Horror Report

Tag: horror

  • DOES ‘MOTHER!’ DESERVE THE PRAISE IT IS GETTING? (A spoiler alert with this one)

    DOES ‘MOTHER!’ DESERVE THE PRAISE IT IS GETTING? (A spoiler alert with this one)

    The horror film ‘mother!’ Is getting high praise from noble media affiliations. It is also being billed as an intellectual horror flick with a message.. religious overtones.. social justice ramifications.

    Big name star: Lawrence.
    Big name director: Aronofsky (BLACK SWAN FAME)
    Shock scene (SPOILER): Infant being eaten.

    Let’s unpack this..
    Taken purely on its surface, the film is about the horror of hosting ungrateful houseguests. Going beneath that surface, it’s about gruesome male narcissism. Ignoring its text and subtext entirely though, mother! is something more ambitious: A herald of prestige horror at a moment when we might actually need it. It’s September, the calm before the dizzying storm of awards season self-aggrandizement, when we stop thinking of movies as works of art and start thinking of them as show horses; we sacrifice the substantive power of movies in this stretch of the year, focusing instead on making predictions, playing the odds and analyzing marketing campaigns. mother!’s theatrical release falls just on the cusp of celebratory madness, three months earlier than Black Swan’s back in 2010. But both movies screened at the Venice International Film Festival, often treated as the start of the Oscar race by pundits; both movies star esteemed, in demand lead actresses, the latter Natalie Portman, the former Jennifer Lawrence.
    X X X 
    VULTURE has a report on this too .. And they go deeper into the shock scene of an infant being eaten. And they really work hard but find a reason to praise it..
    From their report:
    Aronofsky is no stranger to shock value, having given us such moments as Winona Ryder stabbing herself in Black Swan, the main character giving himself a lobotomy in Pi, and the infamous “ass to ass” scene in Requiem for a Dream. But killing off a newborn, even a CGI one, is a big leap for him. Baby murder is generally off-limits in cinema, and witnessing it triggers your lizard brain’s instinct to protect young life, making even the most hardened stomach potentially churn. It perhaps fits with the environmental and religious metaphors of the film (which we’ll get to in more detail in a minute) by showing the ways in which mankind destroys that which is most precious to us. But there’s also a solid argument to be made that it was a gratuitous attempt to inflict something memorable at the cost of good taste.

    X X X
    I am a fan of the unwritten but prescribed rule of leaving graphic scenes OUT of movies involving children.. “IT” was a little much for me even during the opening sequences, but I get it. The movie had to focus on Georgie first.. but still.
    The NETFLIX hit “CLOWN” ? ,That movie went too far for me, as well.
    Call me a wimp .. But I have an idea of then type of horror film I like. Less blood. More store. Less cautionary problems for vision, but mental fear and distress..

    But mother!? This is my take, without seeing it:

    Basically it is a snuff film. Pornographic and violent. Suitable only for degenerates who pretend to be intellectuals. Absolutely horrible and vile. And that is it.

    Now before I go deeper into a category that will cause my own impunity and commentary of being a boring and tired no-name who shouldn’t even have a voice at all with my audience, let me offer a counter point that many of you may already agree with before reading. From the VULTURE article, a comment, a defense of the movie and the anti-religious message, and the baby eating scene:

    “They kill the baby, Him says to forgive them, the creepy priest says he’s not really dead, the worshippers put his carcass on an altar and ceremonially eat his flesh. Remind you of anything? The baby is Jesus, eating him is the Eucharist.
    The movie is a brief, ugly history of humanity culminating in the whole thing blowing up with the help of some fossil fuels in the basement. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry!
    I thought it was a wild trip and I didn’t even get the Mother Earth thing until later. In retrospect, I think it makes sense. But it’s also a dark portrait of religion as practiced by the masses of Him’s fans/worshippers. Him’s beautiful scripture is perverted in their hands. Sharing means stealing, love is cannabalized for cheap comfort, and supposed Christians behave in every awful way people have done and still do in a thrilling cinematic tableau worthy, as others have said, of Hieronymus Bosch. All the while, horrified mother (earth) and her house are abused and Him (God) pleads for patience.
    It must also be a dark portrait of the artist/muse dynamic. In this layer of the metaphor, Him is more of an a-hole, a wannabe God. He can’t just create. He relies on the adoration of his muse — whom he only loves for that adoration. Her love is symbolized by her heart, which calcifies in the apocalyptic furnace along with her body, leaving behind a delicate glass rock containing the force with which he will start again — this time, with a new girl. The old one’s dust, remembered and valued only for her love of Him. Not sure he’s trying to say sorry to an ex here or what, but the Great Artiste comes off as an all-consuming narcissist in this telling. 
    Don’t buy the reviews that say it’s very disturbing. I find mere trailers for ordinary horror and action films more upsetting for their blasé callousness. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer as a hilarious chain-smoking Adam and Eve are worth the price of admission alone.”
  • THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is right: Horror movies that show too much lack in horror

    THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is right: Horror movies that show too much lack in horror

    THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is right: Horror movies that show too much lack in horror:

    From their article:

    Horror movies function best the less their viewers know about their subjects. Think, for example, of the dapper aberration in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, or the faceless entity from David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows; both monsters in those films have defined rules of behavior, and more importantly, an absolute dearth of backstory. If you want to go classic, look no further than Pinhead (Douglas William Bradley), who lacks an origin story for the better part of two movies, until we learn that he used to be human in Hellraiser II: Hellbound’s climax. Once we’re privy to a snippet of Pinhead’s background, he loses his oomph as a villain, arguably not just for the rest of the movie but for the rest of the Hellraiser series. (And if you want to straddle the classic/contemporary line, recall how Rob Zombie’s Halloween films attempt to humanize Michael Myers take away from the character’s driving unfathomable qualities. He’s supposed to be evil without reason.)

    Could not agree more.

    from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2uTPM7G

  • TERROR versus HORROR

    TERROR versus HORROR

  • IT director Andy Muschietti says IT2 will finish filming in 2018

    IT director Andy Muschietti says IT2 will finish filming in 2018

    Here’s what he had to say in a recent interview with Variety. “We are doing [two films],” said Muschietti. “We’ll probably have a script for the second part in January. Ideally, we would start prep in March. Part one is only about the kids. Part two is about these characters 30 years later as adults, with flashbacks to 1989 when they were kids.” Muschietti also commented on what fan’s expectations are for the new film, and what they want to see. “Most of the people are excited about seeing a good adaptation. There are naysayers. Those tend to be the people who are fans of the miniseries rather than the fans of the book. People who read the book and got the book, they’re not crazy about the miniseries. It was a very watered-down version. It didn’t contain the darkness that the book had. They couldn’t make something for TV about a clown who eats children,” Muschietti added.
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  • NEW IT IMAGE REVEALED

    NEW IT IMAGE REVEALED

    With IT being released September 8 (two months) another image of ‘Pennywise’ has been released.. A press release with the photo: The kids in peril, the Losers’ Club, include Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs and Jeremy Ray Taylor. Javier Botet will play The Leper, and Nicholas Hamilton plays Henry Bowers. The cast also includes Owen Teague, who plays bully Patrick Hocksetter. Bill Skarsgard is our new Pennywise.

  • SYFY looking to a Tremors reboot

    SYFY looking to a Tremors reboot

    ..not sure if you’re into stale old ideas coming back after being dusted off from the top shelf. If you are! Here’s your chance to see TREMORS again ..and it will star the same star it starred then..? According to Variety, the SYFY network has picked up a pilot which could potentially spin into a series set 25 years after the 1990 flick left off. The set up sounds a little similar Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead spin off: Valentine must return to the small town of Perfection to defend it against the killer Graboid worms, but will have to “overcome age, alcphol and a delusional hero complex”. “This is the only character I’ve played that I’ve ever thought about revisiting,” Bacon told Variety. “I just got to thinking, where would this guy end up after 25 years? Andrew Miller has a fantastic take on it and we hope to create a show that will be fun and scary for fans of the movie and folks that have yet to discover it. Let’s kick some Graboid ass!” What a press-releaseish kind of statement.
    from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2tjbN2I

  • RAIN coming to Netflix

    RAIN coming to Netflix

    Netflix has announced the start of production on Miso Film’s “The Rain,” the streaming giant’s first Danish original series which is both penned and co-created by Jannik Tai Mosholt (“Borgen”). Set six years after a devastating biological catastrophe wiped out almost all humans in Scandinavia, two siblings join a group of young survivors and set out to find out whether a new world has begun somewhere else. Set free from the rules of civilized society, each of the young members of the group has the freedom to be who they want to be, but they all struggle with their own selves. Mikkel Boe Følsggard, Alba August, Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen and Lars Simonsen lead the cast. Mosholt will serve as showrunner alongside Christian Potalivo (“The New Tenants”). Jonas Allen and Peter Bose will also executive produce the series which will be shot in Denmark and Sweden and will premiere in 2018.
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  • Unmasking the MASK: The horror movie that never was

    Unmasking the MASK: The horror movie that never was

    I read this interesting historical tidbit today concerning the famous Jim Carrey movie THE MASK: It

    was supposed to be a horror movie.

    Really..

    Director Chuck Russell has been looking back at the movie, and he’s revealed that New Line had a very different take on the film originally. “It’s a great example of really fighting for your vision in a film. We changed it from a horror film into a comedy. It was original conceived as being a horror film. That was a real battle. New Line wanted a new kind of Freddy movie”,  he said…

    I am curious if the film’s face would have measured up high as a horror.. especially with Jim Carrey?

    I think yes.

    Though Carrey’s RIDDLER was a debauchery in the BATMAN FOREVER movie, he is fully capable of serious roles, as we have seen later in his career.. One achievement on the serious note (though humor was added) was one of my favorite movies from the 20th century: THE TRUMAN SHOW.

    Other comedians went serious with good results, too. Such as Robin Williams in WHAT DREAMS MAY COME and ONE HOUR PHOTO. ONE HOUR PHOTO may have one of the scariest films in general I have ever seen..

    But the MASK worked as comedy. And I think –I really do–that it would have as horror too.

    With the modern stint of remakes and re-imaginations, I would not be surprised if we see the MASK unmasked as a horror one day sooner or later..

  • AP : Jack Harris, who cemented his place in Hollywood history by…

    AP : Jack Harris, who cemented his place in Hollywood history by…

    AP : Jack Harris, who cemented his place in Hollywood history by producing the 1958 horror film “The Blob,” has died. He was 98.Harris died of natural causes Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills surrounded by family, according to his daughter, Lynda Resnick.

    Born in Philadelphia and a vaudeville performer from a young age, Harris was a decorated WWII veteran before getting into the movie business. He worked in marketing, publicity, distribution and production across his long career.

  • The IT remake coming this autumn have left movie-goers…

    The IT remake coming this autumn have left movie-goers…

    The IT remake coming this autumn have left movie-goers screaming.. The website BLOODY DISGUSTING, linked to INDEPENDENT, and shared worldwide on Drudge, reports this:

    The trailer opens with footage of Bill Denbrough making a paper boat for his little brother Georgie. We then move outside, where Georgie is chasing his boat in a rainstorm as it floats next to the curb,” the description reads. “Suddenly, Georgie runs right into a street barrier, which knocks him down on the ground. He then watches as his boat sails into a gutter. He runs to the gutter and tries to see if he can see his boat. As he looks deep into the sewers, Pennywise abruptly appears before the screen cuts to black.”

    The members of the Loser’s Club then meet up and realise they’ve all been seeing the same entity until finally someone says ‘The Clown.

    The description continues: “The teaser then moves into its centrepiece, which shows the members of the Loser’s Club looking at pictures on a carousel slide projector that suddenly acquires a life of its own and begins moving through the slides at an increasingly alarming speed. The pictures are of Georgie and his parents, and each slide zooms in on Georgie’s face before cutting to his mother, whose hair is covering her face. As the projector moves from slide to slide, the hair moves out of his mother’s face, and her face is revealed to be that of Pennywise himself.

    “The trailer then blows through a flurry of shots, as most trailers are known to do. The most striking image from this succession of shots is the unforgettable moment when blood flows out of Beverly’s sink, only in Muschietti’s film it spews out like a geyser and blasts her in the face. There is also a sublime image of Pennywise approaching two of the children (he has them cornered against a wall), but the shot is framed in a way so that only his long, bony fingers fill the screen. The children are in the background, out of focus but clearly terrified

    Expect a lot of clowns this year starting in August, if not earlier. And with it, Halloween costumes galore of Pennywise vs the Losers Club..