The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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ando
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Projec

#1501 Post by ando » Sun Jul 21, 2019 3:38 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Tue Oct 18, 2016 2:20 pm
Another thought: latent in the narrative is probably the symbolic story of sexual force, with its power or destructiveness being the result of its lying outside the systems set up to organize people along healthy lines (the home, the school, religion, etc.); and therefore, when achieving a sufficient pitch in an individual, without an outlet established by convention, that sexual force immolates everything. But De Palma isn't much interested in this kind of symbolism...
Yet he can hardly avoid it. The film begins with the horror of the physical aspect of sexual awakening and concludes with Carrie performing a horrifying recreation of the male penetration on/to her mother with the flying knives/crucifixion scene (Piper Laurie clearly deriving pleasure from it). How is this not symbolism? Nothing here is realistic unless you buy the premise that telekenesis is real. Isn't Any Irving's dream of the bloody hand of Carrie pulling her into the hell of sexual repression and guilt symbolic? Funny that the actress who plays the mother of Irving also played a mother figure/principal of the blooming teenage daughter of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. I remember her defending Christina's sexual proclivities as natural and innocent after the overreacting, scene-stealing, headline looking Joan asked her, with much the same self-righteous hypocrisy as Carrie's mother, "Is this an institution of learning or a teenage brothel?!!"

What I've never understood is what in all the heavy handed symbolism (or real world consequence) triggers the roof to cave in sending the house ablaze. Granted, with easily a hundred lit candles going at once all it would have taken was a loose plank to suddenly come ajar; but what, specifically, in all the mythology accounts for a fiery collapse?

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1502 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Jul 21, 2019 6:39 am

I don't think my point was that the film doesn't have symbolism (as you say, it's hard to make a film like this and avoid it), but that overall De Palma's interest lies elsewhere. The symbolism we get is mostly confined to the beginning and end, and what there is of it tends towards the blunt and explicit (blood, fire, knives) as tho' to make up for the lack of a consistent symbolic patterning throughout the narrative by ensuring the symbols it does use are large and potent enough to be totalizing.

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ando
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1503 Post by ando » Sun Jul 21, 2019 10:26 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Sun Jul 21, 2019 6:39 am
I don't think my point was that the film doesn't have symbolism (as you say, it's hard to make a film like this and avoid it), but that overall De Palma's interest lies elsewhere. The symbolism we get is mostly confined to the beginning and end, and what there is of it tends towards the blunt and explicit (blood, fire, knives) as tho' to make up for the lack of a consistent symbolic patterning throughout the narrative by ensuring the symbols it does use are large and potent enough to be totalizing.
Of course; much of the film is the level of the mundane. But I liked where you were going with the idea of the power of a repressed sexual force which is often and particularly explored (certainly exploited) in scenarios involving inhibited teenagers and, for lack of a better term, homicidal maniacs, from the mid 70s through the 80s. It became a tired trope by the 10th Jason movie - the dynamism of the juxtaposition found in Carrie replaced with cynicism and mindless carnage - and, worse, the repressed protagonist looses agency altogether. Carrie maintains it throughout and even beyond the grave, intimating that the force of this sexual repression does not die with her but continues in the lives of young people who, for lack of a constructive way of dealing with it, suffer and inflict suffering on others. It's really what driving the narratives (it seems to me) and can be found in flicks involving teenage protagonists from The Exorcist to Halloween.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1504 Post by domino harvey » Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:45 pm

Well, not that we ever closed up shop in the interim, but let me call your attention to the new addendum to the first post...
domino harvey wrote:
Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:04 pm
ImageImage

THE HORROR LIST REDUX
October 15 2019 - April 20 2020

Here we go again! Please submit your list of fifty (50) films-- no more, no less-- ranked in order of preference, to me, domino harvey, via PM, by April 20th, 2020.

Eligibility
Short films are eligible. Music videos, should the spirit move you, are eligible. TV Miniseries (using the American definition) and Made For TV Movies are eligible. TV series are not.

Anthology Backdoor
Single episodes of anthology horror series (Tales From the Crypt, Masters of Horror, &c) are eligible. Single episodes of dramatic series with continuing storylines (The X-Files, Fringe, &c) are not eligible. Be aware that save some fantastic campaigning on your part, these will have little to no effect on the overall tally of the board's list, and therefore users are advised to exercise this exception sparingly. However, no member will be limited in their final list selections.
--Please note that individual segments from anthology films are ineligible by themselves. Vote for the whole film and every segment within, or not at all.

the Vote For It Approach
Curious as to whether a given title counts as a horror film? Debates on what constitutes a "horror" film can be made within this thread, but… if you feel strongly for a contentious title, just put it on your list. If enough people agree with you and it makes the list, then yep, it's a horror film!
The previous Horror List was our most popular non-decade list ever and I imagine we'll get a large turnout again this time. Get spooky with it, folks

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1505 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:47 pm

Hitler's 131st birthday! Creepy stuff

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#1506 Post by domino harvey » Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:48 pm

I just picked 4/20/20 because blaze it in the optometrist's office

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1507 Post by domino harvey » Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:51 pm

For those looking for viewing suggestions, here’s my “short” list of ~100 films I’ve set aside to whittle a top 50 out of
SpoilerShow
A Bucket of Blood
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Alone in the Dark
An Unlocked Window (the Alfred Hitchcock Hour [1965 version])
Anguish
A Night to Dismember
AntiChrist
Bad Dreams
Beetlejuice
Black Swan
the Blackcoat’s Daughter
the ‘Burbs
Carrie
the Crazies (new)
Dead Alive
demonlover
Der Fan
Detention
Don’t Go to Sleep
Don't Look Now
eXistenZ
the Faculty
Fascination
Fear
Final Destination 3
the Fly
the Flypaper (Tales of the Unexpected)
Frailty
Freaked
Freeway
Fun
the Girl in a Swing
Glasser: Shape (music video)
Halloween
Happy Death Day
Hard Candy
the Hitcher
Home Sweet Home
the House on Sorority Row
the House of the Devil
the House on Haunted Hill (remake)
I Married a Witch
I Still See You
Inferno
Innocent Blood
Intruder
Invasion of the Body Snatcher (1978)
Isabel
It Follows
L'annulaire
La vie lointaine
Lake Placid
Last House on the Left
Le puits et le pendule
the Legend of Beaver Dam
Lifeforce
Link
Lipstick
Lord of Illusions
the Lost Boys
Maniac (1980)
Matinee
Monsters
mother!
Near Dark
Night Has a Thousand Eyes
the Nightcomers
the Old Dark House
Opera
Over the Garden Wall
the Owl Service
Phantom of the Paradise
Planet Terror
the Prowler
Psycho
Scream 2
Single White Female
the Skin I Live In
the Slumber Party Massacre
Sorority Row
Sound of My Voice
Spellbinder
the Spiral Staircase
the Stepfather
Surviving Edged Weapons
Targets
Terror Train
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Next Generation
Torture Garden
Tremors
Triangle
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
Twixt
the Uninvited (2009)
Upstream Color
the Village
Wait Until Dark
the Walking Dead (1936)
War of the Worlds (2005)
When a Stranger Calls Back
X: the Man With X Ray Eyes
Well, I think it was already a given that my Redux list would look far different than the one I submitted years ago if just based on the sheer weight of subsequent viewings logged in this very thread, but we’ve also seen some incredible horror movies in the intervening years, with the Blackcoat’s Daughter and mother! being strong contenders for the higher reaches of my list. My number one will almost certainly be Triangle, which I find more rewarding with each revisit (and isn’t that perversely appropriate?)

A few more recommendations that I don’t think I’ve discussed on the board:

Two miniseries, Over the Garden Wall (Nate Cash 2014) and the Owl Service (Peter Plummer 1969), both ostensibly for children but containing some surprisingly disturbing elements. Over the Garden Wall is a quick watch, coming in at just under two hours for its ten animated parts, and very charming as its pair of child protagonists navigate being lost in an enchanted forrest and encountering some endlessly inventive distractions on their way home, including a cult of pumpkin-headed townsfolk, a Richard Scarry-book’s worth of woodland creatures in human roles, a reluctant ghost, and a mythical beast lurking in the background for the length of the story. The fun celebrity voices from Elijah Wood, John Cleese, Melanie Lynskey, and more are also welcome. The Owl Service is a longer commitment at four hours, and its story is less flashy. The discovery of a set of plates in an attic (the titular “service”) has a gradual and strange effect on a trio of young people in Wales. The slow-burning creepiness of just what the hell is going on as the three find themselves reliving a pattern of behavior inherited from generations of trios before them is effective, and the class consciousness driving much of the action and conflict comes to a head in the brilliant finale. As odd as it may sound, the biggest success of this one is how unsatisfying the finish is, but intentionally so— it’s ultimately a great critique of the impenetrable nature of class on the British psyche, and the lack of conventional narrative payoff or heroics in the last part reframes the whole of what came before in a less glowing light.

And surely the strangest film I’ve seen in years is La vie lointaine (Sébastien Betbeder 2009), a French TV movie about a Japanese director attempting to adopt the titular novel, only to be distracted by… well, it would be a criminal offense to spoil the surprises of the picture, which goes on the very, very short list of good movies where I truly had no idea what the fuck was going to happen next. There is a five minute span in this film that contains no less than three of the strangest fucking things I’ve ever seen in a movie, all treated straight-faced and sincerely without irony— and this is key. It’s not hard to be Troma and make a parade of wacky weird shit occur, but to do so from an authentically eccentric place like this, and to clearly mean it, is something else. Betbeder filmed a sequel the following year, Yoshido, that unfortunately I thought was a piece of shit lacking any of the strengths of the original, and his Les nuits avec Théodore (2012), about a young couple who become obsessed with breaking into a park every night, had some intriguing moments and hints at darkness that never really paid off, but I’d love to see him recapture the highs of this film in another picture.

(Availability: Over the Garden Wall: Australian Blu-ray / the Owl Service: R2 DVD set from Network / La vie lointaine: No commercial release)

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1508 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:31 pm

I'm especially excited to participate in this project since lately I've found myself dissecting more films from the angle of horror. While the line can be blurry, and there's certainly a risk in misdiagnosing films by approaching with this mindset and indirectly forcing them to fit within the paradigm, the blanket of what constitutes a "horror" film has definitely molded in my perspective with age. A theme woven through my own infatuation with the horror genre relies on unpredictable disruptions to the laws of cinema that change the ways we comprehend the world, or the implementation of aggressive provocations against the defense mechanisms that make us feel safe while engaging in the experience as a viewer. Thus, sensory-visual, psychological, and existential disorientation, manipulative in the defining sense of the term but not condescending in the use of manipulative measures that intend to make one see the movie “their” way; rather manipulation that provokes our own unique neuroses, uncovering truths we’d rather not face. It’s difficult to pull off, not to mention pull off well, but the most affecting films of the genre hit these buttons for me.

A few favorites to highlight each of these ideas:

The Thing

The success of this film is in part due to its pacing, with an incredibly slow build to the most terrifying visualization of a monster I’ve ever seen come from one of the most innocent animals. The real power of the horror here is the unpredictability of what the monster will look like. We get heads that turn into spiders, heads that open and spurt tentacles, abdomens with mouths, and whatever else you can - or can’t - think of, surprising us in true horror fashion as jump scares, but more frightening because there is no rhyme or reason to their shape-shifting nature. If the monster was presented as one whole subject each time, that would allow some comfortability in at least resigning itself to a single vessel to tweak its form, but no: it must appear as slight variations on body parts, hidden and unidentifiable, until they expose themselves after we have met and spoken with the vessel that’s carrying them and judged that person to be sound of body and mind. This undoing of physical law of identification alienates the viewer from their most useful tool to detect danger: the eyes, by redefining the form of the danger unrecognizable. We all become unreliable narrators here, and it’s just as terrifying when that personal distrust extends from the characters in the film, acting as our surrogates, confused and stripped of the power of logic in a fight or flight scenario, back to us. Oh and being trapped in Antarctica of all places doesn’t exactly help anyone feel safe either.

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The Trial

Welles does the impossible and makes an adaptation that blows the source material out of the water. I’m a fan of Kafka but Welles’ disorienting techniques were born for this demonstration of the ultimate existential nightmare: consequence with a complete absence of reason or explanation. The communication breakdown between K and all other people in this story, along with labyrinths of physical barriers, sharp sound design, and nausea-inducing photography, reduces his agency to a worth of absolute zero and isolates him from not only other people and his societal structure expected to contain him, but from himself and his own identity. By the end we’re all insane.

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City of Pirates

I could probably apply this reasoning to several Ruiz films, and likely will by the project’s end, but this film is (especially) unlike any other, rendering descriptors like “surreal” meaningless, and inserting horror unexpectedly into moments of this dream on film creating nightmarish cuts with little time for brooding. This is a fantasy, but it’s also an existential nightmare presented as psychological. Any purpose for any character, any meaning clung to, is surrendered with or without consent, and even in the moments of serenity one gets from surrendering said meaning and embracing the wild ride, get taken away as characters, and we, get punctured hardest in these vulnerable moments
SpoilerShow
(Malo’s scream toward the end never fails to run chills down my spine, partly for the juxtaposition between his soft child-voice and this dubbed satanic vocal, but mostly because there seems to be no grounded reason for this response).
There is no safety, for the mind, body, or spirit, in this entrancing magical journey through hell. It’s also one of the most unsettling endings I’ve ever seen,
SpoilerShow
as we, Ruiz, and Isidore give up hope all at once accepting doom as fate and yet remain trapped in the anxiety of what this will look like, revealing that any acceptance toward the horrors in the world is that of impermanence, and never sustained catharsis.
demonlover

I wrote up an initial reaction to this in its dedicated thread, but what makes this melting pot of genres land in the horror camp for me is the way Assayas uses genre and narrative expectations, coupled with technical comprehension skills of how to operate the camera and sound, and consistently and unpredictably mixes them to create unease, disruption between the viewer and subject on screen, and internal tension. The film’s plot and the experience of watching serve as a reflexive, involving process of the fear born from relinquishing control, and the realization that perhaps we never had any real sense of control to begin with, which results in and from choices to initiate uninvolving separation on a metaphysical level (even the different film stocks create a subconscious disorientation and disintegration of the self!)

This is not to say that the film is full of weak characters, quite the opposite, and that’s intentional. The story relies on strong-willed people seeking and attaining power, taking control over their and others’ lives continuously as if control were air or food. The problem is that after these instances, a variable will present itself that serves to block or undo such acts, and render one - often our heroine- powerless, more confused and disoriented than before; but she keeps getting up and trying, as is the drive of human nature, to futile and devastating measures. On a larger scale, the film’s plot is about globalization, where people are reduced to meaningless objects, and the collective masses have been desensitized to the horrors people commit (an idea rooted in truth, itself quite horrific) while rapidly diluting individualism, or any sense of authenticity in identity. Self-actualization appears to be reached and even maintained by confident characters throughout the film, but this slowly becomes apparent as a facade, for we never get the sense that this attitude is possible to sustain in the world of the film. All personality is artificially constructed and contingent on capitalist ideologies, and any catharsis from selfhood is smashed by the unstoppable force that crushes the need within the human being to be visible beyond their status as commodity.

I’ll stress that this is the least “safe” I can remember feeling while watching a movie: unsafe from where the narrative is taking me (Ruiz is the master of this, but his films are predictably unpredictable in spirit), and unsafe from myself; my own psychology and existential pain with isolative separateness set off and muddied in a blend of chaotic ‘fullness’ of everything a film can include (in eclectic blend of genres, themes, film form, film materials, hell- even the globalization elements allows us to experience places and cultures throughout the world) and yet complete 'emptiness' within, as cultures and (consequently) individuals assimilate, broken of their separatist, unique natures into a melting pot of absolute value- or the absence of value. By reducing distinguished cultures, morals, and political systems to one blurry construct, the subjects become even more separate and disillusioned, as they have no belief systems, unique traits, or special tools to to hold on to, navigate, or comprehend the complexity of the world; a juxtaposition so intense that it alone creates depersonalization by obstructing identity contingent on meaning.

If cinema is often designed as a safe space for audiences to achieve catharsis through mastery over the image, with some slight alterations to provoke emotional, cognitive, and physiological (especially in horror films) responses, this movie takes that purpose and twists it until it’s completely inverted, like the inside-out dog in The Thing. Assayas’ maintenance of a consistent narrative is key to allowing the sheer dread to unfold, as we remain bound to the film in some aspect of reality while gradually losing our own identity right with our surrogate. It’s a cinematic ride unlike any other, and redefines the horror film as it pierces the senses we’re accustomed to, in ways we are not, to relentless degrees that reach the vulnerability of the mind and soul, unequipped to handle the charge of abrasive philosophical violence they’re forced to combat, hence unsafe passage through the meaningless, yet scarily familiar, aspects of the social milieu in which we live. We end the film so far removed from the reality of the film, or from understanding our heroine, that it feels like a dream. But then, in the final images, we’re snapped back into the reality of our world, and we remember that this is not escapism we are experiencing, but a confrontation with ourselves. The one we never expected or ever wanted to have.

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I recently wrote some thoughts on The 7th Victim for the 40s project. I believe the film fits this categorization of horror, even if many of the actual genre devices fail- though this may be intentional, or even a red herring, to highlight the actual, much scarier point that our inescapable society is our hellish prison, not an outside force or group of subjects that can be contested.



And a few newer watches that hit these themes, which will almost certainly make my final list:

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Triangle

I went into this blind and thought it was terrific. Melissa George (unrecognizable from “the Girl” in Mulholland Dr.) hooked me right away amidst a group of dramatically weaker performances in a seemingly paint-by-numbers plot setup with dynamics and potential dynamics in place and obvious. These perfs and plotting were clearly intentionally downplayed and overly specified as much to heighten George’s aura as to manipulatively fasttrack our reversion to complacency in the horror genre. Of course all elements of this film get better, and stray further from comfort until we’re lost at sea from any tangible bearings.
SpoilerShow
Not only are all initially developed characters completely forsaken prematurely, but our protagonist becomes the most unreliable narrator. She was already unreliable based on her suspiciously unexplained emotional dysregulation at the onset of the film, but at a certain point I wasn’t even sure which version I was watching, splitting this already unsafe character into undefined shades. When all trust goes out the window, some may disengage completely, and I wouldn’t fault anybody for having that reaction to this, which admittedly is a tough film to like because it’s easier to dismiss, based on the film’s own dismissal of the participatory expectations of film (and this is not an attack on the viewer- I watched this with a group of horror fans whose tastes I respect and none liked it but me).
The deeply psychological and existential horror films have come to be my favorites over time; “deeply” being the key word, as these provocations exist within all horror to some degree. However these “deep” few fearlessly dig in areas the others only superficially touch on, in a way that appears safely digestible until it’s too late to unsee and unfeel the vulnerability and trauma that you’ve been forced to engage with, and must sit with the experience. This weighs heavily on the psychological side (while something like demonlover would be existential, but that one’s harder to pigeonhole), and it earns a place among the best of them.
SpoilerShow
While not as dangerous in uprooting those deep-seated core beliefs in the existential, this film presents a very kinetic allegory for the disintegration of reality orientation and the futile attempts to crawl out of the hole of a trauma cycle.
This film has many details in its design that should be fun and escapist, but I found myself completely uncomfortable and lost throughout, hardly enjoying myself during the experience as much as a burst of pleasure following the experience once my senses were resorted to equilibrium, which was probably fitting for a film that’s as much a nightmare in structure as it is in content.

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Swing You Sinners!

An example of abstract disorienting filmmaking that is reminiscent of a nightmare. The Fleischer brothers use the infinite possibilities of animation to create horrific visions and tinker with the laws of reality testing in ways that would otherwise be impossible in classic photography or processes of capturing action with limitations on manipulation of the image. Surrealistic yes, but that is only the surface level catalyst that prompts the unnerving danger alert set off by this film bomb. If it lasted for more than eight minutes, it would be a personalized race to whether this would trigger a psychological breakdown or an existential crisis first. Absolutely mesmerizing, and acutely deranged for 1930.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1509 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:41 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:51 pm
... we’ve also seen some incredible horror movies in the intervening years, with the Blackcoat’s Daughter and mother! being strong contenders for the higher reaches of my list.
I also highly, highly recommend mother! and especially the much-lesser-seen The Blackcoat's Daughter, which I enjoyed at the time and has only grown on me over time. I think of the final shot and all its implications often...

As for other post-2012 standouts, a quick scan through my lists since the last iteration of this project produced the following genre entries I've enjoyed or at least found distinctive enough to recommend, even if they aren't all contenders for my list (in no particular order):
Hereditary (Aster)
Midsommar (Aster)
Bone Tomahawk (Zahler)
Suspiria (Guadagnino)
Raw (Ducournau)
1922 (Hilditch)
It Comes At Night (Shults)
The Apostle (Evans)
The VVitch (Eggers)
10 Cloverfield Lane (Trachtenberg)
The Neon Demon (Refn)
The Invitation (Kusama)
It Follows (Mitchell)
The Babadook (Kent)
The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears (Cattet, Forzani)
The Guest (Wingard)

I'll add more thoughts on some of these that I haven't written up elsewhere soon...

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1510 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:44 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:51 pm
And surely the strangest film I’ve seen in years is La vie lointaine (Sébastien Betbeder 2009), a French TV movie about a Japanese director attempting to adopt the titular novel, only to be distracted by… well, it would be a criminal offense to spoil the surprises of the picture, which goes on the very, very short list of good movies where I truly had no idea what the fuck was going to happen next. There is a five minute span in this film that contains no less than three of the strangest fucking things I’ve ever seen in a movie, all treated straight-faced and sincerely without irony— and this is key. It’s not hard to be Troma and make a parade of wacky weird shit occur, but to do so from an authentically eccentric place like this, and to clearly mean it, is something else.
Thanks for posting your thoughts on this, as I've been scratching my brain since I watched it in June to put down even a few words. Surely one of the strangest films I've ever seen, and though I have absolutely no idea what to make of it, that makes it even more horrific and won't stop it from finding a place on my list.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1511 Post by domino harvey » Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:49 pm

Unrelated to this genre, but therewillbeblus, have you seen George in the first season of In Treatment? It’s her confession in the first episode of the series that dramatically sets off the entire 43 episode season (and the opening image of her sobbing uncontrollably sets the tone for all that follows). Especially for someone who seems interested in therapeutic concepts and readings in film, I think you’d love it. I wrote about it in a non-spoiler way here

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1512 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 15, 2019 6:51 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:49 pm
Unrelated to this genre, but therewillbeblus, have you seen George in the first season of In Treatment? It’s her confession in the first episode of the series that dramatically sets off the entire 43 episode season (and the opening image of her sobbing uncontrollably sets the tone for all that follows). Especially for someone who seems interested in therapeutic concepts and readings in film, I think you’d love it. I wrote about it in a non-spoiler way here
No but now I may finally have to take the plunge! It’s funny, many graduate schools for social work and other mental health degrees show episodes of In Treatment in classes or for assignments, and most colleagues of mine went through their respective programs using them as primary sources to analyze characters and the practice of specific therapeutic modalities. For some reason my school never did (we used Skins for assessment and mostly real videos of sessions) but it’s amazing to me how many people I know had the show factor in as a large portion of their academic curriculum. I’ve heard great things pretty much universally from these peers, so while I’d like to wait to make my own judgments before assigning value, it’s clearly well-respected fiction in the profession.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1513 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Oct 15, 2019 7:18 pm

A couple of recent horrors that made a big impression on me are:

Ode to Nothing
The Witch in the Window

I may well be the only person on the forum to've seen them, which is too bad. They're excellent.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1514 Post by zedz » Tue Oct 15, 2019 8:22 pm

I don't think it's out on home video yet, but if you get a chance to see Koko-di Koko-da, go for it. A real mind trip, and one of the most original horror movies I've seen in a long time.

The trailer (here) doesn't give away anything much, least of all its bravura structural conceit, but it does convey a little of how batshit crazy it is.

I third or fourth the praise for The Blackcoat's Daughter too.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1515 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Wed Oct 16, 2019 4:20 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:31 pm

The Thing

Triangle
Without quoting your entire post :D

The Thing will definitely be near the very top end of the list. And I probably need to catch up with the whole early Carpenter output. I really enjoyed Triangle too (who'd have thought Angel from Home and Away would star in a number of decent movies but never get the bigger roles she might've deserved - she was phenomenal in the Oz version of The Slap).

I'll dig out some titles of my own. I do love horror films and I am generally much less snooty than I am with other genres :lol:

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1516 Post by Dr Amicus » Wed Oct 16, 2019 4:45 am

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:51 pm
The Owl Service is a longer commitment at four hours, and its story is less flashy. The discovery of a set of plates in an attic (the titular “service”) has a gradual and strange effect on a trio of young people in Wales. The slow-burning creepiness of just what the hell is going on as the three find themselves reliving a pattern of behavior inherited from generations of trios before them is effective, and the class consciousness driving much of the action and conflict comes to a head in the brilliant finale. As odd as it may sound, the biggest success of this one is how unsatisfying the finish is, but intentionally so— it’s ultimately a great critique of the impenetrable nature of class on the British psyche, and the lack of conventional narrative payoff or heroics in the last part reframes the whole of what came before in a less glowing light.
That fits into a cycle of British horror tv series in the late 60s to late 70s (or so) - some of which I'm just about old enough to remember being creeped out by (Children of the Stones, The Changes) but I have yet to go back to properly. I haven't seen this, but did read the book last year (Alan Garner is a strange absence from my reading - I'm surprised how little of his I've gotten round to reading) - from what you say and from what I've read elsewhere, I gather it's a pretty close adaptation. It is really creepy in places, and I fully agree about the ending - I want to reread the book knowing how it plays out to see how differently it reads.

nitin
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1517 Post by nitin » Wed Oct 16, 2019 9:06 am

Glad to see others enjoying Triangle, an underrated 2000s horror/thriller. I also add to Dom’s recommendation of In Treatment, a fabulous show (apart from George you also have Mia Wasikowska’s early breakthrough in one of the subsequent seasons).

As for horror suggestions, The Descent, Let The Right One In and The Others are still the best horror films this century IMHO.

Others from the 2010s that I would recommend that haven’t been mentioned recently above include Berberian Sound Studio, The Awakening and Julia’s Eyes (a modern spanish giallo really)

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DarkImbecile
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1518 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Oct 16, 2019 2:22 pm

My first dedicated rewatch for this project was Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which I remembered being solid and was pleased to discover was even better than I recalled; I noticed it on the results of the previous iteration of this project, and since my perception of this story in both its original and remade forms was so wrapped up in its science fiction elements — highly paranoid and suspenseful science fiction, certainly — that I wasn't sure I'd even classify it as horror, and thought it would be a good candidate for a second viewing.
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What had escaped me over the last dozen years was how grotesque some of the body horror elements are — Sutherland smashing the head of his duplicate with a hoe, for example — and how the ominous paranoia of the first two-thirds gives way to an utterly crushing hopelessness that the original never comes close to reaching. The sequence in which Sutherland and Brooke Adams cling to each other in the reeds — professing their love before Sutherland is distracted by the false hope of the boats, returning only to hold Adams' unconscious body before it shrivels away — is even more bleak than the famous final scene. The later appearance of a nude Adams in the burning pod factory uncoiling her tongue and unleashing the pod people's scream at Sutherland works so well beyond the memorable imagery because it is such an obscene re-purposing of the person he held only moments before.

And of course that last scene still works wonderfully, even knowing exactly how it plays out; I love the tracking shot before Veronica Cartwright reveals herself to Sutherland, which trails behind him as he walks along a row of leafless, pruned trees that look like alien outgrowths themselves in the wet gloom.
(Speaking of Brooke Adams, how did she not have more of a career as a lead film actress after this and Days of Heaven in the same year? She's not Meryl Streep, but there's more than enough there to justify more than a handful of film roles before she went back to doing primarily television. Is The Unborn, which I didn't realize she starred in until today, worth a watch?)

So atmospheric and evocative in its late-70s mid-winter San Francisco setting, populated with distinctive, colorful actors, and enhanced by the eerie sound design, this remake works so much better for me than the fine but far less specific and ultimately less lingering original. Barring a wave of great new discoveries (fingers crossed), it's a lock for the middle tier of my list.

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zedz
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1519 Post by zedz » Wed Oct 16, 2019 8:50 pm

Dr Amicus wrote:
Wed Oct 16, 2019 4:45 am
domino harvey wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:51 pm
The Owl Service is a longer commitment at four hours, and its story is less flashy. The discovery of a set of plates in an attic (the titular “service”) has a gradual and strange effect on a trio of young people in Wales. The slow-burning creepiness of just what the hell is going on as the three find themselves reliving a pattern of behavior inherited from generations of trios before them is effective, and the class consciousness driving much of the action and conflict comes to a head in the brilliant finale. As odd as it may sound, the biggest success of this one is how unsatisfying the finish is, but intentionally so— it’s ultimately a great critique of the impenetrable nature of class on the British psyche, and the lack of conventional narrative payoff or heroics in the last part reframes the whole of what came before in a less glowing light.
That fits into a cycle of British horror tv series in the late 60s to late 70s (or so) - some of which I'm just about old enough to remember being creeped out by (Children of the Stones, The Changes) but I have yet to go back to properly. I haven't seen this, but did read the book last year (Alan Garner is a strange absence from my reading - I'm surprised how little of his I've gotten round to reading) - from what you say and from what I've read elsewhere, I gather it's a pretty close adaptation. It is really creepy in places, and I fully agree about the ending - I want to reread the book knowing how it plays out to see how differently it reads.
The one that freaked me out as a wee'un was Escape into Night (available on UK DVD), an adaptation of Marianne Dreams, which would later be adapted by Bernard Rose as Paperhouse. Rose's film has a couple of excellent scares, but the children's TV series is generally creepier.

The Stone Tape is still pretty effective as well.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1520 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Oct 16, 2019 10:11 pm

zedz wrote:
Tue Oct 15, 2019 8:22 pm
I don't think it's out on home video yet, but if you get a chance to see Koko-di Koko-da, go for it. A real mind trip, and one of the most original horror movies I've seen in a long time.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for this one in particular. Hopefully it’ll rear its head before April.

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1521 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Oct 17, 2019 1:13 am

Image

Annihilation

I didn’t love the film overall but it’s stuck with me as the perfect example of the horror film that uncovers the limits of our abilities to make sense of, or feel control over our world. As the scientists venture into the mysterious void, strange happenings occur, and the scariest part is not the effects themselves but the unpredictable process in that there is no standard or consistency to the effects.
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One woman’s memory fades while another grows plants from her body. Animals and nature splice in ways that have no reliability in their results (with one ‘monster’ having captured a scream, in what may be the most original creature in a horror movie, perhaps ever). While our most important crutch for reality testing, 'time,' seems to be manipulated for all the characters, it’s individualized to each person in how it's manipulated. In a world where we know so little, and rely on basic scientific laws like gravity, time, and consistent physical reactions common to all of mankind to provide some sense of groundedness, I can’t think of anything more horrifying than upending these simple rules and randomizing them, disbarring our understanding of the only experience we can be certain of, and destroying the collective experiences that bind us to our fellow man and allow us to feel some sense of connection in an isolating world.
This film is like the monster of The Thing as a concept expanded and applied to the invisible laws of nature, turning the concrete to abstract. The entire picture may not make the push from good to great, but as a horror film I don’t see how I can leave this one off of my list. Garland may make a few questionable steps but the one he lands with precision is the atmospheric exploitation of the most real horror: the facade of our safety and security under the blanket of a few strings of predictability to mask the horrors of the unknown.

Hard Candy

Well this was just brutal. As horrific as some moments were, this remained in the thriller ballpark for me in tone, as the distinctive parts of the film functioned to trigger different responses. From the start, I had no relatability to characters, but the romantic flirtation occurring on screen created enough uncomfortable dissonance that forcing me to remain with these subjects was absolute horror. However, once the film reveals its true colors and takes a more intense (but not necessarily more disturbing) turn, I was already so far removed from caring about the characters that it felt like a relief, an “out” from the horrors I was experiencing before. The second half, while more outright aggressive, landed the film in a curiously suspenseful territory, removing me from the more affecting first half. However, at the same time the twist takes advantage of that displacement, and the film then becomes interested not in provoking us with the claustrophobic disgust of the first half, forcing us to ask ourselves questions we don’t want to ask, and philosophically debate the morality of what we’re seeing on screen, which can inspire a unique kind of horror dependent entirely on the viewer and not the film itself.

The film is manipulative but fairly so, and the performances were spot on, the dialogue written like a sharp play. I was hoping for the narrative to remain ambiguous all the way until the credits, but I suppose the information we do receive winds up revealing more about the viewers than the film would without it. Or perhaps it would still reveal the same, just without a potential slap in the face. Either way, it’s a bold, loud film that deserves to be seen for its unapologetic aggression in tackling material that, when you think about it, shouldn’t be handled any other way.

Berserk!

What starts out as amusing camp (I admittedly grinned when Crawford announced that everyone being trapped in the circus m would be “good for business” after the initial, ludicrous death) quickly loses any steam it had. A mediocre-to-bad slasher that works better than it should, like many of the Hammer films, because it knows its place and doesn’t try to rise to a level of higher importance. Crawford isn’t anything special here but her ugliness (in makeup and in character) serves the design of her shoehorned creepy antisocial archetype. The deaths can be a bit inspired, but nothing to write home about. This is a good movie to throw on when you’re sick or want to shut your brain off, and not much else, but that’s all it seems to want to be anyways.

The Snorkel

Your classic gaslight-the-kid thriller, with a lot of unnecessary fluff but enough long silent scenes of process and spying to inject some originality into the Hammer output (especially the wordless seven-minute opening pre-credits scene, which is sadly the best part of the film). This becomes interesting horror in the creative ways that our villain - who is revealed as the killer before we meet any of the principal characters - torments our heroine, each time passed off to be innocent, with even her blamed after he tries and fails to murder her. It’s an old tired concept, and certainty overstays its welcome, but the direction is excitable and allows this enough fun moments for it to be better than it should be in script.

Never Take Sweets From a Stranger

Well here is a curious one… a B-movie that directly confronts pedophilia and stranger danger. It’s odd to watch a film that follows the generic mold of the Hammer formula but openly discuss horrific sexual perversion and the lack of safety enforced by the system. From community members nonchalantly discussing knowledge about the perpetrator and turning a blind eye, to the young girl screaming on the bed from traumatic shock, this is a disturbing snapshot of the bystander effect and burying of sexual assault that’s (obviously) just as relevant today as it was 60 years ago. Even though this is more of a chamberpot drama and social thriller than a horror film for much of the runtime, the moments of horror are shocking in bold content and their method of directness. Extra points go to the film for its drawn out court scene in real time with the little girl absolutely slaughtered on the stand, making Gaslight look like a romance about conscientious validation by comparison. The ending is so dark and creepy, yet realistic, that I do think this film can be considered pure horror from the societal lens.

Single White Female

This was an above-average entry in the psychological thriller as social horror subgenre, with solid lead performances and a reasonably accurate portrayal of the high end spectrum personality-disorder sociopath. One could even say Leigh gives a sensitive perf, not as sympathetic, but calculated and multidimensional enough to warrant interest and refrain from a cartoon villain. She’s absolutely terrifying, and if anyone has met someone like this before (not to this extreme, for you’d be dead, but an unexpected psychopath) it’s not too far off from reality. The social horror is powerful because it exploits the truth that we can never truly know someone and that with giving trust, we risk safety. This is often emotional and psychological in nature, but manifests as the physical in the horror genre, and hey, can do so in real life as well. The problem with this type of movie is that I just can’t take much more away from it when it stays at surface level (as opposed to films like Antichrist or Rosemary’s Baby, which take this notion and twist it deeper), and so for a film that’s very good at what it does, but what it does isn’t by bag, it probably won’t make my list. Though if these films do peak your interest, see it immediately.


Image

l’annulaire

In a chilling presentation of the power dynamics inherent in relationships, the horror here comes in part from the obvious (yet phenomenal) central dyad, and how the film has the confidence, and audacity, to present and not examine the details as they sit uncomfortably on the surface. There is absolutely an element of patriarchal imbalance in these dynamics begging to be explored by what Bertrand hands us, but there is an even more vague and consuming theme at play, one that everyone can relate to: loss.

The clients are pained, desperate, and seeking, as they seem to place all of their hope on objects, tangible leftovers of whatever they’re simultaneously chasing and running away from. We don’t know why they’re here or what they’re after specifically, but their facial expressions and body language exhibit shame and unease, stained with loss; perhaps not of death but in some capacity, that has left them broken and searching for an avenue to find meaning or value in their trauma.

All people experience loss. It’s one of, if not the primary horror that is universal to all. Loss can mean death, the departure of a friend, a breakup, or even time going by, life spent, skills weakened, memory fading. Loss can come from diminished strength of moral convictions in action, loss of agency or identity, and so on and so forth.

The loss of agency and identity is what I believe inhibits Iris’ descent into her role here. What we know about relationship dynamics, however, is that one’s assignment to his or her role is always serving them in some way, even if it’s unmanageable or primarily upsetting. Iris may be experiencing loss in a negative sense by forfeiting her own sense of dignity and worth, but she may also be experiencing freedom as a result of this very same process of loss. The socially assigned value placed on agency and will power, that only one’s acceptance of the limitations in can bring peace, is a subjectively worthy yet priceless asset or defect that she may be resigning entirely through escape for the sake of absolute serenity.

Is this a choice that propels Iris to become the more powerful member of the duo, or an equal, in her own twisted way? Do her actions rely on defense mechanisms to rationalize this behavior from the sad surrender to misogyny that it objectively may be? Is it a choice at all? Is objectivity really significant in these submissive relationships that hinge in totality on subjective experience and invisible contracts that refuse normative rules of the game?

Is this a mutually understood, and reciprocally serving, relationship? If not, who is responsible? If so, aren’t gender politics functioning on an imbalance to some degree subconsciously? Is this perhaps the most authentic manner of confronting such deep-rooted dynamics, by refusing to hide, acknowledging, or surrendering to them?

I don’t know the answers, but I do know that by deliberately remaining objective, Diane Bertrand keeps the energy bottled and cryptic, perhaps a hint to reading the film against the freedom I proposed, but I’m not too sure. The scenes of Iris uninhibited during breaks from her time with her boss, especially the one where she is swinging from the shipping equipment, are the most freeing in the film- but is this due to the absence of him in these moments, or a result of his presence in her life? This film functions as horror, not just because it is creepy in its exposition, but because it is consistently repressive of the emotions we as an audience expect, and need, to experience. We as viewers are left to puzzle the psychology of Iris, torn between whether she has disintegrated her self or perhaps achieved a sense of self-actualization incomprehensible to the common man. We as viewers are deprived of this insight, and in turn, like a more enigmatic version of the processes at play in Hard Candy, the responses we have reveal more about ourselves than the film. We experience our own loss twofold: a failure to grasp at the truth of the film, and a loss of the comfort we expect in escaping ourselves through the medium. All I was left with was myself as I asked myself these questions, and it’s all I’m ever going to get from this film on a cognitive level. This film is some kind of masterpiece.

Oh, and can we just put this on the shortlist of best final shots in cinema history?

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1522 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:58 am

Rabid (Cronenberg, 1977)

I probably last saw this movie in high school, but I found its best scenes still vivid in my mind. The film's at its best in the slow build up of detail as the local community and then the government react to the growing rabies epidemic. The scenes of martial law in Montreal are the film's strongest and are undoubtedly a reaction to the martial law declared in Quebec during the October Crisis earlier in the decade. Scenes of military checkpoints, queues overseen by soldiers, and military vehicles traveling the city disposing of infected, still retain their punch and rival such scenes in Romero. It's the rest of the movie that doesn't lift its weight. Unlike Shivers, this one never articulates the philosophical content of its metaphor, I guess hoping the metaphor itself is enough to communicate everything. I'm not sure it is, at least not when it leads to a mostly static plot of Marilynn Chambers endlessly going out, attacking someone, and then coming home. What I hadn't picked up on before, tho', is how much Chambers' attack scenes are basically porn scenes in their contrived hypersexuality: a patient in distress begs the curious responder not to leave for more help and pulls him close; a shy woman soaking in a hot tub late at night is seduced by the stunning temptress who happens by; the creep in the porn theatre find his attentions returned by an unnaturally pliable woman. It goes on and on like any porn, except of course for the endless irony that she is penetrating them. So it's a kind of parody of pornographic situations in which they're understood as only a pretext for predatory victimization. But that would seem oddly moral and prudish for Cronenberg, so who knows what he's actually getting at. Maybe the resemblance to porn was unintentional. Since the intellectual structure of the metaphor goes unarticulated (Chambers' character is perhaps Cronenberg's least self aware monster), one can only guess at what's going on.

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Satori
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1523 Post by Satori » Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:08 am

I'm very excited that y'all are doing another horror genre list: not only is horror probably my favorite genre, but the previous version of this list was the first list project I ever participated in. Digging up that list now is pretty interesting. There are some films that I ranked way too low: The Haunting will almost certainly be in my top 10 but I had it near the bottom of my 50 last time, and I seem to have ranked Murnau's Nosferatu embarrassingly low. There were also some bone-headed inclusions, of course: my only excuse for including Cabin in the Woods , a film so obnoxiously bad that I couldn't finish it the last time I tried to watch it, is that I was completely obsessed with Joss Whedon at that point in my life. (I'm better now, although I still love Buffy.)

Overall, though, I think my horror tastes are fairly consistent. My holy trinity of horror filmmakers remains Lewton, Jean Rollin, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who seem to me to be interested in similar ideas of melancholy, alienation, and loneliness, which are then articulated in their radically different historical moments and geographic spaces. I'm happy to see Seventh Victim mentioned above, a film that might well be my favorite American film, period. I'm in the midst of my annual October Lewton rewatch, so I might try to post some thoughts on those films. Whatever I say would undoubtedly be inadequate to the quiet beauty of those magical images, though.
Last edited by Satori on Wed Oct 04, 2023 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1524 Post by domino harvey » Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:26 am

L’annulaire’s gotta be up there with My Sister Eileen in terms of me slowly converting the board to its brilliance. It and Hard Candy and Single White Female are locks for the higher reaches of my list, though it sounds like only the Bertrand stands much danger of making your list TWBB!

We went into Rollin a few pages back and sorry to say the more I saw, the less I got out of his work

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Re: The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#1525 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Oct 17, 2019 1:39 pm

The Rollin films are on BFI Player. Fascination is a fantastic film and will definitely be high in my list!

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