Last Movie Watched

Dog Soldiers gets a big thumbs up from me. Bleak, lean, and nasty. Fantastic cast.


Also! Literally sitting in the theatre after watching Shelby Oaks. Real genre hybrid: even saying what it’s drawing from would probably be spoilers. I dug it. Some of the subject matter is *rough*. Very reliant on the lead performance, which I thought was great.
 
Hot Take Time!

The only truly great film that also happens to fall under the "horror" genre is The Shining.
 
Love Dog Soldiers! I watched it on a projector in the woods on a camping trip last fall. Every time an acorn hit the ground I had to look around just to make sure I wasn't being stalked by a werewolf.

The Descent is also phenomenal, which reminds me I am due for a rewatch. It's been too long.
 
This weekend's programming includes finishing off my Pete Walker Horror collections, the original Chinese Ghost Story trilogy and watching the 1st season of Ash Vs Evil Dead with my sis. I introduced her to the Evil Dead films a couple weeks ago. She only slowly started to get back into Horror with the new Halloween films, but really hasn't watched a whole lot since we were kids a century ago :D It's fun experiencing this stuff through new eyes. Keep trying to get her to watch Godzilla Minus One, but something always gets in the way.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
The score absolutely fucks.
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My personal fave is this one, whch I have used in many a fight/chase scene when running ttrpgs:

TheSameIdiot said:
You're crazy for this one.
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I said what I said ;)
TheSameIdiot said:
Notably, we haven't seen Prince of Darkness or The Fog yet.
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Personally I think Prince of Darkness is massively underrated. On a level it's almost "what if Ghostbusters was actually a horror film" where a bunch of nerds try to science the devil.
TheSameIdiot said:
I haven't heard of this one, but The Descent is a top-three horror movie for me. I haven't seen any of Neil Marshall's other flicks, so I might have to give it a shot for that reason alone.
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You're in for a good time.
fac said:
The only truly great film that also happens to fall under the "horror" genre is The Shining.
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Surface of the sun level hot take, I'm not into Kubric. He makes beautiful pictures, but his cynicism coats every film of his I've seen. He films humans like they are insects.

Also this is blatant Alien erasure and I'll not stand for it!
 
AceofKnaves said:
Also! Literally sitting in the theatre after watching Shelby Oaks. Real genre hybrid: even saying what it’s drawing from would probably be spoilers. I dug it. Some of the subject matter is *rough*. Very reliant on the lead performance, which I thought was great.
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I should give that one a try. I've seen a few of Stuckman's youtube videos over the years and he seems like a sincere dude, s I'm happy he got to shoot his shot on something bigger. There's a few youtubers I follow that I want that for, and horror seems like a great genre for people to break in with.
 
Damien said:
Hotter take: I think The Shining is boring as fuck.
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Sigh....

JakeEkiss said:
Surface of the sun level hot take, I'm not into Kubric. He makes beautiful pictures, but his cynicism coats every film of his I've seen. He films humans like they are insects.
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I know that is a common Kubrick take, but I don't take his style as cynicism as much as he lets you, the viewer, decide how to react to the behavior you are seeing. I put forth "Paths of Glory" for this.

JakeEkiss said:
Also this is blatant Alien erasure and I'll not stand for it!
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Admittedly, this did come to my mind.

Felonious Monk said:
He meant the mini-series. :p
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Sigh....
 
fac said:
I know that is a common Kubrick take, but I don't take his style as cynicism as much as he lets you, the viewer, decide how to react to the behavior you are seeing. I put forth "Paths of Glory" for this.
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TBF, as I recall Kubric himself said Shining was his most optimistic work because "it assumes there's life after death". I think to say he's cynical isn't to say he's only cynical, but to recognize a definite trend in his thinking and artistic output. Sort of like how Clint Eastwood's work is often a catalog of his nostalgia for times that may not have ever existed. That's not all he is, but it's 100% there in the work.
fac said:
Admittedly, this did come to my mind.
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You're not totally lost then ;)
 
Ah, Ginger Snaps and Thirteen Ghosts (or Thir13en Ghosts, as the poster awfully stylizes it as). Ginger Snaps was, and is, one of my sister's favs growing up. We often had to rent movies from the library or buy in the bargain bin, and that's how she discovered that one. It's fine for what it is- a low-budget, shlocky, vageuely sapphic girl-power werewolf movie. Think I've only seen the sequels once, though, and they make the first look like a masterpiece.

13 Ghosts, while definitely falling into both campy and overly angsty early 00's shlock, fares better, in my opinion. That's one we'd watch every Halloween growing up. I still remember watching it some time in the winter for some reason, when stuck inside on a snow day, and watching the special feature of the backstory for all the ghosts. Man, we don't get special features like we used to. Supposedly they're making an anthology TV show about the different ghosts, but haven't heard anything on that in a while, so maybe it's canned. I'd still unironically take some figures from that movie.

Comfort movies/date night movies for the Halloween season? I'd say Scream, Trick r Treat, Hocus Pocus, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Crimson Peak too, as others have mentioned. They're not traditional spooky movies, but I also love watching the Del Toro Hellboy movies around this time.
 
I think Kubrick said stories with ghosts were by nature "optimistic" as it implies life after death is a thing.

I am a big Kubrick fan and think there is a moral/philosophical center and undercurrent to most of his films, but he tends to make it more observational, like a nature film showing how nature is cruel - the same event can be seen as a good day for the predator, bad day for the prey - kind of viewpoint.

Anyway, my point was more about the distinction between a "great film within a genre" and a "great film that is in a genre". I think there are many great horror films when isolating the genre, but only a few of the great horror films are great films in general....? (Probably could include some Hitchcock in the mix of great films in the horror genre, depending on how horror is defined...)
 
joshsquash729 said:
I'd say Scream, Trick r Treat, Hocus Pocus, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow.
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Scream and Sleepy Hollow I'd also go for. Trick R Treat didn't really do much for me.
fac said:
but he tends to make it more observational, like a nature film showing how nature is cruel
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Right, and that's what I mean when I say he films people like they are insects. It's as though his actors are subjects in a lab, and he's the scientist who is about to administer electric shocks. It's something that I wrestle with watching David Fincher as well, though I feel like Fincher's characters more often have a little more life behind the eyes, and that warms some of his cold observation in places.
fac said:
I think there are many great horror films when isolating the genre, but only a few of the great horror films are great films in general....?
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I think that's largely true of any genre, including basic drama, though I think there are definitely more great films that are horror than just Shining. Some of it also depends on where you draw the bounds of the edge of a genre, always a fuzzy subject. Is Silence of the Lambs horror, or thriller? Is Jaws truly "horror"? It's often listed as such, and by trope it's definitely a monster movie, but it's the best monster movie ever made because it's plausible.
 
Agreed about Jaws, or Silence of the Lambs, or even Psycho - where do they fall?

In terms of "Haunted House/Ghost story" supernatural type horror, which I would argue The Shining falls into, not sure what else is out there.
 
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