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| Topic | Board 8 Ranks 2010s Horror Movies - The Final Chapter - *THE RANKINGS* |
| Snake5555555555 05/27/22 9:37:36 PM #237: | Johnbobb - I've bounced around on this film a lot. I know I have it super high on my list, but that's absolutely not a suggestion that this film is without flaws. In fact, it's got some pretty significant ones, by far the BIGGEST flaw in my opinion being the way it uses a disfigured character as nothing more than a weird, uncomfortable crutch who holds no real purpose in the film other than to essentially be the "look how ugly he is, isn't that scary?!??!" character. It's both harmful and weirdly out of place in a film where the horror is, in all other aspects, entirely focused around cult mentality, societal deviance and mental disorder, all things that are presented through speech and actions rather than what appears to be intended gross-out horror. The REST of the film though, goddamn, I mean the cinematography and camerawork here alone are probably heads above anything else on this list. Performances are insane (Florence Pugh not getting an Oscar nomination for this is yet another refusal of the Academy to recognize the genre), soundtrack is insane, and it manages to do maintain that sense of dread through the entire movie despite being set entirely in bright, daytime settings. Lightning Strikes - It cant be 9pm! The sky is blue! Ari Aster strikes again, with a film that is simultaneously less of a horror film than Hereditary and also more conventional. Despite that, I think that Middommar manages to be the better of the two, not least because Florence Pughs role from the performance to her character development is one of the most remarkable horror leads of all time. You sense her grief, her growing frustration with her boyfriend, her slowly building a link to the people there, her extended pain and then finally her mix of anguish and relief as she lets go and finds a new future. What fascinates me about this movie is the oft-repeated story about Aster using the techniques of cults to brainwash the audience. You cant help but feel that its not so bad, that shes happy, that the cult has a point with their logic. Ot almost seems like a happy story. Then you get a bit of distance and realise that its a very messed up situation and a deeply sad ending. Of course the actual mechanics of this as a horror movie work brilliantly too. Theres some truly maniacal imagery, its a much gorier film than the directors previous, and the daytime setting lets you see all of this in bright daylight and truly beautiful colour. And while it is very reminiscent of The Wicker Man (the good 70s one) the finale is spectacular, it is both apocalyptic in its tone and strangely hopeful, quite symbolic of the ceremony the cultists perform themselves. For all the strangeness and brutality there is also beauty. 5/5 Biggest scare: The horrendously grim opening, in particular the reveal of the sister herself. Tom Nook - The folk horror sub-genre often plays around with the concept of sacrifice, which pretty much leads you to predicting how the movie is going to end, right from the start. And while this movie absolutely goes the direction everyone knows it was going to, what matters is the journey and not the destination. What this movie succeeds best at is the tone. The tone is everything for this. I've seen tons of movies that are gorier, more shocking, meaner, etc, even films that use real life actual death and gore. But this movie finds a way with its tone to make these bursts of gore to be something truly nasty. It's hard to really put it into words why. It's just something about the folk aspect of making this harmony and nature become death and decay, yet seen their the eyes of most characters in the film perceiving it as beauty, aside from the protagonists, where it comes off as horrifying. And the gore is so well done too; you can tell they studied actual deaths for those effects. I know plenty of people who hated this movie, due to the main protagonist's mental transformation and choice by the end, but I also see that as another layer to the horror. There is just something about this movie that feels dirty by the time it's over, and that is the sign of a good horror film to me! Suprak - A- I know Im going to just need to stop myself at some point, because I feel like this is something I could ramble on about forever if I wanted to. What a weird, strange, great, but also sometimes not great, confusing, bizarre, wondering, beautiful, haunting, strange, strange, strange film. There are a couple of movies on this list that I feel like Im going to forget about by this time next month but this isnt one of them. This is going to be kicking around in my brain for quite some time. This was a brand new watch for me, and I happened to watch it by myself at like 11 at night during one of the nights of my work trip. And I wish I hadnt because this was something I needed to have seen with someone else so I could start talking about it right away. This is Ari Asters second film on the list, and what I think is his second film after Hereditary. And I do think I was better prepared for this one after seeing Hereditary, and I mean that both in a good and bad way. This feels very strangely similar to Hereditary, and you have a woman dealing with grief that happens to get sucked into the plans of a cult and her and the group of friends/family around her are caught up in this ride that seems impossible to escape from and then a lot of people die in brutal ways and theres a scene where you go holy shit what the fuck and then it ends. Not that I necessarily hated the idea here, because I dont, but when I got to the point where they reach the compound and I went huh another cult film? I was a little disappointed because I had already seen Ari Aster do a cult film. It is also strange that in a movie that involves a man being sewn up into a bear suit and set on fire with the half human/half puppet amalgamations of his dead friends that one of the first words that came to mind was predictable. This was a movie whos ending I had figured out as soon as they got to the compound. And it didnt necessarily make it less scary or interesting, but I was surprised there wasnt anything else to it. Like to go back to Hereditary, I thought I knew where that was going and then the daughter with the weird face has her entire face removed from her body and sat there with my jaw on the floor. Midsommar doesnt really have any sort of equivalent. You go to a cult compound, and then they do weird cult-y things, and then characters die off mostly offscreen, and then it ends with someone being sacrificed to appease whatever gods it is that they prey to. Thats exactly what I thought was going to happen and, I dunno, I guess I was surprised that I wasnt surprised. --- 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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