Lurker > v_charon

Seymour
Shuyin

Cloud
Paine

I hold then thanks

Basch

Seymour
Shuyin

Basch
Cloud

Seymour
Shuyin

Nimrook

Auron

Basch

Shuyin
Seymour

Cloud

Basch

Shuyin
Seymour

Yes

Kain

Basch

Seymour
Shuyin

Couldn't stomach Hereditary losing to both Midsommar and VVitch.

Basch
Rufus

Seymour
Shuyin

I nominated Shuyin to remove him from the bottom of the stats since he's occupied that spot for basically the entire time stats have existed. I kinda wanted to do it the legit way, by just giving him a year of support, but I guess this works too and speeds the process along. I didn't really want to see Gabranth at the bottom of the stats either.

Still planning on giving Shuyin some support this year though, even if he's out of the cellar now I'd like to see a semi-decent run anyway.

Basch
Rufus

Shuyin
Seymour

Basch
Rufus

Seymour
Shuyin

It's always been the same format.

It's true, but not every flawed protagonist is unlikable, just this particular one was to me.

TomNook posted...

Part of what made the horror of Midsommar more potent, was how irredeemable the protagonist became by the end of it. You aren't supposed to be happy.

If that works for you, sure. I personally don't enjoy films like this, so the writer can claim that was "intended" all they'd like but it doesn't make me have a fond take on the movie.

It was hard for me to feel sympathy for her because I didn't like her. None of the things the movie presented to me in her backstory or "growth" throughout the film made me like her one bit or think she was justified at the end. It's kinda the same reason I didn't like The VVitch too. Neither had a likable protagonist in my opinion.

I will say they wasted the first scene by not making it more crucial later on. I don't really agree the movie would have been the same film without it, but I wish it did have more bearing on the overall plot than it did.

Midsommar's most unnerving portion for me was that scene and being forced to watch it in a theater full of other people. It just went on and on and on, for what felt like forever. It's moments like those in certain types of films that just make me cringe, roll my eyes and put my hand in my palms. It's the moment when you know that art > horror, and I just hate that personally.

Like I've said, I was super excited for Midsommar because of Hereditary and I've just never been let down more by a film of any sort. I wouldn't have ranked it last, but bottom 5 or so would have been a distinct possibility because of how I feel about my experience with it. When you compare the two films, both have this big moment of climax. Hereditary's decapitation scene vs. the cliff scene from Midsommar. Both are effective, even though with Midsommar you can see it coming because of the pomp and circumstance. Charlie's death in Hereditary is probably the most shocking moment I've witnessed, and I can still remember it like it was yesterday. We were watching this in a theater than serves food, and I was actually in mid bite when it happened. Rather than fill my face with food, my mouth just hung open for a good minute after it happened. It's one of the most effective deaths and shocking moments to me because the trailers indicated she was the main character, and it ended up being Peter which was very surprising coming into the movie.

In Hereditary, after this scene, the film only ramps up a gear. There's a lot of creepy imagery and spooky moments that come after this. Midsommar starts in the same "slow burn" kind of way, but once the cliff scene happens the film literally just jumps off a cliff. I don't remember a single thing of interest that took place after this that I liked seeing, and the film BEFORE the cliff was just ok. It still had the potential to be good but it was taking a little too long with it. So yeah, I'll just never understand people's fascination with this film. I remember going to Dragon Con after the movie and seeing cosplay all around of the main character.

Another mild criticism of this movie is the Josh character. We're presented with him as this respectful to the cult character who just wants to write a paper on them. Then out of nowhere he decides to forget all about his character trait of respect and appreciation for them by photographing their sacred text in the middle of the night. Nothing more than the writers realizing they needed to kill him off somehow but forgetting they wrote his character in such a way it wouldn't be easy to do.

I'm a little surprised at the number of people surprised Midsommar is still in contention. It would have easily been what I'd have picked to win, especially if I wasn't participating myself.

An expected, if incorrect, result.

Hereditary would be my easy #1 on this list, and is in contention for my favorite horror film of all time with other decade contenders like Scream and The Ring. It's the film that keeps sending me to movies like Midsommar and Men, hoping that I'll find the next Hereditary. None of the films have even been close (in fact I've strongly disliked all films such as those).

The swings here are pretty wild.

Babadook was excellent. As one of the writeups put it, there really was a lack of great "monster" type villains in this decade and to me this one stands out as possibly the best original creation (barring Pennywise from the discussion).

Salim and Jason are awesome.

It's subjective sure, but I don't think any of the other films have real serious debates on what genre the film belongs too. Typically, I don't mind just lumping most psychological thrillers into the horror genre and I would consider this movie to be just that. While I don't mind lumping things together, I also tend to skew away from those films if I'm asked "what's your favorite horror movie?" because to give that answer, to me, seems like I'm breaking outside of the genre to give the answer.

To reiterate other things in Inviso's writeups, if you aren't that invested in the characters in a love or hate way then it does become difficult to like a film. That happened to me with this movie too. As much as I would praise their acting ability, they're simply portraying people I'm not all that interested in and I came in believing I would like the movie. I came in wanting to like the movie more than I did too. As such, when considering I view this film more of a thriller than a horror, if I already dislike the characters the film in which I consider to be more of its own genre than flat out "horror" is not going to get a lot of high rankings out of me in a list format such as this.

plasmabeam posted...

What specific elements?

I mean the main idea of a horror film, at least in my eyes, is to be frightening. Whether you achieve that that through tension building, unsettling mood or setting, jump scares or a presence of some sort that's an antagonist I really feel it has to be there in some way. The closest The Lighthouse really comes to that is with the isolation factor in the setting, but that doesn't necessarily make a horror film. Castaway isn't a horror film.

I know Wikipedia is obviously subject to public edits and I haven't gone through all the films individually, but checking out The Lighthouse's page it isn't even listed as a horror film completely. There's even some debate whether or not it's actually just a thriller or perhaps a survival film, or a character study as it says there. But yeah, I mean that's the main element of horror to me; to be frightened by it. If it's not going to do that then I'm not sure how it can really classify itself as part of the genre.

FBike1 posted...

I owe the FF7 crew a bone.

Zack Fair

trading 5x for Zack auto

5. Zack Fair

For Shuyin.

Snake5555555555 posted...

Inviso - This isnt a horror film.

This is also me.

Like I said with Creep, that movie and The Lighthouse are hard for me to critique. For Lighthouse, I mean the acting is phenomenal there's little debate about that I would think. But I was left missing the elements which I associate with horror. Those elements are ones I feel define the genre, and that if you remove them the film becomes lost without them. I feel it's a big problem in modern horror, especially indie horror films. It becomes more about the art of acting, or the art of subtlety or the art of allegory. It's the same issue I took with the film we watched last night, Men. It tries so hard to be smart and hit you with these "deep meanings" and I feel like many other films wants to "leave you thinking about what happened", which in my opinion isn't usually something good. It's covering up poor storytelling. A great story can have a good ending and still let you think about the film or the aftermath of things. But I digress into rambling about Men mostly now I think.

But yeah, Lighthouse was great in terms of acting and setting and even mood. I just didn't feel like anything happened that would make me feel this was a horror movie.

4. Bartholomew Estheim

v_charon posted...

We're off to watch Men tonight. Hopeful... but a little reserved.

Welp... it was awful.

Trading twice more for Shuyin.

I wanted to like Us as much as Get Out, but the cohesive plot just isn't quite there. I think I told Genny back when we saw this in theaters that the film was just trying to do too much; it's almost just too big of a story to attempt to tell the way they were trying to. It's a great concept, it just has moments where it's not executed as well as it could have been I think.

That being said I still appreciate Peele's creative visions and will always look forward to his new horror films. Here's hoping Nope will be closer in quality to Get Out than to Us.

We're off to watch Men tonight. Hopeful... but a little reserved. I was honestly not a huge fan of Annihilation, as much as I know a lot of people were. A24 usually delivers with films that bear their moniker so here's hoping it's a good experience.

3. Venat

1. Alphinaud
2. Ricard Highwind

Shuyin

Trading all other nominations for him, auto accept.

Suprak the Stud posted...

What side is best and what side is worst?

Uh, top to bottom, best to worst.

Snake5555555555 posted...

Charon, I'd be interested in your thoughts on Creep

I saw Creep by accident. It was around the time I was living alone and I finally got Netflix so I was really excited to check out all that it had to offer. The first film I watched (that I hadn't already seen before) was Creep. I had no idea what I was getting into. Creep is sort of a weird film for me because while I would probably rank it fairly low, it isn't a film I feel like I can critique and point out something that's bad. It's one of those movies that just quite "isn't for me", I think. As a found footage film it already had a long way up for me to climb, and I felt the protagonist of this was pretty stupid and I couldn't rationalize with his decision to continue to trust someone like Josef despite all that he's seen that should tell him that this guy is the last person you should put any faith in. I will say that the axe scene was very startling and delivered. But ultimately, for me and horror films to rank highly I tend to need a protagonist I can identify with or like or a villain who transcends into someone that's able to capture my imagination. Writing about it, I would possibly consider moving it around a little bit since I tend to do that when I used to participate in these projects. There was never a time my ranking list didn't change when I did writeups.

Creep and The Lighthouse both are films I struggle to say what I didn't really like about them. Both are hard to fault; they're just certain kinds of movies that may or may not be intended especially for the person who is watching them. I would have a far easier time talking about what I didn't like about The VVitch and Midsommar despite having those a little above these two.

Probably Child's Play (2019), which I think was a little bit better than Curse. Should have been the representative of the series as it didn't require any previous knowledge of the series.