Welcome To Our Nightmare III: Terror, Wooley... and TAKOMA!

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Victim of The Night
16 hours ago
Originally Posted by Captain Terror
Ok, so as a kid I used to like the Defenders comics, because the Hulk was my guy and I was also a Valkyrie fan. By the time I was reading them we're talking issue #75 or whatever, and it was all mostly standard superhero fare. I recently got this collection which includes the first dozen or so issues, but also all of the other titles that led up to the formation of the team. These all came out before my time, so I'd never read any of them.



What I did NOT know before I got this was that the origin of the Defenders was tied up in all kinds of occult shenanigans with demons called The Undying Ones and some guy named Necrodamus and Namor robbing graves and whatnot. I did not intend for this to be my October read but it turned out to be perfect.

Image dump:






I loved The Defenders. I see that Nighthawk and Hellcat are not in that first issue you posted. Bummer.
I loved the old Doctor Strange and the Dormammu stuff, all that. Plus the Silver Surfer when he meets Mephisto.




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Fouke-a-delic
10 hours ago
Originally Posted by Wooley
I loved The Defenders. I see that Nighthawk and Hellcat are not in that first issue you posted. Bummer.
I loved the old Doctor Strange and the Dormammu stuff, all that. Plus the Silver Surfer when he meets Mephisto.
Right, I'm halfway through the collection and it's just been Hulk/Strange/Namor with an occasional assist from Silver Surfer . Flipping through the remainder it looks like Valkyrie will be showing up soon.


There's a volume 2 so I'll be picking that one up also



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8 hours ago
Originally Posted by Captain Terror
One thing I remember about As Above So Below is that they would run into a dead end and the main girl would be like "I wonder if one of these bricks opens a secret passage?" And then like the second brick she tries does, indeed, open a secret passage. Is that accurate or am I misremembering? I didn't hate it but just remember being bugged by stuff like that although I too was ultimately charmed by the main character. Will no doubt watch again at some point in the future.
This is very accurate, lol.

But for me, it kind of added to the charm. The idea is that it's one big puzzle, and they are using clues to navigate it, and once I got over it being kind of goofy (there are MANY shockingly fast and accurate guesses), I was fine with it.

What bothered me was the way she'd be like, "Okay, we need to find the correct stone. If we pick the wrong one, we will all be crushed to death." And then they'd pick a stone in like 30 seconds with just a brief discussion. I mean, that's definitely how I decide things when I'm stressed, but I don't like my odds of escaping the catacombs.



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Master of None
8 hours ago
Originally Posted by Takoma11


As Above, So Below, 2014

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is an archaeologist who is obsessed with alchemy and with pursuing the legendary Sorcerer’s Stone. After a risky foray into an Iranian cave system, Scarlett is certain that she can find the Stone in the Catacombs beneath Paris. With her former boyfriend and fellow scholar George (Ben Feldman) and cameraman Benji (Edwin Hodge) in tow, Scarlett enlists local guide Papillon (Francois Civil) to take them deep under the city. But the deeper they go, the more it seems that some force is working against the explorers.

Compelling and spooky, this is a solid horror adventure.

The most important thing to put in this review is: a big sorry to ApexPredator, who has been championing this film for YEARS, to which I’ve always responded in my mind “Yeah, but found footage . . . “.

If, like me, you’ve been put off by the found footage aspect or by the sense of it being a Descent knock-off, I’d encourage you to give it a chance. This was fun and scary without being overly depressing or formulaic.



FULL REVIEW
This is a film I've been hesitating to check out for years. Maybe this is a sign.
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8 hours ago
Originally Posted by Thief
This is a film I've been hesitating to check out for years. Maybe this is a sign.
I say do it. It's really solid and, like I wrote above, not super disturbing or depressing, and an engaging story and pace.



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A system of cells interlinked
5 hours ago
I am a big fan of As Above, So Below. I have seen it multiple times. One of my favorite found footage films/
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he/him
2 hours ago
Originally Posted by crumbsroom
It's about the tone and how it presents what is showing to the audience. Big spooky house. Mysterious figure. A sense of dread. And, at least from what I recall, it never breaks that spell or its total horrorness. Unlike something like BSS, which very clearly plays with the rules of horror, and sometimes purposefully deflates its supernatural seeming elements, that first segment in Amer doesn't pull its horror punches. Maybe we can argue in the end that what it all means isn't necessarily horror, but we can end up doing that in all sorts of movies. We could also gripe that Ginger Snaps is essentially just an allegory for puberty, and that the girls transformations are nothing but a representation of that, and so that somehow dampens its pure werewolf moments because what's so spooky about puberty afterall.


But, again, unless I've forgotten something, the opening of Amer doesn't break from the pov of the child, so whatever she is seeing is real to her, and that's what is effective about it. It works completely as horror.


The rest of it, not so much.
I guess it's been long enough that I can't really remember a substantial difference in terms of qualifying as horror tone between BBS and Amer (I've re-watched BBS a few times, but not Amer). But to be clear, I think the opening of Amer as horror and is perfectly fine for an October watch (and for me, so is BBS). And I also agree that the first segment is the strongest of the three, but it's also doing an homage to Argento with movies, which I also prefer to his giallo stuff.

I guess, I'm just trying to calibrate it to, "does this seem like the specific type of stuff that Wooley likes for October?" And there I'm a lot less clear. I think the obvious answer is for Wooley to put a calendar item for next September 30th so it's close enough to October to count if it does and outside of it enough for him to not complain about it if it doesn't.

The reason why my mind went to the third segment was the possible parallel with Stage Fright, since I have to feel around blindly a bit around on whether Wooley feels something is supernatural enough or not for Halloween. So, instinctively I felt there might be something there in the third segment. Though I did undersell, the possibility of the first segment, since I remembered that it wasn't actually supernatural in the literal sense.

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