#supernatural fantasy slasher movies

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[horror-aesthete]

Satanic Hispanics, 2022, dirs. Mike Mendez, Demián Rugna, Eduardo Sánchez, Gigi Saul Guerrero and Alejandro Brugués

[gryffindorconsultingtimelord]

Ch ch ch ah ah ah😏

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/771823370694213632/on-the-topic-of-the-ao3-ship-stats-thing-i-would#notes

I'm just rambling, sorry.

Ohhh this actually actively makes me look back at fandom stuff. I've always been intensely invested in books, manga and probably more Asian created media than Western. But let's all be real, those are still not that big fandoms, compared to fandoms based around more accessible and in your face Western media, like movies, shows and books.

Why are there more "white" ships? Well, why are there more Asian ships in Asian media? Because it's the most easily available both just basic culturally and pop culturally. At least when you look at white characters compared to any other ethnic group in most available media. I feel like pop culture in the West is going to be high up on the charts regardless of what actual top contenders are going each year.

So the stats for AO3 basically just tell you that it's primarily an Anglo-spheric fandom archive where different fandoms come together. But that, in the Western room, even with a lot of other media available, Western media will still be more common and widely followed, and therefore more Western levels of ethnicity will be represented: Eg there's more white actors in movies and shows, so on average there will be more white people, meaning more white ships.

Further spinning that thought, what specific type of media dominates the charts? Like I said I never really got into Western media, so someone else might know more.

I wonder if there's some actual scientific studies you could do with places like AO3, and the equivalent in other culture with fanfic/fandom sites, or even just between the different languages on AO3. Eg: What is the distribution of ships and fandom attention in Spanish AO3? East-Asian languages like, Ch/Ja/SK AO3? Etc etc.

--

those are still not that big fandoms, compared to

...

Anon...

The weeb contingent has been massive in English since fanfic was on the internet. It's just that AO3 in particular was started by LJ Western fandoms slashers, so it took a while for the Asian fandoms people to show up.

On FFN, the biggest fandoms are:

Naruto (442K) Inuyasha (122K) Hetalia - Axis Powers (117K) Bleach (85.5K) Fairy Tail (69.2K) Yu-Gi-Oh (68.3K) Dragon Ball Z (54.6K) Fullmetal Alchemist (49.3K) Digimon (48.1K) Sailor Moon (45.8K) One Piece (45.1K) Gundam Wing/AC (41.7K)

Harry Potter (849K) Twilight (223K) Percy Jackson and the Olympians (80.8K) Lord of the Rings (58.3K) Hunger Games (46.5K)

Avatar: Last Airbender (46.2K) Teen Titans (41.4K)

Pokémon (106K) Kingdom Hearts (74.3K) Sonic the Hedgehog (43.2K) Final Fantasy VII (41.1K)

Supernatural (127K) Glee (107K) Doctor Who (76.8K) Sherlock (59.3K) Once Upon a Time (53.3K) Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (51.5K) NCIS (42.2K)

Star Wars (60.5K) Avengers (52.4K)

Wrestling (44K)

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #67 – I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

I’d never heard of Stephen Graham Jones at the start of the year, but I’ve at this point read three books of his, seen him speak at a con, and can probably consider myself a fan. Beyond the general positive association I grabbed this book knowing literally nothing but the title, mostly just to have something I could get him to sign. Which worked out much better than it often does! This wasn’t really what I expected from that title (something more comedic or over-the-top), but it was a lovely read. It even managed to make a meta genre-tropes-are-actual-metaphysics plot compelling to me, which is basically impossible these days.

The story is set in a tiny nowhere town in 1989 West Texas and stars Tollie Driver, 17-year-old and already most of the way to being a burnout who is not at all over his dad’s death the year before. It’s written 17 years after the fact as something between memoir and confession, an older Tollie writing on some shitty computer about what happened over a few climactic days to him, the town, and the six classmates he brutally murdered.

He’s a slasher, see – it’s apparently something of a blood-borne ailment, and he was infected while enjoying an involuntary front-row seat to the first set of high school students getting karmically murdered that month, right after a bit of drunken bullying and a peanut allergy just about killed him. The plot is, after that excitement, mostly a matter of Tollie recounting his transformation and the life, relationships, and whole social world permanently destroyed by it.

There are, it sometimes seems, more books these days playing with the trappings and aesthetics of the horror genre than there are actually using them to tell horror stories. This is kind of that – there’s a level of psychological horror to becoming a murderous monster that you’d have to try really very hard to to erase, but it’s certainly not trying to leave you jumping at things rustling in the dark. It’s incredibly the case, though, that this is a story about a slasher and commenting on the slasher genre that is in no real way a slasher story.

Which is to say, Tollie’s best friend Amber has an older brother she idolizes who was a horror movie fanatic, and so she quickly realizes (with the iron-clad certainty of a teenager with a limited reference set) exactly what he is becoming – not even a ‘slasher’ as in a supernatural, vengeful serial killer, but a slasher as the monster at the centre of a particular kind of narrative, whose existence reshapes the world around them to follow its demands. It’s all very tv tropes – Tollie discovers that he moves at least twice as fast as he can run, as long as he’s limping and no one can see him, there’s some banter about the logistics of driving when the only machines that will work for him are murder implements, the sheer force of narrative causality turns a closeted gay guy and a sincere saving-herself-for-marriage Christian girl into a couple who go fuck in an abandoned camper van at night so Tollie can find them. It’s actually a major plot point that the mere fact of being a Final Girl will forcibly reorganize your personality to be a diligent, studious good Samaritan. All of which is order of magnitude more meta than I can usually stand, but it works here (more or less).

It feels a bit silly to say this book reminds me intensely of My Heart Is A Chainsaw – of course it does, that’s the last book by the same author I’ve read. But they both do similar things using the genre apparatus of the Slasher as scaffholding to tell stories that are really only tangentially/obscurely examples of the genre. Also, extremely close first person narration from a low-achieving teenager in a small town. Now, this is a far, far easier read than Chainsaw – not in terms of subject matter, just in keeping track of what’s happening versus what’s fantasy or extended tangent – and, I think, a bit more elegant in its use of the genre, but the similarities are still very clear.

As for what the story’s actual about – I mean first and foremost, it’s a period piece. Lamesa, Texas is a nowhere town, but it is a particular, specific nowhere town that Jones was familiar with in his childhood and (gong by the acknowledgements) went to no small effort researching to perfectly recreate it as it truly was in the late ‘80s (plus or minus a massacre or two). It’s no coincidence that Tollie was born the same year the author was, or that it’s set specifically in West Texas. The whole book is run through with a deep (if jaundiced) nostalgia for the whole milieu. Given how high concept all the slasher stuff is, the firm, deep grounding is pretty much a necessity for making the whole story feel real enough to land.

It helps, too, that the late ‘80s USA is the slasher movie’s natural habitat. All the tired tropes really do fit much more naturally in the culturally environment that spawned them then they do when dragged into the modern day. If I wanted to be slightly cynical I’d say this is a big part of why every modern slasher story is so very self-referential – if you’re not leaning on lineage and metanarrative the bones of the stories themselves just don’t make the same sort of sense anymore. Many such cases, I suppose.

Even the framing device is a period piece, in a rather charming way. Tollie is writing his confession on a cheap, shitty desktop in the back office of a junkyard in 2006, and this informs his narration all through the book. It even shapes the book as an artifact – the fonts and formatting used are all ones that would have been available, right down to only being able to underline instead of bold or italicize for emphasis. Which is absolutely a gimmick, but one I honestly kind of love.

Aside from being a love letter to West Texas 40 years ago, the book is about being a monster. About the cold math of it all making it impossible to deny that the world would have been better without you in it. About leaving people you love behind and never, ever looking back because you can’t bear to confirm the sick certainty that just being connected to you probably ruined their lives as collateral damage. Of spending your life trying to be anonymous and inconsequential, and mourning the loss of a life where you were only the normal and pedestrian sort of fuckup. Of looking through the past as a preordained tragedy in one instant and grasping at all the lost chances and missed turns that might have made it different on the other.

It’s a pathetic narrative – that is, one that’s mostly there to deliver pathos. It definitely worked, at least for me? It was a very affecting read, especially the ending. But your enjoyment of the book will depend more or less entirely on whether you find Tollie’s internal monologue compelling and sympathetic, I think. But with that caveat, I would recommend it.

[cantsayidont]

Recentish movies of note, or not:

BOTTOMS: Ridiculous "teen" comedy about two gay high school losers, PJ (Rachel Sennott, who also co-wrote with director Emma Seligman) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), who seize on a rumor about their having been in juvenile detention to start an after-school "self-defense club," in the hope that introducing the school's hottest cheerleaders to the cathartic thrill of girls beating the shit out of each other will finally give these hopeless (and ho-less) virgins a chance to score. So silly that complaining about the stupidity of the plot seems a tad churlish, but the story misses some obvious comedic opportunities, and despite the premise, the film eventually becomes far more interested in cartoonish violence than sex. If you dig the overall vibe, you might not care, but as a gay teen sex comedy, it's ultimately less successful (and less outrageous) than BOOKSMART, even though only one of the latter film's teen loser heroines is gay.

DO REVENGE: Black comedy homage to the teen comedies of the '90s and early '00s, inspired in part by the 1951 movie version of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, about a disgraced prep school popular girl, Drea (Camila Mendes), who joins forces with gay weirdo Eleanor (Maya Hawke) to avenge herself on her former friends and find out who leaked her sex tape — a plan that involves giving Eleanor a makeover so she can infiltrate the popular kids. Hawke is a delight, Mendes is very good, and the homoerotic tension of their odd relationship makes the movie fun for a while, especially if you appreciate the many self-conscious homages to prior teen movies. However, a major reveal late in the second act makes hash of the already sloppy plot, and the finale is both nonsensical and as antisemitic as STRANGERS ON A TRAIN author Patricia Highsmith, which leaves a sour aftertaste.

IT'S A WONDERFUL KNIFE: Bizarre slasher movie pastiche of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, about a teenage girl named Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop of YELLOWJACKETS), who kills the masked serial killer who's been terrorizing the small town of Angel Falls and murdered her best friend (Hana Huggins) at Christmastime. A year later, everyone in town seems to have gotten over it except Winnie, who's miserable. On Christmas Eve, she's magically transported into an alternate timeline where she was never born and the masked slasher has continued murdering people, including Winnie's brother (Aiden Howard). To set things right, Winnie has to stop the villain all over again with the help of Bernie Simon (Jess McLeod), the town outcast and the only one who believes her story. Not scary, gruesome, or suspenseful enough to be much of a horror movie, but there are enough grisly murders to make the comedic holiday fantasy aspects seem a trifle sociopathic, and a late reveal that the killer has supernatural powers beyond just stabbing or slashing people feels like one ingredient too many in an already convoluted plot. The main redeeming feature is that it's ultimately a gay love story, which I wasn't expecting, but appreciated nonetheless.

THE KILL ROOM: Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello, and Maya Hawke go slumming in this dumb black comedy about a handsome hitman named Reggie (Manganiello) who becomes the sensation of the art world after his mob intermediary (Jackson) concocts a scheme to launder Reggie's payments by selling his abstract paintings (under the nom de plume "the Bagman") through a burned-out, Adderall-snorting art dealer (Thurman). Intended satire of the cutthroat vacuity of the art world lacks bite and no part of the plot makes any sense, but sheer star power gets the movie through about half its 80-minute running time before the banality becomes terminal.

POLITE SOCIETY: Silly British action-comedy by Nida Manzoor (creator of WE ARE LADY PARTS) about Ria Khan (Priya Kansara, delightful), a Pakistani teenager who aspires to be a stuntwoman, and her quest to save her flaky art student older sister Lena (Ritu Arya, radiant) from marrying a handsome doctor (Ashay Khanna) who seems a little too good to be true. It looks great, and the characters are very charming, but the story waits much too long to clarify the stakes of the plot: Until the finale, we don't know if Lena is actually in any danger or if Ria is just letting her imagination run away with her, and that uncertainty becomes an unwelcome distraction in the later action sequences. As a result, it feels more like an update of the John Hughes perennial SIXTEEN CANDLES than the over-the-top action movie it obviously aspires to be.

SHIVA BABY: Low-key but vivid comedy of manners, written and directed by Emma Seligman, starring Rachel Sennott as Danielle, a bisexual 20something Jewish girl who secretly pays her bills as a sugar baby. When she goes with her parents (Fred Melamed and Polly Draper) to a shiva, she finds herself trapped with not only her most annoying relatives, but also her disgruntled ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon), her current sugar daddy (Danny Deferrari), his gorgeous blond wife (Dianna Agron), and their new baby. Seligman milks every awkward nuance of this uncomfortable social situation for maximum dramatic effect, and the tension of the final scene (which is nothing more complicated than the characters trying to squeeze into the back of Danielle's father's minivan) will drive you right up the wall.

VOLEUSES (WINGWOMEN): Is it really possible for a 40-year-old Frenchwoman living in the 21st century to not know that lesbians exist? One wouldn't think so, but watching this jokey buddy-action movie suggests that director/co-writer/star Mélanie Laurent desperately needs some kind of educational intervention in that regard. This is for all intents and purposes a lesbian romance: Master thieves Carole (Laurent) and Alex (Adèle Exarchopoulos) live together, routinely sleep in the same bed, and plan to retire together; they constantly express their love and affection for one another, and when Carole discovers that she's pregnant (the hows of which are never explained), Alex immediately assumes that they'll be moms together. Nonetheless, the story not only attempts to no-homo this cozy domestic scenario, but also presumes that there's no way Carole and Alex's relationship could ever be the de facto marriage it obviously already is — indeed, a crucial story moment involves Carole tearfully wishing she were a man so she could love Alex the way she deserves! If the movie had been made 50+ years ago, this might be poignant, but in 2023, it's just weird, and the resulting cognitive dissonance largely overshadows the thin plot, which concerns Carole and Alex trying to persuade their bitchy, cheerfully murderous employer Marraine (Isabelle Adjani, barely recognizable beneath her big hair and oversized sunglasses) to let them retire, while training a younger woman named Sam (Manon Bresch) to become their driver and the ambiguously defined third in their domestic ménage à trois.

[merrock]

event: Hallo-Week

location: all around Merrock

date & time: October 25 - November 3

ooc duration: same dates

It's time… to get your spook on! We know how much this town loves Halloween, so we've rounded up as many Merrockites as possible to get fun things happening in town, whether it be movies, spooky fun activities, party nights, or anything that your haunted little hearts desire.

Please note: for the kids, trick-or-treat will still be happening on Halloween (October 31st), so make sure that you have candy ready to go, to treat them right! Or else… you might find yourself getting a trick. You can go door to door, do the trunk-or-treat, or head to the nursing home to get candy!

Dive under the cut for a complete list of things happening in and around Merrock from October 25th until November 3rd, and have fun!

DOWNTOWN

bookends -- book sale on all horror novels

brownstone inne -- ghost stories in the hotel lobby (& refreshments)

cityview park -- pumpkin carving & painting contests, various craft stations set up (for adults and kids)

cobblestone cafe -- pumpkin spice everything

the holiday shoppe -- 50-75% off all Halloween decor

mack's -- special seasonal pumpkin menu

merrock railway -- haunted train ride

the mirage -- spooky karaoke in the speakeasy (come in costume!)

mods -- flash tattoos & face painting for kids

stubs -- nightly Halloween movies (see below!)

touchback -- spooky cocktails & drinks

town hall -- Halloween safety demonstrations

vibrations -- monster mash party night all week-long (come in costume!)

STUBS:

All movies will be available on the Stubs app, as well, for you to watch at home! There is a small charge for each film, but the money goes straight to the theater. Early films will play at 6PM, late at 9PM.

October 25 -- Casper, Friday the 13th.

October 26 -- Beetlejuice, Pet Sematary.

October 27 -- Addams Family, Nightmare on Elm Street.

October 28 -- Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, Psycho.

October 29 -- Nightmare Before Christmas, Scream.

October 30 -- It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Carrie.

October 31 -- Hocus Pocus, Halloween.

November 1 -- Coraline, Child's Play.

November 2 -- The Haunted Mansion, The Exorcist.

November 3 -- Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Craft.

ALSO AVAILABLE: Monster House, Halloweentown, Goosebumps, Practical Magic, Sleepy Hollow, What We Do in the Shadows, Ernest Scared Stupid, Scared Shrekless, The Witches, Death Becomes Her, Poltergeist, Happy Death Day, Jennifer's Body, The Crow, The Lost Boys, Rosemary's Baby, The Conjuring, The Invisible Man, Trick 'r Treat, Totally Killer + more.

COASTAL AREA

anchors away -- seasonal drinks and pumpkin beer

breathe in -- yoga & pilates with the Sanderson Sisters (come in costume!)

cassidy's candies -- mega discount on all Halloween candy

from brush to canvas -- autumn/Halloween paintings exhibited

the lighthouse -- ghost stories at the top of the lighthouse

the marina -- haunted boat rides (murder mystery style)

mawk tales -- seasonal spooky mocktails all week

sea breeze -- special Halloween flavors available

SUBURBS

aster playground -- pumpkin painting, various kids games set up

benny's -- massive Halloween decor & costume sale

children's museum -- various halloween-themed activities

community center -- costume closet open for takers

the creamery -- black & blue milks available, halloween ice creams

cul-de-sac diner -- halloween-themed meals (& specials for kids)

flour co. -- decorate your own pumpkin cookies

the fun spot -- horror skate nights (come in costume!)

the great escape -- horror escape rooms

memorial library -- spooky story reads, horror book displays

pinecrest cemetery -- cemetery tours (not haunted; respectful)

treasure chest -- 50% off all fall and Halloween decor

COUNTRYSIDE

the barn at lake malory -- haunted houses; family friendly (for kids & easily scared adults who want to take it easy), supernatural/fantasy (medium), slasher (scary).

handpick'd -- specials on seasonal wines

harmony ranch -- haunted hay ride & corn maze

hideaway market -- trunk or treat sponsored by takato's (come in costume!)

lavender lane -- pumpkin, mums & fall favorites on deep discount

little chapel -- ghost stories (with surprise haunting)

north shore -- trick-or-treating with senior citizens (come in costume!)

paradise gardens -- seasonal fall/halloween displays

pet haven -- free treat to all pets that show up in costumes

pine grove gardens -- true merrock horror / scary stories

state park -- spooky walks along the trails (very kid friendly)

the wheel -- 50% off all halloween related items

ADMIN NOTES: have at it! If you want to post costumes, they can be done any time through the week, whether you're partying at Evolution, dressing up to work at your business, or just want to get spiffed up for actual Halloween. Please tag them with #merrockfashion. Socials can be tagged with #merrocksocial, as well. Please do remember to tag anything with trigger warnings if it veers into triggering things, such as excessive blood! You can do other things for Hallo-Week, like having a slumber party and watching movies at home with your bestie, roasting pumpkin seeds, going out to toilet paper someone's house (please have permission), this is the perfect time to just have fun with anything that has to do with Halloween! <3

[ghostflowerdreams]

Witch Films

It’s October! The month in which I watch even more horror movies than usual. Each year I tend to have a theme to help narrow down what to watch. So far I’ve done Zombie Films, Werewolf Films, Vampire Films, Slasher Films, Ghost Films and Lovecraftian Horror. This year's theme will focus on witches, though I'm surprised I haven't already done this.

I think this is my shortest list yet. I expected to find more films featuring a witch or witches, but it seems there aren’t as many as I thought. With fewer actual horror titles available, I had to include some lighter options to add a bit of length to the list.

Hocus Pocus (1993) – an American fantasy comedy film directed by Kenny Ortega from a screenplay by Mick Garris and Neil Cuthbert, and a story by David Kirschner and Garris. The film stars Omri Katz, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw, Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy and Sean Murray.

After moving to Salem, Massachusetts, teenager Max Dennison explores an abandoned house with his sister, Dani, and their new friend, Allison. Skeptical of a spooky legend Allison shares, Max unwittingly brings back a trio of wicked witches on Halloween night. Now, with the help of a mysterious cat, the kids must seize the witches' spellbook to prevent them from achieving immortality and unleashing chaos on the town.

Halloweentown (1998) – an American fantasy comedy film directed by Duwayne Dunham. The first installment in Halloweentown series, it stars Debbie Reynolds, Kimberly J. Brown, Joey Zimmerman, and Judith Hoag.

The story follows 13-year-old Marnie Piper, who uncovers her family's magical heritage after following her grandmother to a hidden world where it’s Halloween every day. In this magical place, Marnie encounters witches, vampires and monsters who live peacefully, separate from the mortal world. But as she learns more about her own powers, Marnie faces a choice: embrace her destiny and protect Halloweentown from a looming threat, or risk losing her connection to this magical world forever.

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) – a Japanese animated fantasy film written, produced, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Eiko Kadono.

At thirteen, young witch Kiki sets off, as tradition dictates, to find her place in the world and hone her skills. With her loyal cat, Jiji, she settles in a seaside town and starts a delivery service to help the townsfolk. But as Kiki navigates her new life, she encounters challenges that test her independence, resilience, and the magic within herself.

The Craft (1996) – an American teen supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Fleming from a screenplay by Peter Filardi and Fleming and a story by Filardi. The film stars Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True.

When new girl Sarah transfers to a Los Angeles high school, she’s drawn to a group of outcast girls rumored to practice witchcraft. Together, they form a powerful coven, casting spells to transform their lives. But as their magic intensifies, so does its darker side, and Sarah soon learns that power always comes at a price.

The Witch (2015) – An period horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his feature directorial debut. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy in her feature film debut, alongside Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson.

Set in 1630s New England, a devout Puritan family finds themselves exiled from their community, struggling to survive in isolation near a foreboding forest. As their crops fail and livestock perish, unsettling events begin to plague them, fostering paranoia and mistrust. When their youngest child goes missing, the family’s faith is put to the ultimate test, and dark secrets come to light, suggesting that something sinister may be lurking in the woods.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) – a gothic supernatural horror film directed by Tim Burton. It is a film adaptation loosely based on Washington Irving's 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", and stars Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, with Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, Christopher Lee, and Jeffrey Jones in supporting roles.

New York detective Ichabod Crane is sent to the small, eerie village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of brutal decapitations. He’s a skeptic of the supernatural, but the villagers believe the killer is the Headless Horseman, a vengeful spirit from local legend. As Crane delves deeper, he uncovers dark secrets, mysterious rituals, and a sinister plot that threatens both his life and his beliefs. With each discovery, he’s forced to question what’s real—and what might be lurking beyond reason.

The Witches (1990) – a dark fantasy film directed by Nicolas Roeg from a screenplay by Allan Scott, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. The film stars Anjelica Huston and Mai Zetterling.

There's also another adaptation of the novel, The Witches (also known as Roald Dahl's The Witches), a 2020 dark fantasy comedy horror film co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, based on the novel. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Kristin Chenoweth, and Jahzir Bruno.

The story follows a young boy who encounters a group of witches led by the Grand High Witch, who despise children and plot to eliminate them using a magical potion that transforms them into mice. When the boy and his grandmother stumble upon their nefarious plan, they must outsmart the witches and find a way to stop them before it's too late.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) – an American found footage supernatural psychological horror film written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez.

Three student filmmakers venture into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, to create a documentary, about the terrifying legend of the Blair Witch. What begins as a simple project quickly turns harrowing as strange, unsettling events draw them deeper into the forest—and into a nightmare from which they can’t escape.

You Won't Be Alone (2022) – a Macedonian dark fantasy horror drama film written and directed by Goran Stolevski. It is an international co-production of Australia, the United Kingdom, Macedonia and Serbia in the Macedonian language, and marks Stolevski's feature film directorial debut. It stars Sara Klimoska, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta, and Noomi Rapace as some of Nevena's forms, alongside Anamaria Marinca as Maria.

Set in 19th-century Macedonia, the story revolves around a young mute girl named Nevena, who is raised in isolation by her mother, Maria, a witch. After being transformed into a shapeshifting creature, Nevena embarks on a journey to explore the world through the experiences of others, discovering the joys and sorrows of humanity.

I Married a Witch (1942) – an American romantic comedy fantasy film, directed by René Clair. The screenplay is by Robert Pirosh and Marc Connelly and uncredited other writers, including Dalton Trumbo, is based on the 1941 novel The Passionate Witch by Thorne Smith, who died before he could finish it; it was completed by Norman H. Matson. The film stars Veronica Lake, Fredric March, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward and Cecil Kellaway.

A mischievous witch named Jennifer and her grumpy warlock father, Daniel, are accidentally freed from centuries of captivity and set out to take revenge on the descendants of the Puritan who condemned them. Together, they set their sights on Wallace Wooley, the unwitting descendant. Jennifer plots to enchant him and ruin his upcoming marriage, with Daniel adding his own brand of chaos. But things go hilariously awry when Jennifer finds herself falling for him instead.

Suspiria (1977) – an Italian epic supernatural horror film directed by Dario Argento, who co-wrote the screenplay with Daria Nicolodi, partially based on Thomas De Quincey's 1845 essay Suspiria de Profundis. It stars Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Alida Valli, Udo Kier, and Joan Bennett, in her final film role.

There's also Suspiria (2018) film, directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by David Kajganich, draws inspiration from Dario Argento’s iconic 1977 Italian film of the same name. It was described by Guadagnino as an "homage" to the 1977 film rather than a direct remake, reimagining the story in Berlin in 1977. It stars Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, and Chloë Grace Moretz, the film also includes a cameo by Jessica Harper, the lead actress from the original Suspiria.

The story follows a young American dancer named Suzy Bannion who arrives at a prestigious ballet academy in Freiburg, Germany, only to discover that the school harbors dark secrets. As unsettling events and strange occurrences disturb her surroundings, Suzy becomes entangled in a sinister mystery lurking within the academy’s walls.

[adrianicsea]

what do you like about nightmare on elm street? (genuine question, I respect your views and would love to know your opinion)

OH MAN thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about it!!! i’ve always had a huge soft spot for the elm street series as it’s what got me introduced to/hooked on horror, and imo there’s a lot to love about it and a lot that sets it apart from its contemporaries.

for starters, while it IS a slasher series, it was the first big one to really foreground/mix in the paranormal and even some elements of the fantasy genre. while jason voorhees and michael myers are both supernatural in origin, they continue to occupy the physical world and are thus constrained by mundane laws when it comes to their kills; not ONLY is freddy supernatural in origin, but he continues to occupy the realm of dreams and use supernatural powers in his kills. this sets the series apart by adding a greater element of mystery to the events, and it ALSO opens up the series for a variety of creative and memorable nightmare/kill sequences that wouldn’t be possible if freddy had to play by the rules of the real world. (this is also notable bc the slasher cycle had begun to feel a bit tired when nightmare 1 released— elm street is credited for jump starting the slasher for a NEW cycle in the 80s, partially by virtue of introducing a greater fantasy angle to it!!)

freddy himself is just SUCH a fun and creative character. prior to nightmare, the majority of slasher villains didn’t have much of a personality and didn’t talk a lot, but there’s always (imo) been something so fun about freddy WITHOUT compromising how genuinely menacing he can be. robert englund is a fantastic actor, and i think the series was also able to maintain more integrity (such as it is) by keeping englund as freddy throughout the entirety of the series. even after the series crosses the threshold and becomes Not Scary And Kind Of Bad, freddy still provides a lot of camp fun in his jokes and creative kills.

wes craven’s horror movies almost always have elements of anti-authoritarianism or other types of political critique to them, in a way that feels more deliberate and purposeful than a lot of other 80s slashers (which, on a surface level, tended to be either apolitical or outright regressive compared to the 70s horror films that came before). in nightmare, this first manifests as a combination of police ineptitude, a critique of white suburban parenthood and of parents not listening to their children, AND a critique/commentary on the disastrous fallout of vigilante justice. that is a frankly impressive amount of ground to cover in an 80s slasher, and the second and third movies only up the ante by looking at the horror of realizing you’re gay during the peak of the AIDS crisis (in nightmare 2) and of the ways that the mental health institution preys upon and fails to meaningfully help institutionalized patients (in nightmare 3). after that, the series kind of loses its vision and starts to feel more generic and less pointed, but the original trilogy at least is a SHOCKINGLY cogent body of work for the decade and subgenre that they occupy.

the movies can also be very funny! the original trilogy has a lot of tongue-in-cheek or darkly humorous moments without compromising the moments of horror, and the latter films are still funny in a more camp sort of way. i’ve always personally found the scream series to be TOO glib and too meta, so the type of comedy/humor used in the elm street series is more my speed.

speaking of scream, i feel like i HAVE to talk about the last film in the original series, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (yes that is its full title). it feels like the prototype for scream in a lot of ways— it’s ALSO a meta-horror horror movie, but here the story is ABOUT the actress from the first and third movies coming back to the series to make a new one. but things keep going fatally wrong on set, robert englund is acting strange, and a mysterious stalker keeps leaving threatening phone calls for langenkamp’s son. i think this movie is SOOOOO ahead of its time for its investigation of fandom and its raising the question of “what do we do with these modern monsters we’ve created?” i always get so smad that this movie has been so overlooked in comparison to scream, bc they’re a lot more similar than people realize, and i think that scream wouldn’t have happened the way it did if not for New Nightmare.

this is more of an ancillary thing and something i didn’t come to appreciate until much later in life, but craven’s body of work was a HUGE influence on james wan and leigh whannell— lawrence gordon of the saw series partially owes his name to a main character from nightmare 3!!! there’s a lot of other neat little connections between the elm street series and saw, which i particularly enjoy as those are two of my absolute favorite horror series.

any movie where j*hnny d*pp dies badly is worth celebrating imo!!

as a final note, i’ll acknowledge that a lot of my love for the elm street movies IS because they were my first horror movies, and so i have a very nostalgic emotional attachment to them. which is to say i’m a bit biased!

i can see a lot of the common criticisms of the series— for some people, the core fantasy element of “he kills you in your dreams” makes it too unrealistic and therefore not scary for some people, and while freddy was very purposely changed to be “just” a child murderer due to high-profile cases of CSA around the time of the film’s release, he still carries a VERY predatory subtext, which can be offputting for some viewers. i also feel like the things that made the elm street series such a standout— the fantasy element, the talkative and funny slasher villain— were then imitated by SO many other 80s slashers that it can be hard to recognize elm street’s originality today. but the franchise wasn’t just a member of the pack, it CREATED those tropes!!

if anyone reading this hasn’t seen the elm street movies (and is so inclined), i definitely encourage you to check them out— and for people who have historically disliked the series, i hope this post was informative, even if it doesn’t change your mind :)

[firespirited]

hot take but I think the fantasy Event Horizon director's cut should have less gore and more of the character building moments. Less is more.

The more ambiguity about whether it was a mass hallucination, the more left to the imagination and conveyed by the actors reactions to what they saw off-screen, the better the film.

The set design, the lighting, the incredible acting speak for themselves - I think those things are so strong you could have a PG-13 rated cut with a single f-bomb (Fishburne's "Fuck this ship!" of course) that still leaves you sleepless.

-------------------------------

9/10 film. Would have been 10/10 without the extra gore.

As Anderson himself says, after a certain amount the viewer's imagination is stretched too far and you start to rationalize the rubber props and fake blood. The anatomy is off for PJ's death, the fire's effects are off even for different gravity, the carefully acted distress of the crew isn't present in the shock imagery. That's the one point against it, that and the prevailing belief that it's about a literal hell when that's refuted in the text.

==== I love this film ====

It is breathtakingly beautiful. the sets, the effects, the lighting, the filters, subliminal symbology everywhere. The acting, the way the world is lived in and their relationships are shown to us by the way the actors touch each other and move around their ship.

Within the first five minutes we have everything we need to know: Weir is a self-absorbed "genius" who hesitates over his jugular while shaving, Miller is an efficient and empathetic search and rescue lifeguard captain with full devotion to his crew which is fully returned.

Each member of the crew has their backstory in their mannerisms and design: we have a superstitious pilot with an ankh back tattoo, the sun-starved surgeon has scalpels on a utility vest and encourages you to smoke, the women are "one of the boys" facing the same ol' sexist banter from lovable rogue Cooper, but also respected in their fields. That's show not tell in impeccable detail.

We get a quick meet and greet verbal introduction to the crew at the 10-minute mark. We're introduced to the ship and its gothic, unholy geometries at 25. The design elements invoke a hybrid between the awe of a cathedral and the disgust of an intricate medieval torture device. The technology is robust and, except for an optical drive disk, future-proof.

This ship is a twisted Passion Play in design form with an evil seraphim of eyes within eyes, wheels within wheels as a beating heart engine. You don't have to be told that this thing demands worship and sacrifice, it is in your cultural subconscious.

It is in every jagged tooth and violence invoking shape engraved into the various panels and walls. The designers working on creating future warnings about nuclear waste would be pointing at different elements and yelling "Yes! That's it! Universal, visceral, primal signs of danger! Colours of disease!"

We're in a psychological thriller: the first real violence is a full 50 minutes into a 1h30 runtime and it's a plausible hazard of the job, shown with an unflinching camera with real time tension.

We spend the next ten minutes being gaslit by Weir into believing the ramping violence of the 'haunted house' might just be in our heads until the captain and crew subvert the horror trope and GET OUT. Fantastic story telling, very smart.

We now switch genres. again. to an ultra violent possession and slasher movie with a switch in tone for the ending: rewritten to be just open-ended enough to wonder if it was a shared psychotic frenzy, something supernatural or something natural but beyond humanity's understanding. A nice bookend to that almost campy over the top blood fest of a last half hour where Fishburne is the grounding force to Sam Neill's insane monster.

The CGI is in service to the practical effects and near seamless despite the age, it's mostly composite work on miniature sets and for zero gravity liquids. I honestly don't know how Mortal Kombat guy managed to get this kind of acting and photography talent to work on a space horror.

It feels a lot like the glitch that was Hannibal the TV show, art that wouldn't get made if the money men had known exactly what was involved and art that is bordering on schlocky but toeing a line that makes it brilliant. A kind of art that is achieved with a lot of talent and dedication but also the enforced limitation of The Edit.

I really think that the multiple test screenings and edits made this film better: it's like Robocop vs Showgirls*, Event Horizon vs Resident Evil*: the edits saved us from a movie that went too far and came out silly.

It's a film that feels rare.

*you already know I like both.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Commercial #2 for the DVD and VHS boxed set releases of the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror series from 1999.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/16/2024: NEVER LET GO (2024)

I was very ambivalent about this movie, but I have to say that it kept my attention the whole time. Sometimes I felt frustrated by how gimmicky it is, but once it got going I seriously wondered whether it was worse for the characters if what happens to them is truly supernatural, or whether it's actually a lot more grim if it's all mundane. Sometimes I felt like its fairy tale affection was too slick and pretty for the movie to be convincingly scary, and other times I thought it was really pretty effective. In any case I was actively thinking about this movie the entire time it was on, which puts it ahead of a lot of other, more successful movies.

As you can see from the trailer, Halle Berry and her two young sons (who are very good, I've seen some good kid actors in horror recently) live way out in a primordial forest where their only defense against an omnipresent "evil" is the holiness of their ancestral cottage, to which they are literally tied. The kids aren't sure whether their mom has made up the threat, which only she perceives, but testing the nature of their reality only creates bigger problems. Generally speaking, I don't love movies that constantly pester you about whether or not "it was all a dream"; I think if you're going to do that, it has to be motivated by something better than just wanting to outsmart the audience, and few movies take that challenge seriously. Because of that, I usually take movies literally, since little meaning is added by saying "Ha ha it was all FAKE"--but in this case I couldn't help thinking, this is about congenital mental illnesses, right? I mean what else could it be? But I got very hooked into the game of saying to myself, "Well if X was real then it's bad because of Y, but if X is an illusion, then it's actually way worse because of Z! (or vice versa)" So, that's definitely something.

At some point I also started thinking, is this what it's like to be a doomsday prepper or a member of some sort of xenophobic separatist faction? Like, what you're doing seems obviously grim and abusive to other people, but in your mind you're living out this fable-like fantasy where you and your kin embody pure wholesome righteousness and everyone and everything else is corrupt and contaminating? So your forced isolation and austerity and occasional violence has this glow of love and dignity about it, which makes it a pleasure to doom yourself to one inevitable problem or another? That's an interesting way to think about it.

It's curious how Alexandre Aja has this split personality where he makes merciless slasher movies, and then he also wants to do these kind of glamorous fantasies like this and I guess HORNS which is probably better forgotten. Maybe you can make the argument that some of his movies seem to combine raw horror with archetypal fairy tale material, like CRAWL and THE HILLS HAVE EYES may permit that sort of interpretation, somehow. I don't know. He's an odd director, and I guess that's about all I have to say about that.

[randalbutternubsiii]

For years there's been talk of a Galaxy Quest tv show or possible sequel, but what if they expanded in a sideways direction instead? Like, make 'Quest' the gimmick/franchise and tackle other genres with a similar schtick.

Epic Quest: Several out of work actors famous for their stint in a series of fantasy movies (in my head it's legit just whoever from the Fellowship is down to play fictionalized versions of themselves) are pulled into a fantasy universe by the defenseless locals, who watched those films on magic mirrors or something and believe these heroes can help them overthrow the evil, despotic overlord.

With other genres, the "we watched your totally real heroics in that 'documentary series', and believe you are the ones to help us" aspect might be difficult, but could still be creatively handled.

Horror Quest: Several out of work Final Girls/Guys are wrangled into helping some terrorized college students deal with a merciless supernatural slasher.

West Quest: I picture this one as basically Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven mixed with Galaxy Quest. The downtrodden villagers grab one actor, who ends up roping in (lassoing in?) six fellow "cowpokes" to save the day.

To be clear, absolutely Not Everything Needs to be a Franchise and More Original Ideas in Hollywood Plz, but the image of Wood, Astin, Monaghan, and Boyd playing fictionalized versions of themselves and roped into that scenario felt like it needed to be shared, and then it just kind of snowballed.

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

Search movies by genre/subcategory

Short Animation Supernatural | Ghost | Doll Psychological | Demonized mental health trope Drama Slasher | Death game Thriller | Mystery | Crime | Kidnapping Anthology Comedy | Dark comedy Monster | Natural horror | Alien | Demon | Ghost | Vampire | Werewolf | Zombie Dracula | Frankenstein | Invisible Man | Mummy | Werewolf Science Fiction | Technological Fantasy | Folk Occult | Religious | Possession | Demon Gothic Found footage | Mockumentary Medical | Disease Body horror | Splatter | Exploitation Survival | Home invasion Cosmic Superpowers character Romantic Erotic thriller | Sexual horror Giallo Action Musical War Western Demonized ethnicity trope LGTBQ+ | Demonized LGBTQ+* *Movies where LGBTQ+ themes are the horror

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed - Tokyo: The Last War

Like many a follow-up to a bona fide cult classic, Tokyo: The Last War (sequel to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis) is widely considered to be inferior to its predecessor; the reviews that I’d read online were almost universally negative, dismissing it as overly derivative of trashy, formulaic, uninspired American slasher flicks (the later entries in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise serving as a particularly reductive, unflattering point of comparison). This unenthusiastic reception failed to deter me from purchasing a copy of Media Blasters’ recent Blu-ray release (under the alternative title of Doomed Megalopolis 2) at this year’s Anime NYC convention, of course—and the official beginning of the Spooky Season seemed an appropriate occasion to finally give the disc a spin.

To the surprise of nobody familiar with my easily pleased cinematic palate, I disagree with the critical consensus. Despite its obviously lean budget—which necessitates a less sprawling cast and more modest special effects than the preceding film—The Last War still manages to feel ambitious within its relative limitations. Indeed, I’d even argue that the narrower narrative focus lends the plot a greater degree of urgency and momentum; it is, after all, significantly easier for the audience to become invested in a conflict that revolves around a small handful of genuinely sympathetic characters, as opposed to a bloated, unwieldy ensemble of vaguely sketched archetypes.

Additionally, it’s not as though the movie is lacking in visual flair; it is consistently as spectacular as it can afford to be. There’s an especially impressive sequence, for example, in which the nefarious Yasunori Kato (a role reprised by the inimitable Kyusaku Shimada, whose magnetic screen presence elevates every scene—including those in which he never physically appears) slaughters a group of soldiers in magnificently brutal fashion. One poor bastard is hoisted aloft by psychokinetic energy and slowly twisted in half at the waist; another is decapitated by flying debris, his headless corpse twitching and spasming for several seconds after the fact. The commanding officer, however, suffers the most gruesome demise: forced by supernatural means to clutch a live grenade, the man can do nothing but scream and flail in desperation until the explosive inevitably ignites, graphically (albeit not entirely convincingly) tearing him to shreds.

Ultimately, Tokyo: The Last War hardly deserves its less-than-stellar reputation; it’s perfectly enjoyable on its own merits. Sure, it veers closer to conventional horror than the series’ previous installment (which is best described as “epic urban fantasy”)—but as a fan of both genres, I find absolutely nothing wrong with that. Heck, in my opinion, this dramatic departure in tone and style only makes it more interesting. Not better, mind you—just compellingly different.