Well, Pontypool was a sort of zombie movie.

Absentia was a movie about people going missing. Very simple concept, not exactly anything mindblowing on paper - but the way they did it, holy Jesus fuck it kept me awake. I remember the first time I saw that it was 2 a.m. and I had just gotten off work. But I was wide awake. They took a real human concept and turned it into a miasma of dripping, screaming, hellish horror. That's what we need more of. Human, real things with societal impact, turned on the devilish side. We need to take things that matter right now and turn them on their heels with a "what if" notion. We need to ask "how far can we take this idea and really scare people?"

I haven't seen Absentia, though I think I've heard you guys talking about it - that's the other problem, the few genuinely good horror movies that come out are so obscure that practically nobody sees them.

Adam Wingard's "You're Next" is being released by Lionsgate and that's been getting some very good pre-release reviews. Right now it's got an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hopefully that'll make some decent money, especially since I've been seeing a lot of ads for it.

You're Next looks incredibly shitty. Basically the same thing as The Strangers/ The Purge. Home invasion movies are almost as tired as zombie movies. Almost. I haven't even heard of Pontypool before now. And Absentia is a supremely obscure movie. It was made through crowd funding, then released to Netflix. I'm not even sure there's a DVD release. But yeah, it's decent. Not as good as Empyreal says, but worth a watch.

On the subject of home invasion movies, what'd you think of The Collector? I thought it was pretty good. It kinda reminded me of the first Saw movie in that even though it has torture in it, the torture is far from the focus. It's more about suspense than anything, and I enjoyed that.

Now its sequel on the other hand I heard was the drizzling shits and just a Sawquel clone.

Absentia has a whole new context to me now that I have my reporter job. I hear about crimes and people going missing a fair bit and it drives the point home. Your mileage may vary on the acting or the pace of it but I think it's a huge step in the right direction in terms of actual substance and meaning in a horror flick.

I've heard The Collector is utter shit. Been meaning to check it out and verify though.

Home invasion movies aren't too bad of a trend, none of them I've seen have been utterly worthless yet. The Strangers is a fine old school romp and The Purge was a bit too safe, but still quality.

I thought it looked really, really bad. So I never watched it. I've already had more than enough of those torture movies. The last good one I saw was Eden Lake a while back. None have yet reached the nadir that is The Loved Ones, but they all come so close at times. I kind of want to see The Snowtown Murders, but that's about it.
As for Absentia, I did think the characters were really realistic, and their actions made a lot of sense. I shouldn't be saying that as if it's some kind of exception, as it should be a basic given, but it rarely is. I think it struck a nice balance of explaining/not explaining which I think is always a problem when it comes to monsters in movies.

I remember posting about The Poughkeepsie Tapes when I first saw that too. I really liked it. The only home invasion aspects of it are some of the serial killer POV scenes, but they're really well done and actually make you care about what's happening to the victim. The mockumentary parts of it are also well done, and look like a real documentary. All in all I recommend that one wholeheartedly, especially if you're a fan of good found footage.

Poughkeepsie Tapes was a huge exception to the rule. Just an all around disturbing movie with some chilling dialogue. It shows the potential of found footage, which so many gimmicky movies use but straight up squander.

The most disturbing scene in The Poughkeepsie Tapes for me was actually

Have you seen Ils? The Strangers often gets compared to it (I own both and remember enjoying The Strangers more).

Oh ho, I saw that shit a few years back. I did not enjoy it. I remember finding it incredibly stupid and wrongheaded in execution...just a mess...I thought The Strangers was way better.

The TV ads for it almost look like the fake movie trailers from Grindhouse.

I'm not familiar with director Adam Wingard but I looked him up and found he had a segment in The ABCs of Death called "Q Is for Quack." I think that was one of the more memorable ones, but that's faint praise because I thought The ABCs of Death mostly sucked.

He also did a segment in either V/H/S movie (the wraparound in 1, and Clinical Trials in 2), and the movie Pop Skull, which I heard was pretty good.

Why settle? I almost never watch any horror past the 80's and 90s and I'm content. There's hundreds of horror movies that where made around this time that are good, even occasionally the odd gem, you just need to compile a good list. Plus with most of it now being tranffered to blu-ray there's really no need to bother with the modern route. I'd imagine the only reason left is keep up with trends and fit in.

I watch tons of old horror movies. The problem is, if new ones aren't being made, that's a finite amount. I'll run out, and probably sooner rather than later, given I'm kind of a snob when it comes to horror.

But have you seen 2005's Reeker? It looks like it could potentially be either impossibly awesome, or impossibly lame.

my favorite home invasion movie is the original black christmas, and its one of my favorite movies of all time. the gritty 70's filmography and sound is a large part of the atmosphere so i think it would be impossible to make anything that good these days.
i just watched the gate, its a lovecraft-ish story about 2 kids who have to defend themselves against demons invading from a portal. the 2 main kids are likeable and it has cool special effects, and it also has some old school metal in it.

I love telling friends of mine that love A Christmas Story that the director of that movie did Black Christmas. They would have never guessed in a million years.

I've been meaning to see a new horror film called Chained with Vincent D'Onofrio, although I haven't seen it released in shops over here. It's directed by Jennifer Lynch so you know it's going to be a little out-there. On the subject of Jennifer Lynch, I've still yet to see Boxing Helena. I'd advise any who are interested to avoid the trailer and google images as they spoil it. Also the Australian horror movie Crawl, might be worth a shot if anyone can find it.

Reeker is kind of a headless mess. I wouldn't bother with that one.

I have one friend who just lives and breathes horror movies. It's all she watches, all she talks about, works at a movie theater and uses her position as manager to get me in to movies for free all the time (and makes fun of my choices unless it's a horror flick, then I'll stick around for an hour and talk to her about it), just that's pretty much her entire identity. I think her standards of quality are kinda low but she's seen pretty much every single horror flick, mainstream, Netflix fodder, or low budget cult film released in the last fifteen years or so. The only one she claims fucked her up and makes her sick just thinking about it is The Collector. Granted, I think it was more for one scene than the whole movie, but for that reason alone it have a notoriety in my head and really makes me want to see it.

Anyway, the hype here has lead me to start bluebearding The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Considering how much Megan is Missing fucked me up (though granted that was more for personal reasons that nobody else could really relate to), I expect this to be incredible. Don't let me down, Necro/Emp!

I've since re-evaluated my opinion on Megan is Missing. The last half hour is indeed really fucked up, but a lot of what comes before that is really shoddy. There's the poor editing (see: boom mic shots in the party scene and a couple instances of hearing the director call "Action!"), there's the at-times unbearable acting, there's the pretty major distraction for me of every single camera source in this movie having the same picture quality, it's just uneven a lot of the time. The final half hour I do think makes up for most of it though just by being so in your face and gritty that it will leave some kind of impact on you.

Also, even though it isn't really a horror film per se, I'd love to hear what your friend has to say about A Serbian Film. Of all the grossout movies I've seen, that's still the only one that I cannot bring myself to watch again. Not even some of the insanity in the last act of The Human Centipede 2 bothered me as much as just that one scene that we all know from A Serbian Film.

The reason Megan is Missing hit me so hard was because of Megan herself. She didn't look anything like her, she didn't act anything like her, but her voice, her accent, her dialect, inflections, body language, everything of that nature was dead on exactly like my best friend. So I wasn't watching something horrible happen to a mere character, I was watching it happen to somebody I personally knew and loved. That fucking tore me apart, and made the movie a lot more powerful than it otherwise would have been, I feel. That's why it affected me so much, not because the movie itself was great, but because of dumb coincidence with the main actress.

What?! I've never seen the Poughkeepsie Tapes! These expectations are killing me!

Kick-Ass 2 - ???/5

This is a horrible, horrible film, that does everything wrong. I mean it - everything is done wrong with this. It's seriously like watching some of the worst 90s movies like the Power Rangers or maybe even Batman and Robin, it's that bad. I mean holy fuck this was a steaming mess. From the writing bad enough to give any English major an aneurysm to Chloe Grace Moretz looking physically uncomfortable in every scene, this is just unforgivable. But at the same time I also laughed my ass off at a lot of it, just because it's so fucking insane and out of its mind. It literally just doesn't give a crap. It doesn't care what you think or who's watching or any of that shit. Garish, immature, even mildly offensive, and I feel kind of bad for watching it. But at the same time it wasn't exactly something that evoked hatred in me. It was a weird experience I just can't quantify.

Oh, that was Subrick. Well then it's on Necro and Subrick if I end up hating it!

When it comes to Kick Ass 2, I'm expecting it to suck if only because the comic Kick Ass 2 was so goddamn terrible. I know that it cut out a lot of stuff from that book, but still, that rape scene in the book has one of the WORST FUCKING LINES EVER.

Half the lines in the movie are that bad. There are scenes that will make you embarrassed to be in the same universe as the movie.

Did you like the first movie? I really enjoyed it, and it's actually pretty disappointing to hear that the sequel's a piece of shit.

So I finished The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and other than learning that I've been pronouncing "Poughkeepsie" wrong my whole life, I liked it. There were problems with it: But otherwise I thought it was very well done, and like Necro pointed out, the dialogue was pretty creepy. "You called me 'officer' before you got in my car. Why'd you do that?" Actually, that whole sequence with the girl with the British accent was pretty chilling. I feel like people would complain about how dark it was at times, but I feel like it worked to the movie's advantage.

I liked it, maybe I'll actually go with Emp's post now and watch Absentia.

I thought the balloon bouncing stuff was really bizarre too.

I didn't like the first movie. It was like an angsty and callous 15 year old with a hard on for violence wrote it. Deplorable scenes of insensitive behaviour from the supposed heroes (which apparently was the 'joke') and general story in consistency for a film that's trying to portray itself as realistic. Nothing was likeable and I found my self rooting for the bad guys by the end.

I just finished Absentia. It was alright. The acting between the sisters is the best thing about it, as their dialogue comes off incredibly natural and like a real conversation most of the time. I didn't really find it all that scary to be honest, but I can definitely see where somebody else would. It was more chilling than outright scary to me.

Instead of Absentia, I instead watched The ABCs of Death because that's what my Netflix search auto-filled out for me after "ab".

My life is pretty much over.

Man, maybe I should review ABCs of Death.

Hey, I told you (well not you personally, but the thread in general) that The ABCs of Death was lame! But the saddest part is they're making a sequel, which I'll probably end up seeing.



Seems like it would be pretty time-consuming, with 26 segments to talk about. Unless you just said something like "The only good ones are D, L, V, and X; fast forward through the rest."

Anyway, I just tried to add The Poughkeepsie Tapes to my DVD queue, but NetFlix doesn't have it.

What do you guys make of "Come and See" (1985)?
I recently saw it and to me, this might be the last word in anti-war films.
It's a WW2 film about a teenage boy looking to join the resistance in nazi-occupied in belarussia when, of course,
he gets more then he bargained for.
I love the desaturated, authentic documentary look (later popularized by Saving Private Ryan).
But this movie doesn't resort to dramatic slow motion or sad orchestra strings in it's most brutal scenes.

theres a big, central half-an-hour scene concerning the nazis entering a rural village I won't spoil,
but the way Klimov manages to escelate the tension and chaos for so long, or how the vivid realism and detail of it gives it a paradoxical surreal effect, is absolutely stunning and one of the most nightmarish things i've ever seen on screen.

Here's the trailer for those interested

It certainly is a hard movie to sit through just for how emotional it is. However, there are scenes that made no sense to me when I first watched it, like when the teenage boy is with this one girl in the woods. It was just a bizarre scene from what I remember. Overall I do recall enjoying it, but for WW2 action (for which this certainly isn't) looking elsewhere is preferred.

Just watched Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec by Luc Besson with the kids. Completely goofy, very French in a silly way, but very enjoyable. Besson hasn't let me down yet.

And I like The Poughkeepsie Tapes a lot.