4th Annual N&G 31 Days* of Halloween (2022)

LeeVing

LeeVing

Well-Known Member
*I think a full 61 days is a good start...

Just like previous years,, this isn't a contest - just a thread to post and rate and, if you want to, review the Halloween/Horror movies or TV shows you watch during the season.

Post the name of the movie, rating and your thoughts on it if you want to - if you post spoilers, please use the spoiler tags.

We can use the skull emoji as a rating system....

💀 - Not worth watching ever again.
💀 💀
💀 💀 💀 - Average
💀 💀 💀 💀
💀 💀 💀 💀 💀 - Best movie of all time.
 
Day 1. I Came By
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This had promise and the cast is usually really good, but the plot suffered from being less than cohesive at times.

💀 💀 💀 - Average

I'm going to try to do an average of one a day again this time around, so this was last night's film.
 
MOVIE #1
Mad God (2021)
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Starting this Halloween season off with a bang! This was an interesting film to be sure. Animator-director Phil Tippett spent 30 years putting it together and the time and effort really comes across. Everything is so detailed, so fully realized. I wish more people would recognize what an awesome medium stop-motion can be, especially for horror. Movies like this really push the limits of what the human brain is capable of coming up with and putting on the screen and if animation as a whole got more respect, surreal gems like this wouldn't be so rare. Because it is so grimly gruesome and experimental in form, I imagine it won't appeal to broader audiences as much, but sick bastards like me will sure get a kick out of it. An enormously impressive work of art.

Rating: 💀💀💀💀💀

Also, just as an aside, now that I have a Letterboxd account I'll be logging the movies I watch on there as well. My reviews here will probably just be more direct versions of whatever I write on LB, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to attach them anyways in case anyone wants to read them. Thanks to @LeeVing for setting this up once again!!
boxd.it

A ★★★★½ review of Mad God (2021)

Awe-inspiring. Phil Tippett's decades-in-the-making passion project is an enormous achievement in filmmaking. I can't even begin to fathom how much time and effort went into every frame of this, every minute little detail. I hope that seeing labors of love like this help to convince any skeptics...
boxd.it boxd.it
 
Day 2.

I didn't watch a movie but instead watched the first four episodes of Marianne. So far I'm loving it. Very creepy and some great cinematography.
💀 💀 💀 💀 Based on the first four episodes. It could still go up or down as a whole show, but a great first half imo.

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My first spooky watch for the season was Afflicted (2013)—a found footage horror with heightened action and a fun, unusual twist.

It's pretty darn good for a feature debut by its creators (and acting leads) Derek Lee and Clif Prowse. Enough so that it's kind of astonishing that they haven't made anything since.

Kinda gave me Chronicle (2012) vibes at parts. Not sure how invested I was overall, but it has its merits.

💀 💀 💀 for a respectable, earnest effort.

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My second spooky watch was Neill Blomkamp's latest, Demonic (2021).

A woman gets roped into using experimental tech that bridges mind and reality to contact her estranged, comatose mother with a murderous past, unleashing a whole other kind of darkness.

Is it good? Not really. But does it deserve to be as maligned as it is? I think not. I maintain that Elysium is still his worst output for how incredibly boring it was. Demonic oddly leans into live-action anime territory in parts, but perhaps not far enough.

One of the common complaints I saw was how bad the virtual interface looks. As a beta technology, I feel like it kind of has to look coarse and shitty. It just makes more sense. Other elements like
creature design
simply don't live up to what we've seen in the Oats Studios shorts.

Verdict:
💀 💀 💀 (2.5 rounded up)

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My third spooky watch is Come Play (2020), another selection made primarily based on my Showtime trial ending tonight.

Overall, it's pretty well done—better than basic. A competently realized exploration of loneliness, othering, and barriers to connection (i.e., technology) with a neurodivergent kid at the center.

It has a couple of ham-fisted moments that garnered hearty eye-rolls from me, but they're very quick and not core to the overall experience—largely used for expediency in moving the plot forward. For each of those moments, however, there's also some really neat decisions that I've never seen played out in a horror film before (one clever moment in particular taking place in an empty parking lot at night).

I could see this being a great gateway horror film for young folks/those just getting curious about the genre.

💀 💀 💀


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Glad to see people starting this thread off well.

I just haven't had a whole lot of time off work since the 1st...I actually started the thread on my phone at work.

I have a couple days off later this week to get my first watch.
 
Rounding out day 4 with The Monster (2016) by director Bryan Bertino (The Strangers and The Dark and the Wicked).

Have to admit I struggled with this one, despite most of my Letterboxd connections' raving impressions.

A mother and daughter face a beastly threat when they become stranded on a rural, wooded road.

I appreciate the darkness and oppressive dread that Bertino has kind of made a signature of in his films. He's not afraid to play with contentious and dislikable characters. Just wish this script gave me something, anything, to feel for.

I'm also usually pretty good with allegorical horror and confronting our darknesses. Unfortunately, this one ended up grating me the wrong way.

💀 💀, but heavily based in personal taste. Try this one for yourself.

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Just seeing this thread now but I just so happened to watch a couple new Shudder exclusives the last few nights so i'll start with those!

Glorious (2022)

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I was actually pretty excited about this one as it looked like a great role for Ryan Kwanten aka Jason Stackhouse from True Blood since I had always expected bigger things for him since that show and he actually did nail the role and it was fun seeing him in something decent again. The biggest attraction though is the voice-over of J.K. Simmons who nails it like he always does anything. These two characters are pretty much the majority of the movie and do a great job throughout keeping you immersed, wondering wtf kind of batshit crazy thing is going to happen around the next corner with both humor and dark moments but the last act just kind of lost me a bit and brought the overall movie down by the end. It was still a really fun, obscure ride though! The tagline is basically "Dude encounters rest stop bathroom glory hole god voiced by J.K Simmons and things happen" .. If that intrigues you at all then you should have at least some fun with this one :D


💀💀💀1/2



Who Invited Them (2022)


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This one was a pretty basic and straight forward thriller with some comedy and horror elements thrown in. If there were a lifetime version of a movie made for Shudder this would check all the boxes. Just some solid mindless entertainment that you wont regret watching but it also wont be anything special. One of the most memorable parts of this movie for me was how they keep going back to a party guest that left like probably 4-5 times and she's super confused and pissed off that she's "lost in the Hill's" and just going in circles. This mostly just had me wanting to revisit The Invitation from 2016 which has a similar concept but was a significantly better movie.

💀💀💀 Flawlessly "average".​
 
MOVIE #2
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
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I love how much this commits to its premise, being not just a visceral, disturbing horror film, but a damn solid bleak as hell Western in its own right. This is a slow-burn done well, with memorable characters, sharp dialogue and an eerie tone. I have yet to see any of Zahler's other films, but I really like what he did here. A well-made movie through and through.

Rating: 💀💀💀💀

boxd.it

A ★★★★ review of Bone Tomahawk (2015)

A uniquely disturbing blend of the Western and horror genres, Bone Tomahawk is a bleak and brutal contemplation on death and determination set in a land of cowboys, cops, crippled men and cannibals. Though it's patient pacing and two-hour plus runtime may be a point of contention for some...
boxd.it boxd.it
 
Day 4.

Choose or Die

It was pretty obvious what the quality of this would be just from the description. I started it once before and didn't make it past a few minutes, but wasn't feeling focused enough for anything worth my full attention tonight. My feelings on it are indifference. It's the kind of movie where if it's playing in the background I might leave it on, but I'd probably not pause it if I got up to make a sandwich.

💀 💀, Maybe with an extra 🦴 if I was feeling generous or stoned.

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gaporter said:
MOVIE #2
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
View attachment 150509
I love how much this commits to its premise, being not just a visceral, disturbing horror film, but a damn solid bleak as hell Western in its own right. This is a slow-burn done well, with memorable characters, sharp dialogue and an eerie tone. I have yet to see any of Zahler's other films, but I really like what he did here. A well-made movie through and through.

Rating: 💀💀💀💀

boxd.it

A ★★★★ review of Bone Tomahawk (2015)

A uniquely disturbing blend of the Western and horror genres, Bone Tomahawk is a bleak and brutal contemplation on death and determination set in a land of cowboys, cops, crippled men and cannibals. Though it's patient pacing and two-hour plus runtime may be a point of contention for some...
boxd.it boxd.it
Click to expand...

Yeah, I absolutely loved this one! I went in fully blind when I first watched it and enjoyed every minute of it (as tough as some of those minutes were 😬). I remember seeing it within a year or so of Kurt Russel's first Christmas Chronicles movie and realized both that his beard game is Elite asf and he's still got as great of range as he ever has. Without spoilers there's a specific scene in this movie that has and always will stay with me for the rest of my life.

On the subject of Zahler, I HIGHLY recommend his film Brawl in Cell Block 99 with Vince Vaughn.. You can def. tell it's from the same director even though it's a very different genre. Vaughn's role is easily one of the most badass characters in the last decade imo. I've had his other film Dragged Across Concrete high in my queue for quite awhile now as well and it's supposed to be pretty good.
 
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