A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I'm gonna need to see this, it seems. A friend who generally has very good taste in movies, especially genre movies, shredded it and said it was all she could do to finish it. She was coming up with real superlatives for how much she thought it failed and I told her about one of Roger Ebert's scathing review that one time about the ukulele picks and she just said, "Well, he's lucky he didn't have to sit through this."
And then I read all these reviews that say it's great. I feel like I'm gonna have to be the rubber-match.

I was going to say the same. It's not filmed with the visual flair of Nosferatu or the later Universals, so I'm not sure how impressive the big-screen experience would be. It's all about Barrymore and the makeup for me.

I mean, I'D go see it but if choices have to be made I wouldn't be mad if Torgo skipped this one.

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It kinda is. I mean the story is good, period, but Barrymore is absolutely awesome. And I love that even in 1920 it doesn't flinch on the ugly stuff.

You should congratulate your friend for having extraordinarily good taste.

My take on the movie probably wouldn't be nearly as harsh, there's certainly some good stuff in there but the most monstrous aspect of the movie is just how it goes on way longer than it really needs to. It didn't need to be almost 2-1/2 hours, it just becomes a little too repetitive.

If you have Shudder, which I assume you do, the director's previous movie, Revenge, is on there. The concept of The Substance is... more interesting and leads to more interesting scenes, but I always phrase the characterizations as shallowly cartoonish (this applies to both movies).


I feel like Revenge is probably a good predictor as to whether you'll hate, love, or feel ambivalent about The Substance.
(I'd say I enjoyed the dark comedy of the ending, which is where I feel the Society comparisons come in, but did the movie need to be 2h20m? And I feel the movie was very... shallow).

I've been meaning to get to Revenge. Did not know it was the same director though I had heard that the Substance director had directed something good.
And, hey, we all have different tastes, I got a call from a friend this very night who said, "Hey, you know your favorite movie of the year? Well, I just saw it and I have some bad news for you." So I'm open to the possibility that, with Substance, I may disagree with the critics and not like it or disagree with my friend and like it. I tend to see divisive movies if they're anywhere near my genres.

Holy mother of jesus. Have I just seen the worst movie of the year? The worst movie of the last five years? The last decade? Do I have superlatives enough to describe how f*cking bad this movie is?

Rather than describe plot (why bother) or technical issues (I demanded better CGI in 2004 than this in 2024) or the lack of any real wit (in a sequel to a film famous for it) or the dearth of creativity or any new creative ideas, rather than describe any of myriad ways in which this movie utterly fails, I would rather describe the f*cking dishonesty of this movie.
Everyone lied to us.
When Tim Burton said, "I'm not just a shit-bag Hollywood shill, Ima make a good movie that's not a cash-grab again!"... he lied through his f*cking teeth.
When Michael Keaton echoed this in so many interviews that he only did this because they really had a good script and they'd found something special and he'd never do this as a cash grab... he's 73 years old with grandkids and he f*cking lied right in our faces.
When my beloved Willem Dafoe talked about how they were really doing something special and not just some lazy re-hash for the money... liar!
My god this thing is an atrocity. When I considered what I might say about it, all three of the following crossed my mind:

1. This is the worst cash-grab I've ever seen.
2. This is the worst movie I've ever seen.
3. This is actually worse than The Rise Of Skywalker.

I might walk it back a few steps from No.3 but lord it was in contention.
I will give the movie this one and only this one thing. Wynona Ryder was genuinely good at what she was given to work with and bravely holds this piece of actual shit up all by herself and it's so heroic in the context of what she had to carry, that she has actually risen significantly in my estime (she'll be so relieved).
On the other hand...
Boo! to you, Willem Dafoe. Shame and more shame on you for doing what you did. Where is your integrity sir?
Boo! to you, Michael Keaton for half-assedly rehashing-for-dollars when you knew this was garbage. I will never trust you again.
Boo! to you, Tim Burton for sinking lower than I thought you could. You are dead to me.
And the Venice Film Festival? You gave this movie a three-minute standing ovation? Bullshit. I call bullshit on all of this. This movie is a multimedia scam to see how much money can be made from a nostalgic property while delivering nothing.
Shame. Shame on all of you.
And to be clear, not because you didn't do it the way I wanted, not because you failed my nostalgia, not because you may have ruined one of my favorite movies forever, no, f*ck that, I was on board for you doing anything new, my arms and eyes were wide open... you just made a piece of crap, a shabby, low-rent, cash-grab rife with the worst cynicism Hollywood can offer now and a harbinger that in fact cinema truly is dead. And at $350M+ and climbing, is this the movie that solidified the ultimate move of the industry (which is not Hollywood, it's Sony and other big corporations that own Hollywood), that they have convinced us that shit is caviar? Well, if this is what we like, then eat up, because it's all that we deserve.

I absolutely LOVED Revenge and was really excited to hear that she has a new film out. But even I am a bit hesitant about the 2+ hour runtime. Still, I'm hearing more positive than negative, so I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah the movie is definitely overlong and could easily have been 1/2 hour shorter.

Thanks for the feedback!

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is out since it's playing at an inconvenient time, Sunday afternoon, which is a shame since they will apparently have a live organ player. I'll likely go to either TCM or Rocky Horror. If it's the latter, I better start shopping for just the right skullet wig and candelabra from a Spirit of Halloween store because I could cosplay as Riff Raff.

Wish I could say I'm surprised, but this is pretty much what my gut was telling me about this one. Am I wrong in assuming the plot is overly complex, and that there are giant rousing action-packed CGI set pieces? Because that's what I expect from every film of this ilk now (and from Burton for that matter).

I mean, overly complex is an understatement but also gives it too much credit. It's all just a bunch of bullshit thrown together in an absurd rush with a wink and a nod to the original every 40 seconds or so, so rushed really that what was maybe gonna kinda be the crux of the plot happens in literally like 3 total scenes from start to the end of the arc. And there's just SO much going on but for only like moments before rushing to the next thing.
And yes, it's sick with CGI ugliness everywhere almost all the time. All that talk about practical effects, yeah, there's some but there so much CGI that I wonder why they bothered to do anything practical. It's an ugly movie, it's an awful, awful script, it's rushed, it's not funny, it's not enjoyable in any way I could think of.
I considered walking out of this movie four times (and I almost never walk out of movies) and the only reason I didn't was the guilt I felt at talking my friends into going to see it with me.

Is there a more boring Wes Craven movie than Deadly Blessing?

Probably not...

I Saw the TV Glow? Just guessing. Because that's currently sitting at the top of my year of movies so far, and it seems like a Wooley, Cap, Tak, and if Crumbs wasn't eaten alive by the rats from an Andy Milligan movie, him as well (RIP Crumbs), type of movie. It's also a movie that some people are really going to not like.

Though, I guess we've had a few movies so far this year that are probably going to be divisive.

Every single year brings movies that are divisive....

I haven't seen that one. Out of what I have seen, I think Deadly Friend is Craven's weakest film.

The primary complaint I hear about this movie, that I have not actually seen, is how bad the script is and how there's just too much stuff in it.

I did read that a writer from the Wednesday Netflix series wrote it. I can't say I've seen any of that series, but I did read or heard one attempt at a synopsis of the variety of stuff in this movie and my initial reaction was, "it sounds like they tried to put an entire season of TV into a single movie." That's just my uninformed take, for what it's worth.

If you want to catch it (although I don't recommend it), it's available on Tubi I think.

And yes it is probably worse than Deadly Friend.

Let's just say there's a twist in this one that, if done today, would get you cancelled (and for good reason)

That is a valid criticism, although it doesn't seem to have hurt the movie commercially.

Love Lies Bleeding, though I am definitely excited about I Saw The TV Glow but it snuck out of my art-house theater before I got to it.