#h*rror reviews

[facelessoldgargoyle]

I watched the new Archive 81 show and honestly it was a pretty good time, I enjoyed episodes 1-6. episodes 7-8 were way less interesting than the podcast and tbh you don’t really need to watch them if you want to pretend the podcast ending is cannon for the show.

The show suffers from the desire to make sense. The podcast is based on found footage and lovecraftian horror. There’s a lot of weird shit that never makes sense or connects to anything else. The Visser is a source of weird shit, and many people get many different things from it, from being unrecordable to losing the ability to see faces to making drugs out of the paint chips. In the show, there’s a cult that happens to reside in the Visser and it’s the cult that’s doing freaky shit, so there’s no other cryptids wandering around. It’s much more linear. No loose ends, alas.

Also, they fucking Girl Best Friended Melody’s wife!! They kept Alexa/Annabelle as a lesbian, but made them platonic roommates! Then they set up Melody and Samuel, but they didn’t actually do anything interesting with that!! They kissed once and then Melody caught Samuel sleeping with someone else and lost interest. No betrayal, nothing. So they made her straight for nothing! Insane shit. Anyways, the show ends with Dan thrown back to 1994, so I’m not getting the delicious body horror, surrealist, mirror realm of season 2 that i crave.

Boo Netflix we hate your pussy 3/10 a good way to spend a sick day

[noonewouldlisten25]

I know it's October but.

*shakes Tiktok like a rattle*

QUIT FUCKING SHOWING ME H*RROR REVIEW TIKTOKERS-

[fantroll-purgatory]

One of the more complex Suechained trolls for me to work out a good way to do.

Name: Selaci Lomeda (First name is drawn from Selachimorpha, the clade used for modern sharks; Lomeda is drawn from a heavily scrambled Megalodon, an ancient and massive shark. He usually goes by Bivali Poista- Bivali is taken from the class containing clams, while Poista is from the Finnish “poistaa”, meaning “remove”.)

Theme: Sharks. His theme within the Suechained group is seadwellers of colors lower than purple on the hemospectrum.

;~; You gotta fuckin’ know that I am terrified of sharks, and the image searches for this review were very trying for me but I love your trolls so so much I would look at a shark’s open mouth for them.

Age: 6 sweeps

Strife Specibus: Hookkind (though he rarely uses it any more)

Fetch Modus: Fishing, maybe? With him having to “catch” the card he wants and reel it in, and it resisting based on its importance.

Blood Color: Violet, though he currently presents as brown, for reasons which will be explained further down.

I read your reasons, and I think it’s a good one! I want a lot more information about his moirail, though, because stories about grief and the way it affects you are as much about the departed as they are about the living. I wonder if there’s a way for the moirail to be rustblooded? My reasoning:

Even if they died traumatically, there’s the added layer that they would’ve died much earlier than Selaci anyway, and that unwillingness to deal with the inevitable mortality of his loved ones (including his mom) would be an interesting theme to explore in contrast to his current bloodlust.

The association of sharks with blood in the water, which is a very human concept but rust would be the most immediate visual cue with their moirail’s blood being the thing that makes them snap

If ever there was a time to go for the “lowest of the low” blood caste trope, it would be here; it seems appropriate that someone so removed from the lower class would go for what they he would gain the most sympathy; if he cared about whether or not he was viewed as low caste, he would probably pick something higher up the hemospectrum, like an olive blood. In fact, olive blood also works quite well, since it would explain both his lack of psychic abilities and psychic resistance, as well as symbolize him as a troll who seeks greener pastures. Dealer’s choice! I’ll probably try oliveblood out in my redesign, but I’ll be happy to provide the other version if asked.

Symbol and meaning: Actual symbol is a simplified shark fin, though the one he’s using to hide himself has no meaning and was just something he drew up and thought looked alright.

If you decide to go with him using his moirail’s blood color, it stands to reason that he would also use his moirail’s shirt and symbol; it’s faster than making one up, and he can raid their hive for extra shirts

If that doesn’t track, my other suggestion would be to make his new symbol a simplified shark mouth with a tongue? As a bonus, it kind of looks like an open clam shell with a pearl.

Trolltag: ???

Old one could be…greatCarcharias? It’s pretty simple but in my defense Selaci didn’t seem like a very subtle person pre-getting-his-ears-ripped-off.

The new one…I kinda like the idea of a cheesy one like clamTastic.

(I just looked up the scientific name for clam and it’s Mercenaria mercenaria which is so ominous what are they planning, these shelled double mercenaries)

Quirk: ???

I mean there’s the very s^mple replacement of i’s w^th the l^ttle hats wh^ch looks l^ke a shark f^n along w^th th^s emoj^ o^^^^o to ^nd^cate a buncha fuck^n’ TEEF and also to m^rror h^s lusus’s dorsals in keeping with my suggestion below. (I originally tried owwwwo, but honestly I just saw an extended ‘owo’ which didn’t really parse with his personality I think.)

N{o}w that he’s underc{o}ver, I like the idea {o}f him using brackets ar{o}und the {o}’s like a pearl in a clamshell. It’s als{o} nice because it c{o}ntrasts what l{o}{o}ks like a sh{o}rtening {o}f the “I” s{o}und t{o} the lengthening {o}f the “O” sound.

Quirk Example (BOTH): The qu^ck brown fox jumps {o}ver the lazy red d{o}g.

I think it might be fun to have him slip up and use his “natural” quirk from time to time.

Important stuff: Selaci is currently masquerading as a brownblood in a desperate attempt to survive- within the past two sweeps, he’s managed to alienate many of his friends, get his lusus killed, and murder enough lowbloods to get the ones in his area to organize and attempt to execute him, resulting in him losing his fins. This honestly isn’t the first time he’s had to go on the run, though it is the first time he’s had to try to hide himself properly instead of just getting out of the area.

Lusus: Sharkmom, who had four pectoral fins and roughly all the teeth. Was killed maybe half a sweep ago by extremely angry lowbloods.

The lusus is usually the same “gender” as its troll, though for what it’s worth I’m p sure they don’t have a concept of gender and just answer to whatever their troll decides to call them. Given that you’ve listed his ancestor below as a woman, do you think he’s the type of highblood that researched his ancestor and decided to project some of those qualities onto his lusus? If not, “Sharkdad” works just as well, though I’ll continue to use Sharkmom throughout my review.

In terms of a shark lusus that doesn’t look like a traditional shark, what about this scary-ass dick shark that I am afraid of looking at directly:

I actually like the idea of four DORSAL fins; cuts a very intimidating and impressive figure in the water, and it’s the part of a shark that’s probablyt he most iconic.

Personality: As ruthless as anyone would expect of a young seadweller, and enjoys hunting down his “prey” the way most people enjoy their favorite video game. Right now, he’s doing his best to play the part of a meek little lowblood.

Hemoloyalty: Have you even read the rest of this? (He’s horribly, terrifyingly hemoloyal, and fails to see any real use for the vast majority of lowbloods other than cannon fodder and lusus food.)

Quadrants: None right now. Had a moirail, who died in a freak cliff-based accident a sweep ago and whose death did nothing good for his mental state. Has developed a friendship with Tetria.

Interests: Enjoys fishing, and has a knack for building stuff. Used to make jewelry from the bones and horns of his kills, though that’s obviously not an option any more.

Dislikes: Has an intense fear of heights, and dislikes being away from the water for long periods of time. When he still had them, hated having his fins touched; as it is right now, he’s still highly uncomfortable with allowing anyone to see the scars from their removal.

Title: Seer of Life (No clue how I decided on this, honestly.)

Hm. I really like Doom given his theme around death and working through it. I think…maybe Mage of Death? Like his current issue is that he’s not actually engaging with his grief and is instead acting out in other ways, and I feel that Skaia would want him to confront that before he’s ready to win a game, not because it’s better for his personal growth, but because it would make him a more effective player.

A Mage of Death, I think, would have had to come to terms with the inevitability of death. He’d have to be positively ruthless in following the rules to win the game to its logical end. Of course, this doesn’t mean he has to do that! Sollux was a Mage of Doom who learned to be happy when he abandoned the role that the game had assigned him, and it’s possible that Selaci may do the same! Or, he may overembrace the role and kill others even if the game is technically winnable with them in play.

Land: Land of Cliffs and Basins (His quest is to refill the basins, bringing water to the consorts.)

I like Land of Fame and Fortune to complement his inflated self-importance as a highblood. Probably very Vegas-like in nature, with a vibe similar to LOHAC. His quest could be to erect a mausoleum for dead consorts to get them to appreciate the fortune of being alive? I don’t actually know if it tracks…

Dream Planet: Derse (as he’s trying desperately to avoid the fate his ancestor suffered.)

Hm. I wonder if it would actually be more interesting to place him on Prospit? I like the idea of him being literally haunted by the memory of his dead ancestor every time he sleeps. Imagine the paranoia it would breed! It would also tie into the theme of inevitability granted to him by the Doom aspect.

Ancestor: The Huntress, who patrolled the shores near her hive and killed any lowbloods she found. Was eventually caught by a group of lowbloods she had attempted to kill before, who cut her fins and limbs off, strung her up from a cliff in a cage, and left her to bleed out.

As stated above, a troll’s ancestor is typically the same gender as they are unless there’s a specific design reason, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to change the title and I will refer to her with she/her pronouns throughout this review. For what it’s worth, I chuckled over “The Hunterer.”

Dancestor: ???

How about Charia Lomeda, after the great white shark? Given her Alternian self’s fate, I like the idea that she’s a lifeguard who allows certain lower-blooded swimmers to drown (with the argument that their blood color indicated that they would die soon anyway, making them not worth the effort), giving her a passive role in mass death.

Beforan self: ???

For ONCE I actually have an idea about this, which is that this is a universe in which Sharkmom stays with the Sharkman and the two hunt in a tag team for lowbloods who have angered the Condesce. He loses his fins one day when his mother mistakes him for prey, straining their relationship. However, when Sharkmom is killed by the local lowbloods in an effort to establish a base, the Sharkman begins silently picking off the remaining lowbloods regardless of their crimes, until a brave lowblood (possibly based off his moirail?) shoots a hole in the air tank he must now use to breathe underwater. The pressurized can explodes, and he finally dies.

Hive: Currently living in a simplistic, abandoned hive, as the one he was living in before (taken from an indigoblood, who was promptly fed to Sharkmom) was utterly destroyed by the latest attempt to kill him.

Appearance notes: The blood color he’s currently using is that of his old moirail.

Other notes: The whole thing with how Selaci’s ancestor died is intended to reference what usually happens to sharks caught for their fins. Additionally, the clam thing in his alternate name is a character design reference for him, as he was originally going to be clam-based.

I like that part especially, since one of my favorite parts of Homestuck is the lore referencing “hidden” parts of the story.

Anyway, on to the redesign!

As usual, let’s go top to bottom. I actually designed pre-finless Selaci before figuring out what he looked like after going on the run.

Horns – I mean Kanaya-like horns may not be the most interesting of horns but it matches his symbol shape so well.

Hair – I love giving seadwellers short hair because in my personal opinion it’s the most convenient. I gave him a mohawk with 4 spikes to remain consistent with the redesign of his lusus. For the finless version, I tried to imagine what the hairstyle would look like if he was growing it out for the first time. The awkwardness is deliberate and draws from personal experience of what it’s like to grow your hair out. As an added bonus, his new hair’s softer ridges sort of resembles a carton clam.

Eyebrows and Eyes – I took off the eyebrows because honestly not a lot of the trolls have eyebrows in their sprite unless it would be considered a defining feature. For the eyes, I notice you used one of fan-troll’s standard ones, but I figured that if I was gonna hammer home the “4 dorsal fins” design concept I might as well stick ‘em on the eyes as well. Yeah, yeah when we started this blog we said only women had eyelash definition but a) given that you’ve given him a female lusus and ancestor there’s a design reason and b) Hussie’s creation of like 3 alien races that adhere to the gender binary is silly and I don’t really think it makes a lot of sense.

Mouth – for the pre-finless, I basically looked up kids’ sharkteeth (where some teeth grow behind others) and did my best to replicate that in a whole mess of pixels. I also gave him shark bite piercings for what I hope are self-evident reasons. Post-finless, I imagine he wouldn’t smile quite so much.

Shirt – I will cop to changing the shirt just so I could have enough area to fit the new symbol. As of the Hiveswap leaks, we can confirm that, while trolls usually need their symbol on a black shirt, it doesn’t always need to be centered, so I moved it to the side. Shoutout to fan-troll for the base of that shirt, and for those of you reading who want to make quick, easy, beautiful sprites, I highly recommend you check that sheet out.

Shoes – I changed ‘em to the Rugged Shark outdoor shoes using fan-troll’s template.

Aaaand that’s about it! As always, thank you for the pleasure of reviewing one of your fantrolls.

-TR

[paddingtontwo]

i've been reading this h*rror blog bc i'm trying to find some blogs about h*rror bc i do genuinely like reading nerdy shit about horror BUT i'm wary of a lot of men's takes. so i wanted some by/focusing on women and this one has been kind of....ehh. like kind of enjoyable, and i like the format but some of the language used by the contributors (one more than the other) in the reviews i've read today has been kind of, let's say offputting? anyway i've been trying to read more to decide if i was gonna keep reading but i just got to their resident evil review and you know what ? i have had Enough

[facelessoldgargoyle]

I watched Saw this morning, and damn I see why it’s so popular! I’ve avoided it for a long time because seeing a trailer for it when I was a kid gave me nightmares, and I don’t go in for gore-based horror movies. But the gore in this was incidental; the horror was mostly psychological. Parts of it were too convoluted for my taste, but I LOVED the twist jigsaw reveal at the end. I knew there was something sketchy about that guy.

I’m in love with Adam and Lawrence’s dynamic. Incredibly homoerotic vibes. Hannibal wishes he had what they have. Also, did Adam die at the end???? Ahhhh my heart

[facelessoldgargoyle]

The Ritual (2017) was a super fun and spooky time that genuinely scared me a couple times. I loved the scenery, the mountains were so beautiful. The monster is a beautiful lady and I love her so much. However, it didn’t really seem like it had anything new to say.

This movie traced a lot of familiar story beats. It was competent, but in a routine. I really loved how often small, bad decisions led to tragedy. Go into a liquor store at the wrong time, get your head bashed in. Take a shortcut through the woods, end up lost and afraid. Break down the door to an abandoned shack, wake up naked and praying to a headless effigy.

One of the things that made this movie slightly disappointing was that I didn’t really love any of the characters. You don’t really know anything about them, beyond the fact that they’re friends with each other. It gave me the same feeling that Alien did, if Ripley wasn’t there. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, you know?

The monster in this movie also reminded me of Alien. Weird, big, difficult to see, fast, fuckable. Hell yeah. I was slightly let down by the ending. where the remaining guy doesn’t worship her. Yeah yeah, character growth, learning from past mistakes, whatever. What if instead he doubled down on his character flaws and became the new high priest of the Fucked Up Deer cult?? It would have been a better movie!

The other thing that would have made this a better movie would be a fuller picture of Luke. This is sort of positioned as his story, even though all of them are protagonists, because he suffers the inciting incident and has the most emotional growth to work through. But I just feel lukewarm about him, because I don’t know anything about him! I only know about the things that happen to him, not about about his internal life. Rafe Spall has a charismatic face, but not quite enough to make up for what’s lacking in the script.

3/10 watch it if you’re a monsterfucker or think Swedes are scary

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Near Dark (1987) was a wonderful journey with a kind of disappointing end, like road tripping across Western America to get to Cleveland. There was very little plot or character growth, but if you’re going to have a movie be a series of beautiful pictures and interesting vibes, then Evil Cowboy Vampires Causing Chaos And Falling In Love is the way to go!

When the vampire family makes Caleb run out into the sun to retrieve their van, one of them makes the comment, “What do we have to lose? Just a pretty face.” That’s really the beginning and end of Caleb as a character. He’s a prettyboy cowboy who can’t take no for an answer, and gets turned into a vampire for his trouble. That was a satisfying moment. You make a woman kiss you before you’ll drive her the rest of the way home? Well, now you’re bleeding from a hole in your neck and burning up in the sun.

The movie followed the arc of Caleb and Mae, but it didn’t seem particularly interested in them. That is, I don’t really know why Mae took a liking to Caleb, or why the two of them ended up together, except for the movie’s compulsion to be Hetero Sexual. Despite that, the movie felt distinctively queer. A group of people unconnected except by their inability to belong in normal society banding together in a rough family structure? Yeah.

The family of vampires was unmistakably evil. The movie focuses a lot on their victim’s pain, and goes to some lengths to make you like and relate to the victims. At the end of the day, though, you don’t even know their names, and you leave them behind to follow the vampires who are clearly having a wonderful time. And it’s fun to get swept up in their fun! The stunned fear of the man that Mae dances with in the bar in order to keep him calm for Caleb to kill is deeply felt, but you also feel the predatory joy of their power.

That’s the thing about this movie. It feels two ways about its vampires. Fear, disgust, and loathing on one hand; awe, joy, and love on the other. It’s a fascinating balance to strike! Then the ending throws it away. The evil vampires are all destroyed and Mae and Caleb revert to humanity. And Mae accepts this gratefully! Mae, the same woman who made Caleb pull over so she could get out and stare at the stars, who took such joy in how loud and bright the night was, who didn’t even remember the day enough to miss it.

If I were going to rewrite this movie, that’s what I’d change. It feels like a cop-out to allow these vampires to change back into humans, even if they’ve been vampires and killers for years. It would be much more interesting if Caleb was reverted, because he hadn’t drunk a human’s blood yet, but Mae couldn’t be, and they had to figure out how to make it work between them anyways. Would Caleb have continued tolerating Mae’s murder? Would Mae have gotten bored by him? Would he have given in and allowed her to turn him again? All interesting questions that the movie doesn’t allow us the space to explore!

Other notes:

- the child vampire was fascinating and charming and utterly creepy. Him trying to turn another child was one of the parts of the movie that genuinely turned my stomach.

- The vampire family playing a Russian roulette card game was excellent. I would also do that if I were immortal.

- Caleb insistently trying to kiss Mae in the beginning really creeped me out, but I could have rolled with it if they didn’t end up happily ever after in the end.

- I love the way the movie portrays the vampires being in the sun. It’s a far underutilized weakness, and seeing them literally catch on fire was magnificent.

- Bill Paxton fills me with joy. Every time he’s on screen, the movie gets 30% cooler.

7/10 extremely sexy, gay, and highly recommended. Minus points for the last minute return to normalcy.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

We Are Still Here blew my goddamn roof off! I really loved the aesthetic. I don’t know if they ever explicitly said, but it looked very Minnesotan and very 90’s. There were lots of empty shots of the winter and of the house, where nothing moved but the dead branches in the wind. Honestly, I think they were probably going for ominous and tension-inducing, but I found the blank winter too nostalgic for it to work on me.

I also loved the actors. They were all so fascinating to look at. And the chemistry between everyone was wonderful. Paul and Anne seemed like they genuinely loved each other, in a slightly stiff, older generation way.

The scene where Dave and Cat stop by gave me so much joy. At first I was like “oh, a standard harbinger,” but Monte Markham plays Dave with such a tasty, subtly humor. “Oh you’ve been here for 2 weeks?” “Look at me, five minutes in and I’m bringing up old devils. Well, we better get going.” “Mm, no, I think it’s still Dagner’s house.” Extremely delightful!

I was preparing myself to be annoyed by May and Jacob, because hippie couples tend to cause more problems than they solve. But the characters are so likeable and May is a person who knows when she’s in a horror movie. I was so sad to see her go.

I adored the twist. The small shot of the Dagner ghosts holding hands broke my heart. I love that we don’t get A reason that they held off on killing Anne and Paul. Maybe they empathized them for losing their son. Maybe they hated the townspeople more than they hated the Sachetti’s. Maybe they were just tired of killing people. The ambiguity gives them back some humanity.

As a whole, I think I would characterize WASH as a better version of Hereditary. Hereditary was so intense but the only flavor it was working with was grief. WASH was very much about grief, but it gave us additional characters in May and Jacob to leaven the mood. It was also more interested in the mystery, which diluted the grief enough for me to deal with. My one complaint is that I wish it were slightly longer, so that there was more time to ratchet up the tension before all hell breaks loose.

9/10 I have a new favorite movie!

[facelessoldgargoyle]

The Doom Generation (1995) was a great time, and I totally recommend it to fans of Heathers who think The Clockwork Orange was a little too heavy and had too much of a plot. The thing about this movie is that if you go in expecting a horror movie, you’ll have a good time and be surprised by how funny it is. If you go in expecting a comedy, you’ll have a bad time and be offput by how much violence there is.

There’s not really a plot per se. It’s a series of cyclical motifs drawn into a rising spiral by gay, polyamorous love that gets cut short by violence. The same violence happens over and over again, it’s kind of funny, but it’s not interesting. A stranger thinks Amy, a tiny goth chick on meth, is their ex, and try to kill her or her boyfriend over it. Her boyfriend, Jordan, is an incredibly sweet stoner, who just wants everyone around him to feel good and have a nice time. The two of them save the life of Xavier, a smokin hot disaster bisexual. After that, Xavier keeps saving them, although he is a disaster, and always fucks up the rescue and frequently escalates the violence he’s trying to save them from.

From the second Xavier rolls into Amy’s car to get away from a gang of dudes beating him up, you can cut the sexual tension between him and Jordan with a knife and spread it on toast. What follows is an hour of escalating tenderness. The two of them fuck Amy instead of fucking each other, which, been there, lmao. Jordan finds out Amy cheated on him with Xavier and is just like, “hey it’s fine.” The three of them cuddle in bed with Amy in the middle, and when she leaves, Jordan scoots closer to Xavier, and hums the itsy bitsy spider and walks his fingers down his back. Even though the movie is billed as “sex drugs rock n roll nihilism,” the queerness feels very sincere. My heart grew three sizes.

And the queerness is what gives the story somewhere to go! The trio always has to move on after someone new tries to attack them, and it’s the building affection that’s the throughline. The climactic moment of the movie is when they finally have a threesome, and Amy gets up to pee, and Jordan and Xavier look like they’re about to kiss, when all of a sudden the fire is put out and they’re attacked. Jordan is killed and Amy kills the nazis with garden shears. Amy and Xavier sitting in the car together is the final shot of the film, and it’s so sad, because Jordan was the glue that held them together.

Honestly, I highly recommend this movie because the aesthetics are to die for. One hotel room is 100% pink. Another hotel room is all black and white checkers. A bar they go to is totally covered in tinfoil. The tenderness of this movie kills me. You have to know that there is a lot of violence, and although it is treated pretty lightly, it is still omnipresent. Also, I think a character calls a Japanese man a slur, and the Nazis call the boys the f slur, so content warning for that. If it helps, the writer/director is a gay Japanese American man, so it’s not a Quentin Tarantino situation.

8/10 beautiful, absurd, surreal.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D (2013) is one of my new favorite movies. It’s almost avant garde. The catch is that you need to already love Leatherface before you can enjoy it.

It start after the events of 1974, where a vigilante mob burns down the Sawyer house against the will of the sheriff. The Sawyers (the murder family) flees, but their baby is stolen by someone in the mob. Twenty-some years later, that child, now a woman (played by Alexandra Daddario) receives a letter saying she’s inherited her grandmother’s estate. She confronts her parents, because she’d thought all her grandparents were already dead, and they tell her she was adopted from trash and to leave it alone. She has sex with her hot boyfriend (the second black man in the franchise!) and they go on a roadtrip with their best friends to Texas to pick up the inheritance.

When they arrive at the Sawyer mansion, a nervous Southern lawyer (a delight) ominously refuses to step foot on the grounds and tells Alexandra Daddario to read the letter her grandmother wrote. Spoilers, she doesn’t. The friends, and a hitchhiker they pick up, move into the mansion. While the friends are out grocery shopping the hitchhiker begins ransacking the place. He tries to open a thick iron door in a creepy wine cellar and is killed by (gasp!) Leatherface, who now thinks his home is under attack. Why didn’t the grandmother tell him his cousin was coming to town? The world may never know.

When they get back, the friends are upset. The chef friend cooks dinner, and when he strays into the wine cellar, Leatherface hooks him and drags him away (terrifying). Meanwhile, Alexandra Daddario notices she has the same birthmark as her grandmother, from an old portrait. She’s attacked by Leatherface, but escapes when he chainsaws the chef friend in half (horrifying)! She and her friends escape in a car, but crash on the road. Alexandra runs away, but her boyfriend has been killed and her friend is dragged away.

She goes to the police and is faced with sympathy from the chief of police (3rd black man of the franchise) and hatred from the texas ranger, who was the instigator of the burning down of the original Sawyer house. They send an officer to the house, and he shoots the friend because he’s so jumpy. ACAB. Leatherface gets him (go Leatherface!)

Meanwhile Alexandra Daddario has read the old Sawyer case file and realizes that the texas ranger killed/tried to kill a lot of her family. She tries to run away, but he kidnaps her and uses her for bait for Leatherface. He shows up and is about to kill her when he sees the birthmark and unties her instead! My heart melted. He’s attacked by the ranger and his guys, and Alexandra help him kill them.

They go back to the mansion, and Alexandra finally reads the letter. It tells her Leatherface will protect her because she’s family, if she takes care of him in return. The two almost hug, before he shies away. She decides to stay.

I love every choice this movie made! Truly, this movie says fuck the police and fuck vigilante justice. I love that it finally turns Leatherface, a horrifying serial killer, into a dark antihero. I love that we finally see more Black people in the South. I love the modern horror movie tropes updating this franchise. It feels new, fresh, and fun. 9.5/10 I wish they didn’t kill the boyfriend.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

I just watched It Follows (2014) with my buds and wow! What a great movie! I love how much it pulls from Halloween—the way the neighborhood looks, the feeling of late summer/early fall, the unstoppable slow killer.

Robin loved the set, it intensely reminded her of her friends’ houses when she was a kid. I really liked the vibe of late summer and the lake beach, which was presumably Lake Michigan.

I also adored the ending!!! I was totally expecting her and her friends to triumph, but it turns out, they just have to live with impending doom!!

I get that it’s a metaphor for STI’s, but I don’t know if it really has anything interesting to say about STI’s. Actually, I don’t think it was trying to be a metaphor, I think it’s just a horror movie about a monster that’s sexually transmitted. The movie is much more an homage to Halloween than a thesis horror, and it truly succeeded in that. The main character is named Jay aka Jamie (as in Jamie Lee Curtis) for chrissake.

8/10 well-made, great performances, tight script, the perfect double feature to show with Halloween!

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Alright, so Evil Dead. I didn’t love this one, but that was largely because the first 25 minutes bored the shit out of me. If you just start at the 25 minute mark, I feel like you miss very little and get most of the good stuff.

The good stuff includes:

- candy apple red blood my beloved

- sarcastic zombies

- extremely grody women

- milk (?) spurting from many orifices

- nasty ass gore. A lot of it doesn’t look realistic per se, but is so gross that it gives me the same disgust reaction that realistic gore does

This movie is a marvel of practical effects. I want to marry Zombie Cheryl. She’s so funny and horrible and delightful.

I think I would have like the whole movie a lot more if I found any of the characters charismatic. I was looking at this on Wikipedia, and apparently Ash, the main dude, was kind of a sensation. No offense to anyone, but I just don’t get it.

I loved the eye smushing, the arms punching through the door, the fire hydrant blood. I liked everyone way more after they turned into zombies. 3/10 wouldn’t watch again, but glad that I did watch it.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1996) was gritty and horrifying and somehow both a great movie and a terrible one. It felt much more like a true sequel to TCM 1 & 2 than the 1990 movie did, because it gave us new ideas to play with and new characters to examine. It also felt much more deeply rooted in the 90′s aesthetic, whereas the 1990 movie felt more generic. Not strongly one decade or the other.

First you get a group of four friend speeding away from their senior prom. The bimbo (the film treats her poorly :/ but i love her) is made at her boyfriend for cheating on her. The boyfriend says, “Ugh, you’re so controlling. If dudes don’t have sex, they get prostate cancer. Trust me my dad’s a doctor.” The weed-smoking nerd girl goes “that’s literally not true.” The bimbo goes, “no he’s right, what if he gets cancer cause I’m not having sex with him?”

Anyways. They crash with another motorist and get stranded on the side of the road. They decide to split up.The bimbo, her boyfriend, and her weed-smoking friend find an office trailer where they meet Darla, another bimbo who is an absolute delight and absolutely fucking insane. She talks at length about her new boob job. When a truck of dudes throw a brick through her window, she laughs and flashes them. She calls them a tow truck. The tow truck driver, who is Matthew McConaughy, shows up to the car and kills the unconscious motorist and the remaining kid in a deeply terrifying scene.

The three kids wander through the forest. The bimbo is kidnapped by Leatherface, the boyfriend is chainsawed down, and the weed-smoking nerd girl is kidnapped by Matthew McConaughy. Everyone is screaming, including the murder family. At the obligatory TCM family dinner, a dude named Rothman shows up and shames Matthew McC for being bad at causing horror (??), licks the nerd girl’s face, and leaves. Bewildering. Matthew kills the bimbo and the nerd girl seizes the shotgun. She can’t make the family stop yelling at each other long enough to actually listen to her though, so she escapes out the window (yes bitch!!)

Rothman picks her up in a limousine and apologizes, saying that this experience was supposed to be transcendental. She tells him to fuck off.

I don’t even know what to say about this movie overall. There were a lot of wonderful moments. There were a lot of shitty moments. I felt like this was the first movie to exploit women’s bodies, and the movie does shame the women who are sexual. However, I do love seeing bimbos do whatever they want to do. #support women. Matthew McC gave an incredible performance. Ranting and raving is truly what he’s born to do. Leatherface is in a dress and a long curly wig, and it feels even more transphobic than usual. Very Buffalo Bill. However, his family loves and supports him!

This is definitely a move that I feel complicated feeling about. I, as usual, have fallen in love with the murder family, and they’re a pretty good metaphor for the queer experience. You have a better time with this movie if you root for them. It’s hard to rate this, because I think it’s a pretty bad movie, but I love it. 7/10 please I need to talk to more people about this

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) was a fucking delights! It was very different from the first, despite being by the same director. Apparently, Hooper was making fun of the critics who thought the first movie was too bloody. The TCM2 is a deceptively sharp and funny redux, and despite being billed on Wikipedia as a parody, it can absolutely hold its own as one of the greats.

TCM2 is funny. You start out with two assholes in a car harassing a female radio host getting beheaded by Leatherface chasing them in a truck on a bridge. It’s over the top, and so much fun.

You follow Stretch, the radio host, as she investigates the deaths she heard on air. She teams up with Lefty, a former Texas Ranger who was the uncle of two of the kids from the first film. Here’s some things that happen (spoilers?):

- the father from the murder family wins a chili contest, and says that “having an eye for meat runs in the family” sir??? say more right now!

- Lefty goes into a hardware shop and, without speaking to the shopkeeper, starts testing out all the chainsaws by swinging them around wildly

- Leatherface and his brother ambush Stretch at the radio station and Leatherface accidentally slices into his brother’s head, but because he had a metal plate put in his skull, he’s fine

- after Stretch has triumphed, she does the chainsaw dance at the mouth of a cave halfway up a cliff

It’s got everything I loved about the first movie and more. Honestly, a perfect film. 10/10 go watch it now

[facelessoldgargoyle]

I finally finished watching Stephen King’s IT (the miniseries)! Christ they should have just made a 2 hour movie instead of three 1 hour movies. I did not need that much IT.

The main thing the movie seems to be exploring is nostalgia and the pain of growing older. I find this highly unrelatable because I had a shitty adolescence and I love getting older.

I did really love the psychological part of the horror, where no one except the kids could see what IT was doing. Especially when blood starting spurting around! Delicious, ketchupy blood. My favorite one of these was when Ben started making out with Bev and then he looked in the mirror and realized it was actually Pennywise.

I also adored the spider prop at the end. I love schlocky special effects. IT was extremely cool and frankly deserved to kill and eat the whole gang. Tim Curry, my beloved, was an absolute delight.

That’s it, that’s all my thoughts. Not really scary, too long, unrelatable thesis. 2/10 watch for 5 minutes of an excellent spider monster.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

I watched I Know What You Did Last Summer, and frankly, I know it technically qualifies as a slasher, but it didn’t really feel like a horror movie to me. LOVE Sarah Michelle Geller and Jennifer Love Hewitt as scream queens, though. 4/10 not a waste of time but I wouldn’t watch it again.