#I don't think the point of cosmic horror is that cosmic horror is scary

[jadedaegis]

Oil Rigs look god in the eyes and spits on their shoes

SERIOUSLY WHO JUST WENT:

"Ah, mhyes quite. The Number Must Climb™; sacrifice peasantry to collect the Death that coalesces in locked-away packets of the deepest underground depths. This death has rotted beyond normal decomposition, giving it undue ability to effectively reanimate inanimate matter upon combustion. "

AND THEN CONTINUED WITH:

"Furthermore, we shall build a monument to this Death; a Hell borne of jagged angles and crude iron. Behold, ye witless peons! Harvest for with me! Partake of what we know not of handling! Imbue life into our mechanical automatons; derive VIGOR from DEATH! A brutalist siphon that exchanges life quality for work quantity- directly converting my serfdom's labor into cold! Hard! Cash! This has no chance of hurting the entire species. Harvesting the energy of death is a smart and sane thing to do : ) "

[foone]

My one bit of advice I think every gamer should hear:

GO PLAY OUTER WILDS.

Seriously. It is easily one of my top 5 games of all time, and that's mainly because I'm being cagey about if it's the #1, because it probably is.

It's a game where you're a little alien who is taking their first flight into space, in their little spaceship. You go to space and find a mystery, and have to figure it out.

It's a game entirely about learning things about the world you're in: it's a tiny solar system modeled amazingly well, with varied planetary environments, archaeology, and quantum fun.

It's a game that's hard to talk about without spoiling, because it's about solving the mysteries. There used to be some other aliens here, they're long gone. What happened to them? Their whole society was built around trying to find something: what was it? Did they find it? And there's a weird disastrous event that keeps happening, why? Can you stop it? Should you stop it? Is it connected to the other weird things that keep happening? What happened to that ice planet that exploded with vines? One of the astronauts who came before you was the best pilot who ever lived, but they vanished. What happened to them? And why can you sometimes hear their harmonica over the radio when you point it at your own planet?

The game is wonderful and non-linear and the most unique approach to a Metroidvania I've seen years: it's basically "what if we did the Metroidvania idea but with no items or power ups? What if the thing that you got to unlock new areas WAS INSIDE THE PLAYER'S HEAD?"

Because you don't unlock the next area by picking up the high-jump boots, you unlock it by learning something new. Now you can do something you didn't realize you could before, but now you know you can.

And that's only one of the amazing concepts they stuffed in this game. The itemless Metroidvania, the tiny simulated solar system, the quantum mechanics... Each of these alone could be enough to carry an indie game. They stuffed them all in one game combined with a great story, and that's in a gamewith relatively little dialogue!

There's like a dozen people to talk to, but you spent a lot of time reading conversations left by the long-gone aliens. You get to know them, what they were working for, how they interacted, and what happened to them, thousands of years later. It's less the bioshock style audio-logs, and more like going over bits of ancient writing, making connections and correlations from the fragments you can find.

And don't get me wrong, this might sound like this game is going to be dry and boring: it is so very not. It is a game about mysteries in the void of space, the death of a civilization, and the potentially world-ending dangers that face a living one, and even bigger concepts. It could so easily be a cosmic horror, about the cold death of space and the universe itself, and the nihilism of realizing that even a race that could cross the gap between the stars and bend spacetime to their will... They too died out. If they couldn't make it, what hope do you have, in your little spaceship that's primarily made of WOOD?

And yet... The game is always engaging. It has a few scares, and space is never a safe place to be, but it maintains a sense of humor and wonder. Yes, the universe can be scary, but it's also amazing. And you're just a little salamander-guy who wants to see it all, and figure out all the things. Maybe you don't know something yet, but tomorrow is a new day, and you can go blasting off to another planet, find some writing in a city suspended upside down over a black hole, try to fly into the core of a water planet, dodge giant anglerfish inside the warped space of an exploded planet, and try to explore an ancient city that's slowly filling with sand. It is a game about Things Ending, and it refuses to give into despair. It is one of the most relentlessly optimistic games I have ever played.

And the experience of playing it is so unique. This isn't a game where you could watch a letsplay and only get spoiled on some plot points, it's a game where the fundamental gameplay loop is about learning things. You should try it for yourself. It's got hints and many different avenues to explore (and it even keeps track of them for you, in case you forget!), so you don't have to worry much about getting stuck for too long. You can always put aside a "puzzle" and come back later, after you've learned more. (I put puzzle in quotes because it's not exactly a puzzle game. It's more of a mystery game. You aren't solving a logic puzzle or putting the pegs into the right holes, you're asking "Why is this like this? Where does this go? What is this for?" and then figuring that out from clues)

It's like 25$ on steam, and you can get it for Playstation and Xboxes as well (sadly no Switch version. They were working on one but it seems that version has stalled, with no announced release date)

You can probably get it for like 10$ if you're patient and wait for a sale.

One final note: there's also a DLC. The DLC is fully self-contained, in that you won't miss anything playing the main game without it. It basically adds a huge side-area to the game which goes and fills in some gaps in the history, explains some things, and introduces some more variety to the Outer Wilds universe.

It's utterly amazing, too. It's basically Outer Wilds 2 in everything but name, but it's totally fine to just grab the base game and play that. You can always come back and grab the DLC later if you want more Outer Wilds.

Seriously. To sum up, Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games ever made, it won a ton of awards, and it should have won more. They should invent more gaming awards just to give to Outer Wilds. This is one of the games that is going to be talked about in future "history of gaming" classes and put on lists of the 50 most groundbreaking and influential games, alongside things like Myst and King's Quest and Zork and Mass Effect. It's just that good, that groundbreaking.

[warrior-cats-rewritten]

I really like Moonpaw’s design! And I’m hoping she is secretly a NightSun kit, with like a callback to the Three, which I think would be really cool. Probably not, but she is in my heart.

I quite like it as well! I actually have multiple au versions of her because nothing is even set in clay yet, let alone stone.

I personally love the versions of her where her absorbed twin is the "scary evil voice" (or just a bit more... "Mean", not afraid to call someone a dumbass), but also the version where she is the reincarnation of Bristlefrost. Sadly, that doesn't work with WCR...

I have the Meta Commentary/Cosmic Horror/Fandom heavy version of her as a NightSun baby, at the cost of Sunbeam's life. She wants to do lots of different things, and gets more into crafting than anything, but... She wants her dad to back off. Then the Moonpool gets involved... (This version is more canon compliant, no Bramble Strike happened and Crowfeather is closer to canon, that is to say a jackass) Meta Arc 9 AU

I've got the Continuation of ASC version of her as a FringeSpire baby, coming off the heels of the Skyclan Split and Gray Wing War. She's got a lot of pressure on her, and wants to one day be Leader. She has a fascination with the Moonpool when Waspstar takes her there. (She would be protags with Brightheart, who is oraganizing a way to fight the encroaching Twolegs with Cranberrynose and Skybranch) (this one is even funnier because I already had kits planned for them named Moonkit and Poolkit, born at the Moonpool) Moon + Bright Arc 9 AU

I've got the other version of that where she's a ShellFern baby. It's much more simple, where her big desire is to be a Mediator. (She is protag with Tawnypelt, but also with Breezepelt struggling with his chronic pain and new role) ShellFern Arc 9 AU

I've got a StormCherry version, where there's pressure from being Daisykin, which has been developing quite the legacy. She's a little Poppyfrost clone! She would be the little sister of Silverspots, Flywhisker and Snaptooth, and they are already CherryStorm babies. The other protags are Leafkit, daughter of Featherpelt and Toadstep, who is hard of hearing, and Daisy, who is determined to get to the bottom of why Twolegs have begun to get closer, leading to a very... Strange discovery. Daisykin Arc 9 AU.

And then, I think my favorite little version of her, is the most WCR compliant. A WhistleFrost child found at the Moonpool the day after it was purified. The voice she hears in her head is her Nana Curlfeather arguing with other Dark Forest spirits. Is this Moonpaw going to be a hero? Maybe, maybe not. Multi-Med Cat Arc 9 AU.

Any more canon compliance and I'd make her a corrupted Ashfur/Bristlefrost fusion through Thriftear calling Queen's Rights after her journey during Thriftear's Heart. The Bristlefrost reincarnation absorbed the Ashfur reincarnation to create Moonpaw! She would carry pieces of their memories/personalities inside her, struggling with that, and with her deep connection to the Moonpool that she is growing more and more obsessed with... Reincarnation Arc 9 AU

But... All in all, I'm glad we have such a unique looking Protagonist. I still don't trust the writers, but I'm gonna give them a single point for going absolutely BONKERS with her design in ways that would make 2011 fans whine and scream. Keep going, give these kitties weird features!

[mudstoneabyss]

can you make a list of your top indie horror game recs ::3

yeah! so these wont be in order of what i like the most, they're just going to be here in whatever order I think of them. i'm also trying to go with what I think are more lesser-known ones, and if one is more popular it'll because I think it's one people write off that are actually good. as i'm writing this i'm going back up to say the descriptions for these will become less detailed because i got tired and cant keep repeating the art!! the atmosphere!!

Scarlet Hollow: A heavily choice-based horror mystery visual novel about going back to Scarlet Hollow- a small town in south historically ran by your family- for the funeral of your late aunt. its episodic and there are currently only 4 of the 7 episodes out. even with just them it is my favorite game. I love the writing and the art and the whole atmosphere of the game AND the soundtrack brought Brandon Boone (the composer) into my top 5 artists in my spotify wrapped last year

Slay the Princess: Another choice-based horror visual novel (and dating sim!) by the creators of Scarlet Hollow where you are tasked with, well, slaying the princess to prevent the destruction of the entire world. It's only a demo right now-releasing q3 of this year- but I'm excited for the whole game! my selling point for it with my followers is that the narrator (and some other characters) are voiced by Jonny Sims and hey podcast fans you like him check out this game

Endacopia: A click and point horror game inspired by Humongous Entertainment games such as Pajama Sam. Currently also a demo and set to release in October of 2024, I can not emphasize enough how excited I am for it. The game's style is so fun and there's lots of little details and the music??? There's two musical numbers in the demo alone. Some of the style and writing also reminds me of Undertale and even Homestuck somewhat (I say as someone who hasn't read homestuck)

FAITH: The Unholy Trinity: This is an 8-bit style horror game inspired by the 1980s Satanic Scare coming in 3 chapters with multiple endings, a very good example of games not needing high-end realistic graphics to be scary

Doki Doki Literature Club: Glances at my icon. who could've seen this one coming. I feel like most people know about ddlc by now, even if they don't know anything past "horror anime dating sim". It starts off for a long while a seemingly normal, if bland, visual novel dating sim until-seemingly suddenly- twisting into psychological horror. There's, however, a lot of foreshadowing once you see the beginning again after knowing what will happen. Honestly I think this games brilliant and its such a shame it somehow got lumped in with "cringe" mascot horror (its not even a mascot horror game?). For me a lot of the horror comes from the amount of scares left up to a random percentage- and how subtle a lot of them are. You can replay it and have a fairly different experience than you did the first time- and be scared by completely new things. There's also this existential and cosmic horror element that is less one you experience while playing it, i think, and more thinking about it afterwards. This isn't even touching on a lot of the secrets and easter eggs. a few years after the original game came out, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus was released, and it leaves the og game experience essentially untouched while adding a new vn experience the length of the og game (thats seemingly horror-less) as well as some more lore to the world, not of the game, but around the game, and builds more on the existential/cosmic horror. Needless to say from the length of this, I adore this game. also take the content warnings seriously, in the (free) og the game opens with warnings and a link to a page with specific tws, and in ddlc+ you are given the options to see those warnings listed before starting the game, as well as the ability to turn on tw pop-ups before game events

Home Safety Hotline: Also currently a demo, a horror game where you work for a home safety hotline, answering calls to help people deal with pests and other household problems. as the game progresses you get some more... off-putting calls and access to more unusual problems. I love games that put you into the role of someone who works a mundane job dealing with horrifying shit (similar reasoning to why I like the I'm On Observation Duty games, which I think are more popular rn than I want to put on this list)

NiGHT SIGNAL: By the same creator of Home Safety Hotline, this one's a short one about getting a new tv set and finding some strange channels during the night, inspired by The Twilight Zone and a 1995 game, The Dark Eye. A lot of the art in the game is done with clay which creates this really nice uncanny look and atmosphere- details about which you can see in an artbook you unlock after playing the game, which is REALLY cool I adore seeing the creativity behind and what goes into games like these.

and there's a bunch more I like, these are just the ones off the top of my head and I also dont feel like typing a bunch more dfnafnsk I'll also say if yall haves one you really like that I havent mentioned feel free to send an ask talking about them

[wanderingnork]

wanderingnork's Top Ten Horror Movies

At the time of this posting, I've seen 197 horror movies (that I can remember), ranging from The Haunted Hotel in 1907 to Five Nights at Freddy's in 2023. I've watched horror movies filmed on every continent except Antarctica, and I've seen a couple horror movies that were at least set there. Out of all of those, I'm finally choosing my ten favorite movies. Subjective, of course; you might think differently.

It's a tough list to make. I could list SO MANY movies as favorites for many reasons. For effects, for monsters, for acting, for music! In the end, though, I decided to go with the movies that I remember best, moved me most deeply, or call me back again and again. So, in ascending order: here's the list.

10. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum A brilliant piece of found footage that has me climbing up the walls every time. The use of various camera angles allows us to get up close and personal with terror in a very intimate way. At one point, we the viewers are literally face to face with a monster as if we're the one holding the camera. With some big twists, it's fun to follow. And, while it's heavy on the jumpscares, the timing of them and the relentlessness of the escalation makes them incredibly effective. When I'm really in the mood for a SCARE, this is the one I go to.

9. It Follows One of the prettiest horror movies I've ever seen, It Follows creates a liminal and uncertain atmosphere like nothing else. What season is it? What year is it? How old are the protagonists? We just don't know. It's not the most original plot, but it's so breathtakingly lovely that doesn't matter. The colors are vibrant, the textures are wide and varied, the props are unique and beautiful. Composition of shots is incredible, I swear every other frame could be a poster or framed image on its own. It also encourages personal interpretation. What's the monster? The looming specter of adulthood? An STD? Childhood trauma revisited? It's up to the viewer to decide. I love that.

8. Carnival of Souls This one's beautiful in a different way. In black and white, it incorporates unexpected landscapes and angles to create a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere throughout. The background music is limited if there at all, and often is only the echoing music of an organ. This one's pretty liminal too, and with good reason. I also love it for a meta reason: one of its scenes was a direct inspiration of Night of the Living Dead, so Carnival of Souls has an impact that resonates all the way to the present day. We can still see it in our modern zombie movies. And that's just such a fitting legacy for this movie.

7. The Bay My favorite piece of found footage, The Bay effectively splices together DOZENS of sources of found footage to create its narrative. Security cameras. Home videos. Investigators' records. Recordings of video conferences and calls. Police dashcam videos. News broadcasts. We see the unfolding ecological disaster through so many points of view that we can get a comprehensive view of how it's affecting individual children all the way to a national crisis. Plus, it contains one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen: a running still shot through a police dashcam, where enhanced audio gives us a horrifying window into what's happening inside a house.

6. The Void Top-tier cosmic horror. What are the weird pyramids? What's the motive? What in the fresh fuck is through the portal? Why is everything so OOZY? Some reviewers say that the movie is nonsensical--well, welcome to good cosmic horror. We're given a glimpse into a vast, hostile, incomprehensible universe which snaps shut at the end...and we're left to wonder. Most of the monster effects are practical, and they're done so beautifully and fluidly. Utterly gorgeous. Between axe-dragging cultists, zombies, howling mutant beasts, and giant space pyramids, it's a wonderfully wild ride.

5. Nightbreed A movie lower on the "scary" side of things, this movie holds a special place in my heart. It's a tale of embracing your own monstrousness and finding a home where you belong, no matter how strange you are. Full of gorgeously monstrous characters, who embrace their desires no matter how taboo, it's easy to believe why someone struggling with their identity would want to join the hidden society of the Nightbreed. "Everything's true. God's an astronaut. Oz is over the rainbow. And Midian is where the monsters live."

4. Martyrs (2008) A TRULY unexpected addition to this list, Martyrs is often classed as torture porn. The director, and I, disagree. I read it more as an exploration of the power of women in horror, the scream queen or final girl who suffers to grant the audience catharsis. It's certainly a challenging watch, because the violence is unflinchingly shown on screen in all its details. But I came out of the movie feeling cleaned out and oddly healed. The protagonist, the martyr, shouldered my burden of hurt and fear...and I got to be free of it thanks to her.

3. Alien Aside from having one of the greatest of horror creatures and greatest of final girls, Alien is just a goddamn good movie. The tension is so well-handled. The grandiose scenes of a ship in space, the explosions, the vast alien planet, those are a glorious backdrop for the intimate horror happening within the ship. I can never look away, from the beautiful and strangely sensual awakening sequence to the peaceful hypersleep at the end. I find myself shrieking at the characters to LOOK UP, to get OUT of the vents, to HURRY with shutting down the self-destruct, and on the edge of my seat the whole time. No matter how many times I watch this movie, I always flinch at the chestburster scene. And every time I see Alien, I feel like I'm seeing it again for the first time.

2. The Thing As close to perfect a horror movie as is possible, I think. The Thing itself is slimy, toothy, tentacle-y perfection. The bleak, alien landscape of Antarctica, with its stark beauty, creates such a sense of inescapable tension that there's never relief once things begin. From the pounding heartbeat of the opening soundtrack as the dog flees over the snowfields to the final scene as the camp burns to frozen ashes in the finale, it's relentless. The lighting is gorgeous (as we expect from a John Carpenter movie). It keeps you guessing all the way through, suspecting anyone and everyone of being The Thing in disguise. One of my impossible bucket list items is to view this at McMurdo Station after the last flight has left for the winter.

1.The Ritual Truly my comfort horror movie. With a beautiful, beautiful creature who uses a combination of CGI and practical effects to perfection, this is a story of human determination overcoming even the worst suffering. The claustrophobic yet beautiful wilderness, the monster who is herself an integral piece of the landscape, and the soundtrack work together to create an immersive atmosphere. I could go on and on about how this movie handles grief, guilt, ecology, relationships between men, the weight of history, the power of the human spirit--but instead I'll just recommend you watch the movie and interpret it for yourself. I certainly will be.

(If you've enjoyed this rec list, check out my other horror movie recs here.)

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Hey if the GF kids + GP team were watching horror movies (the oldest because no horror movies for the youngest kiddos or they will not sleep because some horror movie ARE terrifying) What movie would scare the most at every child/teen?

Like i can see Emma being scared of IT, whatever which version, especially the first scene (you know what i mean, right?) for exemple.

Ayshe would be probably scared by White Dog or Cujo :/ but not scared by the movie but scared and sad because of the poor dog (who is a victim in both movies, infected by rabies in one and trained to attack in another). she would speak for the first time to Norman to ask him do find her an appointment to vaccinate her dogs (because it's real dogs, not demoniac dogs or it would be hard for her to feed them in the human world. I doubt that people would be happy to see their beloved pet dog "vanish" (and be eaten).

Barbara would play "the cool sister who isn't afraid" but would be afraid by Scream (for exemple and would be clingy to Cislo/Norman/Vincent's arm for all the movie XD

Have you other ideas? =)

Feel this comes down to semantics because I don't think they'd find mainstream horror scary but more so unsettling? Besides like a well-earned jump scare getting the best of them that's immediately, viscerally frightening and might result in a comedic reaction they tease each other over.

But given everything they confronted in the demon world—both the direct, palpable terror of almost being eaten alive by the grotesque

(Chapter 117)

to the existential horror of realizing everything you've come to understand about yourself and that your very humanity and the humanity of all the people you care about is systemically devalued in such a cold, detached, clinical way—

(Chapter 28)

it doesn't seem like it would result in an immediate bubbling up of palpable terror for them with both the barrier of the screen and their understanding of horror media and media in general often being used to communicate an idea between a creator and their audience (e.g., the possession scenes in Talk to Me being used to symbolically convey the silent brutality of drug addiction, the existential dread presented by pregnancy and STDs in It Follows, etc.). But the important thing with a lot of these pieces is that while horrific violence might be perpetrated, there's still an underlying upholding of human life as inherently valuable and something to be protected, so they can have fun with it and appreciate the works for what they are.

What I believe would be a sticking point for them would be abject, wanton cruelty with no purpose. So like, torture porn, purposefully edgy works that revel in the audacity of boundaries pushed and the shock value of the obscene, exploitation films. Hostel, Funny Games, A Serbian Film, 120 Days of Sodom, etc., I can't imagine them growing up and being fans of this subgenre after everything they experienced.

So I wouldn't say Emma is scared of King's It, but would perhaps be unsettled by a cosmic malevolent force preying on children for no purpose other than personal gratification, and how that servers as a metaphor for the underlying fear of stranger danger present in the 1980s in the US. The specifics might be inaccurate based on statistics (child abduction more often being committed by someone a child knows), but it's the possibility of harm being done by fellow human beings and that one can't immediately combat it with physical retaliation like they did in the demon world due to optics and laws in this world that could lead her to dislike it for her own personal entertainment.

I feel like works that involve medical horror could be triggering for Barbara, or scenes where there's gratuitous focus on flesh being violently bludgeoned into viscera mush with how it might bring back the smells of when she'd enact that on demons.

And I haven't seen Cujo or White Dog, but it does sound like something Ayshe would find disquieting with how she considers her dogs family. Same thing with The Thing, though the dogs being killed and impersonated don't last the whole film. None of these would compare to Cannibal Holocaust, though; I don't think she could watch a movie knowing animals were killed on set for the sole purpose of entertaining people. It would be too upsetting (and why I haven't watched it).

[pyr0cue]

Feel free to answer privately if you'd like- i know the Longlegs discussion is getting a bit muddled up in the notes and i'm actually really interested in people's takes on the film, especially when they bring up things i'd never consider, like Longlegs being a bit of a touchy subject when it comes to being potentially transgender, or just repeated (typically negative) stereotypes in horror in general. i find this type of stuff really fascinating!

(i apologize if i get a little lengthy in this lol)

while i don't particularly see Longlegs as trans, with the idea of Buffalo Bill being in a lot of peoples heads as a reference for Longlegs can definitely nudge them in that direction, and ill never fault anyone on their interpretation on a character in a film, it's kinda what makes films art to begin with. tho i also think (personally) that it may be a bit unfair to a character who, throughout the movie, is not a Buffalo Bill character other than the fact that Bill and Longlegs are both murderers. Bill is regarded as feminine because of who he kills and why he does it, where as Longlegs is sort of guided more towards the 'epitome of evil', to the point where Longlegs isn't even killing anyone directly, because its simply his influence with Ruth, the orbs, and the dolls. the through-lines are surely there, especially in terms of the ambiguity of gender, the cliches, and the harmful stereotypes associated with them. i'm just under the impression that the more you pick at it, the more the similarities kinda dissolve- but that's just me!

not to get long winded and annoying but i perceived Longlegs as not a human at all, but a rendition of the "Beast" itself, with Ruth being the other, forming the triangle that Longlegs seemed to be obsessed with, or less satanically accurate (i guess?? im no where close to religious so hoo boy if im wrong consider me a silly goose) , maybe a portrayal of the Antichrist itself. Longlegs is unnerving to look at and listen to because its desperately trying to be something that it perceives as 'beautiful,' when in actuality, is horrifying, like a 'demon' would present itself (if we want to pretend we know what a demon would do, but its fiction, so wooooo!) there is of course issues that are going to spike up with that- the 'feminine' presentation can set off alarm bells for a demographic that's already viewed in an (unfair, of course) 'evil' sense. but i think that unfortunately makes things more interesting- Longlegs can be perceived as anything, but at the end of the day, is evil, nearly on a cosmic level because we truly dont know what the hell Longlegs even is.

i super apologize for this being long and probably obnoxious but i personally love having discussions when it comes to interpretations of films, ESPECIALLY horror. Longlegs is bringing up a lot of different ideas and concepts for things that i havent seen in quite a while and i think thats really neat.

thank you again for humoring this ask! :) one thing i will fight you on is saw 5 being picked over saw 6, how dare you! the shotgun carousel was a masterpiece!

You are all good!! I also love discussing film and don’t mind long asks at all!! In fact this made my day!!! I just didn’t want to answer rude anons lol) I…also just typed a giant response so I’m sorry for not knowing how to be concise

I actually love your analysis! It’s a lot of things I hadn’t really considered! I think my personal gripe with the movie is that I just don’t find satanic motivations in film scary, I was so much more frightened and intrigued when longlegs was just a killer with an odd obsession with the 14th, when he was untraceable by his own power and not ‘the devil.’ Longlegs wanted you to be scared of both longlegs (the killer) and supernatural aspects, and I just lost all fear of the killer when he started being all ‘hail satan,’ it immediately made the character and their motivation entirely uninteresting and overdone. I spend a lot of time watching bad horror movies just to see if the reviews were wrong (sometimes horror gems were so poorly received and written off), and maybe I’ve just seen more horror about the devil than other people and I’m too jaded about it to find longlegs refreshing or new :/

I do love the idea of longlegs not being human and I can totally see that in the film, it could recontextualize the scene where he smashes his face and his nose falls off as an inhumanity rather than like…hey look at how bad plastic surgery is, which is what it came off as to me at first!! I love that line of thought actually!!

I like the idea that longlegs is portrayed as someone who lacks a gender is less with interpretations like yours which are so fun and interesting to examine is there’s JUST as much, if not more room for bad faith interpretations about trans people. I think my gut reaction of ‘oh no this is about a trans coded killer,’ comes from, both the actor confirming they were portraying a character who doesn’t follow traditional gender roles, and also the social climate rn that is SO violent towards trans people. While I love the idea of a killer who embodies evil, I just think a lot of people are going to walk away with the image of another ‘androgynous’ devil worshipping child killer in their heads, which I think was a dangerous choice on Oz and Cage’s parts. I wish they’d gone in a different direction to show inhumanity, maybe make the killers limbs unnaturally long, get rid of the lipstick and make his lips barely visible, instead of big cheeks have bulging eyes. There’s so many directions they could’ve gone that would’ve led me to immediately think “inhuman” and not “trans stereotype,” on my first watch, but I definitely think there’s a lot of room for interpretation and I loveee the idea of longlegs potentially being infected or changed internally/externally due to close contact with evil and the devil, it’s something to think about!

Ok forgive me for yapping about things you didn’t even mention because my other issue with the film was that it dedicated like 5 whole mins to explain, in depth, exactly how the dolls and Lee’s mom work with longlegs. Like. Ok I can give them the devil worshipping, I wish they’d been more creative but that’s not the ultimate sin, I just WISH they’d let me decide how that supernatural element worked for myself, I don’t want you to explain it to me. Same with Lee’s psychic abilities: you just dedicated a pretty creepy scene to showing that Lee could perceive things others can’t, I don’t then need you to tell me ‼️she’s psychic‼️‼️don’t forget‼️just in case you forgot in the last 2 mins ‼️ our main character is a psychic. This is a movie that held my hand because they were so obsessed with what they wrote that it ruined the horror of the unknown, at least for me. But on the other hand, there’s so many plot holes and issues with the story that don’t really fit in the ‘crime horror’ genre. Idk, this movie left a lot of contradictory thoughts in my brain and I think a lot of why I didn’t like was that I’ve just seen so many better horror movies that do all the things this movie does and more. I don’t think it’s bad but…it didn’t live up to the hype. Whoever was in charge of marketing for this movie needs the biggest raise possible lol

(Ok look the traps in saw 6 are so much better but I love Hoffman and Strahms dynamic in 5 they’re so silly goofy…glass coffin…but ur so right shotgun carousel is one of the best traps in the entire franchise)

[bonesandthebees]

In the spirit of ~spooky season~ I decided to read "looking for a creation myth", because somehow it slipped under my radar (and I don't really know how, because I remember reading "starman waiting in the sky" and really liking it, so why I didn't check this one out is beyond me).

And I gotta say, Bee, you need to write more unreality/cosmic horror stuff, because you do it really freaking well. I can feel the discomfort and unease so easily and I have no trouble picturing the settings. The immersion is just great. And I like the fact that it didn't end "well", it's more satisfying that way. It also makes me really curious how/if the world ended.

And dammit, I forgot what else I had to say. Curse reading while commuting, I live through the fic, but then forget what my insight was at that moment. Point is - good world building and great description of emotions. As always, lmao (<3).

Also, I wanted to ask, since we're heading towards new big fic soon - when transitioning from writing one big story to the other, do you sometimes forget that it's not the previous world anymore? Like, getting into the groove of writing and just accidentally naming characters differently, or mentioning names of locations from different works?

-🌹

aaa thank you so much rose!! looking for a creation myth is definitely one of my more underrated fics but I'm so happy with how it turned out. I'm so glad to hear the dread building worked well with that one!! I was even hesitant to label it as cosmic horror because it definitely veers more towards just weird shit going on but not necessarily in a scary way, but hearing that the discomfort/unease effect i was going for worked makes me very happy. I'm so glad you enjoyed <33

(also I ended it ambiguously for a reason. both endings exist in my head simultaneously where the world didn't actually end but weather got really weird, and then where the world did end and everyone died. schrodinger's ending if you will)

I wouldn't say I forget that it's not the previous world. like in my head the atmospheres for my fics differ so much that I don't accidentally mention the wrong names or locations while writing because I'm in a completely different headspace. the world is completely different so I'm not thinking of the former fic.

(I will say though the exception to this is clinic and world forgetting. while I was writing world forgetting I definitely had a few times where I slipped up and wrote West End instead of Prime Heights and things like that because those two worlds were extremely similar)

it definitely does take me a while to get into the groove of writing a new world though. I really don't find the flow for how I want to write the fic (ie: what kind of prose and metaphors I wanna use) until I've written a few chapters. then things really start to flow and I gain a much better understanding for how the world feels

[towershieldbambi]

I feel like we (weird gross trannies on the internet) are largely past the point where we find lovecraftian stuff scary? like the eldritch stuff and the fear of the unknown is so much less frustrating and stifling than the deep rot of conservatism in society and turning that genre on its head in the way that a lot of us are is good, shoutout to folks who explicitly fetishize cthulhu, but I honestly can't do it myself. I don't think eldritch horror is appealing in a horny way, I think it's appealing in a deeply liberating way. what could be more righteous than the pursuit of forbidden knowledge? what could be more freeing than a cosmic perspective? what power and good we might have if all were subjected to an expanded understanding of the world and their place in it?

I think lovecraft as a reactionary is the SOURCE of lovecraftian horror, and I don't think that's a hot take. reading any of those stories he talks about fish people the way conservative politicians talk about mexicans. I think there's some natural human response to strangeness, a deep gut feeling of fear and horror as your mind resists the forced expansion of your perspective. I think a lot of whether or not someone is a reactionary is tied up in the strength of this response in them, and in how quickly they yield to it.

[gentleman-velvet]

I just love the slenderman so much, man

I just love this tall creepy stalking creature so much.

I just don't why, but I'm going to try and put it into words.

I think part of it is because of what he is and the idea that he could be stalking you at any moment but you wouldn't even notice it. The fact that it straight up removes parts of your memory and makes you second guess yourself and feel more paranoid and scared, is just frightening. I think I'm just scared of losing huge chunks of memory but the idea this creature is stalking you and you yourself at one point now that this thing is stalking you but I you can't remember it anymore. It's just scary to think about

There's also the cosmic horror aspect as well, it just feels like something otherworldly trying to be human and blend in but only somewhat succeeding

and you know what, I want to talk about his design and why I love that so much.

That suit and tie and his human features make him feel well.... human, but that head with no face and being abnormally tall removes those human features and makes him feel inhuman. It's something so weird and your brain just gets confused on that and wonders if it's just seeing things (especially since he's usually far away and blended into the trees) Almost human but not.

I also love how unbeatable this thing is, I mean I think of myself as a hopeful type of dude who thinks most scenarios can be won but Slender Man feels like a being who will never be killed, never be wounded, or never even know fear, we actually have no idea what it thinks of or if it has feelings at all.

It has this face of no emotion, no joy, no fear, no nothing.

I think in summary I love Slender Man because I love the idea of something of this thing just messing with you. Never truly letting go, just driving you mad until you snap. Its goals are unknown, its ideas are unknown, and this thing is a mystery in general.

And you never know if it will come into your life and take it all away.

[darchildre]

Sara Reads an Infuriating Book, part 2

Chapter 2 of W Scott Poole's Wasteland is entitled "Waxworks". This is where I got angry enough to start taking notes in earnest rather than just annotating the ebook, so this is longer and has more actual quotes.

First, a disclaimer: I do not in any way disbelieve that WWI had a huge impact on early 20th century horror. Of course it did; how could it not? What I object to is Poole's assertion that it is the only thing that could possibly have had such an impact and that that impact always and only comes in the form of fear of bodily death and the corpse as an object of horror. Any time anyone gives you a Grand Unified Theory of Horror that claims to explain all of reasons that humans create scary or disturbing art, that theory is never going to be correct. People are more complex than that. And now, bullet points!

Okay, first off, I do have to apologize for ranting about Poole talking about Machen's "The Bowmen" without actually talking about it last chapter, because he talks about the story explicitly in this chapter. This is a structural thing he does repeatedly: he'll mention a writer/director/etc and hint at a work he's going to discuss later without actually naming it. (In this chapter, he does this with Fritz Lang and Metropolis.) This structural choice is not well-signposted and I don't care for it, but at least now I know that's what he's doing.

He also touches on Lovecraft again here, so I apologize as well for accusing him of skipping ol' Howie. Here, we talk briefly about "Herbert West: Re-animator", as it's the only Lovecraft story to a) actually feature WWI explicitly and b) deal much with corpses. There's also this quote about Cthulhu which is...a big fucking stretch: "He raised great Cthulhu, a monster that has haunted the century, a new death’s head spreading wide his black wings of apocalypse, which was clearly recognizable as the Great War and its meaning continued to menace the world."

Like, there is absolutely an argument to be made that WWI was a major influence on the invention of cosmic horror at the beginning of the 20th century. Again, how could it not be? WWI was proof for a lot of people that the universe fundamentally didn't care about them. But that's the thing that I don't think Poole gets - cosmic horror is not about the fear that you are going to die. Cosmic horror doesn't care about your corpse because it doesn't care about you. Cosmic horror is about the fear that no one cares that you exist at all. That is a huge and important difference.

As the chapter title implies, there is a lot of repeated discussion this chapter of waxworks, dolls, puppets, poppets, etc. Poole insists over and over again that a) all of these simulacra can be collapsed symbolically into a single image and that image is of a corpse and b) these objects became horrific after WWI because of the corpse thing. But then he'll go through the history of the fascination with creepy wax figures stretching back to wax images of saints through Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, or he'll talk about dolls and reference E T A Hoffman's The Sandman (from 1817), which, to my mind, totally undercuts his point. You don't need the Great War to make waxworks creepy, my dude.

(Somewhat relatedly - there is a really interesting book to be written about the prevalence of hypnotism/mind control/sleepwalking in early horror film, but it is not going to be this book because Poole thinks all that's happening there is more corpses.)

Which leads us to the discussion of The Cabinet of Caligari! Poole spends a lot of time rehashing a widely accepted interpretation of the film proposed by Siegfried Kracauer in his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler: Kracauer reads the film as a warning about the dangers of authoritarianism, with the somnambulist Cesare standing in for the people of Europe who unconsciously do the evil bidding of their authoritarian masters. Not saying that's the only possible reading of the film - I don't believe there's only one possible reading of any film - but it's an interesting and persuasive one. 'Nope!' says Poole. See, his theory is that the filmmakers wanted to get artist Alfred Kubin to design the look of the film (he did not end up working on the film), Kubin's work has a lot of doll-like figures in it, dolls are always corpses, and therefore Caligari is, once again, only about how all those people died in the war. This is the only thing the filmmakers could have meant.

(On the positive side, this did lead me to look up the art of Alfred Kubin, which I was previously unfamiliar with. It's pretty rad.)

"There’s not enough evidence, for example, that the world understood that their somnambulistic obedience helped produce the outrages of the Great War." I don't see that the world as a whole has to see that in order for the film to attempt to convey that meaning - surely what matters is that the filmmaker saw it and made a film about it. It's not necessary for the world to understand the meaning behind a work of art for a person to make that work of art.

(Somewhat ironically, Poole complains that Kracauer is only capable of interpreting German film in the 1920s through the lens of his pet theory. Who does that remind me of? Couldn't say.)

Oh my god this is already so long, I haven't even talked about J'accuse. Poole thinks J'accuse is a zombie movie which I won't argue because I've only read about it and haven't seen it yet - that could be a valid interpretation for all I know. But then he compares it unfavorably to Romero zombie films and complains that the director of J'accuse "did not really know what to do with [his zombies]", just because they rise from their graves, make their point, and then return to their graves. The entire point of the film is to make the viewer bear witness to the dead. Poole even says this: "The film’s theme of marital infidelity, that inescapable trope in the cinema of the Great War, became a symbol for the larger question of whether the nation had been faithful to the cause of its soldiers.  The dead came back to make sure they had." What else did you want the zombies to do???

God, the whole section about Vampyr made me crazy. Poole is all, "Carl Theodore Dreyer had little connection to the war and I’m not going to show any actual evidence that the war had an impact on his work but he made Vampyr in 1932 and it’s weird and scary and full of shadows and creepy imagery, so obviously it’s about WWI." (nb not at all an actual quote.) There's just no acknowledgement that a person might make a horror film that was inspired by something that happened to them that wasn't WWI. Hell, there's no acknowledgement that a person might make a horror film because they like making spooky stuff. I was a monster kid basically from birth - I suffered no trauma to make me that way. I certainly didn't participate in WWI. Explain that, W Scott Poole.

Lastly, he's just factually wrong about The Phantom of the Opera, in that he claims that the 1925 film presents no explanation for Erik's deformity, unlike the novel. This is not correct - there is no reason for his deformity in the novel either. Later films added that. The lack of explanation in the 1925 film is not a response to mutilated war veterans; it's just an accurate adaptation. Poole says, "No one in the Western world could have looked at the visage of Lon Chaney and not thought of what the French called the gueules cassées…" and maybe that's true, but he's just stating a theory based on a mistake and presenting no evidence.

On the plus side, I'm making a very cool list of books I want to read from the works cited, and also some films that I haven't gotten around to seeing yet.

[foone]

I hate have story ideas which, like, need to be good. Because the whole impact of the story will be ruined if I half ass it. You can't write cosmic horror and fumble the scariness, for example, or it's all a waste. And that's inherently a problem because so often when I DO manage to write, it's just because I got inspiration to go "FUCK IT" and start typing, not worried if the end result is great or not. And that's the thing: stories you write are always going to be better than ones you don't, so naturally the "doesn't have to be good" stories can be great!

But not the stories that have to be great. Because I keep thinking that I'm not in the mood or I don't have the time to finish it, so I don't start. The story doesn't exist. And I may never exist... Because I don't know if I'll ever be able to start it.

This might be a solvable problem if I could, like, iteratively build stories, if I could edit, but that's not one of my strong point, thanks to the ADHD.

Everything* great I've ever done has been done in one single hyperfocus session. And when inspiration strikes I don't have the motivation to go back and expand, to go back and fix... I instead want to make new things.

* the trick with the death generator is that it's not one thing. It's a framework to let me build hundreds of small things. So I only have to hyperfocus long enough to make one game generator, and it slots into the greater structure. So it may seem huge, like it's a project I've been working on for 5 years (because it is), but it's really just several hundred tiny projects flying in close formation

[onewomancitadel]

Kind of weird to wade through dark fiction vs. 'cosy' fiction discourse mostly because I think the discourse is rooted in the wrong idea (whether you find comfort in darkness or brightness). If your only metric is how much an individual piece of art caters to your own fantasies, of course you're going to end up in a squeeze over whether people find comfort in the 'right' things or if there are too many stories of 'one kind' (dark, cosy, whatever).

I know the much more scary thing is thinking about the artistic merit of art, so the retreat into personal escapism makes sense (especially when the emotional value of art is often celebrated on the basis of 'escapism'). I just think that it's natural that the debate becomes narrow; in my opinion, if something is worthy insofar as it's personally soothing, anything has the potential to be personally soothing. I find mind-bendingly harrowing cyberpunk soothing and comforting but I really don't like 'dark' unhappy romance (I can do tragic) because it thematically services different ideas, which make me feel different. But I doubt cyberpunk or horror is termed that way usually (maybe it's thought of as 'cool').

This is why I am not the sort that says 'we need more happy endings'. I need more coherent and justified endings. I need more understanding of the value of the happy ending and the transformation storytelling offers, and the vindication. My approach towards something like narrative cynicism is not 'hmm, I don't like sad things?' and I've said this over and over; tragedy should be structurally and cathartically intelligible, and where it so often goes wrong in cynical renderings is when it is neither (but desperately wants the substance of the genre).

My prevailing issues with the romance genre, say, are almost never solely rooted in the ubiquity of Happily Ever After or Happy For Now; I can understand why those vindicate the progression of the romance when it's not intentionally a dark or tragic romance. My issue is much more front-loaded on the basis of character, plot, and actual thematic substance. Lol. The average person who mocks women for reading romance novels, or romance being looked down on literarily, has very little in common with me.

Of course it's a much harder thing to think about the artistic merit of what essentially, often, amounts to escapist fantasy for a lot of people (and I'm not condemning the idea). I just think that it can end up in critical trouble pretty quickly. I'm much more interested in an author is trying to convey an idea and whether they are doing that well than I am as to how it affects the cosmic balance of dark vs. cosy literature/media. But it's a very basic thing to recognise that comfort is resonant in many different ways, and maybe isn't the best metric for whether something is like... justified in existing (and even then I think the whole mindset of scarcity in storytelling is a little weird. There are so many stories that need to be, and can be told. That's literally the point).

It's one of those topics where I think the argument goes around in circles because it's missing the bigger picture.

[bigyikes97]

Abyss of Neptune: Seems like a straightforward Cthulu-style horror, BUT...

(Screenshot: Abyss of Neptune)

SPOILERS!!

The 'god' was created by scientists who fabricated a cult to "play God". The cult allowed them to facilitate their own wild experiments without having to answer to morality. Their deity may just as well have been curiosity, the cursory nod they needed to disregard the sacredness of humanity for some very awful experiments. I'm usually super not about cults in games, but I think this one was done very well--a cult whose supernatural element was made by its members, I thought, was some solid food for thought.

Now, there WAS an icky, evil monster! Most definitely! Jumpscares galore and moody, murky, creepy-as-heck design. Now it's not very difficult to scare me, but I did surprise myself by screaming at one of the jumps. So don't let the lack of universe-breaking stuff stop you from playing; it's definitely worth it! Instead, there is a lesser god...but one cobbled together by entirely human means, from wretched experiments called "rituals" that, I thought, put science and spirituality poignantly on the same plane. That 'god' is a sorry mess that efficiently terrifies as a 'lab monster', but ultimately underwhelms when the cosmic scale of what it was supposed to be was revealed. I thought distinctly, "THAT was the 'god' this whole time?!" I think that's a lovely thematic point: A failed, gross, nasty monster that overpromises and underdelivers, in a failed, gross, nasty lab whose former splendor is now only pitied and reviled.

Like the visions of cosmic grandeur that drove these scientists to commit atrocities, the monster overpromises and underdelivers in terms of universe-shaking godhood, in a temple/lab whose former splendor is now only pitied and reviled. The result was as deceptive to its creators as the profane ideas that spawned it. It's dangerous, scary, and evil--like the people who made it--but it's to be pitied, not worshipped. I definitely think that's the point and a well done one at that. Grandiose ideas that require divesting oneself of humanity will always have that same end: far from attaining godhood, a transformation into a beast that only knows how to devour. They will always fall short of what they promise and end in disappointment, unmet expectations, and death.

The scientists are fanatical cultists in a faith of their own creation, and it's a wonderfully on-the-nose warning in an era of technologies that can push the limits of ethics further than ever before: gene edited babies, cloning, 'living modular beings', robot zombie spiders (ok that one's not a moral thing but I think it's a pretty stupid one! Like, have they never seen a movie?). Some of the most academically advanced people I know are the most spiritual. I know a successful astrophysicist who believes whole-heartedly in astrology (not astronomy), rightly deducing that the same way the physical world follows rules and organizations, the unseen components of our existence must do so as well. And the way in which these spiritual aspects are processed by powerful, intelligent people can be the difference between benefit and atrocity. Speaking of which...

CONTENT WARNING: children are harmed. It's discovered that the scientists spliced and mutated children into the evil ocean creatures and the cobbled 'god' that we meet. And usually I nope hard out of stuff when that comes up. But in this case? I think it's a poignant talking point that must be addressed, because it can and does happen. The innocent, voiceless, powerless ones are the first victims of powerful adults who have 'greater missions'. The fact that there was no god in the first place is what makes it so impactful. The scientists created the god they wanted to see from the bodies of innocent victims. I think that is a thought that deserves to be lingered with, and a sharp social commentary about what happens when powerful people with voices label powerless voiceless people as subhuman disposable commodities.

[golden--flowers]

I finished Night In The Woods!!! Auwgh, really good. More detailed thoughts under the cut.

It was really good overall!!! I don't know, exactly what happened or what the game was trying to say with the ending. I understand there was a cult with bad politics who wanted to restore and maintain an idea of former glory that they had of the town. I don't understand the cosmic horror thing? I thought it would be explained more, but I guess the point is that it isn't, and there it is just a setting with ghosts and gods and weird very old things? Mae talked about how it had been talking to her for a while, but I don't remember that either? I remember her getting dreams where she saw fragments of the past, and then the one where she talked to a big cat that she decided must have been god for some reason. But also I played the first half of the game years ago so there might be things I'm forgetting. I played the second half recently though!!! I also liked that the reason Mae left college seemed to be for actual mental health reasons, but then it turns out it was connected to the cosmic horror thing? Maybe? I don't even know. Parts of the action climax also just felt very confused or confusing to me, which I guess is maybe intentional since the pov character is Mae? Even the part where you play as Bea temporarily it felt weird and I didn't think the dialogue felt natural. They were having a really tough time though I guess. Also the scary stuff going on in the town is foreshadowed and there's investigation, but the appearance of the cult itself is so sudden and then is over so soon. And it doesn't even let you know what happened to them??? I mean, I guess we know. But I thought maybe they'd tell the cop aunt and the people would be excavated and identified and, put in jail? (Not that I like jail but?) ??? It seems weird that the main characters didn't do anything more. I liked the investigation stuff leading up to the end of the game, the microfiche information was all really neat and it was interesting to piece together some understanding of the town's history, but then the plot it's a part of felt very oddly executed to me. Very suddenly scary and then it's over and there's a weird feeling about what just happened. Maybe that's intentional, I don't know.

The part after the action climax, the epilogue. I understood a bit more of what it was saying. I didn't personally like the message, it makes me feel claustrophobic and bad, but I got it at least. I also know that the ending is somewhat different depending on if you spend more time with Gregg or Bea, but I don't know how different. If it's any of the bigger plot things, or just the couple times Mae talked to Bea at the end in my game would be with Gregg instead. I want to replay the game and get that ending, and see if there are other things you can do differently sometime. Maybe the side games too. Not replaying any of this anytime soon though. Gotta walk away from it.

I feel a little weird and bad about the ending, but the rest of the game I really really like. I would enjoy a game where you just explore Possum Springs for several days and learn about the people and place, do all the little events, and then that's it. All the details and the 'side' stories going on were way more interesting to me than the 'main' one. Maybe the part of the game you're supposed to enjoy most is the detail and getting glimpses into all these people's lives, and they just felt like they needed a decisive climax to the game, I dooon't know. I really liked exploring the town as much as possible though. I like Selmers, Lori, Germ, Bruce, the sports fans, the old science teacher, Germ's friend passing through, Germ's family, the person reading the newspaper, the janitor, all the people that just show up once and say hi. I do really like the game, and I want to understand it more, see what other people have to say maybe. I'm done with it for now though.

[rata-novus]

‎‎‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎better late than never!

༄₊ ⊹🎃✧˖°. ☾ october/horror 2024 watches ☽ ༄˖°.🍂.ೃ࿔*:･

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

🎃 Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi (10/7-x) overall, not what i expected, but not bad. only got thru half the series in spooky month, will finish eventually.

ep1 (10/7): kinda slow, but not boring. the final shot of the woman in the doorway gave me goosebumps.

ep2 (10/10): first third/half SUPER effective for me, esp the whole part where ichikawa's flashlight would turn off at the same point in the room. creepy. but then the last part was genuinely ?????? super intriguing but idk really what happened? the metaphysical/scifi aspects weren't ~scary~ to me but i keep thinking abt the episode so

ep3 (10/10): monster horror isnt my thing so eh, but the revelation at the end that those 2 characters are slowly turning into kappa like its an infection was neat.

ep4 (10/11): favorite so far, loved the spatial/time manipulation. but the scene of them time traveling. lol. lmao even.

ep5 (10/11): really liking how each episode is its own thing but clearly pointing to something bigger connecting everything. real curious abt what kudo "sees" since his coma incident.

ep6 - 10: DNF. didn't grip me compared to other stuff i wanted to watch, will finish at my own pace eventually.

──────────────୨ৎ────────────── ꒦꒷⭑ ࣭ ๋︶꒦꒷︶꒦꒷⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦ ──────────────୨ৎ──────────────

🎃 milk and serial (10/12) liked. flew by, didn't feel like an hour+. mc was super creepy & unhinged. acting felt real & natural. liked the twists. i think naomi & link finding milk's box w/ address to his torture shack was by his design. sequel maybe?

🎃 the void (10/12) liked. FANTASTIC practical effects, wowzers. kinda okay story, more aesthetics than plot but w/e. BIG silent hill vibes though a cult facilitating a "god" to be born, resurrection/reincarnation, physical manifestations of guilt and grief, etc. but like.... spacey/cosmic horror. v different from most mid-2010s or even modern day horror and i appreciate that.

🎃 the empty man (10/13) idk. intriguing but i really dont get the whole part about the people committing suicide. i feel like this is one of those movies i need to deep dive ppls meta analysis to really ~get it~. bc i don't really. honestly my favorite part was the very beginning w the freaky skeleton. what is he transmitting............

🎃 noroi: the curse (10/13) eh. kinda slow. unclear on certain plot points: what was the significance of kana being psychic and drawing that symbol/face/mask? what's up with the boy - another medium? hori was v distracting and borderline exploitative. liked how the seemingly disjointed segments started to connect together, but unfortunately didnt go all the way (see ? above) and too much unresolved. seen better japanese horror and found footage horror tbh sorry

🎃 late night with the devil (10/14) first off -1000000 for using genAI fuck that. second, god the beginning was as boring & cringey as a real late night talk show. which like, yeah ofc but also. i dont want to watch that so no ty. but lilly's appearance at the end was v cool, split head, coursing electrical energy. really liked that a lot. overall better than i thought it was gonna be, but just to the side of okay.

🎃 lake mungo (10/19) quite sad. being haunted by your future death reminds me of nell from haunting of hill house. alice meeting with the psychic and seeing from the perspective of her ghost in the future, paralleled with her mother in the future doing the same and not sensing alice anymore.... big sad. :( some of the spooky stuff did get to me. the recording of alice seeing her future dead body and the reveal that the neighbor was lurking in the house in one of the recordings especially. wtf grossssssss. overall more sad than scary, but i liked it. more effective for me than i thought it would be after reading reddit posts hating it. i feel like i need to be a defender of it now lmao

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🎃 midnight mass overall: forgive me father for i have sinned 🫦 -- dunno if it unseats hill house as my favorite flanagan show but damn it was fantastic.

ep1 (10/19): interesting. if i didnt already know it was abt vampires id be scratching my head rn. the final shot of the cats on the beach was laughable, and thats coming from a sensitive bitch who cant stand animal deaths in horor & frequently uses doesthedogdie lmao ....... rahul kohli can absolutely get it tho

ep2 (10/20): ok first off that whole bit about "pregnant people" was weird af and completely unnecessary. coulda just normalized inclusive language but instead we gotta draw attention to "umm actually ☝️🤓 its usually pregnant women". w/e. -- i think the cats were killed as sustenance (neck wounds), but idk abt the dog being poisoned? the vamp(s) just trying to get rid of the animals on the island so they dont act odd/pick up on the vamps? or smth specifically targeting that one guy, by the nun lady? hmm. -- was the (i presume) vamp stalking the pregnant lady from her house to the clinic bc it could sense her breakthru bleeding??? uew. -- the mimic of the voice near the end was a banger omg so creepy, and i love the reflective eyes v v v good. -- re leeza walking, something in the wine???

ep3 (10/20): is monsignor pruitt this new father paul????? fountain of youth ayoooo. but is he the vampire? nah hes the renfield aint he. what was with the trunk of dirt? ohhh ancestral soil ofc -- theory: the sheriff is gonna be the one to cotton on to smth being wrong bc he doesnt go to the church/drink the wine -- the scene between leeza & joe was so powerful, wow..... -- was father paul poisoned like the dog? kinda bummed if hes dead for good i thought for sure he was gonna be one of the (the only?) antagonists nvm lol, immortal? -- also comparing a vampire to an angel, esp in this context, is sick as hell, love that -- honestly getting big salems lot vibes which i do NOT hate at all tbh, also a bit of exorcist thrown in with the middle east and ruins and smth ~evil~ there

ep4 (10/21): ohhh is monsignor turning into a vampire? sun sensitivity.... -- noooo poor joe :( -- what is up with erin's "miscarriage"/never having been pregnant and her blood reacting to the sun when afair she never drank the wine? -- and riley too damn........

ep5 (10/21): oh hey well guess thats where the title comes from lol -- not, like, super duper crazy with the loooooong chunks of monologue tbh. sometimes it hits like with riley & monsignors back and forth over guilt but other times ehhhh -- speaking of, anyone else down bad for the priest or just me? ok nvm -- so far it seems the og vamp only ate from the stray cats, bowl (bill) and riley so far (maybe the mayor & wife but unclear), and it seems like its been a couple weeks since it arrived so the hunger must not be THAT insatiable, for like 99% of the town population to remain (relatively) unharmed? like, if everyone or even just MOST of them are turned, who they gonna eat? -- on the one hand riley being greeted in death by the uninjured form of the girl he killed in a car crash is beautiful. oh the other hand subjecting the love of your life to watching you burn to fucking death and now shes gonna row back to land with ur smoldering corpse is like. supremely fucked up riley. like i get that erin has to ~see to believe~ but what the hell man. the credits rolling and listening to her screams..... D:

ep6 (10/31): so it's not just the consumption of a vampires blood that makes one a vampire, but death as a catalyst for resurrection. holy shit i love that, flanagan you mad man. -- oh shiiiiit mildred shooting former lover priest in the head damn bitch okay -- bev you pussy ass bitch wont even drink the poison smh my head

ep7 (10/31): "it never felt like a sin, you never felt like a sin and our daughter was never a sin" aoughhhh this got me cryin -- was really rooting for the sheriff to make it out alive :( -- never been religious and have 0 religious trauma but god damn this show got me good, weeping all thru the end

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🎃 rosemary's baby (10/22) regrettably by roman polanski, but 🏴‍☠️ so eh. overall i really liked it. i had seen bits and pieces and i feel this is one of those medias that you kind of know through osmosis, but it was still an enjoyable watch, if not disturbing at times. tho minnis voice and mannerisms reminds me of vic's nana from very important people lmaoooo i cant unsee/hear it

🎃 event horizon (10/22) so far INCREDIBLE visuals, giving big hellraiser vibes with the disfigured/cut up bodies & the elaborate incomprehensible yet decorative engine brings to mind a mix of the lament configuration and biblically accurate angels. incredible. -- why only trauma hallucinations from a few of the crew? the rest were just peachy keen? not a smidge of trauma? bummer tbh -- hot damn the gore visuals are blink and u miss it but sick as hell -- but what happened with justin? rescue crew said he was alive but like.... mentally???? -- pacing felt just a titch off, like shtf so close to the end i feel like the descent could have been smoother, but otherwise i really loved this one

🎃 the exorcist (book) (10/1 - 10/23) liked WAY more than i thought i would. gonna be 4 stars for reference. 2 things i disliked: chris' internal monologues were annoying and shes more than a bit of a yuppie (the point i guess), AND the fact that psychokinesis is just a FACT in this world (ie possession can't be concluded by moving objects / mind reading bc those are observable in clinical settings in ppl with mental issues) bothered me so much!!! like..... if a DEMON can read your mind, move objects, as established w regan, you can't just chalk it up to NO WAY being possession. wtf???? anyway, everything else was great. really liked the reveals (regan's paint found at the church desecration, regan speaking backwards & mentioning merrin before he's even seen on page). the foreshadowing of karras' demise. very disturbing scenes iykyk, and even the detective parts were fun in the end. dunno if i'll read the sequel (legion) but i've heard the show is v good? 👀

🎃 hell house llc (10/25) 1 (10/25): love, it's a classic at this point, most of the scares dont get to me but surprisingly a few still do, solid ending 2 (10/25): kind of worse acting than the first but still liked, enjoy where the overarching plot is going re drawing people to the house 3 (10/25): definitely upped the production value, the scene of the actress in the basement with the clown is top tier but otherwise it was okay. first is still the best tbh, feels like they explained too much and im more of a fan of ambiguity. since the first 3 films take place in the same building, there's a weird feeling of familiarity & coziness lmao, i could see this series being a comfort rewatch fr origins (10/26): margot was definitely at the fair where tully/cult was kidnapping ppl for the abaddon hotel sacrifices, huh. -- did NO ONE think to check rebecca's cam w/ the body on the bed???? like they've seen other proof of the supernatural but cmon -- ohh that whole scene of rebecca screensharing w her boss and the pictures leading right up to her bedroom door grossssssss bleghhhh i love it -- overall liked this one a lot. still confused abt some stuff (where was the dad's body? why was patrick's arm better? his place in the cult, are the souls (patricks?) bound to the clown costumes etc), but super effective horror for me. sometimes i dont need all the qs answered u know?

🎃 the outwaters (10/26) ppl on reddit said they hated this as much as skinamarink & both are deathly boring but i LOVED skinamarink so lets gooooo -- 38 minutes in. is like...... no one going to aknowledge these sounds???? -- i get the bugs being creepy but are these donkeys supposed to be ominous? bc they just look like sweet cute babies 2 me -- these are the WORST flashlights in the entire world my GOD. -- suddenly, screaming flesh snakes. sure why not -- ooohh space time fuckery? is robbie the axe man? -- i literally cannot see what's happen 90% of the time, its like trying to watch a movie through a pinprick. like near the end he could have been pointing a flashlight at a bbq beef brisket for all i could tell. certainly a choice meant to invoke the claustrophobia and isolation and confusion of the pov, but missed the mark. by a lot. -- theres some neat ideas in here (time travel/time loop where robbie is the one killed and also the killer, with cosmic horror to boot), if i could see anything. loved skinamarink, super effective for me and though it was grainy at least you could SEE, this was. eh. i will say the sound design was great. would have loved to see literally any part of the entity near the end that's making it! the end itself was actually good imo, grotesque but better than seeing a 90% black screen tbh. potential.

🎃 lovely, dark, and deep (10/29) very interesting visuals, kinda cosmic horror in the woods. reminiscent of the "stairs in the woods" and "search and rescue" nosleep stories. also big PT vibes, especially in the scenes in the house, very cyclical/loop in nature but different traumatic events each go thru. love a horror movie that doesnt hold your and and leaves the interpretation up to the viewer. backrooms-esque liminal space? purgatory? mc processing her grief and trauma? dream sequence? hell? are the woods just real fucked up in this natl park? yes. (unfortunately?) it was kinda explained at the end, but i still really liked it. i dunno now the mc could keep working as a ranger, knowing that they just.... let this shit happen. and to perpetuate it....... i do wonder abt the ranger in the beginning, making the choice to get taken. what was his story?

🎃 a house at the bottom of a lake (10/29 - 10/31) 4.5 stars. idk what exactly happened, but i really loved it. great atmosphere (dark, under water, claustrophobic - frankly do not understand people who say this isnt horror lmao), easy to read in a day, perfect for halloween (when I read it). i interpret the ending as james and amelia still being under the obsession of the house, possibly still underwater. like the past 12-or-so days was a "test" of some sort. what finding the house in the real world means, i dont know, but i'm all for horror not holding my hand and it just being about ~the vibes~ which this one nailed for me. the scenes where the flashlights go off? and then house lights turn on? chilled. incredible what you can enjoy when u dont have a hater yappin in ur ear that it sucks <3 

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[ * = re ]

(series) • alien (alien*, aliens*, alien 3*, resurrection*, prometheus, covenant, romulus) • hell house llc (1*, 2, 3, origins) • midnight mass

(films) • nightmare on elm street • the thing* • the outwaters • noroi • the void • event horizon • rosemary's baby • lovely, dark, and deep

(youtube) • backrooms (kane pixels)* • gemini home entertainment*

(books) • the exorcist • uzumaki*

(next year, or b4 next halloween) • smile 2 • the substance • in a violent nature • horror in the high desert • leaving dc