Horror films October 2023

[Julius Seeker]

Starting with the Alien trilogy (Scott, Cameron, and Fincher), although only the first one is a horror film.
Tomorrow is Jordan Peele’s Us and Nope
All of these are rewatches, the other two just have horror elements.

Also plan on rewatching Prometheus.

Other films planned for the months: Under the Skin, Suspiria (original), Silence of the Lambs, Jennifer’s Body, Anaconda, Lake Placid, Meg 2, The Witch, The Lighthouse, Hereditary, Midsommar, Perfect Blue, Barbarian, Night of the Living Dead (1991 Savini remake), Dawn of the Dead (original), and Day of the Dead (original… is one of the most fucked up films to watch while high), Pearl, Final Destination series, Treehouse of Horror series (going backwards with THOH1 for Halloween.).

[Julius Seeker]

Note for next time I watch the full Alien series, skip Alien 3

The fourth one isn’t really something to write home about, but it doesn’t feel like it’s using the fantastic ending of the second film and its themes as asswipe to kickstart it. I enjoyed the fourth film.

Of the remaining four films I’ve only seen Prometheus, and it’s not really an Aliens film so much as one that’s in the same universe.

[Eric]

Watchin all the Screams!

[Julius Seeker]

Hitting the big late 90s pics is always fun. How are the newer ones? I haven’t seen past the third one.

[Eric]

1 & 2 are my favorite. 3 is ehhhhhh, 4 is better then it gets credit but studio meddling kinda ruining the ending which is why 5 has this interesting plot element to the fem lead. 5 is the reboot/remake with the old and new cast. 6 was trying new things but didn't go far enough imo, Ghostface in 6 is pretty brutal.

My Order is 1 > 2 > 6 > 4 > 5 > 3.

[Julius Seeker]

Good enough for me!
Unfortunately, this year I’m swamped through October, and maybe into November. Otherwise I’d have watched more by this point.

I’ll see if I can get to them. Otherwise, maybe a bit later.

[Julius Seeker]

Watched some James Wan films including Insidious, Conjuring 1 and 2, and M3gan. Probably going to watch Saw at some point soon to round out his top films. Dude is only 46 years old and is already one of the most prolific horror director of all time.

Conjuring 2 fucked me up. There’s this stretch in the first half that pulls those tension and creepiness strings tighter than any film I’ve ever seen… and it’s like 35 minutes long. At one part, I literally yelled out loud. But I’ve seen this one before and saw about 100+ other people get fucked up, so I don’t feel bad about it.

M3gan is the newest one of the bunch. If you like Child’s Play, you’ll like this one. It’s a similar story to the Child’s Play Remake, except good (critics gave it 93% Fresh rating on RT). Some of the plot points are ridiculous. Without spoiling too much: the film is about an aunt to an orphaned girl who works at a toy company, with the Christmas season just around the corner, she’s pressed to come up with a new toy. Somehow, with her team of three people, she builds the world’s most advanced android to be used as a children’s toy. She built a hobbit sized T-800, gave it the facade of a little girl, and made it into a children’s toy.

The aunt is played by Allison Williams who is best known for the dark comedy TV series Girls, and also for Get Out. She’s unlikable in this film… much like her characters in Girls and Get Out, but she’s not straight up evil like she is in Get Out, more like the self-centered Marnie from Girls. At the same time, there’s kind of a message - she sucks being a mom, and the film isn’t condemning her because of it.

The orphan is basically Andy from Child’s Play. Marnie (or whatever the aunt’s name is) uses her niece for R&D to see how M3gan and her interact. The orphan niece forms a dependency on M3gan because of the lack of a proper parent figures. M3gan is a bit of a brutal anti-hero who is AI controlled (like the Child’s Play Remake) rather than possessed by Grima Wormtongue.

Anyway, this film is James Wan’s more critically acclaimed horror film; although, I don’t think it’s his best. It’s probably his least scary horror film, that might have something to do with why critics like it so much.

[Julius Seeker]

Saw.
I’m shocked at the volume of negative reviews on this one as this is clearly one of the best horror films from its era. But horror, during that time, wasn’t treated very fairly. And for some reason the more creepy and disturbing a film, the more the critics didn’t like it.

• Most common complaint was that it was too gratuitously violent and gory. Not buying that as critics seem to have no problem calling Tom “Sultan of Splatter” Savini gore-fests as some of the greatest horror films of all time. Meanwhile Saw is less violent and gory than Scorsese mafia films.
• The second complaint was that the story was convoluted because of the use of flashbacks. Are you kidding me? This came after an era of films like Fight Club and Memento, and critics loved those.
• Someone complained about how the plot was contrived… as though that wasn’t the point of the story: having the whole thing meticulously planned out by the genius jigsaw killer.

Anyway, the negative criticism reeks of dishonesty. It’s one of those situations where critics dislike an element they don’t want to admit disliking - in this case, the fact the film was way creepier and freakier than other horror films up to that time - and then attack it on some other grounds that don’t make them seem ridiculous… or in this case, a bunch of giant pussies.

I think critics these days are a lot better when reviewing the horror genre. They’re starting to come around to actually admitting that horror films of today are actually a whole lot scarier than those that came out when they were kids. There are probably two horror films that get to me before about Saw and The Grudge, and that’s Candyman (1993) and Day of the Dead (1986), and to be fair, that’s at night while I’m on edibles.

Speaking of Candyman, gonna watch the Tony Todd remake of Night of the Living Dead soon.

And speaking of Saw, I also watched three other James Wan horror films, recently: Insidious, Conjuring 1, and Conjuring 2. I forgot just how terrifying the first half of the second film is. In my opinion, Conjuring 2 (the first half at least) remains the scariest horror film ever made - and this one legitimately killed a viewer who took a heart attack during one of the Nun scenes.

Insidious is a film James Wan created to address the criticisms of Saw… particularly the ones that said it was only scary because of the violence and blood. So he made a film without violence and blood using similar tension techniques, and succeeded in creating a film that was arguably scarier. I think that it might, to this day, be the scariest film that’s rated PG, although A Quiet Place (using James Wan style tension techniques) certainly rivals it.