Masters of Horror: Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (2005)

Okay so, Masters of Horror is an anthology tv show. Each episode is done by a classic horror director. I want to watch all of these. There's a Takashi Miike one at the end of season 1.
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road was done by the guy who did Bubba Ho-Tep. Which explains why its not very good.

Trick 'R Treat (2008)

A movie made by a comic book movie writer (Michael Dougherty of X-Men credit) has very heavy comic book influences. Shocking, I know. Intertwining plot threads and just goofy halloween fun. It is literally the closest thing we are going to get to a new Goosebumps movie, even more so than the first 20 minutes of Cirque du Freak. So goofy. Also, there is a werewolf transformation that alone is worth watching the entire 82 minutes of the film's length. I wish more goofy horror movies had the integrity that Trick 'r Treat has. I would be way less embarrassed about talking about horror films, thats for sure.

Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Sincerely the funniest and scariest movie i've seen since i started this blog. I literally screamed and laughed out loud in parts. i don't do that during films. Drag Me To Hell is Sam Raimi at his absolute finest, an Evil Dead 2 caliber work.

The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter was a genius and this is definitely opus-esque. Deals with suspension and tension in an amazing way and really makes you feel like you yourself are trapped and vulnerable. Apparently, it was critically panned at release for being too reliant on gore but honestly thats completely ridiculous. Maybe its just the intervening 30 years of horror tinting my view, but the films ability to show the level of gore that it does and still have it create emotion besides 'grossssssssss' is admirable.

Funny Games (1997/2007)

Does this count? I guess if Eraserhead and Antichrist do, it does. And those are the most apt comparisons. This film, and its 10-year-later english-language shot-for-shot remake, are startling, impressive, violent,  and poignant. And good. Really, really good. If you want to watch an amazing film that dissembles your expectations and then insults you for expecting things, watch this. Violent by not being violent. Profane by not being profane. Disgusting by not being disgusting. This movie is the antithesis of Hostel while still making the same general point. Really, really, REALLY, really good

Event Horizon (1997)

Make of that what you will and then add "boring."

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Okay, full disclosure: I am a sucker for campy horror movies (huge surprise), musicals, the mall goth aesthetic (which is a subset of campy horror i guess), and Anthony Stewart Head. This movie was like engineered to appeal to me. It, however, is not really a good movie. Like, if you hate this movie, i completely understand. I'd probably actually encourage you to keep hating it. But I loved it. I had some of the songs stuck in my head afterwards. I think they could have capitalized on the setting and fringe characters a lot more, seeing as those things were like a billion times more interesting than the actual plot. The music was clearly "rock opera" and not "musical" and i think that harmed its execution re: seemed forced a lot of the time.  It is kind of the epitome of "fat goth girl who really likes Rocky Horror and Dresden Dolls and wears pink/black gloves all the time." Again, though, in spite, or because, of that, I loved it. Anthony Head was miscast.

Eraserhead (1976)

Really don't think i have enough graduate degrees in film study/literature to say any more than "this movie is totally amazing."
Also i think this is the oldest film i've done here to date !

[REC] (2007)

This is the diamond in the rough. This is the film I've wanted to see since Blair Witch. [REC] is a first-person haunted house story. It is a cast of unknowns and amateurs. The directors didn't tell the cast the script until they shot. All the rehearsals were recorded on straight-up handycams. The film was shot sequentially with 20 minute takes. On the last day of shooting the lead actress was kept entirely in the dark as to what was going to happen to her so her reactions could be real and pure. It is shot entirely with practical effects. It feels so real and so visceral. [REC] is the horror film to beat. Forgoing any message deeper than "don't trust the government/church," it relies on effective action, real scares, and the pleading invitation for you to fully suspend your disbelief and Become Pablo. Anyone who has read anything I've written before knows that I value suspension of disbelief over all else. This is the film that rewards that. There is not a single lagging section in the film, there's not a moment that pulls you out of the action. It throws itself at you full force and its all you can do to fight back. I don't want to write too much plotwise, because its so good, but let me assure you that this film makes you believe in it. [REC] is the holy grail.

Dark Remains (2005)

Antichrist-lite. A generally poor film about a sad couple but instead of delving into the meaning of loss, sexuality, and probing the danger of repression, it settles to be an average slasher with a few ghosts. Whereas Antichrist requires a full page to summarize the same story, Dark Remains takes a paragraph. Unfair2Compare? Perhaps, but like, screw it, Dark Remains is better than a lot of films ive watched for this blog. The ghosts had me watching the negative space more than the film and i dont know if that was intended or not but i liked it. Gives me an idea: Horror movie filmed in "letterbox" that, in the climax, breaks the frame and goes full 16:9. No, that's a terrible idea.
Dark Remains is not a bad horror movie. It makes me think, however, that maybe horror is a bad genre, but I'm sure a lot of that comes down to the dross that I watch. For every Friday the 13th there's a Jason Takes Manhattan and a Part 3D and a Jason Goes to Hell. I guess the payoff for watching the latter is finding the diamond in the rough that makes the Friday 1s and the Final Chapters and the Sleepaway Camps, and even the Antichrists that much sweeter.

Moon (2009)

Sucked. Plodding. Gimmicky. Boring.

Antichrist (2009)

Brutal, haunting, serene, and effectual. I think its funny how a lot of critics have charged Antichrist with misogyny just because, as far as i can tell, it invokes negative sexuality and the villain is a woman (flawlessly portrayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg). The movie, a case study in post-traumatic stress, follows a couple's journey of self-discovery after the accidental death of their toddler son. The Man (a psychiatrist played by Willem Dafoe), in a foolish display of chauvinism, attempts to "fix" his wife's fractured psyche by making her face her physical memories and anxiety triggers. The Woman, blaming herself entirely for the death, responds aggressively at first but soon breaks through to another level of self-hatred. The vanity-layer of blame hides her blame of sexuality and of her essential woman-hood. The Man, by breaking down her self-protection, draws out a sadistic monster. Sexually voracious and hyper-violent, she begins to attack The Man, evolving through various stages of sexuality, from emotional manipulation to rape to smashing his penis with a brick to stabbing him repeatedly, lets say penetrating him, with a shovel. The film expresses the dark sides of human sexuality in a very brutal, yet tasteful, way. It reverses the gender expectation of a film like this (see Don Cosacrelli's Masters of Horror episode Incident On and Off a Mountain Road) and the imagery is stark, natural, and, most importantly, alive. The woods, the cabin, the dead tree, the revenge animals, they are as much a character as The Man or The Woman and the pain, emotional and physical, feel so real. Not a horror film in the sense of this blog. Art.

District 9 (2009)

Good movie, awesome aesthetic choices that are unfortunately abandoned for a weak narrative after the first act,  and frankly amazing technical work. The sound design is awe-inspiring and the cg is nearly flawless, which, from me, the guy who loves puppets, is very rare praise. The story is absolutely great in the first act, shows its cracks in the second when it abandons the documentary conceit, and completely falls apart in the third. Its a shame, but the movie manages to survive it. However, format changes, narrative cliches, and wacky hijinks aside, the characters of Wikus and Christopher are seriously amazing. The empathy that Wikus inspires and later betrays is built so satisfyingly and watching him let Chris down really felt like he was letting me down. Seriously would recommend watching this and am heavily looking forward to Elysium.

Blog Maintenance

So, I've watched a lot of horror movies since Nightmare on Elm Street. The problem being, none of them were incredibly awful and by being able to suspend my disbelief fully, re: not taking notes or liveblogging the entire time, i enjoyed them a lot. That throws me into a bit of a conundrum with the blog. I love horror movies, I watch a ton of them, several a day occasionally. I don't love blogging and I don't blog a lot. However, I do love the experience of watching horrible horror films with the intention of finding stupid, stupid, stupid things about them and typing about those stupid things on the internet. I love identifying what makes Jason Takes Manhattan different from The Final Chapter. I love being able to say, "I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Friday the 13th movies." I love looking back at what I've written and going, "Oh man, that blowjob scene was hilarious," or "Does he think I'm a farthead?" I love the idea that this blog exists.
Part of the reason Nightmare on Elm Street took so long to watch/write-up was a lot of burnout re: blog. I felt obligated to only watch crappy horror films that I could make fun of/feel despair over. Taking these last few months and watching a lot of Good Films has revitalized my hater spirit. Not completely though.
I think I'm going to hybridize the concepts of the blog. The stupid slasher liveblogs and summaries will continue, hopefully at a more frequent pace. I'm going to tackle the higher concept, more interesting horror films in a shorter format. That seems almost backwards but I feel like the liveblogs and jokes are necessary for my own enjoyment of the "worse" films while I still don't feel secure enough to srsly essay on the bigger pieces. Maybe in the future. Regardless,  I've got a backlog.