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

The script is awful. It's so bad. When the dialogue isn't expositorily filling in the audience on all the stuff that they ostensibly need to know for the movie to make any sense at all it's just weak quips. I do think that quote sounds on the money. It's a terrible film.

Your friend needs to fix her heart.

MKS you hanging out with us this spooky season?

Who’s to say. Depends on how many movies come out that I feel need support. Or how bored I get. So probably.

I've now read some spoilers and my fears have been confirmed. I was dreading the "Willy Wonka's dad is an abusive dentist" thing where they waste time overexplaining everything with unnecessary backstories and convoluted plot twists. "The Headless Horseman chops off heads because of something something blackmail". Sounds like this one is a similar offender.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Genuinely miss the days when people realized a movie was bad by actually watching it, instead of going online to try to find someone who tells them it's a bad movie.

I didn't say it was "bad". I confirmed that it did a thing that I feared it would do. I'll determine whether or not it does it well after I've seen it.

You DO realize I'm not talking about the movie you're talking about?

Evidently not!

Oh and lemme tell ya, the resolution of all tension between mother and daughter, a lifetime build up between them, being resolved by is just one of dozens of atrocities this film commits.

Cap, your instinct is correct and I highly advise that you just give this a pass. I assumed that even if it was bad there would be something worth seeing or it would satisfy my completionism nature but I can tell you this movie is devoid of any value, is actually an insult to filmgoers and major blow to the standards that cinema should have, which seem to be going down hard already, and the only outcome from you watching it will be that you wasted two hours of your life and now you're angry.

Oh goody, I've just had my dose of hyperbole for the rest of the week

Well, I've been meaning to watch this, some way or another, for about 20 or 25 years, I think. Once it reached streaming, though I had it built up too much in my mind and would always put it off. I finally just randomly pulled the trigger on a random Monday night.
And, honestly, I think it's about as good as it is fair to expect.
There is a lot to like about Perfect Blue. It's surreal and edgy and bloody and also has that weird tension of Horror/Erotic in several uncomfortable ways that are very effective. I can understand why it has such a reputation. This medium seems so well-suited to portraying a person's descent into madness and it turns out it's a great medium for Horror, which I feel this movie definitely slips into.

If I have a quibble - and I do - it's just what the story is. I felt a little let down by the narrative in the end. The resolution to me felt dull and simple compared to where this film could have gone and seemed like it might go and was a bit of a disappointment, almost a rug-pull to me. I usually try not to mark too much off of a film for the nature of its narrative, my old "judge them by the movie they're making not the movie you wish they'd made" tenet... but I can't help myself. It feels like if the movie followed through on the conceit it's dangling the whole time it just would have been epic and instead it is merely great.
I'll be specific in spoiler-tags:
man, it just left me feeling robbed.

Alright, that said, Perfect Blue was really good and I would absolutely watch it again and recommend it to anyway who can watch anime (not everybody can deal with animation as an adult medium and not every animation fan gels with anime). I'd certainly be open to watching more films like it and I'd love to have seen a well-done live-action adaptation of this.

Feel free to host a (free) month-long horror-themed quiz. My Octobers have been depressingly stress-free these past few years.

Wow...Beetlejuice/Beetlejuice is not the film I would think of this year of having "ugly" CGI. The movie I saw had built sets, claymation, animation, great makeup, and fully formed puppets. Yes I think they had some CGI and the film feels like two films smooshed together but thanks to the short runtime I enjoyed it quite a bit.


Compare that to I Saw TV Glow which is a great concept where the pacing and focus of the film was completely uneven and just kinda fell apart at the end.


So this week is going to suck for me...I've got 4 stubs openings for Thurday to next Friday and 4 Horror films out right now.


Bagman, The Substance, Speak No Evil, Azreal) along with Lee and The Wild Robot. So it looks like I'm going to end up missing some films before Joker takes every screen come Friday.

Just an FYI: the same person who made Perfect Blue also made a short series called Paranoia Agent and I would highly recommend it.

Gonjiam Haunted Asylum (A)

A super neat Korean found footage film about the actual asylum in the title. The movie revolves around a group live streaming their exploration of the asylum. Things start out well enough, but unravel as the exploration progresses.

So this one is very reliant on characters to carry the first two acts, but kicks ass in the third. This is not an ambiguous movie at all. The cast is neat and sympathetic, and the climax is long and intense. Especially by found footage standards. Some of the creepiest stuff I've seen in this kind of film. I would recommend it, especially since it's available for free.

To tide you over: I'm thinking of a movie. What is it?

Final Exam, obviously. Next question!

Incorrect! The movie I'm thinking of was made after 1981.

Also, I find it, like, morally outrageous that going to YouTube and typing in "final exam 1981 arrow catch" yields ZERO relevant results.

Why do we even have the internet if an isolated clip of a man catching a dang arrow in a 1981 slasher film is not at my very fingertips?!