Excellent Horror Films

InkWeaver wrote:

Also: Fuck Wolf Creek. I'm tired of shit-for-brains protagonists and sick fucker rapist villains. Been done. Been done a million times. Fuck the makers of that movie.

Totally disagree, since the villain was based on a real serial killer, and I didn't think that the characters in Wolf Creek were total morons, just average folks who didn't really have what it took to fight back effectively.

But to each their own, different strokes and all that. It's certainly a movie that you either love or hate.

Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone are two great blendings of horror and other genres, particularly fantasy and drama, by Guillermo Del Toro. Devil's Backbone I'd especially recommend, since it's comparatively lesser-known than Pan's Labyrinth.

Miraba wrote:

Which of these would people recommend for someone who gets squeamish easily? I love good tense movies, but I feel faint even when I have blood drawn.

The 1978 Halloween has surprisingly little blood in it.

Miss Misery wrote:

Miraba wrote:

Which of these would people recommend for someone who gets squeamish easily? I love good tense movies, but I feel faint even when I have blood drawn.

The 1978 Halloween has surprisingly little blood in it.

Yeah, and also the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I've been seeing a lot of good horror movies lately. A lot of bad ones, too, but.

How has no one mentioned Jacob's Ladder yet. I can't pick a favorite band, favorite book, or favorite game, but Jacob's Ladder is my favorite movie hands-down. It's the only movie that can genuinely unnerve me if I think about it late at night ("Dream on..."). It's the granddaddy of Silent Hill and the mother of the head-twitch we see so shamefully ripped off in just about every movie these days. It IS psychological horror. Just. Fucking. Watch it. And get the DVD, the deleted scenes are well worth it.

Likewise, Eraserhead. 'Nuff said.

Family was excellent, darkly humorous and with a satisfying ending I didn't see coming. Also fairly short if you want a quick take.

Creep was surprisingly good--it was one of the movies my sister and I rented and started snarking, then went entirely quiet during by unspoken mutual agreement because we were both so impressed and freaked out. I was honestly squirming during one particular scene (you'll know which one when you see it, it involves medical tools), and that is not common for me.

Isolation. Was. Beautiful. Aside from doing just about everything right re: acting, directing, the usual shit, the monster is built with love, devotion, and uncanny insight into primal and body horror. The monster is also a cow fetus, but it's decidedly less funny than it sounds. The cows themselves teach a nice lesson to city-dwellers about how frightening a large animal in pain can be.

To quote my sister on everything you need to know about Undead...

Quote :

Ridiculous gunfights and stunts that you will simultaneously disbelieve and desperately wish to reenact!

Nudist aliens!

Wacky zombie gore with hilarious disregard for the laws of physics!

Undead fish attack!

Why aren’t you watching this movie yet??!

(Note: Filmed partly in yellow-filter and mostly in blue-filter, but if you’re
not used to tuning out monochrome what kind of b-movie fan are you
pretending to be, buster?)

Likewise, Feast is one for the fans--aside from being a solid survival movie, it indulges in fourth-wall breaking humor, including a quick list of stats to introduce each character (THE HERO: Gender: Female; Age: 27; Life Expectancy: Let's hope for the best).

And for our foreign film friends...

The Ring probably shouldn't count, but it really is the one decent Asian film adaptation you're going to find. It's very different from Ringu, but not entirely in a bad way, for once. Overhyped, but still worth the look.

I'm in love with Re-Cycle, I really am. The Pang Brothers films are kind of hit-or-miss, but this was hit, hit, hit. Instead of being straight horror, it's a dark fantasy movie, with the lead, a female author, becoming trapped in the world where all lost things go (Unico in the Isle of Magic much?). This includes ideas--along with the forgotten dead, broken toys, and lost memories, her discarded rough drafts are there, and they'd like to have a word with her. If that doesn't tickle the fancies of our resident writers, I don't know what will. There's also...this one scene...it simply can't be spoiled because of the sheer magnitude of feeling you get when you realize what's going on, but unconvinced readers ONLY may have a hint:

Spoiler:

Gaaaah, I watch too many horror movies. More later.

P.S.: The Descent was horrible. I mean, really, TRULY godawful. I hated every character in that movie. Seriously, I don't know what people see in it.

Delcat wrote:

...Jacob's Ladder...

Likewise, Eraserhead. 'Nuff said.

YES. I also somewhat recommend Begotten if you like those. It's compared to Eraserhead a lot. It's basically a 90-minute version of the evil video from The Ring, with added symbolism being that it's supposed to be a loose retelling of the Bible. Really creepy, despite being a little pretentious as well.

I just saw Låt Den Rätte Komme In.

HOLY SHIT MAN.

This movie is so ridiculously beautiful. Has anyone written about it in relation to queer theory yet? Because that right there is just a banquet for the minions of Judith Butler.

See, Eugene? You can trust me. I wouldn't steer you wrong.

War-Horror movies for those who like the genre - they may not be the best ever made, but they fill an evening nicely:

Dog Soldiers : a group of soldiers on a training exercise in Scotland are left in the woods for the night. They come across rather hostile beasties.

Deathwatch : low budget horror movie that takes place during WW1. A group of British soldiers get lost during an attack and find a German trench. All but one of the Germans are dead, but they can only communicate with the survivor by one of their own, in French, and the German soldier tells them they won't like it here.

The Outpost: another small budget British movie. We follow a group of mercernaries who are hired on false pretences to accompany and protect a scientist in search of something in an abandoned Nazi bunker in Eastern Europe.

Malganis wrote:

Devil's Backbone I'd especially recommend, since it's comparatively lesser-known than Pan's Labyrinth.

I second El espinazo del diablo. It's gloomy, spellbinding and very creepy. See it in Spanish, the actors are great.

Delcat wrote:

Creep was surprisingly good--it was one of the movies my sister and I rented and started snarking, then went entirely quiet during by unspoken mutual agreement because we were both so impressed and freaked out. I was honestly squirming during one particular scene (you'll know which one when you see it, it involves medical tools), and that is not common for me.

I was really disappointed by that one, myself. The villain, while gifted with a cool monster design (plus, I loved the subway tunnel setting, and I generally like "villain/antagonist is horribly isolated for years upon years" scenarios in horror) just didn't make much sense to me (how did he survive so long?). I just thought the idea that

Spoiler:

Delcat wrote:

P.S.: The Descent was horrible. I mean, really, TRULY godawful. I hated every character in that movie. Seriously, I don't know what people see in it.

Well, you know, people do have different opinions on trivial crap. YMMV and all that. I personally loved the crawlers and thought they were the best and most intriguing part of the film. Set design and cinematography were uniformly gorgeous and well-done despite the film's small budget. And the humans had more character depth and development than your average horror film cast has.

Pontypool is completely brilliant and underrated. I watched it on Canada Air and was captivated throughout the entire movie. It's about a disease that travels through the English language causing the infected to repeat a word over and over again. After the first stage of the virus sets in, infected people begin to parrot things that are said to them or that they hear while searching for a victim to victim often in large victim while victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim victim...

O-oh God D: I'm going to watch it and hate myself for it--mental palilalia is one of my OCD symptoms that starts when I think of it and is more or less uncontrollable for as long as I'm aware of it. I'M GOING TO GET THE FUCKING DISEASE.

eugenetapdance wrote:

I just saw Låt Den Rätte Komme In.

HOLY SHIT MAN.

This movie is so ridiculously beautiful.

Yessssss!!! I'm so eager to get my hands on the book sometime, I just need to be able to throw around my saved money first.

Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2. Pinhead wasn't really the villain, he was more a guy doing a job that involved killing people as slowly as possible, then taking them to Hell and doing it some more (and he enjoyed it). Julia and Frank were the real villains. And Doctor Channard as well in the second one.

If you like blood, those two have got it all over the place. And I mean ALL OVER.

It's a weird kinda plot; half the time you're waiting for something to happen while people talk about nothing in particular, and the other half of the time, it's happening.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2. Pinhead wasn't really the villain, he was more a guy doing a job that involved killing people as slowly as possible, then taking them to Hell and doing it some more (and he enjoyed it). Julia and Frank were the real villains. And Doctor Channard as well in the second one.

If you like blood, those two have got it all over the place. And I mean ALL OVER.

It's a weird kinda plot; half the time you're waiting for something to happen while people talk about nothing in particular, and the other half of the time, it's happening.

I adore the first two. The third one is embarrassingly bad, and even worse that it was mostly filmed in my old hometown in North Carolina (seriously, I used to pass the church from near the end every day - the reason they let the Hollywood people come in, film an extremely blasphemous scene and then blow up the back window of the church was because they needed money badly) so I have a little shame from that.

The fourth one was a fucking mess, no thanks to the studio. If they'd just gone with what the director had originally handed them, it could have been great... but no, they had to rape it to death and plop its blood-and-semen-encrusted corpse down onto the moviegoing public.

I actually quite liked the fifth one. It was an interesting psychological horror flick along the lines of The Shining or Jacob's Lader, both of which I love. Props for trying to go back to the style of the first two and kicking the "Pinhead is a generic slasher villain" crap.

The sixth one wasn't bad, but was too much a retread of the fifth one.

I haven't watched the 7th or 8th, and don't really want to - from what I hear, they weren't even written to be Hellraiser movies, but just generic slasher flicks, and had Pinhead and the Cenobites dumped into them at the eleventh hour because it would be more profitable. That sounds downright painful.

Quote :

Deathwatch : low budget horror movie that takes place during WW1. A group of British soldiers get lost during an attack and find a German trench. All but one of the Germans are dead, but they can only communicate with the survivor by one of their own, in French, and the German soldier tells them they won't like it here.

Oh god. That movie still gives me nightmares.

Those fucking rats! *curls up into a ball rocking back and forth*