What's the temperature on Blade Runner 2049? It has gotten overwhelming positive reception, and considering I'm super into cyberpunk and I love Blade Runner's world, this makes me absolutely delighted. Sunday matinee showing, here I come!

What?

The first time I ever watched the Exorcist was at a time I was already in a negative mindset and had been warned about watching the film by my parents. Their deeply held religious views said viewing the movie would get me in an allegience with Satan and I was all of 9 years old.

What happened? I found it to be one of the most dull, insanely stupid and boring movies ever.Cool? Nope. Atmospheric? Nope. Well-written? WTF?

How is a story about something 100% impossible and not even consistent with its own mythology well written? I have seen school plays conducted by kids between ages 6 - 10 with more consistency and coherent thought then that stupid and overrated movie.

The Exorcist is the single most overrated film in history. It is stupid, boring, dull and has never once managed to even make me uncomfortable, let alone scared.

Exorcism is NOT real. Demons are NOT real. Jesus is NOT real. Satan is NOT real. I can NOT be scared of any premise that is not rooted in some kind of realism.

If you base your enjoyment of horror movies on what's plausible to happen in real life, at least 90% of the well known ones are automatically out. I realize I'll probably regret entering into this discussion in a few posts.

lol

You mean enjoying movies involves a suspension of your disbelief?! Get the fuck out!

Why is that? I can be debated without needlessly attacking those with a different opinion. In almost 12 years, I have never been disrespectful.

To your point though. I do not consider plausibility to be why I watch a film. For example I love The Thing; for the acting, score, pacing, special effects and ambiguous nature of the script. It too is a film where the story is 100% fiction since, unless you can prove it, aliens are NOT real.

I am sure you get what I am stating but if I can be indulged for just a moment and encompass my entire position into one simple sentence: IF YOU CANNOT SHOW IT, THEN YOU DO NOT KNOW IT AND YOU SHOULD NOT SAY THAT YOU DO.

If something has no basis in reality then it is impossible for me to care. Now in the context of art, I can be a little more lenient and accept complete fiction. I enjoyed the original NOES and accept that is 100% fiction, because it was at least consistent with its own mythology. I enjoyed the Devil's Advocate for the exact same reason, and so on... The Exorcist I simply cannot and I realize now that in my first post I meant to state that I was so bored with it that I fell asleep. Now I believe it was you that mentioned people are desensitized, but that does not apply to me in this discussion. When I was 9 the year was 1976 - Yes I know I am archaic - and I had seen extremely few horror films at that point. So I was not used to horror and was still at an age where other childish things could spook me.

I would be more than happy to explain in detail why I rip the film but I get the impression no one cares.

I've just seen you post this before and it seems like we already disagree. Haha.

Honestly I guess I get what you're saying, though it seems like a pretty specific thing. I think The Exorcist is brilliant and harrowing and has a lot of interesting things to say about faith in modern day times, skepticism, science, etc. It's scary because it poses the question of "what if we were wrong in being atheists and the devil really exists?"

Okay but you never seen me post why I dislike the Exorcist though.
Which is partly where I was going to go with the discussion but, again, I realize the only responses would be people who hope to make some snide joke if I got any responses at all. Sorry for expecting people to be serious here.

Also, for whatever it is worth, I thought the Exorcist 3 was a far superior film then the first two.

I think The Exorcist works quite well, as does The Omen, and that's from someone quite adamant about his atheism.

Horror doesn't need to be realistic or for me to believe in something. I mean, lots of people here listen to and love music about Norse mythology (myself included), and that's no more real than Christianity. The point that The Exorcist is 100% impossible but The Thing is somehow more plausible, we're talking fractions of degrees. There is equal evidence for the potential behind both of those films. There are a lot of parasites on Earth, but absolutely nothing remotely similar to The Thing. None of them invade your body, then replace it.

If you're going by plausibility, the evidence for both of these films is logically equally zero.

So, I get Empyreal's point, that going on supposed realism is a ridiculous measure for horror movies. As I recall, you're a huge fan of Saw movies, and those are absurdly nonsensical. The best case for defense of those in the realm of "realism" is that there have been torture-murderers before, but literally none of them had that "ripped-from-Se7en" moral superiority spliced with intelligence and creativity. Serial killers just aren't that smart, that moral, that crafty, or that organized. For the most part, they get away for as long as they do by a mixture of luck and who they're targeting, and they typically get caught through stupidity. Homophobia, for instance, kept cops from tracking Dahmer any sooner. The closest case you'd have for this was H. H. Holmes, and even that's a stretch. Building chutes to dump bodies is not nearly as involved as constructing elaborate murder devices carefully dependent timers, pain threshold, and ickiness.

Horror works great for a variety of reasons, but internal consistency is part of it. Indeed, that is part of all fiction storytelling. Weak internal consistency is when something truly ceases to function, and truly disrupts suspension of disbelief. Take, for instance, old Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, or Star Trek episodes. They aged poorly in technology, science, and various advancements we have now. But a great deal of them still deliver powerful, engaging, and intriguing episodes and stories due to solid dramatic and character writing and strong internal consistency. Indeed, for great modern examples of this, look at Rick & Morty and Black Mirror.

That internal consistency is what matters. That set-up of the rules early on coupled with how the characters deal with the rules. The first episode of the second season of Rick & Morty is a fucking brilliant example of this. Due to a mishap with a time device, they accidentally end up "splitting time" until they've split it upwards of 64 ways. This is set up in the first few minutes of the show and then we watch how the characters work through the problem. Is that believable? No, it's quite silly, but the strength of the writing, characters, and the internal consistency power the plot.

This is why Exorcist and The Omen work. Nope, not a believer in any of that stuff. But if I can watch Escape from New York and go along with a "future" 1997 where Manhattan Island is a walled-off prison colony, then I can allow myself to enjoy the internal consistency of The Exorcist and be enthralled by the strong story and characters.

Yes, movies and TV shows and books and entertainment exist that defy suspension of disbelief, that are so wonky that they are nearly impossible to get into, that are so floaty with their internal consistency that there is no way to take them seriously or to enjoy them without open mockery. The Exorcist isn't one of those, and in a great many ways, it delivers on quite literally all the elements that define a solid horror film experience: Thick, intense atmosphere, outstanding internal consistency, a powerful yet minimalist musical score, strong characters who dive into the role, all while not being over-blown on the effects budget or turning it into a stupid star vehicle for one or two Hollywood egos in front of the camera. Indeed, I think the biggest star there was Max Von Sydow, and he's fucking brilliant because that man was always fucking brilliant.

I mean, if your dismissal of The Exorcist is "exorcisms aren't real, Satan isn't real, blah blah blah," then that attitude pretty much writes off most horror and just leaves you with frequently awful serial killer "biopics."

I don't believe in the "powers of Russian psychics" either, but dammit, One Dark Night was still a fucking great movie. Dammit, people, watch that one! It's tons of fun!

(Amazon Prime says it's from 1970, but it's actually 1982.)

I am unable to respond to your post right now because I have a boatload of things to do. However, I will respond to your points in a few hours.

I will say that while I appreciate the kind response here, as opposed to a distasteful one, you completely missed the point of my post and I DO have a great deal to write in response.

The Omen doesn't really do all that much for me. I liked it when I was younger, but these days it just pales in comparison to the other big Satanic movies - Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. The Omen just feels a bit too hammy and over the top, and while it has some good scenes, it just hasn't held up all that well for me in recent years. Once the surprise wears off I guess it just isn't as interesting to me anymore. The sequels were all immediately terrible too.



Yeah, this is all very well said. It's the difference between a horror movie like The Exorcist and something like a Shyamalan film. It's about the quality of writing.

Consistency is key, too. The Exorcist is believable not because the events depicted could actually happen, but because the movie creates a world where these events could and do happen, and the horrors are consistent with the film's internal logic (demons exist -> demons possess people and make them do weird shit -> demons fear God, etc.). Whereas a bad horror movie like Signs takes an equally outlandish premise--aliens are here on Earth and are comin' for you--but falls upon under the most minor scrutiny within the film's own logic (they are hurt by water, but invade a planet filled to the brim with water...?).

There are a lot of horror films but none of them compare to the Exorcist. I mean what other movie could be as terrifying as the Exorcist? Nosferatu or Evil Dead maybe? Hellraiser could be a possibility. Since a few of you don't agree with my opinion, what film would you find the most scariest of all time?

To this day, I still find the original Alien movie deeply frightening, to such a degree that I'm not fully comfortable watching it on my own.

Then again, it was the first horror movie I ever saw, and at the tender age of four/five/six at that (I'm not entirely sure on the exact age), so I'm not surprised it kinda scarred me. After that, I refused to so much as look in the general direction of anything horror related for several years, entirely convinced that all things horror were sanity-blasting, inhumanly ghastly affairs. Chalk it up to my kiddie mind not being ready to process that kind of thing at the time, I guess. It took me until my early teenage years to get back to the stuff and find out, to my surprise, that I fucking loved it.

The only movies that have made me legitimately worried and afraid about what might transpire on-screen are:

A. Not horror movies (Old Yeller)
B. Due to childhood traumatization (Pet Sematary)
C. The proud few horror movies that actually got to me even in my adult years (the first 3 Paranormal Activity films, Oculus, Perfect Blue)

Oooooh, come on, man. The Paranormal Activity films? For real? Like, I can't speak for Perfect Blue as I haven't seen it, and can understand the Oculus mention (dat killer atmosphere, mang), but the PA movies? Even the first one, while not really baaaaaaaaaaad per se, isn't really what I'd call scary, save for maybe the ending scene.

There's nothing more terrifying than unidentified sounds when you're home alone, man.

Okay. I NEVER The Thing was “plausible” - you completely ignored the paragraph where I spelled this out. In it I wrote that I do not consider plausibility to be why I watch a film. Also, the very next line explained why I enjoyed the Thing but still declared it 100% fiction, just like the Exorcist.
Do you feel better now that you wrote the exact same thing I already have.
Right. That was the gist of the past two paragraphs.
Really? REALLY?

So if you were unaware of Saw and the Exorcist when holding a DVD of both, then you read the brief synopsis on the back, you would declare, “Two men awake in a twisted morality game and must find their way out of a puzzle to survive,” as absurdly nonsensical?

Furthermore, if you read, “Teenage girl gets possessed by a demon and Priest must perform exorcism,” you would declare, “WOW! This will be a masterpiece of film. Oscar worthy on just the premise alone. Best screenplay because the screenwriter would, by default, have to be well versed and studied in the very real scientific field of Demonic Possession."

I am not saying I would refuse to watch a film with the second premise, I might even enjoy it but I would be drawn to the first premise first. Why? Simple. The general plot of the Exorcist is absurdly nonsensical and Saw is realistic.
- I also do not have to even be a Saw fan to state that. Same goes for the original Halloween. I am not a fan of the franchise but the original was NOT absurdly nonsensical. Same with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If the very premise of your film - for me, the single most important element - begins in fairy tale land, a la the Exorcist, I lose a sense of connection to it.

The reason for this is because I have grown accustomed to stupid actions in horror movies. When the premise is silly from the outset (Nightmare on Elm Street) then the writer can write themselves into a corner and get out of it by reminding the audience, this is 100% fiction and I cannot be bothered to write quality characters.
- In other words, I need for the characters to at least feel human in the inhuman situation. It is reasonable for a person in a completely unknown situation to react on intuition, but there is a big difference between behaving reasonably illogical in an unknown situation and just being completely fucking stupid.
- This usually happens when a mediocre writer does not know how to progress and has to jump the shark just to keep the scene moving. A good example of this is when a main character breaks into a vehicle and, despite this, there are keys in the sun visor.

As an aside, just once I would love to see a supposed main character be on the run and tries this tactic, possibly even referencing that it works in action movies, only for it to be the cause for their demise.
This entire paragraphs were extended versions of what I wrote. I referred to internal consistency in my very first reply because I am used to that argument. Ironically, I find internal consistency to be precisely why the Exorcist and films like it fail so miserably.
Uh, no…
Nice attempt at equivocation but one is a science fiction action film while the other is based on fairy tales made up over thousands of years and was based on zero facts to begin with.
- Besides, I have NEVER written that the Exorcist cannot be enjoyed (or in this case, scary). I just pointed out that people claim it is frightening and, as a 9 year old, I thought it was boring and fell asleep during it. I believed in that stuff then, out of indoctrination of course, but I still found it stupid. However, because everyone adores the film, my pointing out that it was boring always seems to shock people and demand some explanation. My explanation has led to all this. My personal feeling is films about something that is 100% fiction can be enjoyed - and I often times do - but they should never be held with such reverence.
I do not consider just those elements as solid horror film experience and outstanding internal consistency applies to any art form. One of my favorite horror films has 95% of its scenes not only during the day but most in broad daylight. This includes the very dramatic and intense climax where every single action is 100% probable to happen.
- Ironically, in this climax, the protagonists have to steal a vehicle and while they do find the keys, it took them several minutes and nearly caused their deaths. There is a very minimalist musical score, strong characters played by A-list actors who kept their egos out of the picture and there is also very little blood, gore or overblown effects. Only two deaths happen on screen while three others are implied though never shown. The story moves at a very rapid pace however it slowed down when it was plausible to do so. The pace of both structures were very well used however the narrative lent itself more to the action movie pacing.One of the points you made sure I understood the last time we had this discussion was how I was equating Saw to quality only measured against slasher films. You made it known I was treating Saw as if it were in a vacuum and no other horror films existed.
- So I will make it known now that you are doing the same. Writing off supernatural horror would not leave little more than awful serial killer biopics. There is so much more than that.

So, Blade Runner 2049:



So, enjoyable, but meh.

I wouldn't say PA or Oculus are anywhere close to The Exorcist in terms of actual horror. I enjoy Oculus and, to an extent, PA, but in terms of both quality and horror I'd say Exorcist is much darker and more dire. Oh well, at least nobody is saying The Conjuring is scary anymore.

If we're talking Mike Flanagan movies though, the aforementioned Gerald's Game was super creepy in some parts. Just drowns you in this fucking ominous, eerie atmosphere. So good.

The original Halloween is still my pick for actual scare value - just a dude with a knife stalking a regular suburb like I grew up in. It works. The 60s version of The Haunting and the 70s Texas Chainsaw Massacre are both also up there. And Rosemary's Baby is a terribly frightening film for how it puts you in the main character's head.

All Hallow's Eve is another recent pick for pure balls to the wall, horrifying insanity. That one doesn't seem to get mentioned much.

The scenes of the family being murdered in the first act of High Tension is still one of the scariest things I've ever seen on film too - though it's been a while since I watched it. Maybe I'll change that this year.

We've had the debate on The Exorcist a few times over, and I'm between Empy and Luvers on it. I think it's an incredibly well made film and knew exactly what to focus on to really draw horrified reactions from the late '60s status quo (a time where much of the Western world was still very religious), but I don't buy into it because I've never been a religious type. For my money? The original TCM is still the best horror flick ever made.

A couple of quickie reviews:
-The Neon Dead: A no-budget flick that feels at home with late '90s Full Moon fare. Cheesy and cheap but enjoyable if you have a taste for cheese. 5/10
-Hardcore Henry: Third time seeing it and it's all gimmick, but if you appreciate how all-in on the gimmick it is then you'll have a blast. Sharlto Copley is incredible and I'll fight anybody who says otherwise. 7/10
-Hard Boiled: I'm ashamed to have only recently seen this, and...it's okay. I'm actually a bigger fan of John Woo's American work (besides that overrated POS Face/Off) because it's more reined in and believable. The story was actually my favorite part and how the narrative builds to the climax is action movie perfection. 6.5/10

I'm not even close to being religious, but I think that's why the movie works. The characters aren't religious either and then it turns out that the evil parts of the religion they know about are actually real - science fails them. It's just a scary concept. I go for ideas and social commentary in my horror movies - like how does this resonate with something in real life, you know, even if it's a fantastical concept?

Finally got around to watching Videodrome today, and it sure did beat my expectations. Not that I really had any but I was expecting it to be a lot gorier and a lot less social commentary-y. It could have been made better with a longer runtime which is something I rarely say about a movie.


Gonna probably rewatch the Exorcist after scrolling through the posts here, its been a while.

Videodrome:

Ah I see, that's sort of what I got out of it but definitely something I'll need to rewatch again after I let it sit for a while. Good movie either way. Would love a new horror film where hands just turn into grenades, what a fun way to go.

On the subject of Mike Flanagan films, my favorite of his is Hush, followed by Oculus. Hush was just a suspense machine, and I was on edge literally the whole time, while Oculus had some of the weirdest, most off putting & unsettling horror imagery and cinematography I've seen in a long time (in the good way, of course).

--

I just finished watching Cult of Chucky. Oh my fucking god. It is mind boggling how utterly great this movie is. It's so great that I'm literally almost at a loss for words to try and describe how great it is. Somehow, someway, the SEVENTH Child's Play movie is not only the best by a country mile - even moreso than Curse was - but it's also the most innovative and mesmerizing to watch out of all of them. I wholeheartedly recommend watching this immediately, and I'm totally on board for an eighth movie at this point.

How the fuck did Child's Play become the best horror franchise going today?

Both good stuff, but Absentia is still my favorite and now Gerald's Game is right behind it for me. He's super talented though - my favorite new horror director, just keeps putting our challenging shit.

Since there was some discussion about legitimately scary horror films a few posts back, I figured I would post some of mine:

- Susperia (to me, one of the few 70's horror films that holds up as legitimately scary, the ending where the girl meets the witch-queen Helena Markos especially).
- Don't Look Now (I knew the horrifying twist beforehand, which is already shocking and disturbing in and of itself but it's moreso the psychological torment & atmosphere of all-encompassing dread that got to me...maybe knowing what will happen made it even worse - anyway this movie fucking rules.)
- The Sentinel (not a super great movie, it's alright but only notable for some of the imagery and the ending where the "demons" attack...played by actual people with real severe deformities....pretty shocking to say the least.)
- El Orfanto/The Orphanage
- Grave Encounters (a lot of people hate this movie but I fucking love it, one of the only good found footage movies)
- Sinister

I actually fell asleep during Sinister on my first watch. It was so boring, and everything after the 16mm scenes is just jump scare after jump scare after jump scare.

Also, Grave Encounters 1 was mostly boring and unoriginal (plus my most hated horror thing ever: A full score in a found footage movie), but Grave Encounters 2 was actively terrible, with a stupid concept, moronic characters, and a climax that completely rips off the climax of Chronicle.

Oh man, Sinister is such a frustrating movie. The 8mm footage is some of the creepiest stuff in the genre, but everything else is either horribly mishandled (loud orchestral stings where raw silence would be much more terrifying) or just awful (that final "scare").

Never saw the sequel, but I watched a Nostalgia Critic-wannabe review it awhile back and isn't there a scene that implies that "the ghosts" of the asylum for some reason operate a YouTube channel which gets in contact with the main character? I remember something like that, maybe just a repressed memory.



I more or less agree, the meat of the movie didn't bother me too much but it's definitely flawed (the beginning scene where the sheriff starts critiquing the main character's books is laughable) but yeah 8mm footage was the main thing that shocked me and why I listed it. And yeah, that final scare was totally unnecessary and basically the ultimate low-hanging fruit for a horror film (that godawful generic piece of shit The Forest does pretty much the same thing, never a good sign for any comparison to that fucking movie...)

I actually really like the first Grave Encounters movie. It starts a bit generic, yeah ("this is real, unedited footage", protagonists are greedy assholes, etc), but as soon as the serious supernatural stuff begins to happen, the whole film just goes completely batshit insane, with ever more intense and bizarre scares one after the other, in between the characters going crazy due to the isolation and getting killed off by the ambiguous forces that inhabit the Asylum. Plus, the implication that there's a lot more than a run of the mill "haunting" going on are great. Spoilers ahead:



Grave Encounters 2 sucks though, yeah. They just had to ruin the whole thing by going ahead and giving you a clear, point by point explanation of why the building acts the way it does and stuff. Totally kills the horror of the situation.

Grave Encounters had all the warning signs to be one of those awful horror movies I'd watch back in the days of FearNET On Demand: an unoriginal setting (abandoned mental hospital), a tired approach (found footage), no actors I recognized, and it's made by a couple of dudes who call themselves The Vicious Brothers. I think I would have skipped it if not for its decent IMDB rating.

Yet not only was the movie not terrible, it was good enough I usually mention it along with [REC] on the list of solid found footage horror.

Blade runner 2049 was awesome. It is a villneuve movie. Highly recommended for world building and set design alone, but wait, there's more! Highly recommended in 3d, yes, in 3d.

Just saw Blade Runner. What an odd movie. I like it a lot.

I've seen the first film once or possibly twice. In any case, I fell asleep during it.

I saw the new Blade Runner yesterday. Very dense, cryptic kind of film. I liked it, but I'm not sure if I'm the right kind of person to comment on it in depth.

Blade Runner 2049 - I liked it but didn't love it. Gorgeous visuals and the same kind of slow, enveloping pacing as the original. But I found Ryan Gosling just kinda dull and the story felt like it was riding off the first one too much - I guess I thought they'd do a bit more with it than this, and it felt a bit too safe. It was kind of a 'Force Awakens'-ish thing with the original story beats with new characters, only I didn't like it as much this time as I was expecting a denser, more unique story I guess. Movies like Ex-Machina have done well at moving sci fi forward these days and this sequel feels just a bit stale. But overall it was good and worth a watch for the visual spectacle alone.

Nothing about it justified its gargantuan runtime. Also, Harrison Ford didn't need to be in it at all.

Started rewatching the entire Friday the 13th film series. Got through 6 over the weekend fully indicating how much nothing I had going on. When my son isn't around, I really have nothing else to do.

I wanted to catch the Tommy Jarvis arc a bit better this time around. You can also notice a change in the style that became rather common for horror franchises of this ilk in the era around parts V and VI, where the style of telling the continuing story is similar in tone to how the Nightmare on Elm Street and Child's Play franchises felt and ran. The way the films ran, the way they recognized the iconic nature of the characters, and the like. Parts V and VI were also the first to add some different twists to just Jason killing in the dark--for instance, one wasn't even Jason but a guy playing on the legend, and in the next, Tommy Jarvis himself was considered the problem and he was the one chased by authorities because it was inconceivable that Jason could still be around. This being the point where Jason went fully supernatural.

The first film is also interesting for just how much of Psycho's music was gratuitously utilized. The screeching violins, the tense score--much of it directly lifted from Hitchcock's classic. I'd never noticed that before. It helps that I'd watched Psycho again in just the past couple months.