SHOCKtober

Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Mon Oct 28, 2019 10:12 pm

26.) Tragedy Girls [Available on Hulu]
A fun little bubblegum piece of nihilism that's not gonna light the world on fire (and didn't), but is cute enough. Two teen besties who run social media accounts dedicated to true crime in their little town want to boost their followers and likes, but more than that, they wanna MURDER!! So they taze and kidnap and tie up the local slasher who's been killing teens all around town, and then continue his murdering spree themselves to maximize their internet fame. Yasss queen! .. it's not really as fun or quirky as you or it wants to be, but it's not terrible either. Charming performances make up for the lulls, mostly, but you're better off watching Booksmart and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon in a back to back double-feature rather than this more tepid combination of the two.

27.) Rings [Available on Amazon Prime Video]
<Niku> i think Rings might have been filmed specifically to hurt me
<leeham> are they still making terrible Ring sequels
<Niku> yeah but this one's a terrible american sequel from a year or two ago that is basically so far like fucking
<Niku> what if flatliners were obsessed with the cursed video instead of dying
<Niku> or some shit
<leeham> Niku, can I ask you a serious question
<leeham> why the fuck did they remake flatliners
<Niku> because the original existed
<Niku> that's all the reason they need anymore
<Niku> i knew i should have put on Sadako vs Kayako instead of this no matter how bad i've heard that is
<leeham> ok guys we need a hot property to bring back to cash in on that sweet sweet franchise revival money
<leeham> oh I know, how about this mediocre 1990 b-movie with Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon that nobody on god's green earth even remembers
<Brentai> Sadako vs. Jason
<Niku> THEY'RE LITERALLY FUCKING TRYING TO
<Niku> USE SAMARA'S TAPE TO PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF THE AFTERLIFE AND THE SOUL
<Niku> THIS IS JUST FUCKING FLATLINERS
<leeham> WHAT THE FUCK
<Niku> IF I PUNCH A HOLE IN MY MONITOR THIS WILL STOP

<Narrator> It didn't.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Tue Oct 29, 2019 9:06 pm

28.) The Shining [Available to Rent/Purchase .. and .. streaming on Philo? Whatever the fuck that is?]
BWOM BWOM BWOM BWOM BWOM. Much like The Exorcist, if you've only come to know The Shining through osmosis and parody and The Shinning, you still owe it to yourself to watch the real deal. It opens with a sense of overwhelming dread (that soundtrack!), and very rarely lets up. If the actual "scares" of the movie lean a little too often toward a loud sting and a zoom cut on something spooky by the end of it, the overwhelming sense of things unraveling and everyone involved being powerless to stop it (even with the psychic child knowing something is coming!) is the real horror that permeates everything from the very beginning right through to the final push in.

If you're somehow completely unfamiliar with the actual plot beats of The Shining, it's pretty simple: family gets shut in at the remote hotel where the father works during a long winter storm, and then the patriarch slowly succumbs to madness. It's not the first time that's happened, and probably won't be the last. Half abuse parable, half spooky haunted house story, all fantastic. I rewatched this mostly in anticipation of the upcoming Doctor Sleep adaptation, and I'm hoping that movie manages to do right by the legacy of this one.

29.) Girls with Balls [Available on Netflix]
I mean, you know with a title like that you're in for something classy. Somewhat akin in tone and style to Tucker and Dale vs. Evil in its slapsticky approach to a "hillbillies in the woods" horror movie premise, Girls with Balls is a lean (barely 80 minutes, if that) story of a volleyball team breaking down in culty-murder-hick territory and getting menaced and fighting back. It lets you know what it is from the very beginning by opening with a singing cowboy (?!) breaking the fourth wall to detail that this movie is about hot girls getting killed before zipping over to title-carding each of the main characters during a volleyball match. The singing cowboy soon returns and then .. is mostly forgotten about. And that is this movie. It's kinda slipshod despite knowing what it wants to be, forgetting its characters and jokes for long stretches, and making some weird tonal choices throughout that holds the whole thing back. Here's an inappropriately timed sexy table dance! Here's a boy scout circle singing about Jesus in the middle of hillbilly hunting ground! It's intermittently funny enough, but I don't really recommend it. I mean, there's doggy AND kitty violence in it, so that's pretty poor form.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Thu Oct 31, 2019 2:41 pm

30.) Sadako vs. Kayako [Available on Shudder]
because i don't learn. There are two good movies based on Koji Suzuki's The Ring; Ringu and its remake. Everything else is mediocre-to-garbage, BUT I'LL KEEP WATCHING THEM. This flick from a few years ago pulls the Freddy vs. Jason treatment by pitting everyone's favorite VHS-repping bakemono up against that gal with the grudge, Kayako Saeki (and her meowing little buddy-son Toshio). Now, you might wonder how two spooks who mostly menace and creep around but don't do a lot of active killing would be pit into a totally-pun-intended grudge-match against one another, and this movie is here to tell you ..

In the most ridiculously contrived but kind of weirdly sensible way possible?

I will say, this is way up on the "mediocre" list of Ring/Ju-on movies, and the Freddy vs. Jason comparison is pretty apt in a lot of ways. It is deeply silly, it makes random weird changes to the core mythologies to do what it wants to do, and it is fairly boring and rote when it comes to its human cast (aside from the psychic exorcist and his blind Pinoko-esque companion). But there's something really fun just the same about their solution to Sadako's vengeful curse latching itself onto someone being "well .. we just need to get you cursed by ANOTHER ghost who will kick your first ghost's ass, clearly".

31.) Gremlins 2: The New Batch [Available to Rent/Purchase] [Watched with Giant Bomb's Film and 40s commentary track]
Is Gremlins 2 a "scary" movie? Is it even a "horror" movie? No, not really. There's certainly some gore and splatter, especially of the monster variety, but Gremlins 2 is pretty much a full on comedy for 90% of its run time.

Is Gremlins 2 an absolutely perfect Halloween movie? Yes.

Is Gremlins 2 the most perfect movie literally ever made? Also yes.

If you have somehow never seen Gremlins 2: The New Batch or it's been a long time since you've seen it, it's easy to forget just how incredibly weird, wild, and legitimately well made it really is. People make fun of just how strange it gets and the choices it makes, but this is a movie that knows what those choices are every single step of the way. There is almost not a single wasted scene in this entire film, each one having at least some sly joke or commentary that will slide right by if you're not entirely in tune with what it's doing. And more than everything else, it is fun. It's macabre mostly as window dressing and mayhem, letting chaos and monstrousness run amok amok amok through a satire of retro-futurism (that still has plenty of satire in today's world, honestly) with a glee that to me encapsulates exactly what Halloween really should be. And "Now, was that civilized? No, clearly not, fun!, but by no means civilized" is the quote I probably find the most excuses to use in my life. Every single part of this movie has aged like a fine goddamn wine .. except for one cameo halfway through. And you can even get rid of that with the VHS version. So yeah. Perfect movie.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Thu Oct 31, 2019 2:42 pm

also here, happy halloween
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Friday
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Friday » Thu Oct 31, 2019 5:51 pm

I am deeply, nonsensically in love with Freddy vs Jason despite hating their respective franchises. I have no idea why, except it sparks the "kaiju fighting versus battle" inside me which I love beyond all reason.

So yeah I want to see Sadako get her ass kicked by Kayako now.

Also yes, Gremlins 2 is absolutely S tier quality.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sun Oct 02, 2022 5:57 pm

HI WHY DIDN'T I POST ANYTHING IN 2020 OR 2021?

i don't know because it's not like i've stopped this way of making sure the spooky train starts and does not end until halloween is fuckin HHHHHHHEEEEERE.

1.) Scream (1996)
What can be said about Scream that hasn't already been said?

how about that it kinda sucks

That's not fair but I don't really care. I've never been a fan. I first saw Scream when I was like, fourteen and did not have any of the context to make any of it interesting to me then. I had maybe by that point seen the original Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween, but had never sat through so much as a single Friday the 13th movie. I think the only other horror movies I had even seen before Scream were Army of Darkness and Ernest Scared Stupid; I grew up in a fairly "no horror movies" household though violent 80s/90s action movies that my dad wanted to watch were a-okay. I was also a pretty baby-ass kid who was terrified of Tales from the Crypt when it came on. I had a friend who was, on the other hand, a total horror fanboy, liked to grab Fangoria, liked to talk shop on AOL about horror movies, etc. He's the one who told me about a "real footage" movie coming out called Blair Witch a while later. And he saw Scream in theaters and lost his shit for it, hyped it up for us, and rented it at some party or sleepover. And I just .. did not get it.

These days I can respect it for what it did, but it missed its window with me pretty bad. I was interested in revisiting it when my partner mentioned wanting to rewatch it for this year's movie list because I don't think I've actually seen it since when I first saw it on VHS; now I can appreciate the references, the meta commentary, and the way it was like a breath of fresh air in '96 compared to the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties when all the old slashers were limping on their last legs. But also now it's .. extremely nineties, and Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard being in the same mid-90s movie is a special kind of torture.

I acknowledge its place, but I'll never personally enjoy it too much.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sun Oct 02, 2022 6:04 pm

2.) Orphan: First Kill (2022)
The original Orphan is one of those movies that is notable for two things; the bonkers-ass twist, and the pretty incredible performance by a child actor in the lead role. It's also very much the kind of movie that absolutely does not need a prequel given how much it relies on its backstory already in the original film, and it seems absolutely insane to, 13 years later, cast the exact same 12 year old actress as her now 10-year old self at 25.

In other words, First Kill should not work anywhere nearly as well as it actually does.

The way that Isabelle Fuhrman plays ten at 25 is not exactly seamless, but it gives the pint sized killer a really interesting offness to go with her Estonian accent and attempts to play doe-eyed as she insinuates herself to another potential murder victim. They go, as far as I can tell, one hundred percent practical with her de-aging, using forced perspective, up close cameras, body doubles, and costuming to "de-age" her back into Esther's look. I can always appreciate swinging for that, especially when the budget probably would have been untenable for CGI de-aging the entire movie and the franchise stewards don't want to do a movie without their original lead actress.

Orphan pretty much lived or died on how campy it was willing to go in a straight forward, refreshingly B-movie sort of way where it swung for the fences without winking at itself, and Orphan: First Kill continues that. It's camp as hell, and the acting is pretty sleepy and bad aside from Isabelle and Julia Stiles (who is always a welcome presence in basically anything) as her adoptive mother, but it joins the ranks of Oujia: Origin of Evil in "horror prequels that do not need to exist and furthermore do not need to be as decent as they are".
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Mon Oct 03, 2022 9:22 pm

03.) Scre5m (2022)
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A girl home alone answers a phone; someone on the other end asks her if she likes scary movies. "I like the Babadook. Hereditary, The Witch, you know, elevated horror?"

I acknowledge that Scream 5 (stupidly just called Scream) is pretty much hitting the exact same notes as the original Scream but it is much more laser focused at me today, a person who is now extremely invested in horror films and minutia compared to the teenager that I once was. It is practically pandering to the horror fans of now in a way that didn't even exist in 1996; at one point a character kvetches about "being in the middle of someone's fan-fucking-fiction" and that's exactly what the entire movie is. Made by the collective Radio Silence (see also from past writeups about V/H/S and Southbound, and most recently in the public eye Ready or Not which fuckin' ruuuuules), Scre5m is literal Scream fanfiction put up on the screen by fans of the original. And it gets to the heart of what makes fanfiction real good AND real bad all at once. If you need a perfect example of why this movie hit me just right (spoilers for basically my favorite gag), there's a bit where a character is complaining about how the Knives Out director made the eighth Stab film in-universe and absolutely ruined everything about the franchise.

Remember the bits about the rules of horror movies? Well now we're diving into the rules about reborquels, including legacy characters and their purpose (hi Courtney Cox, David Arquette, and Neve Campbell), how things tie back to the original movies, and how those original movies inform the people who grew up on them. It's a simultaneous love letter to and indictment of stuff like The Force Awakens and Jurassic World and remakes like The Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and Halloween (2018). It is as much of a remake as it is a sequel as it is a reboot of the original Scream, and it found me at a time in my life where I was much more ready to accept it. I've never seen Screams 2-4; I don't really feel any need to fix that. Not sure I'll care about the follow up they're already making to this one. But as a one-two punch from the original to this one, I think Scream 5 is actually pretty damn worthwhile.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Thu Oct 06, 2022 9:45 pm

04.) Silent Hill (2006)

Silent Hill is not very good as a movie, but whenever it shuts up and just wants to be a spooky tone piece, it's still really damn good. All the dialogue feels very much like "a Frenchman directing English-speaking actors", the exposition dump / flashback sequence toward the end is understandably maligned, and some of the violence feels over the top in a not very Silent Hilly way; but since originally seeing it in theaters I've always really admired the way they took on the game aesthetics and keeping Yamaoka's score was the smartest possible thing they could have done. I think complaints about how the monsters lose something when divorced from the context of the game is fair but also not really an issue with it as an adaptation where spooky monsters existing is plenty of reason for spooky monsters to exist. It's an extremely watchable C+ if you're not paying close attention to it the entire time.

I also think some horror movies are improved by a great "fuck you" ending, and Silent Hill is among them.
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby nosimpleway » Thu Oct 06, 2022 10:30 pm

My favorite thing about Silent Hill when I watched it for the first and only time was realizing that the protagonist, having just completed a difficult jumping/platforming puzzle to see the spooky creepy cutscene at the other side, got a convenient shortcut back and didn't have to do the platforming again in reverse, even off-camera.

Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sat Oct 08, 2022 11:42 am

05.) Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared (2022)

If you've been on YouTube sometime in the past decade, you've probably run across or been linked to Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared at some point or another.


It's a simple premise, combining somewhat random internet humor and nonsequitors with Lynchian horror to puncture through a parody of a children's puppet show, and debuted at a time when creepypasta and similar shock humor/horror was on the rise. DHMIS endures through six videos in total with pretty sharp writing, absolute earworms of songs, and the ability to continue to shock or surprise in new ways with pretty much every short; it's way, way better than "man, what if a children's show was like .. fucked up???" usually is or can be and I love it to fucking pieces.

Making a full-length 22 minute episode, much less six of them, could have gone wildly off the rails. I haven't seen the pilot "Welcome to Clay Hill" that transports our .. heroes Yellow Guy, Red Guy, and Duck into a more fully fledged community, but I had heard that while it's enjoyable it lost some of the feel of the web shorts by expanding the scope and the supporting cast into something more traditionally TV ready. And apparently the creators felt the same, because the new six episode Don't Hug Me I'm Scared series goes back to what worked before and yet stretches it out to full length run times without losing what actually makes it unique and special. Not following up at all on the "plot" of the originals such as it is (DHMIS probably caused a cottage industry of "____ explained!" videos that lead directly into Five Nights at Freddy's fans a bit later) where it's poking fun at the banality of children's programming and the sinister nature of advertising in the same, it nonetheless follows pretty much the same structure. Yellow Guy, Red Guy, and Duck are living at home, and then a wacky character shows up to teach them a lesson.

Chaos and nightmares ensue.

From learning about jobs, to transportation, to death, to existentialism about one's own place in the universe, the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared series manages to still have whip-sharp timing in the way it surprises you with offhanded lines and random jump scares and screaming. It could all be a bit much in the wrong hands, but it's got that alchemical it factor that makes it really work, and never gets entirely to the point where you're like "yeah yeah, now something weird and fucked up is going to happen", mixing up its horror and humor in smart and surprising ways. If I have a main complaint about the tv series vs the web series, it's that most of the songs are not nearly as banging as the originals. That hasn't kept the main theme "There's Three of Us" from being utterly lodged in my head, though.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sat Oct 08, 2022 7:41 pm

06.) Werewolf By Night (2022)

Absolute delight. I really hope that Marvel continues to plumb the breadth of their catalogue in this fashion, essentially doing a one-shot/anniversary issue (or a TV movie if you wanna go that route) in a wildly different tone than the rest of their output. This is a black and white love letter to Universal (or probably more accurately Hammer) horror where several monster hunters are brought together for a mysterious function where their benefactor promises a fabulous prize to whichever hunter manages to bring down the beast -- but perhaps the true monster is not what it seems!!!

Okay, so it's not exactly surprising material, but it takes itself seriously, has a great mood, and is exactly the kind of thing Marvel should be funding all the time since they can greenlight anything they want whenever they want. Gael Garcia Bernal is extremely charming here, as is Laura Donnelly as Elsa Bloodstone, and the cinematography really hits in a few places. You can definitely waste an hour in much worse ways this Halloween season.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:55 pm

07.) Hellraiser (2022)

seriously stop calling your reborquels the same fucking thing as the original movie i hate this goddamn trend so much this is not even remotely even a reborquel it is just entirely a new goddamn hellraiser movie for fuck's sssssssaaaaaaaaaakeeeeeee

wait is this my endless suffering, damn, good marketing

NuHellraiser is a fine horror movie. It's a pretty bad Hellraiser movie. This makes it easily the third best Hellraiser movie ever made after Hellraiser and the movie where the lament configuration is an entire goddamn spaceship (okay i guess hellbound is ACTUALLY a good movie and hellraiser movie so, sorry Hellraiser In HellSpacer you're bumped back to #4). Much like Hellraiser 3, NuHellraiser feels more like a slasher movie that has Cenobites for the killers rather than something actually interested in fucked up sexual psychoses, but it doesn't have anything nearly as stupid slash awesome as the CD Cenobite, so you win some and you lose some. This Hellraiser in particular follows a recovering drug addict which should be a pretty potent source of Hellraisery goodness dealing with seeking highs and addiction and all that, but actually she just kind of runs around going "oops I gave more blood to the evil box and now that person is gonna die too ooooh whoopsie" and the people who are like "hell yeah i want some hellraising, oh no, the hellraising was actually pain and not angels sucking my dick all the time who could have thought" are not even remotely as interesting as like, Frank or Julia were. The boring, boring, boring nothing characters with no real desires or needs is what tanks this as a Hellraiser movie, but the largely practical effects and nice set and creature/character design make it a decent watch.

Anyway if you wanted Hellraiser to be a little more like Th13teen Ghosts, here you go I guess. Pretty much a C+ on balance.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sat Oct 15, 2022 10:30 pm

08.) Prey [2022]

Prey whips so much ass it's not even funny. It is everything about its most basic description: a Predator lands in the 1700s right next to a Comanche tribe. It does everything you could possibly want with this premise. Amber Midthunder is fucking incredible in this movie. The set-ups and action sequences are fucking incredible in this movie. The doggo is a very good doggo in this movie. It is the best Predator film since Predator by a long shot.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sat Oct 15, 2022 10:34 pm

09.) Bodies Bodies Bodies [2022]

A horror/mystery movie all about Gen-Z made by someone who absolutely hates Gen-Z. Or at least that's how it feels; you'll spend the first twenty or thirty minutes mostly groaning about how utterly obnoxious the entire cast is until they essentially blow up during a Werewolf game and an actual dead body throws a wrench into everything, at which point the movie becomes much more about making fun of Those Damn Kids as their obnoxious foibles all start blowing up at one another. But it's a pretty damn well written and funny version of Those Damn Kids once things get going; the classic dark and stormy night setup, the motives and backstabbing and bitching about group texts, Lee Pace as the absolutely scuzzy guy who is way too old to be at this party of much younger adults, it's Ten Little Indians with glowsticks and TikTok dances.

Would be a lot more solid if you ended up liking basically any of the characters, but that's a pretty common issue with horror and horror comedies especially that don't want you to actually feel bad when people end up dead.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Mon Oct 17, 2022 6:47 pm

10.) Black Friday (2021)

Horror comedies are hard; see above regarding Bodies Bodies Bodies. Black Friday is not gonna top anyone's lists of comedies or horror movies or horror comedies or holiday movies, but it's still fairly charming. It's your classic capitalism-place-under-siege-by-monsters movie a la Dawn of the Dead, in this case a toy store run by Bruce Campbell, his sycophantic assistant manager, single dad Devon Sawa who has given too much of his life to the place, and a couple of other retail regulars (the older lady, the young idealistic kid, the snarky girl). They're all getting ready for the Black Friday rush, when wouldn't you know it, alien meteors crash land and start turning people into barfy alien zombies with retractable noodle tongues.

There's a bit of fun design work for the budget, some okay character work, and the cast is game, so you can do a lot worse. But you can do a fair amount better too.
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Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Mon Oct 17, 2022 6:53 pm

11.) Slaxx (2020)

What helps a horror comedy? When it really actually has something to say. The premise of "killer jeans" is as stupid as it sounds and treated with as much gravitas as it deserves here, with some very fun and ridiculous puppetry bringing the bloodthirsty denim to life. It's another capitalism-under-siege, in this case an extremely high end fashion store that is the exclusive launch location of a new pair of jeans that conform to your body shape via questionable technology and pseudoscience, following the bright eyed new hire who has been waiting to work at the place for years. The satire in Slaxx is much more pointed than in Black Friday, and when it's going for the throat against certain corporate practices it works pretty well. I liked this way, way more than I expected. And it's also about a pair of killer jeans.
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Mazian » Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:12 pm

I like to think that all movies whose title could be written as "Death [Object]: The [Object] That Eats" form a series. An amazing series.

Niku
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Re: SHOCKtober

Postby Niku » Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:52 pm

SHOCKTOBER NEVER DIES

just cause i stopped postin for a while doesn't mean i stopped watchin things:

12.) The Black Phone
Fairly decent little Stephen King-esque thriller, as is what you often get from Stephen King's son. I don't know that I'll remember it especially well in a year or two from now, but if you dig the kind of horror where the supernatural elements are cropping up to bolster the plight of the living protagonists rather than causing spooky jumpscares, or escape room style puzzle solving to get oneself unkidnapped, it's pretty good. Ethan Hawke also plays creepy villain well here.
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