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| Topic | Board 8 Ranks 2010s Horror Movies - Chapter 2 - *THE RANKINGS* |
| Snake5555555555 05/20/22 12:22:40 AM #48: | Snake - It took me a long time to really warm up to this film. I first wrote it off back in 2013 for feeling generic, overdone, and boring. I thought the film was going to focus more on Annabelle and I was also severely disappointed (then they actually made an Annabelle film and for at least the first one, you get what you asked for :/). I digress. I had revisited it some years later, and the film finally clicked with me. I better understood its ambitions. Its a real horror films horror film. Its a very quintessentially tropey movie but it does everything really well and it being set in the 70s gives it a sense of vintage class. Its a film all about ghosts and demons and witches and a clairvoyant in a haunted house and what should be tired is elevated by James Wans sense of direction with an epic sense of scale and consequence. By the ending, I really feel this is the Marvel'' of horror, everyone in the cast is giving it their all, theres quips and humor, the Warrens feel like superheroes exorcising this dangerous demon-ghost-witch, theres loud-noises and everything is rumbling and shaking and its exciting and epic and not really frightening per se but its something an audience can easily connect and get into and feel the fear anyway. Just a really solid horror film I feel more respect towards everytime I re-evaluate it. Red13n - Family moves into a cursed house, hires some professional demon uhh, trackers or whatever, and then is left stranded because the Catholic Church is a horribly inept organization that really should be forced to pay taxes. Some of the tracking of the ghost or demons or whatever is actually kind of clever and interesting, though the subplot of the turmoil of the professional demon people ends up falling really flat. They were literally depending on the church to do it when apparently they could just have done it themselves the whole time. Like many movies on this list, don't think about it too hard. Suprak - C+ The Conjuring was another movie I had seen before starting this project, and I was already aware going into it that this would probably not be cracking my top half. I couldnt quite remember why I didnt like it that much, which is honestly probably one of the main issues I had with it. I barely remembered anything about it, and after my rewatch I kinda see why. There are horror movies that stick with you and then there are horror movies that pass right by, and The Conjuring is absolutely in that second bucket for me. There are some good occasional scares, sure, and some interesting cinematography, but something about the film overall just doesnt work for me like a lot of others on this list. One of the biggest issues is the nagging sense of familiarity. Say what you will about some of these other movies, but almost all the others on this list felt at the very least unique. I feel like Ive seen The Conjuring like six other times by now, and I feel like Ive seen it done better six other times (including by a couple of other movies on this list!). Evil house/demon/Satan haunts and possesses the family is something that felt a bit stale by the 80s. I feel like one of the worst things a horror movie can be is formulaic, and of all the horror films on this list I think this might be the most predictable. There is no subverting genre tropes or anything unexpected about the storytelling here. This is by the book (assuming the book is an upside down flaming bible, of course) and you just sort of know what is going to happen right from the start of the film. I also wasnt particularly crazy about the non-horror parts of the film. Like when the movie is doing scary stuff, I feel like thats when it is at its most competent. But any really good horror movie has interesting stuff around that scary stuff, and it tends to be what separates an ok horror film from a great one. The lives of Ed and Lorraine and the family life of Perron family fall flat and I honestly just didnt care what happened to them. I kept getting Ned Flanders vibes from everyone, sort of generic good person without really anything interesting about their personalities. Like, these guys are just here so scary stuff can jump out at them and yell BOO and honestly Im not sure I could do a good job describing the various characters in anyway that wasnt basically just who the actor was that played them or what they looked like. The Ed and Lorraine stuff in particularly I just wasnt interested in it. They have all these scenes with them in colleges and college students are like well what do you call this demon and then Ed mugs at the camera and is like JUST DONT CALL THEM LATE TO DINNER HYUK and everyone laughs like theyre some hugely charismatic couple but I never got that from them. It was like if the Carol and Mike Brady decided to take up fighting demons on the weekend and I feel like a lot of the later scenes in the movie wouldve resonated better if these two in particular werent so painfully dull. The only reason this movie is as high as it is is because I feel like it actually doesnt a genuinely good job with the horror scenes. There are a lot of great moments here, and I feel like I appreciated them more on the rewatch partially because I went in with very low expectations. But, like that scene where the mom is lighting matches and the little boy ghost is playing hide and clap, that sticks out to me as one of the better jump scares on the list. You are expecting the mom to light the candle and then the ghost be there looking at her, so when the hands emerge from behind here and clap instead, that is the kind of misdirect I love in movies like this. Then you have stuff like that sheet getting blown off by the wind, catching on a form, and flying up to the window, or the creepy witch woman materializing on top of the dresser to attack the daughter there are a handful of examples of them doing a good job setting up a legitimate scare and following through on it. Theres a lot I dont like about The Conjuring as a movie, but at the very least I feel like it is competent with the horror part of the film, which is honestly the most important thing to get right anyway. FFDragon - Somehow works for a horror movie where no one actually dies. Jcgamer107 - I remember this being pretty intense to watch in the theater - then I quickly forgot about it and never really got the urge to watch it again. Some solid scares though, and the way the camera moves through the house almost makes it feel like a thrill ride. --- I've decided to put my fears behind me. I'm not going back. https://www.instagram.com/horror_obscurities/ ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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