The Horror Thread II: The Return

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  • In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter's last great film in my opinion. It's about a fictional Stephen King named Sutter Cane whose disappearance Sam Neill has to investigate. I won't say anymore, but it definitely has strong Lovecraftian influence.

    Event Horizon doesn't exactly feel Lovecraftian but goes in for its own kind of cosmic horror nevertheless. It's a pretty chilling film actually. I think it's probably Paul W.S. Anderson's best crafted film.

    Come to think of it, Possession contains its own Lovecraftian monster too, haha. But it's also just very weird in very many other ways.
  • Posts: 6,728
    Happy Halloween! I'll be watching Spectre tonight; fun costumes, and some of the creative decisions... downright terrifying. ;)
    If any of these classic Sam Neill horror films that I've never seen but really want to suddenly become available for streaming:
    • Event Horizon
    • In The Mouth Of Madness
    • Possession
    Then I might watch one of those instead.

    You'll probably have the most fun with one of the first two...and the most pure outright horror with the third. All great choices though. Spectre of course is quite appropriate for the eve of Dios de los Muertos.

    Thanks for the info! The first two are the only ones I'm really interested in anyways... I was just surprised that Sam Neill horror films I'd never heard of kept cropping up!

    He also did the vampire sci-fi flick Daybreakers and, while I haven't seen it, a horror-thriller with Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane called Dead Calm. Since I'd always known him simply from Jurassic Park, I too was surprised to find he had such an affinity for starring in horror.

    'Dead Calm' is a splendid thriller. Kidman is marvellous in it, and tautly directed by Philip Noyce!
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,009
    Dead Calm is great.

    Daybreakers is also a good little film. Made for next to nothing and manages to look great, too:

  • ProfJoeButcherProfJoeButcher Bless your heart
    edited November 2022 Posts: 1,665
    My movie club had our annual horror marathon last weekend, and we had a pretty nice variety this time, though a couple entries might not be strictly horror:

    Freaks (1932)
    Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
    The Freakmaker (1974)
    Phenomena (1985)
    House (1977)
    The Crazies (2010)
    Cemetery Man (1994)
    The Wicker Man (2006)
    Kwaidan (1964)

    Now, a couple of these are rather mediocre (Henry, The Crazies), and Cemetery Man was just god-awful (Rupert Everett acting like Jarvis Cocker in what feels like Croupier with zombies), but there were some nice surprises. House, by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, is simply marvelous. It's funny, sentimental, and has actual moments of absurd horror. And it looks like it was made in the 1990s or something. It's way ahead of its time. You have to see it. The YouTube trailer is lower quality than the Bluray though.

    The other Japanese film, Kwaidan, was also a nice surprise. It's a four-part anthology film that runs three hours and is slow as molasses, but it looks and sounds gorgeous and lingers in your mind for days.

    The Wicker Man remake turned out to be just fine. It's not any ropier than the extremely ropey original, and Nicolas Cage, as usual, turns in a memorable and original performance. He's certainly more likeable than Edward Woodward's character was, and it seems clear to me that 100% of the humor in this remake is intentional. I think the internet just finds out-of-context Cage to be funny.

    Freaks isn't horror, of course, but it is horror adjacent, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how sympathetic the film is to its subjects. I don't think there was any moment in the movie where I thought, 'You'd never get away with that nowadays', and that's pretty unusual for a 1932 film, and especially one with this subject matter.
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,009
    I really enjoyed The Crazies remake. It holds its own against the original.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    I really enjoyed The Crazies remake. It holds its own against the original.

    Agreed. It was the first film I saw at my local Alamo Drafthouse and I had a blast with it. Olyphant was great, he's one of my favorite underappreciated actors.
  • ProfJoeButcherProfJoeButcher Bless your heart
    Posts: 1,665
    Creasy47 wrote: »
    I really enjoyed The Crazies remake. It holds its own against the original.

    Agreed. It was the first film I saw at my local Alamo Drafthouse and I had a blast with it. Olyphant was great, he's one of my favorite underappreciated actors.

    Olyphant was definitely the best thing going in that movie. He was wonderful. But I don't think I felt any suspense at any point, and the constant cheap, score-assisted jump scares didn't get me either.

    A lot of the writing was pretty janky too--Olyphant seems to figure out that a disease is making people crazy, and is then completely bewildered to find people in gas masks putting the town in quarantine. And of course, when one of the heroes gets the crazy virus, it affects him differently so he can briefly recover for a heroic death. Meh.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    Creasy47 wrote: »
    I really enjoyed The Crazies remake. It holds its own against the original.

    Agreed. It was the first film I saw at my local Alamo Drafthouse and I had a blast with it. Olyphant was great, he's one of my favorite underappreciated actors.

    Olyphant was definitely the best thing going in that movie. He was wonderful. But I don't think I felt any suspense at any point, and the constant cheap, score-assisted jump scares didn't get me either.

    A lot of the writing was pretty janky too--Olyphant seems to figure out that a disease is making people crazy, and is then completely bewildered to find people in gas masks putting the town in quarantine. And of course, when one of the heroes gets the crazy virus, it affects him differently so he can briefly recover for a heroic death. Meh.

    Granted, I've not seen it in ages, so you're probably right on those score-assisted jump scares. They're so prominent anymore. I've been checking out the Conjuring universe in full with my girlfriend and it's stunning just how much heightened score there is, followed by complete silence for a second or two and then a really obvious jump scare. They couldn't reveal their hand any more obviously. It's disappointing to see employed so often.

    And yes, lots of tropes and ham-fisted revelations throughout but the atmosphere and pacing kept me locked in. I dug the brutal ending too.
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,009
    Creasy47 wrote: »
    I really enjoyed The Crazies remake. It holds its own against the original.

    Agreed. It was the first film I saw at my local Alamo Drafthouse and I had a blast with it. Olyphant was great, he's one of my favorite underappreciated actors.

    It's always a bonus when he turns up in something.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    Creasy47 wrote: »
    I really enjoyed The Crazies remake. It holds its own against the original.

    Agreed. It was the first film I saw at my local Alamo Drafthouse and I had a blast with it. Olyphant was great, he's one of my favorite underappreciated actors.

    It's always a bonus when he turns up in something.

    It really is. Seems he's been popping up more and more in the last 5-6 years and I'm loving that fact. Deadwood is my all time favorite TV series so seeing any major player from that show get more work makes me happy.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter's last great film in my opinion. It's about a fictional Stephen King named Sutter Cane whose disappearance Sam Neill has to investigate. I won't say anymore, but it definitely has strong Lovecraftian influence.

    Event Horizon doesn't exactly feel Lovecraftian but goes in for its own kind of cosmic horror nevertheless. It's a pretty chilling film actually. I think it's probably Paul W.S. Anderson's best crafted film.

    Come to think of it, Possession contains its own Lovecraftian monster too, haha. But it's also just very weird in very many other ways.

    It's a solid film, but it could have been better. I'm confident that Carpenter could have pulled off a great--not just good--Lovecraftian horror flick. But he wasn't at his strongest anymore, and budgets dry up fast when you've suffered a few misses. Poor guy. I practically worship the man, but he was always several steps ahead of critics and general audiences, and that came at a tremendous cost. Remember that idiot critics called him a "pornographer of violence" at the time of the release of The Thing. And such damnation had a huge (negative) impact on his career.
  • edited November 2022 Posts: 6,844
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter's last great film in my opinion. It's about a fictional Stephen King named Sutter Cane whose disappearance Sam Neill has to investigate. I won't say anymore, but it definitely has strong Lovecraftian influence.

    Event Horizon doesn't exactly feel Lovecraftian but goes in for its own kind of cosmic horror nevertheless. It's a pretty chilling film actually. I think it's probably Paul W.S. Anderson's best crafted film.

    Come to think of it, Possession contains its own Lovecraftian monster too, haha. But it's also just very weird in very many other ways.

    It's a solid film, but it could have been better. I'm confident that Carpenter could have pulled off a great--not just good--Lovecraftian horror flick. But he wasn't at his strongest anymore, and budgets dry up fast when you've suffered a few misses. Poor guy. I practically worship the man, but he was always several steps ahead of critics and general audiences, and that came at a tremendous cost. Remember that idiot critics called him a "pornographer of violence" at the time of the release of The Thing. And such damnation had a huge (negative) impact on his career.

    Yeah, it seems Carpenter was always battling the studios for better budgets, and as you say, the fact his films were 30 years ahead of their time and didn't have the audiences then that they have today didn't help him any. I do think he lost his way creatively around the late 80s/early 90s, but in Mouth of Madness you still see his creativity firing on all cylinders. The closest we ever got to an all-out Lovecraft film from Carpenter is The Thing itself, and that's rightfully regarded as his greatest achievement.


    Mathis1 wrote: »
    Happy Halloween! I'll be watching Spectre tonight; fun costumes, and some of the creative decisions... downright terrifying. ;)
    If any of these classic Sam Neill horror films that I've never seen but really want to suddenly become available for streaming:
    • Event Horizon
    • In The Mouth Of Madness
    • Possession
    Then I might watch one of those instead.

    You'll probably have the most fun with one of the first two...and the most pure outright horror with the third. All great choices though. Spectre of course is quite appropriate for the eve of Dios de los Muertos.

    Thanks for the info! The first two are the only ones I'm really interested in anyways... I was just surprised that Sam Neill horror films I'd never heard of kept cropping up!

    He also did the vampire sci-fi flick Daybreakers and, while I haven't seen it, a horror-thriller with Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane called Dead Calm. Since I'd always known him simply from Jurassic Park, I too was surprised to find he had such an affinity for starring in horror.

    'Dead Calm' is a splendid thriller. Kidman is marvellous in it, and tautly directed by Philip Noyce!

    Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely check that one out. Hard to go wrong with that cast!

    House, by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, is simply marvelous. It's funny, sentimental, and has actual moments of absurd horror. And it looks like it was made in the 1990s or something. It's way ahead of its time. You have to see it.

    Hausu is certainly bonkers. A predecessor to the zany, special effects-driven, anything-goes horror-comedy of types like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter's last great film in my opinion. It's about a fictional Stephen King named Sutter Cane whose disappearance Sam Neill has to investigate. I won't say anymore, but it definitely has strong Lovecraftian influence.

    Event Horizon doesn't exactly feel Lovecraftian but goes in for its own kind of cosmic horror nevertheless. It's a pretty chilling film actually. I think it's probably Paul W.S. Anderson's best crafted film.

    Come to think of it, Possession contains its own Lovecraftian monster too, haha. But it's also just very weird in very many other ways.

    It's a solid film, but it could have been better. I'm confident that Carpenter could have pulled off a great--not just good--Lovecraftian horror flick. But he wasn't at his strongest anymore, and budgets dry up fast when you've suffered a few misses. Poor guy. I practically worship the man, but he was always several steps ahead of critics and general audiences, and that came at a tremendous cost. Remember that idiot critics called him a "pornographer of violence" at the time of the release of The Thing. And such damnation had a huge (negative) impact on his career.

    Yeah, it seems Carpenter was always battling the studios for better budgets, and as you say, the fact his films were 30 years ahead of their time and didn't have the audiences then that they have today didn't help him any. I do think he lost his way creatively around the late 80s/early 90s, but in Mouth of Madness you still see his creativity firing on all cylinders. The closest we ever got to an all-out Lovecraft film from Carpenter is The Thing itself, and that's rightfully regarded as his greatest achievement.

    Indeed. It's a good place to start a Mountains Of Madness vibe. I also appreciate Prince Of Darkness as an excellent Lovecraftian adventure. Another underrated Carpenter film IMO. And The Fog has a good Innsmouth vibe to it.
  • edited November 2022 Posts: 6,844
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter's last great film in my opinion. It's about a fictional Stephen King named Sutter Cane whose disappearance Sam Neill has to investigate. I won't say anymore, but it definitely has strong Lovecraftian influence.

    Event Horizon doesn't exactly feel Lovecraftian but goes in for its own kind of cosmic horror nevertheless. It's a pretty chilling film actually. I think it's probably Paul W.S. Anderson's best crafted film.

    Come to think of it, Possession contains its own Lovecraftian monster too, haha. But it's also just very weird in very many other ways.

    It's a solid film, but it could have been better. I'm confident that Carpenter could have pulled off a great--not just good--Lovecraftian horror flick. But he wasn't at his strongest anymore, and budgets dry up fast when you've suffered a few misses. Poor guy. I practically worship the man, but he was always several steps ahead of critics and general audiences, and that came at a tremendous cost. Remember that idiot critics called him a "pornographer of violence" at the time of the release of The Thing. And such damnation had a huge (negative) impact on his career.

    Yeah, it seems Carpenter was always battling the studios for better budgets, and as you say, the fact his films were 30 years ahead of their time and didn't have the audiences then that they have today didn't help him any. I do think he lost his way creatively around the late 80s/early 90s, but in Mouth of Madness you still see his creativity firing on all cylinders. The closest we ever got to an all-out Lovecraft film from Carpenter is The Thing itself, and that's rightfully regarded as his greatest achievement.

    Indeed. It's a good place to start a Mountains Of Madness vibe. I also appreciate Prince Of Darkness as an excellent Lovecraftian adventure. Another underrated Carpenter film IMO. And The Fog has a good Innsmouth vibe to it.

    The Thing was actually based on the 1930s short story "Who Goes There?" which itself was heavily inspired by At the Mountains of Madness, so the Lovecraft influence is built in!

    You're very right about the Innsmouth vibes in The Fog and the otherworldly horrors stepping freely into our reality in Prince of Darkness. The latter is one I'm still warming to, but there's undeniably a lot of greatness from Carpenter in it and it's certainly one of his most chilling, most foreboding soundtracks.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,000
    I’m not always on the same wavelength as these guys, but I am as far as HALLOWEEN ENDS is concerned. I very much appreciate that the film tries to do something different while staying true to the idea of evil being elusive.



    Also agree with the shout out to that wonderful ending of HALLOWEEN 4.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    It's appreciated but still an attempt that fell horribly flat. The final film of a trilogy, one that's concluding a storyline that's been running for over 40 years, is not the time for shaking up the formula and trying something new.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,000
    After 12 films, I welcome shaking up the formula and trying something new. If I didn’t want that, I’d watch something generic like H20.
  • Posts: 9,738
    I loved Halloween 6 the producer cut watched it at halloween
  • I've never seen that version. I'd like to though. The theatrical edit definitely feels like there are things missing.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    edited November 2022 Posts: 8,000
    I’ve only seen the theatrical cut, but I remember thinking during the film that it felt like the least connected to the original film in terms of tone and style. It feels like the most 90s movie that ever 90s, before they tried to turn H20 into a SCREAM film.

  • I don't think any of the post-80s Halloween films have come close to the tone, style, or atmosphere of the original. Maybe the second half of Rob Zombie's first one, but the first half of that film was about as far from the spirit of Halloween as you can get.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    After 12 films, I welcome shaking up the formula and trying something new. If I didn’t want that, I’d watch something generic like H20.

    The preceding film count is irrelevant though when you're trying "something new" at the end of a trilogy like that. Hell, they could've even gone with something entirely fresh in the first installment of the new trilogy, but the final one? The one marketed as the conclusion of a decades-long story that only delivers in that department in the final 10-15 minutes? It's clear though that they had absolutely no concrete plan or outline from the start so it doesn't surprise me.
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    edited November 2022 Posts: 8,009
    Creasy47 wrote: »
    It's clear though that they had absolutely no concrete plan or outline from the start so it doesn't surprise me.

    I think they had a plan - they pitched the entire trilogy back in 2018 as three films over one night. For some reason, they completely changed the plan for the final film.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    Creasy47 wrote: »
    It's clear though that they had absolutely no concrete plan or outline from the start so it doesn't surprise me.

    I think they had a plan - they pitched the entire trilogy back in 2018 as three films over one night. For some reason, they completely changed the plan for the final film.

    At least with this last one, it felt like it was unnecessarily extended into a trilogy, given the heavy focus on a brand new character for 80% of the film. It sounds like DGG and co. were constantly course-correcting and changing their big ideas as it all went along. I admire the attempts but the trilogy as a whole is so messy and tonally inconsistent. I was so hopeful it'd be way better and end on a high note at least.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,000
    I think of each of installments trying to be its own thing in this trilogy. H18 is basically the TFA of the new trilogy, where it hits and twists all the familiar beats of the original. It’s a pure unadulterated slasher, done well. Then KILLS shifts gears by focusing on how the town reacts to the killings and the damage that causes. Finally, ENDS shifts gears again by showing how the town’s unresolved issues with Michael Myers pushes a well meaning person’s anger, boiling to the point that the evil, whether awakened or transferred to him by Michael, destroys him and others.

    Is any of this all planned out? I don’t really care. The original Star Wars trilogy never was, and that doesn’t dilute that. Ultimately, I feel they all compliment each other in various ways. Like how Ally is temped to “burn this town” with Corey, as if they’re Bonnie and Clyde, which she costumed as for H18. That put me on the edge wondering if she would actually kill with Corey and we see that turn take place, and where that might impact Laurie.

    I didn’t need the entire film to focus on Michael and Laurie, because I think we already had that with H18 which would have just as served well as the final confrontation between the two. It’s just that we got two extra films after.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    They would've done well in marketing it better or something then. No sense playing up the "final showdown" of Michael and Laurie this year if we really only got that in the first film and sprinklings of it in the third one's finale, dedicating a majority of the runtime to someone we've never even seen.

    Regardless, these films had way more issues than narrative cohesion and the timely injection of new, fresh ideas, so it doesn't make much of a difference in the end to me.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,000
    Maybe it helps that I didn’t pay attention to any of the marketing surrounding ENDS. I stopped watching trailers online in favor of catching them in theater, and none of the screenings I went to this year featured any trailers for ENDS. I went in pretty cold, with my only knowledge that it would be set 4 years after KILLS.

    I did get spoiled about Michael not appearing until about 40 minutes into the movie, so that at least set my expectations to this installment being atypical at best.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    I did the same thing but I caught a couple streaming ads in the week or two leading up to its release that were very heavily leaning into this "final showdown." Sadly, those TV spots and whatnot are usually the most revealing too.
  • MakeshiftPythonMakeshiftPython “Baja?!”
    Posts: 8,000
    I just watched the trailer. Poor bastards that bought into that!

    First run never matters, anyway. Most people who see movies are those who didn’t catch it in theaters. If you’re a new Star Wars fan, you can get into the nine films now without ANY of the fan baggage that many took in theaters. You’re more able to watch the films as they are, rather than how hyped they were.

    I can easily see both KILLS and ENDS develop a cult following years from now. Similar to how SEASON OF THE WITCH has been embraced as its own thing, when for the first 20 years it was largely seen as the black sheep of the whole series.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,372
    I grew up loving the series but never gave Season of the Witch a chance until earlier this year. It's nothing special but all in all I actually quite enjoyed it and the atmosphere it produced.
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