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

Home invasion night!


Don’t Hang Up. Teen dudebros internet famous for their prank calls are terrorized by one of their victims. I appreciated that for once it’s mostly two guys preyed upon by a killer and for actually doing some pretty bad shit. The prank call that opens the movie is a truly ****ed up thing to do to someone. The filmmakers halfheartedly try to shine some sympathy on them but it doesn’t make up for their homophobic suggestions and borderline domestic terrorism. The movie does look good and there’s even some stylish flare to keep it eye-catching but the whole thing boils down to if the opening scene from Scream was 84 minutes long.


The Strangers: Chapter 1. This third entry in the franchise is pretty standard stuff that doesn’t have enough going on to justify its own existence. I remember liking Prey at Night and was hoping for more of that but Chapter 1 is almost the exact same thing as the tamer first movie. And the question really on all our minds is will they ever find Tamara?

From watching a couple of Video Nasties, as well as looking at those I saw before, it's pretty remarkable how squeamish that censorship board was. This is some mild stuff. Hopefully Evil Dead delivers on the nastiness.

I'm also learning to enjoy zombies. I guess it's just the modern over saturation of the genre that made it seem bland and uninteresting. It's nice to see this sort of free form era of zombies, where they're all different and with different levels of intelligence, versus just hordes of loosely hungry idiots, the only difference from one movie to the other being how fast they are.

I gotta say I do appreciate the extremely slow zombies of films like Zombie 1979, Dawn of the Dead, The Beyond, etc. Dawn of the Dead, which I just watched for the second time, probably has the best zombies ever. The actors are all killing it, they have tons of moments of folks interacting with them individually, and you can see they're still sort of people underneath! Fantastic film. I learned that there was a longer version, which I will be watching next October too.

I'm finally gonna get around to binging the Rob Zombie trilogy tomorrow (House of 1000 Corpses, Devils Rejects, 3 from Hell)

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The only thing that kept me from feeling particularly negative about this film was that it felt like perfunctory stage setting. They clearly wanted to do two sequels that followed the original but needed to ignore Prey At Night and work around Liv Tyler being 15 years older now so they opted to do a close remake.

BUT it performed so poorly that they haven’t even announced a release date for part 2 and both it and part 3 were supposed to come out within the year!!! Between this and Horizon, I’m feeling pretty burned by ambitious studios suddenly getting cold feet with their already shot follow ups.

Fake TV broadcast night!


WNUF Halloween Special. A “live” seance from 1987 in a haunted home on Halloween night complete with period-accurate commercials and news segments makes this a fun watch…for a little while. The novelty wears off after about 45 minutes due mostly to a lack of narrative and a subtle yet irritating audio whine throughout that was probably a side effect of shooting on VHS.


Ghostwatch. Despite being famous for doing found footage before The Blair Witch Project I never heard of this until about a year ago. This is very effective at what it’s going for, especially when it comes to hiding apparitions in the background of panning shots. I thought the characters were compelling and felt realistic as well. The end gets a little too big and some closure might have made the story feel a little more complete but overall I see why this is influential and often emulated.

I really dug this as well. I want to write something about it, but I don't know how to do that without spoiling it. Hope that's not a spoiler in and of itself...

The Vourdalak -

Can love bloom in a creepy forest? Specifically, one where the titular creature is killing or turning everyone he once held dear into one of him? This funny and strange French horror adapted from a Tolstoy short story does a good job at exploring this equally odd question. The vourdalak's prey is a favorite mainstay of horror that apparently existed long before Spider Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.: a strange and isolated family. It's also just as deprived of love, and to the movie's credit, in multiple ways, whether it's teenage son Piotr's unfavored proclivities or daughter Sdenka, who is cursed by local tradition to remain unmarried. Enter French aristocrat and unwitting visitor Jacques, who is just the right hero for how he's just as much of a stranger as we are and for how much his privilege contrasts with the family's. Who (or what) will you remember the most, though? Well, there's a reason he's in the title. Besides being one unholy creation, he'll make you wish more special effects teams realized the power of puppetry before they consider relying on CGI.

Despite its qualities and one scare I dare not say anything about, it's all a bit too safe to be great. Also, even though it gets the point across and occurs offscreen, there's a scene relying on one of my least favorite tropes (here's a hint: it involves a pet). This is director Adrien Beau's first feature, and I'll at least say it makes me anticipate his next one. It's a solid horror movie and a story that shows what it means to truly love someone. It's also a must-see for lovers of unconventional vampire stories (a vourdalak is a Slavic variety of one).

For an earlier example, even if only by just one year, check out the Tales From the Crypt episode The Undertaking Parlor. I was bouncing around my Tales From the Crypt collection when I landed on this one, and was stunned to see them going full found footage for the entire episode.

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I haven't played the Amnesia games yet. For horror games I love the Resident Evil and Dead Space franchises. The new Silent Hill 2 remake is getting good buzz, and I keep meaning to get around to Still Wakes the Deep.

I saw there's an IMDB page for The Strangers: Chapter 2 but all the information was a carbon copy from the Chapter 1 page except for a 2 hour and 42 minute runtime. So what you're saying is making all that make more sense now. Also Renny Harlin directed this and that's wild.

He did an interview on Kingcast where he pretty much said that the only reason he signed on was due to the excitement of getting to make what was essentially a 4-5 hour horror epic that would span years.

Then seeming to lose confidence and cut this endeavor off at the knees before it has a chance to get interesting seems to represent everything annoying and risk averse about modern cinema.

Was that the one with the teen boys breaking into the mortuary?

Terrifier 3 is everything I could want from a Terrifier film: it’s the best in its franchise, the best killer clown film and maybe… Just maybe…

The best killer Santa film.

Beberian Sound Studio. I avoided this movie for the longest time because I was wrongly under the impression that it was torture porn. Instead it’s so inspired by giallo that it’s about making one, specifically all the little details and analog machines that go into creating the audio. The real horror here was the behavior of those Italian guys amirite?


The Sacrifice Game. Holdovers at a girls’ boarding school during Christmas break encounter a group of satanists on a murder spree. The beginning is pretty flat and bare bones as if the filmmakers were bored shooting all the setup and character development, but things pick up in the second half. And while the way it ends doesn’t necessitate a sequel I wouldn’t mind seeing a continuation of the story.


Harpoon. Horror and dark comedy mix in this survival story of three friends stranded on a boat in the ocean. It’s got a low budget feel but the actors do a solid job at both the comedy and the drama, and even succeed at being sympathetic and relatable when called for. It’s a fun time.

One of the best horror movies I've watched so far this year doesn't even have a wiki page.





Loop Track (2023)



This is a brilliant slow burn, watching a man psychologically crumble, and question every thought he has, and the motives of all around him.


Excellent performances all around, especially the main character. Fair warning: this movie takes its time. Don't expect things to get violent quickly. But one of the movie's best features is its atmosphere of constant uncertainty and dread..


Really good stuff.

Yes!

I'm laughing at this because I have to admit in the past 12 years of discussing this movie with people, that's one category I've never heard anyone associate it with (and mentally would categorize it on the opposite end of the spectrum from torture porn).

ETA: my only guess is you read "Berberian" and just mentally associated it strongly with the word Barbarian and/or the title "A Serbian Film".

Great episode! I remember quite a few that were a lot better than you'd expect, for an anthology horror TV series

I've almost put this one on several times. Good to know it's worth checking out!

In A Violent Nature. What if Friday the 13th but you follow Jason? Just a big dumb relentless force lumbering towards any shiny object it sees. What. A. Movie. I was cackling throughout. Perspective is a powerful thing, I loved our big lug of a killer and didn’t give a shit about the victims at all. Delightful.

Double Blind. Test subjects locked in a lab discover the experimental drug they’re on prevents them from falling asleep. Solid concept and well-executed. There’s scares, gore, neat camera tricks, setups and payoffs. Just a well-done movie all around.

I only wish it had been an official F13 film. Following Jason rather than their carbon copy would’ve both elevated the film and been exactly the wild swing the franchise needs for its 13th entry.

I do wonder if the acting was intentionally bad, evoking the genre, or just a symptom of being a low budget production.

Either way, big fan. Second best slasher of the year.