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General Horror Films & TV Discussion Thread

Started up The Bondsman with Kevin Bacon on Amazon Prime and it's pretty good.
 
I'm the only person bitter that M3gan isn't an official Small Wonder reimagining.
 
Drop is a quick snappy fun background watching blumhouse deal.

Watch it or don’t watch it, it’s entirely up to you.
 
Y2K is the right kind of stupid schlock and I'm surprised that a) it was able to get the cast that it did, b) it was released by A24, and c) FRED DURST SAVES THE DAY.

A friend recommended it under the guise of it nailing those 1999 high school stereotypes perfectly, and I'll be damned if it didn't hit them spot on. Maybe not the swing kids, though, because that fad came and went so much earlier than people like to think.
 
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Lionsgate is finally releasing "May" on Blu (I have the region 2 disc from Second Sight, and I assume the special features and transfers are going to be the same. Either way, release Tobe Hooper's "Toolbox Murders" remake) Heads up though, as it's going to be a store exclusive
 
Interesting that they made it a point in the first one to show that the Infected are still mortal and will succumb to dehydration, starvation, disease, etc. but that there's still such a huge problem. Beyond the metaphor aspect, I wonder if they'll explain that.
 
Sinners was really, really fucking good. Definitely worth the watch even if you've seen the trailers. Great cast (Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Jack O'Connell, introduced Miles Caton), it's set in the 1930s (1932 to be specific in Mississippi), and does a lot of great thematic storytelling in regards to music especially but also a lot of the subtle (and not so subtle) black themes of the era. If you've ever been into early 1920s-1930s Blues, you'll love this and the score itself is so, so good.

Easy 8.5/10. Everybody splooging back in 2022 over Nope (giving it 9/10s and 10/10s) is how I feel towards this movie.
 
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"Wolf Man" is bad outside of the acting and some nice moments of gore. It's another horror movie about generational trauma that doesn't do a single interesting thing with it, it's never scary and the script is weak and treats it's characters like cyphers for themes that are nowhere near as deep as it thinks they are. Also, the werewolves (there's two of them) barely even look like werewolves. You had one job.
 
Final Destination: Bloodlines was just fine for me. Maybe a 6 to 6.5/10

There was some solid gore and the opening was pretty great. Outside of maybe 2 characters, really, 3 being generous, calling any of the cast "characters" would be laughable as it made people from the other Final Destinations seem like they all had deeper backstories. It's strength was having a tighter story for the movie and more FD lore, including a good Tony Todd scene, for those who care about that kind of thing.

My issues were
#1: Because it centered around a specific family, the characters all clung together outside of the tattoo parlor scene teased in a trailer so their inevitable deaths weren't that intriguing because 2 would die in a single area at a time... The MRI machine was pretty gnarly and worth it though.

#2: The lore was interesting but really robbed the movie of just being fun and I feel movies like FD 3 are underrated in that aspect. It had a stronger family dynamic/family theme but IMO it kind of leaned too far in that direction at the expense of the kills. With that said, Julie and one of the brothers (the peanut allergy one), could've literally just been Brother and Sister for the characters had going for them just to be cannon death fodder.

#3: The opening premonition was fantastic, especially for somebody afraid of heights, but it dragged and went on far too long. By the end of it before the wake up, it felt like it was going to be 1/3rd of the movie's length.

#4: I liked the end and that was one of the funnest parts of the movie to me. I wish there was more of that. Deaths like what happened to Julia felt like they could've been done more creatively or entertainingly. I actually thought the compactor arm was going to physically grab her instead of the trash can (it also starting off in the background kind of didn't help as I felt robbed of the surprise impact).

#5: You could kind of telegraph where they were going in the movie. I suspected Julia's death immediately when she went jogging with the truck still there and it felt like multiple scenes were taken from other FD movies in spirit or outright e.g. Stefani having to be cut free from being tied up in the RV whilst underwater.

My FD Rankings in terms of my own re-watching: 1, 3, 5, 2, 6, and 4. I'd maybe bump 6 over 2 but 2 still has the iconic premonition scene and a greater variety of deaths.
 
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I don’t love 2 as much as everyone else. I remember the opening being so tense. Then in the theater every single death got laughs. Took me out of it.

I can’t imagine a world where 4 isn’t everyone’s least favorite.
 
The conspiracy theory stuff kills 3 for me. They try to tie in Lincoln's death and 9/11 to it and my brain dies each time I watch. I prefer 2 for that reason and the deaths were supposed to be funny imo. 16 year old asshole kid at the dentist getting crushed by a giant window pane was gold. So was doughy blonde guys death. And Mickey from Shameless getting blown up at the end was clearly a comic punch line.

2 is the funnest for me. Still need to see 6 but my ratings are

2, 1, 5, 3, 4
 
Just saw Until Dawn and a 4/10 feels generous. It's pretty well known it's not close to a proper adaptation of the video game and the interesting plot element works for the first 1/3rd before it ends up kind of spinning its wheels with a rushed final act. Some of the kills were good but again, it felt like the budget/direction suffered after a point and we were literally only shown clips of some of the other kills.

It also felt like the initial set up (woman wants to find her sister who disappeared) just gives way out of nowhere to this psychology thing but it's also centered around this town where a mine collapsed. It was confusing and not really coherent at all by the end which made the film as a whole suffer.

Worth catching it on streaming, I guess, but if you're a fan of the video game you can probably just skip this one. It felt like one of those dime-a-dozen Amazon movies that you try for 20-30 minutes and move on.
 
Got a ticket to see Bring Her Back on 5/31 as it's by the team behind Talk To Me, which I loved. I'm mostly going in blind but I've heard good word of mouth on this thus far.
 
Coming this August from Arrow

https://twitter.com/x/status/1928452961866293331
https://twitter.com/x/status/1928454561682911403

I'm admittedly not a huge fan of these (I think the remake is decent but not much else, while I hate "The Beginning" outside of a few moments of dark humor), but I'm sure there's fans here. Also, Shout Factory is releasing "Sleepaway Camp" II and III on 4K and Vinegar Syndrome is giving the same treatment to "The Dark Half" and "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" (YES).
 
HarleyQuinn said:
Got a ticket to see Bring Her Back on 5/31 as it's by the team behind Talk To Me, which I loved. I'm mostly going in blind but I've heard good word of mouth on this thus far.
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Just got back from seeing this, pretty packed screening which bodes well to its possible box office this weekend IMO. I went into this purposefully "blind" so I'll keep that the same without mentioning the plot.

7/10

Really strong film with some dark, harrowing themes. Going in per the title, there isn't a lot of surprise in the "why" but the concept still works because of the "how" that is attempted behind it. I feel like this will be stronger on a re-watch as some of it felt a little under-explained/like I was missing a piece or two behind the effect/capability.

Billy Barratt and Sora Wong, who play brother/sister Andy & Piper are really good. I think Sally Hawkins puts in a borderline Oscar worthy performance here, just the right balance of authenticity with her care giver role and menace/sinister when the last act hits. Jonah Wren Phillips does well as Oliver in a role where he isn't necessarily given a lot to do but also has to pull off a lot of heavy acting.

There's some great gore effects and the tension is really thick almost from the first minute. It's a little weird at times but largely stays tight so as to not veer off the road, much like Talk To Me, which works to this film's benefit.
 
I feel like this year, probably the most since 2017/2018, is a year where I'm literally seeing something almost every single weekend right now. My co-worker got me a $16 AMC Gift Card for my birthday so I got to use that for my Megan 2.0 ticket :)
 
Just finished Final Destination: Bloodlines and mostly had a blast. It's impossible for me to hate one of these movies. Even 4, I find fun because you get to watch shitty dumb characters get creative deaths and a scene where a Klansman gets killed to "Why Can't We Be Friends".. A little too much CGI like 4, but I dug the change from the rest of the series. I even ended up liking some of the characters like Erik and Bobby. Final girl sucked though. She was really bland and didn't bring anything to the table. The deaths had some CGI, but I mostly enjoyed them. I don't want to say much more about it. If your a fan of the franchise, you should really enjoy it.

7.5/10

My updated Final Destination rankings:

2, 1, Bloodlines, 5, 3, 4

Still find 3 a little pretentious because of the conspiracy bullshit, and 2 will always be my favorite. I love the deaths and just have so much fun watching it. 1 is carried hard by Devon Sawa and feels the most like a real movie of the series. The rest are worth watching imo as well. 4 has a woman saying "I'll keep my eye on you" to her kids before a flying rock hits her in the eye. It's so much better than the worst movies of Saw or Friday The 13th imo.
 
Epic for Springs said:

What is the point?
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To be fair... it's been almost 30 years. It's like people growing up in the 50s or 60s bemoaning the remakes being done in the 80s and 90s. I've long given up that film quality means something can't/won't be remade.

To the trailer's credit, it doesn't seem to be trying to be a shot-for-shot blanket remake so hopefully it can go a semi-interesting new direction.
 
A few immediate notes on M3GAN 2.0

#1 & Most Important: Ignore the trailer marketing. It completely lifts lines from other scenes and overlays them onto other scenes for "comedic" purposes and paints it as way more of a comedy than it is. There's multiple trailer lines/moments that aren't even in the final movie and will probably show as Deleted Scenes.

#2: If you didn't like the 1st M3GAN, you are probably not going to like this one either. It does veer hard from the horror to the action/comedy side much like T2 and Aliens (though I'd argue Aliens had way more horror elements than people remember).

The rough plot is that there's a "weapon" that was created for the DID being used on the Iranian border that goes rogue, Amelia, and it quickly kills its creators. As the US Government/FBI chases Amelia, Gemma gets involved due to Megan's initial code being the source involved in Amelia's creation and Megan comes back to help stop Amelia as Amelia searches out this Project Black Box. The plot kind of struggles under the movie trying to comment so much on AI with the new boyfriend, Christian, being this anti-AI big tech mogul person and Gemma having written a book about the dangers of AI/Technology.

This movie is way more serious & straightforward in tone than the trailers suggest. It's literally the tone of the 1st M3GAN (not surprising) with a lot of the "comedy" coming from dry sarcasm or quickie scenes such as the Teletubby robot AI thing. One of the things I really liked is that Megan isn't necessarily a good guy so much as, like the 1st movie, she's back largely to protect Cady and Gemma has some serious trauma/issues with having Megan back as expected. I still think the strongest aspects of the movie are the interactions between Cady/Gemma/Megan.

Ivanna Sakhno is great as Amelia (gave me a lot of ScarJo in Lucy vibes tbh) and Jenna Davis remains fantastic as Megan's VA. Brian Jordan Alvarez gets a bit more meat as Cole this go-round but the movie feels like it's trying to do too much at times and loses its way sometimes in terms of the story and the pacing overall while clearly trying to be a Terminator 2-Lite Lite story if SkyNet was more AI oriented.

A lot of the action is good and there's a little graphic gore but it's largely kept PG-13 like the 1st movie.

6.5/10 leaning slightly closer to a 7. I think better writing could've made it a tighter plot but also at the expense of it kind of knowing it's about a girl robot protecting a 12 year old kid against a possible evil AI led robot and treating things a bit more tongue-in-cheek.
 
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Got this in the mail today. Freaky Tales was filmed in Oakland and features four different stories that become interconnected by a mysterious green light that emanates during particular scenes, some of which are loosely based on real-life events that took place circa 1987. 1987 is also the year that Too Short came out with the song "Freaky Tales" on the Born to Mack LP.

First chapter is based on a real-life incident where Nazi skinheads rushed the door during an Operation Ivy show at Gilman Street and beat everybody up. I'm not sure who the band is portraying "Operation Ivy" here, but it is a laughably bad representation. Some of the skinhead extras are longtime friends of mine who picked up a few extra bucks to play Nazis and they come off as more of a legit representation than how the punk scene looks to me in Freaky Tales. These punks are more like today's hipsterized version dropped into an '80s context, but whatever. Fine. Yes, the Gilman kids really did have a meeting about how to deal with the Nazis because that's how Gilman did things and that is also the Berkeley way. They decide to fight back and an out-of-control street brawl between the Gilman geeks and the Nazi skins ensues and the punks really did win that fight. Not as gnarly or cartoonishly violent of a fight as Freaky Tales would have you believe, but that's why it's loosely based on local lore and shouldn't be taken as an accurate account.

Speaking of accuracy, the depiction of the local punk scene makes me question how local hip hop is portrayed in the next chapter, which is about a girl duo called Danger Zone who manage to upstage Too Short in a rap battle at Sweet Jimmie's. No idea if that ever actually took place or who Danger Zone either was or is supposed to represent, but they are at least better than either of the punk bands in the previous segment. Pedro Pascal's chapter about a career criminal determined to go straight after an assassin's bullet meant for him kills his pregnant wife is entirely fictional (I think it is; it's a typical premise of many crime dramas), but its backdrop is certainly realistic and reflects Oakland's grittiness in the late '80s reasonably well.

Last chapter is about Golden State Warriors point guard Sleepy Floyd and I believe that the story about his house getting robbed while he was playing a game at the Oakland Coliseum is actually true, but I could be mistaken. Nothing else about the tale is true at all though, but that's why it's loosely based on local lore and shouldn't be taken as an accurate account. Gonna go ahead and say that The Legend of Sleepy Floyd is my favorite chapter; it's the most fun and ridiculous in its displays of violence. All of the previous chapters converge in this final tale, making up for whatever shortcomings I and others may nit-pick about and Freaky Tales turns out to be a pretty solid effort. Maybe some of the representation is a bit lacking in how it comes off, but Oakland itself looks about as gritty and run-down as it did circa 1987—I moved to Alameda County in the summer of 1988—and I feel like Freaky Tales more or less captures the vibe as it was back then too. I put it behind Fruitvale Station, Blindspotting, and Sorry to Bother You for the admittedly short list of modern movies shot in and representing Oakland; it gets complicated with a longer list that includes older movies like The Mack, Space is the Place, and The Principal. Does Sneakers count as a movie filmed in Oakland, what with the hacker group's home office located in the abandoned building that is now the Fox Theatre?

Not sure if I'd really call Freaky Tales a straight up horror movie per se; it's probably more of an intentional B-movie/"cult classic" attempt that combines a little bit of this and that for modern audiences, but its violence is certainly gory and the special effects are pretty amusing in a comic book sort of way. Cast includes Pedro Pascal (who would be on the verge of overexposure if he wasn't such a good actor), as well as a good performance from Jay Ellis as Sleepy Floyd. Cameos include East Bay natives Marshawn Lynch, Too Short, Tom Hanks, Tim Armstrong & Marteen, as well as the real Sleepy Floyd, Chris Mullin, and a host of various East Bay locals who are mostly seen as extras in the background. Not a flawless love letter to the Town, but certainly good fun if you don't take it too seriously.

I'm not sure how wide of a release Freaky Tales has gotten, but it was kind of a big deal around these parts until Sinners came out and stole its thunder as a better movie more worthy of its hype. Not that the two movies are anything alike aside from being period films that are considerably violent and bloody, but they are similar to me in that both Freaky Tales and Sinners struck me as semi-offbeat, independently-minded movies that outperformed their respective expectations—Sinners performing far above and beyond, of course.
 
Bring Her Back was pretty great. I liked it more than Talk To Me because the characterization was much better this time around. I really liked the brother/sister leads too, and in Talk To Me, I really didn't care about many of the characters besides that poor little brother. Sally Hawkins eats this movie up though. What a phenomenal performance and she gave me Toni Collette Hereditary vibes at times. Hawkins really needs to start getting put with the likes of Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton as one of the best actresses today. She's been incredibly consistent since the Mike Leigh movies of the 00's.

Movie is not a fun watch. I know people are tired of these type of movies, but I don't think there have really been that many the last few years and especially this year. This year has been bombarded with campy and fun horror comedies like Heart Eyes, Clown In A Cornfield, Death Of A Unicorn, The Monkey, Companion etc. Hell, even Final Destination: Bloodlines was much more of a comedy than parts 1 or 3 or 5. The hospital scene was hilarious.

In a way, it helped Bring Her Back hit more for me. This movie is pretty mean and nasty. There are some imagery that will not leave my head. The Philippous are legit and I'm excited to see more from them too. I thought Talk To Me was very good but flawed with a fantastic third act and ending that elevates it for me. Bring Her Back was a much more confident and cohesive film to me. One of the most terrifying children characters in horror history for me as well.

8.5/10
 
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