The Horror Thread

[zero]

It's so that kind of story though. This suburban legend with weird rules and kids band together to fight it. Also I'm surprised it's not Canadian because it feels like a Canadian horror movie. It's Detroit though, soooooooo South Canada?

[Gabriel]

Midsommar is the most recent movie to really hit me hard. I was also on mushrooms when I watched it (lightly on mushrooms), and it was very intense.

The Babadook is probably my favorite horror movie of the last five years. I really dig the mental illness connection with that one.

In terms of just straight fun though, anything Samara Weaving. Ready or Not was great. The Babysitter was hilariously good. Mayhem, as well, was so much fun to watch.

Horror is my bread and butter. I will watch a shitty horror movie over a well reviewed drama every day of the week.

[Baddar]

@zero Was it you who also suggested Lake Mungo? I remember liking that too.

[zero]

@Gabriel - Samara Weaving forever! Her, Anya Taylor Joy, Olivia Cooke, and Jane Levy are such a great batch of modern Scream Queens and I hate that the mainstream is trying to take them away from us. I just watched Mayhem for the first time a couple weeks ago, such a blast. 

@Baddar - Lake Mungo was my favorite horror film of the 00s, so yes that was probably me! Scariest movie I've ever seen.

Also, if anyone is looking for a genius work of horror, check out One Cut of the Dead on Shudder. Go in as cold as possible, don't read any synopsis or anything, just turn it on and wait for it. Trust me. 

[Krabby]

Yeah love to see Ready or Not getting some love - I was a bit let down by the end but the movie itself was really good and a lot of fun

[Monkey D. Lars]

What is everyone's favorite horror franchise? I like the Conjuring, Evil Dead, Scream, Halloween, Lake Placid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, Critters, Phantasm , Hellraiser Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein but my favorite is Friday the 13th. 

Edited March 3, 2020 by Monkey D. Lars

[zero]

I'd say Child's Play and Evil Dead have the best batting averages of the big horror franchises, Romero's Dead movies are probably my fave though. And I'll always geek out for a new Scream movie. 

[Krabby]

20 minutes ago, Monkey D. Lars said:

What is everyone's favorite horror franchise? I like the Conjuring, Evil Dead, Scream, Halloween, Lake Placid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, Critters, Phantasm , Hellraiser Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein but my favorite is Friday the 13th. 

We really enjoyed the Conjuring movies but to be fair, we've not sat down and watched a lot of those others - at least not as franchises, just here and there.

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Also, lmao wuphf.com

Also, Ma was a let down - still alright but defs a letdown

[GhostMachine]

23 hours ago, Benjamin said:

When horror is done well, it's so freaking good. However, I find most horror to be tedious and just a bunch of nothing happening. That said, I thought Gretel and Hansel was really good. Not a typical horror or supernatural movie, sort of skirts the line between each. Kind of enjoyed it.

On the other hand, Brahms: The Boy II was absolute hot garbage. What boring nonsense. At least The Boy had that one shocking twist that to me was slightly surprising.

My favorite horror movies of the recent years are probably Get Out, Crimson Peak, Us, It Follows, Green Room, A Quiet Place, Villains and I also quite enjoyed Life. I know some of those might not qualify as horror to some but I think of those as horror to some extent. 

To me the best horrors are the ones that rely on psychological aspects and scares, rather than deaths and gore simply for death and gore. I'll take most old Vincent Price movies...even those with gore...over most modern horror movies that don't have good storytelling and rely on special effects and gore over plot. Get Out, It Follows, and A Quiet Place were all great. Crimson Peaks was good. Haven't seen the others you mentioned, but a lot of people I know who saw Us didn't like it. Including people who were big fans of Get Out.

Edited March 4, 2020 by GhostMachine

[zero]

Us is wildly different than Get Out. I get why people didn't love it, I think they gave away too much, but it is really good. Worth seeing. Best trailer ever. 

[Monkey D. Lars]

11 hours ago, zero said:

I'd say Child's Play and Evil Dead have the best batting averages of the big horror franchises, Romero's Dead movies are probably my fave though. And I'll always geek out for a new Scream movie. 

Forgot about Romero's films! Those are amazing too! 

Watched Session 9 last year, that film creeped the hell out of me!

[Baddar]

15 hours ago, Monkey D. Lars said:

What is everyone's favorite horror franchise? I like the Conjuring, Evil Dead, Scream, Halloween, Lake Placid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, Critters, Phantasm , Hellraiser Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein but my favorite is Friday the 13th. 

Scream was the first franchise I started, so will always be held in high regard. Anything similar to it nowadays feels nowhere near as good in comparison.

I remember watching all the Freddy films on a box set. Some are better than others, but it's probably the best/most terrifying concept.

Halloween and Friday the 13th are fun too, but it's been so long, I can't remember which ones I have/haven't seen.

The first few Saw movies were awesome. The Final Destination films will always be held in high regard by me, too.

[Gabriel]

Nightmare on Elm Street is probably my favorite horror franchise. Robert Englund absolutely killed it as Krueger, and even the hokier ones were fun. New Nightmare though, is right up there with Dream Warriors as my favorite. The meta look at what would happen if Freddy could cross over into the real world, and the return of Heather to the role of Nancy through the film... man, it was just so good.

I really love the Hellraiser franchise, even if it goes to shit after the second movie. I found a lot to enjoy about the direct-to-video sequels, and Inferno is actually one of my all time favorite horror movies. I really hope it gets a proper remake by people who respect the material.

Child's Play is a really fun one. The first three movies are completely different to what follows. Bride and Seed were so much fun, and Jennifer Tilly is so great in them. Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky both breathed new life into the franchise as well, taking it in a different direction again. The one constant though, is that no matter which generation of Chucky films you're watching, the character of Chucky doesn't feel like it changes, whether the movie is more serious or more camp. Don Mancini did a great job of making Child's Play like horror's version of Chris Jericho. It's always what it's supposed to be at its core, but it changes with the times and adapts as it needs to. Nobody talk to me about the remake.

[zero]

I still haven't seen the Child's Play remake. I've heard love it or hate it and Hamill as Chucky is intriguing, but really don't like how they did it without Mancini. 

[Gabriel]

7 minutes ago, zero said:

I still haven't seen the Child's Play remake. I've heard love it or hate it and Hamill as Chucky is intriguing, but really don't like how they did it without Mancini. 

I will watch it eventually to see how it is... but I refuse to give them any money because of the politics behind the whole thing. Mancini breathed new life into the series with Curse and Cult, and has a television series in development to continue on with the world that he's created, not to mention talks of additional films to follow... and for some reason, they decided that they needed to reboot a healthy and existing franchise (while it's still running) without any of what actually made Child's Play what it is.

Everything that I've heard about the remake thus far says that they could have literally called it anything else, because it really isn't Child's Play. They just wanted to capitalize on the revitalized brand, and nothing pisses me off more as a horror fan than people making horror movies without any heart.

[GhostMachine]

On 03/03/2020 at 15:54, Monkey D. Lars said:

What is everyone's favorite horror franchise? I like the Conjuring, Evil Dead, Scream, Halloween, Lake Placid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, Critters, Phantasm , Hellraiser Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein but my favorite is Friday the 13th. 

Evil Dead, but only the ones with Ash. The newer one they did with a female lead was okay, but not great. A Nightmare On Elm Street (ignoring the remake) a close second.

Most of the Hammer Dracula movies were excellent, and so far no one has surpassed Christopher Lee as best Count Dracula (tied with Bela Lugosi, actually....). But Satanic Rites of Dracula was garbage. From what I understand, Lee didn't actually want to do the film but had to.

Speaking of Hammer, its a shame there was never a sequel to Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter.

[zero]

Classic Hammer is something that's a bit of a horror blindspot for me. Any recommendations where to start? 

[Benjamin]

Are the Aliens movies considered horror? Or the Universal Classic Monsterverse? I like those.

If kaiju movies are considered horror, then well, they're the best of any film 

[Gabriel]

I would definitely consider the Alien franchise as horror. It's Sci-Fi Horror, but the horror elements are most definitely there. I'm such a sucker for that series. 1 and 2 are clearly just really good films. 3 was a mess, but still worth watching. Resurrection is a guilty pleasure. I know it's not good, but Brad Dourif hamming it up, Winona Ryder and Ron Perlman being bad ass, and Sigourney returning just make it so much fun. The action sequences were great too, if maybe a little over the top.

I really enjoyed Prometheus as well. The visuals and the ideas behind everything were so intriguing. I feel like Ridley wanting to get away from the classic Xenomorph kind of handicapped the film, as a lot of what is wrong with it is either due to changes to the original script that were made to separate it from the original franchise... or things that could have been more easily forgiven had he not tried so hard to veer out of the classic Alien lane and just embraced it.

The original script for Prometheus that I read online was so much better than the finished product. It still had a lot of flaws that needed to be tidied up, but even as-is, would have been a much better shooting script. I think it leaned maybe a bit too heavily on the already established Alien lore and felt too much like fan-fiction at times, but it still would have been a better way to go than to promise a return to the universe and then give the middle finger to everyone who expected another Alien movie.

Covenant, I felt was a step in the right direction, but it definitely felt like Ridley was almost forced to incorporate more classic Alien elements than he wanted to, and the mashing of those things together with his clear desire to focus on David and the dangers of Artificial Intelligence... plus the complete neglect of the Elizabeth Shaw character... made the film a mess that didn't feel like Alien... didn't feel like Prometheus... just was kind of there.

As much as I wanted Prometheus to be more Alien in its' DNA, the natural and best possible sequel to Prometheus would have been what we didn't see in Covenant. David and Shaw finding the planet of the engineers... David playing Shaw and dropping the weapon on the planet... and then the cat and mouse game that would have ensued as she realized what he was doing and tried to get away. An ending sequence of fifteen to thirty minutes of him performing his experiments on her, keeping her alive but torturing her by using her to refine his creation... that would have been grim, disgusting and a great setup to a third movie where either another batch of Engineers comes for him and the Xenomorph, or a group of humans get a distress call from Shaw and try to save her, not knowing she's already dead, or a combination of both.

[IDOL]

It follows really is fantastic. I went in hearing nothing about it and was completely blown away.