/horror/ general megathread - Let's talk about movies and shit.

frozen_runner said:
RE 28 Years Later: Civil War aside, Garland is a solid writer who will tackle a lot of these questions, I'm sure. He'll actually have to in order to explain how there are so many infected in existence all these years later.
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Garland WAS a solid writer. Trump mind virus got him hard, as that's exactly when his output went to utter shit (could be coincidence, but I'm kind of doubting it as I saw the trailer for Civil War).

I guess it's good that Danny Boyle is involved, but honestly it's been nearly 20 years since he did anything actually good (2007....2008 if you count Slumdog, which I don't). Although I did enjoy T2, it certainly wasn't because it was good.

Garland's only done 3 movies in the past 10 years, but they've all been spectacular failures (Annihilation*, Men and Civil War), meanwhile Boyle hasn't failed as spectacularly, but everything has just been a tepid mass of boring. I mean how the fuck do you make a Sex Pistol's bio pic unwatchably boring and shitty - well, ask Boyle, because he did.

All this to say, my expectations are pretty low for 28 Years, despite really liking the first 2 movies and it having a pretty good trailer. I'm curious about the giant zombie mutant in it. Is that going to be some kind of evolution of the rage virus, or is it just supposed to be a big guy and I'm looking at it wrong from the camera perspective. Seems inhumanly big. But anyway, I will have no plan to see this in a theater unless it gets reviewed exceedingly well by people I trust.

*I'm aware this movie has its defenders, but any sci-fi horror movie that I turn off from absolute boredom after 30 minutes is inarguably shit. There are no likeable characters, or even anyone that talks like a human, in it over that time period.

For vampire movies I like smaller scale depressing ones. Let the Right One In and My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To are good depressing winter watches that I highly recommend. That second one I only found because I was checking up on the careers of all the people involved in Wristcutters: A Love Story.
 
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Civil War was a terrible movie. Just about every element of the civil war was handled terribly unrealistically, and the climactic battle in DC revealed how low budget the movie was. The multiracial main cast of ethical do-gooder journalists was straight out of shitlib fantasy, and the moral of the story was "war bad." Thank you Alex Garland, very heady stuff. The marketing for the movie was also terribly deceptive, making it look like an action packed war story. 90% of the action scenes in the trailer are in the last 10 minutes of the movie, and some of the posters for the movie were fucking AI generated.

Really good sound design though (even if there were a few errors). Pretty much the only good thing I have to say about that damn movie.
 
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With regards to Garland's writing I will just quote Judge Holden circa 1 year ago, which also covers some of the shit I was babbling about earlier
Judge Holden said:
Yeah I have sperged bout this before at great length, but 28 days later for all I love its visuals/sound design/music/general concept has some of the most hilariously shit worldbuilding and storywriting of any zombie movie outside of the resident evil movies.

The zombies starve/thirst to death within a few days or weeks, refuse to go out in daylight even when someone is literally screaming for attention outside, can be killed as easily as any human, and will just lurk around wherever they got infected unless they see or hear someone in their immediate area, and yet somehow manage to spread all over the country across hundreds of miles of rural countryside between cities and towns with zero explanation and effortlessly curbstomp any and all military opposition or evacuation attempts aside from less than 12 soldiers holed up in a mansion who seem to have no problems whatsoever aside from lack of coom facilities

Also character writing in general is shoddy at best given how the black chick goes from near sociopathic survivor to sobbing and terrified woman in need of rescue by an emaciated irishman less than 48 hours after meeting him and what you already mentioned about the soldiers.

Again, I absolutely fucking love just about everything in the movie aside from the script and specific plot details which seriously let it down, and this seems to have been down largely if not entirely to Garland.
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My opinion has not changed, and honestly I think at best we are looking forward to a mostly ok movie that will probably be held up by visuals, music, and acting

Your Starter for 10 said:
All this to say, my expectations are pretty low for 28 Years, despite really liking the first 2 movies and it having a pretty good trailer. I'm curious about the giant zombie mutant in it. Is that going to be some kind of evolution of the rage virus, or is it just supposed to be a big guy and I'm looking at it wrong from the camera perspective. Seems inhumanly big. But anyway, I will have no plan to see this in a theater unless it gets reviewed exceedingly well by people I trust.
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"Mutant zombie variants" is something that while ancient in vidya is also something that been steadily creeping into movies/TV in the last couple years, with Zombieland 2, and Walking Dead go to France immediately springing to mind and Last of Us further boosting it as an on-screen concept, so odds are good it will be in this movie too.

While I don't especially like the concept outside of vidya, I am not completely against it. My only thought with regards to 28 Years Later is they are gonna have to either majorly rework the Rage Virus from "shit makes you angry" to "straight up superhuman mutagenic that also happens to make you angry" in order to justify why there are giant rage zombies now....and also justify why the fuck they have neither been hunted down or starved to death or died of around about ten thousand other infections they would be exposed to eating dead bodies/dead animals/whatever the fuck they be eating after like 30 years, or just ignore it and hope the audience doesn't question product
 
Some (not all of, just some) of the complaints about the Rage virus don't make much sense to me.

Who says the infected survive very long? There are an incomprehensible amount of people in the world, and if the infection continues to spread at a steady pace, you could have the infected dying constantly and still plenty of "rage zombies" to run from. The virus could be endemic.

Why don't they come outside when characters are making noise? They're sick human beings, not undead. They have to sleep like any other human being, and it was stated they don't like sunlight. So they sleep during the day because horror movie.

Why are zombies ever capable of overrunning society? Because "civil servants competently do their duty and decisively avoid disaster" would mean no horror movie. No shit.

Stories have to have rules that make sense, but only to a point. These movies are nowhere near the biggest offenders in illogical horror setups/plots.
Your Starter for 10 said:
*I'm aware this movie has its defenders, but any sci-fi horror movie that I turn off from absolute boredom after 30 minutes is inarguably shit. There are no likeable characters, or even anyone that talks like a human, in it over that time period.
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I'm one of those defenders. I thought it was a pretty damn effective scifi/horror film.

Garland also wrote Dredd, which is a fucking phenomenal action film. I can't be too mad at the guy. (I did not and will not watch Civil War.)
 
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Kind of surprised I haven't seen Gravy mentioned yet.
A group of psychos take over a restuarant and the customers & staff are held hostage to engage in some torture games and cannibalism. The main antagonist is Jimmi Simpson, aka: Liam McPoyle from Always Sunny in Philly. The co-antagonist is a Charlie Day wannabe. The plot has a feeling of a gored-up version of season 3 episode 4 of Always Sunny "The Gang Gets Held Hostage" The writing credits are two unrelated people, but the coincidence leads me to think this movie was conceived on set or after viewing the show.

I'd rate it a solid 6, with a ceiling of 8 for people who enjoy the film. The characters are stereotypical and one-dimensional, but memorable. The effects are good and the violence feels real. A blow from a hammer will hurt, and they show it. If you are a fan of Always Sunny and horror movies (and you should be), give this a watch. It's free on Tubi right now.
Oh, and Sarah Silverman is in it. So, there's that. If you care.
 
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caught Howard Lovecraft And The Frozen Kingdom
cute enough idea, sorta Vincent But It's Lovecraft
Corman-esque levels of walking and holding shots to pad out what would have been a very good 45 minute short feature for kids to a bit of a slog at an hour twenty
any budget went into the name talent voicing, Christopher Plummer, Ron Pearlman, Doug Bradley

a lot of stock assets and bland textures

however the core concept is pretty solid and it does a lot of what you'd want with it outside of lacking a joke referencing Howard's choices for cat names
 
XYZpdq Jr. said:
however the core concept is pretty solid and it does a lot of what you'd want with it outside of lacking a joke referencing Howard's choices for cat names
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ddc.jpg
It could be so much better.
 
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I just saw heretic and I got very mixed feelings about it.

Hugh Grant his performance was great, yet ultimately the movie suffers of "annoying redditor atheist" syndrome.
Its almost like a fucking wojak comic how the main characters are like strawman for people who are religious.
The twist ending is pretty dumb.
Hugh's character ends up being a serial killer who wants to show people the true religion being "Control" and end up being killed by one of the missionaries he sliced the throat of and cut their arm (She should be dead by now as this is now an half hour in the movie.)

TL;DR

It captures the true horror nobody wants to endure, being alone in a house with a redditor.
 
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The Nothingness said:
Is the new thing with horror movies now have them set and/or released around Christmas? Terrifier 3 got the ball rolling and the Nosferatu remake is coming out on the 25th.
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It has been done several times. Wolf Creek and the first Black Christmas remake were released on Xmas and infamously pissed off the religious right and Roger Ebert. Silent Night Deadly Night is another one and a weird one I remember being released on Christmas day was An American Werewolf in Paris. Why release a werewolf movie on Christmas? Who knows? It didn't do the movie any favors at the box office.

An Eyetalian Nazisploitation movie was released on Christmas day in Italy as well. I'm pretty sure it was Gestapo's Last Orgy.
 
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Rungle said:
I just saw heretic and I got very mixed feelings about it.

Hugh Grant his performance was great, yet ultimately the movie suffers of "annoying redditor atheist" syndrome.
Its almost like a fucking wojak comic how the main characters are like strawman for people who are religious.
The twist ending is pretty dumb.
Hugh's character ends up being a serial killer who wants to show people the true religion being "Control" and end up being killed by one of the missionaries he sliced the throat of and cut their arm (She should be dead by now as this is now an half hour in the movie.)

TL;DR

It captures the true horror nobody wants to endure, being alone in a house with a redditor.
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6b6a1x.webp
 
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Have you guys seen Alien: Romulus?
I just can't get over the moment when, about halfway through the movie, the asian girl spasms and her leg hits the DRIVE STICK of the space ship they're riding, making it run amok and crash into the hangar of the space station in which the movie takes place. Because obviously a highly advanced space ship would operate by manual transmission.
I would otherwise deem Alien: Romulus a decent horror movie, and I would even deem it a worthy successor to the Alien-franchise, even though I have some misgivings about the finished product. It's quite flawed, but I do believe it to be at least better than Alien: Covenant. Esepcially the impending impact of the space station into the asteroid belt felt quite horrid and "vulnerable", making it an excellent addition to the movie.
 
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Alien Romulus was alright, it is not as great as the first two films but it is competent, though the fucking callbacks are pretty annoying.
 
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I have a love/hate opinion of Aliens. As a movie, everything about it is really cool. But as a sequel to Alien, I despise it. I hate Cameron for turning the alien into just a big bug. The alien in Aliens is stripped of the mystique it had in Alien. I very much preferred the horror vibe of Alien to the action of Aliens, which is also why I prefer Alien 3 (Assembly Cut) to Aliens (hot take, I know).

I will say, one thing that came out of Aliens was the cool toy line by Kenner, which introduced the idea that the alien's DNA is altered by the host, changing its appearance. They had a scorpion alien, gorilla alien, snake alien, rhino alien, etc. Did most of these make any sense? Not really, but they were cool enough that Alien 3 used this concept for its alien, being more quadrupedal than previous aliens due to being birthed from an ox in the Assembly Cut, and a dog in the theatrical cut.
 
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