The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[The Curious Sofa]

And sharks can’t floss. That’s silly.

You have me there.

[brundlefly]

It's not the questioning, it's the too-easy conclusions. All of the above is rendered incoherent by the fact that the children have killed all the locals on the island well before they get to a couple of foreign tourists.

Not to drag this out (and late, sorry), especially as neither of us are particularly invested in this movie, but I think there’s some conflation of point and peeve here. I wasn’t drawing any cause/effect relationship; just laying out examples of behavior I found less than sympathetic and thinking about background elements that may be marginal parts of this. I don’t think the movie winds up any serious treatise on anything, but am less cynical about including those elements. “Adults are messing up the world!” and “Tourists! Aargh!” are fine, vague points of expressive frustration to toss into fantasy violence.

So what part does their being tourists, or pale, or rude, or ignorant play in the movie's conceit? Nothing that I can see. The children attack them the same as they do their own family members, the police, and presumably everyone else in Spain. Adults are targeted indiscriminately, so what kind of adults the tourists end up being is rendered meaningless.

What kind of adults the main couple reveal themselves to be may not matter to their (terrestrial) fate, but it’s not irrelevant. First, we have to spend the bulk of the run time with them, something I came to resent quickly. But more importantly, it’s not a movie called Which Adults are These Kids Killing? Exactly zero other adults on the island, according to Titular Line Daddy (whose final scene is heartbreaking), raised a hand either in self-defense or to defend other adults. Because of course they wouldn’t. But what has two thumbs and a moustache and ultimately proves willing to wordlessly machine gun down a plaza of pre-teens? That guy.

[Mr Sausage]

Exactly zero other adults on the island, according to Titular Line Daddy (whose final scene is heartbreaking), raised a hand either in self-defense or to defend other adults. Because of course they wouldn’t. But what has two thumbs and a moustache and ultimately proves willing to wordlessly machine gun down a plaza of pre-teens? That guy.

Because for the adults on the island, those were their kids. Whereas the male tourist goes all Rambo to make it back to his kids. So, tribalism!

[thirtyframesasecond]

Talk To Me (2022) - this Australian film appeared in a few top tens of 2023. The Philippou brothers started out making horror comedy shorts on Youtube and both worked on Jennifer Kent's 'The Bababook' - this is their debut feature. A group of Aussie teens communicate with the dead and naturally, it does not go well! One of the characters has a past family tragedy, which then has serious consequences. There are some very odd and sad scenes and that balance of comedy and poignancy mixes really well. It's A24's most successful horror and has very good reviews for a film of this genre - should be on Netflix (or is in the UK at least).