vega pass the time dutifully.
So I saw this trailer a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
The film is not, strictly speaking, out yet. But it’s been widely pirated since it’s went over big at Fantasia Fest, and I had to see it. It fulfilled most of my expectations for being pretty much trapped in a two-hour childhood night terror, though it does take about 15 minutes of running time to get in sync with something this slow-paced.
It’s coming to Shudder later this year. I’m excited to see how divisive this one is gonna be.
That sounds horrible. I’ll probably love it. Movies like 'The Babadook" scare the *&$% out of me.
I liked this one, but it’s not a horror movie, despite the way it markets itself. However, I understand why they made that choice, because you really do need to go into it blind. I posted some frames on the 20:20 thread, and described it as “[a film that pretends to be] a creepypasta found footage horror film, but is really an examination of loneliness, connection, and unreliable narrators in the Internet age.” A solid 2.5 stars out of 5, and I wouldn’t watch it again, but I’ve thought about it a fair amount since I first saw it. Like @malkav11, though, I don’t interpret the ending the way you did.
I may have checked out by the ending. I was so annoyed with the main character that I had a difficult time giving a crap.
You may or may not love Skinamarink, but be warned it’s nothing like The Babadook. Or any other movie for that matter.
The trailer got to me pretty well, the 70s quality and voiceover pushed a lot of childhood buttons. Pass!
I started watching it; low, carpet shot…
Nope… f**& this
(god why must I torment myself)
There’s now a separate Skinamarink thread, since it seems to warrant its own discussion as an upcoming theatrical and streaming release.
I haven’t found a firm date for Skinamarink’s streaming release but I am looking forward to it.
I didn’t pay attention at first because January, but man M3gan is doing well in reviews.
Both of those are on my radar to watch as soon as they are on a streaming service.