That’s encouraging (“enconjuring”? 
) to hear. I like that horrors are being treated more seriously once again but whilst I appreciate the intent behind Insidious, Sinister, Mama, The Possession etc and whilst I acknowledge that these films have some great individual set-pieces, I’m not yet convinced that I’m seeing anything from this wave of films that feels as though it’s the real deal, you know? Paranormal Activity (the first one) was bloody good and before that, [REC] scared the Jesus out of me but those were a few years ago now. Most interesting thing from the horror genre lately for me has been the fairly divisive V/H/S franchise (my inane ramblings on those movies HERE[/url] and HERE[url]http://letterboxd.com/lastcaress1972/film/v-h-s/). Also: Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) and Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project, Altered, Seventh Moon, Lovely Molly), I love those guys. Oh and I want to see that Maniac remake too. Looks interesting.
That Blair Witch Project in my opinion is one of the biggest pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. Proper boring, then just as it looks like something interesting it about to happen for a minute or two it suddenly finishes!
IMO The Blair Witch Project was terrifying. Blood and gore are all well and good (when done well, of course), as are jump scares, but neither need be essential if the movie’s up to it. I find the idea of becoming hopelessly lost in the woods scary enough (not the sh*tty woods around me here in Essex you understand, where you’re only ever one long piss-stream away from a main road, but PROPER woods where it’s feasible for people to vanish) without witches from beyond the grave stacking the deck in favour of my imminent demise! Didn’t provide any visceral thrill-scares at the time of watching it, but it stayed with me, that film. As I find the best tend to.
All merely IMO of course, I can fully understand how many didn’t take to it.
Blood and gore are all well and good - I’m not a gorehound if that’s what you’re thinking? 
When I saw Blair Witch Project when it was first released, I literally got motion sickness that lasted for hours after I left the theater. I also got the same thing years later when I saw Quarantine. All that shaky camerawork. Oddly enough, that didn’t happen to me when I saw Cloverfield, which I really liked, nor during another good one, Troll Hunter. To be honest, I didn’t care for either BWP or Quarantine, even if I hadn’t gotten nauseated by their camerawork.
I’ve pretty much sworn off of any more hand-held camera mockumentaries, especially in theaters. For me, it’s kind of like playing Russian Roulette.
[quote=“last.caress, post:683, topic:405”]IMO The Blair Witch Project was terrifying. Blood and gore are all well and good (when done well, of course), as are jump scares, but neither need be essential if the movie’s up to it. I find the idea of becoming hopelessly lost in the woods scary enough (not the sh*tty woods around me here in Essex you understand, where you’re only ever one long piss-stream away from a main road, but PROPER woods where it’s feasible for people to vanish) without witches from beyond the grave stacking the deck in favour of my imminent demise! Didn’t provide any visceral thrill-scares at the time of watching it, but it stayed with me, that film. As I find the best tend to.
All merely IMO of course, I can fully understand how many didn’t take to it.[/quote]
I agree with Yod about it, The Blair Witch Project is one of the films which I genuinely hate. A piece of shit for me IMHO as well. It is just a matter of taste and expectations. Before I saw it, I hadn’t had any thirst for gore or anything like this, I had anticipated a movie scaring with its atmosphere and permanent sensation of menace. I didn’t get what I had wanted tough. A rustling bush cannot frighten me, otherwise I’d be afraid of leaving my house. The flick did not come up to my expectations at all, it was insufferably tedious. Once any movie is lacklustre, I dislike it. I understand people who enjoy a movie like this. I am just not one of them, the rendition of BWP didn’t appeal to me.
it was insufferably tedious - that sums it up perfectly, Mickey,
It stayed with me after it ended as well, I think its much better than any recent found footage film, it actually feels real because the acting is so good, imo
Ah, not at all sir, I was really more implying that I can be a bit of a gorehound; leastways, I have no objection if it’s done properly; and that The Blair Witch Project was - for me - strong enough to be affecting without gore, scares or really any of the tropes more usually associated with the genre, certainly these days. But no, I fully see where you and Mickey (and PLENTY of others) are coming from as regards that pic.
Yeah, I think it remains one of the worst I’ve seen for “shaky-cam” despite the rafts of films that have followed in its wake over that time. V/H/S (the first one) is bad for that, too. Cloverfield - I really like Cloverfield but strangely I found the shaky-cam - or rather, lack thereof - to be detrimental to the picture. It comes off as too professional. It’s a balancing act for sure, but I felt that [REC] addressed it the most elegantly by having the character of the guy doing all of this footage filming be a professional television cameraman with professional kit and, because of the government’s part in quarantining the building, a decent motive for continuing to film even once the sh*t has truly hit the fan.
Cloverfield remains my all-time favorite of the ‘mockumentary’ horror films (the relatively few I’ve seen). I like that it’s a clear homage to the original Gojira (Godzilla), which in itself is one of my top 2 favorite kaiju films. I thought the characters were more interesting than in most mockumentary-style films. It was very obviously cinematic, but that’s okay for me. I thought it was funny, when Blair Witch first came out, that a lot of people in the audience assumed it was real found footage.
But for myself, outside of the shaky camerawork, Blair Witch didn’t scare me or leave me feeling creeped out at all. Maybe because I’ve become fairly immune to horror movies, and watch them because I enjoy a good one. I do prefer great atmosphere to gore, though some gore is okay, so long as it fits the story and isn’t the main focus. However, several years ago, while watching the original Pulse (Kairo), I found the first 30 minutes or so somewhat creepy, and the scene 30 minutes or so in, in the basement, gave me chills for some odd reason.
Always interests me, how things get hold of people differently. Personally speaking, both Pulse and its obligatory English-language remake did nothing for me. I owned both, I threw them away (ie sold them to MusicMagpie, which amounts to pretty-much the same thing). I DID go a bit bananas for J-Horror/Asian horror around that turn-of-the-century time though, maybe I was a bit J-Horrored out. Alternatively, The Grudge (the Japanese one) scared me witless at the time, whereas many other people were largely ambivalent towards it. I loved The Grudge 2 as well (NOT the Japanese sequel which I thought was a bit ropey, but the sequel to the American remake). I might be the only person alive who likes that film. ;D
[size=8pt](Japanese original The Grudge and American sequel-to-the-remake The Grudge 2: Underrated)[/size]
You probably are the only person who liked it. 
My issue with the J-horror thing is, some were excellent, but so many became so overly derivitive that it killed it for me. A bit like the Paranormal Activity movies. The first one was very good; the second was okay. By the third one, they had beaten it into the ground. I didn’t bother watching the fourth. IMO, some films would be better off as a stand-alone movie (The Matrix and A Nightmare on Elm Street are perfect examples). The interesting thing for me about the first Paranormal Activity is that the house it was filmed in is about 20 minutes from where I live. Supposedly it’s actually haunted.
I thought the third one found a bit of a second wind, myself; the camera-on-an-oscillating-fan bit was inspired. But that franchise suffers badly from the knowledge that absolutely cock-all is going to happen for the first three-quarters of an hour. Even the excellent first movie - head and shoulders above the rest - doesn’t welcome repeat viewings very well because of this.
You missed nothing, it was piss-poor.
;D That’s undoubtedly true of about 90% of all films with sequels/prequels!
Cool, I thought it would’ve become a bit of a tourist trap by now, or maybe even bulldozed in order to shoo the fanatics away.
I don’t know the address of the house, but I do know the neighborhood where it is. I wouldn’t actually try to drive past there anyway. I heard that very problem is happening in Rhode Island right now, at the house where the events in The Conjuring are supposed to have occurred. Lookey-loos are trespassing on the property of that one.
The Paranormal Activity house was director Oren Peli’s (sp?) home at the time. Neighbors report that it’s a very strange house.
Thats interesting Filmlovr. I live quite close to the sorority house in Black Christmas (original). I’ve never driven by but my high school was 5 minutes away. Its a really posh neighborhood though I heard the house is different now because of extensive renovations.
I also went the same University and walked by the locations that were in the film everyday going to class.
This was before I even saw Black Christmas so I walked by everyday not knowing that a well known horror film was filmed there!
Bet it was a bit of a surprise when you first viewed Black Christmas then…
2004, Shutter… pleasingly spine-tingling film from Thailand, paying homage to all those ghostly photographs that people have captured over the years. The film really didn’t need the car-accident segment in the beginning to establish anything about the ghost that begins appearing in a boyfriend’s and girlfriend’s pics. -Then dreams. There’s a ghostly car-scene later, but it could’ve stood on its own. There’s only one illogical part, where the couple visit a girl who may not be dead from suicide, yet meet her mother, who indicates the girl is in her room. They go in and discover a rotted corpse in bed, face-down. But in the next scene the girl’s doctor explains about the suicide in a fall from the hospital-roof… yet doesn’t explain how the mother ended-up with the body, or even is surprised that mother stole it. She’s in a scene or two after that, acting perfectly normal, lol. I’d rate the film as a 7-out-of-10.
i see gallowalkers, not bad not good either 3 stars, plenty of blood good opening not much action
^Gallowwalkers is garbage, I give it a 1 and that’s just for the horses.
[url]http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/513/uvlq.jpg/[/url] DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966, Terence Fisher)
![http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/513/uvlq.jpg/[/url]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/513/uvlq.jpg/%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
The film opens with a flashback to Dracula (1958), the first of Hammer’s movies about the vampire, with Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing destroying the monster.
But it takes more than just one Van Helsing to kill this Count, so ten years later the terror starts all over again when two young British couples are stupid enough to visit his castle. The Count’s valet, Klove, kills one of the two men, using his blood to resurrect his Master.
Exquisitely made entry in the series, called the quintessential Hammar Horror movie by some, but not too scary. There’s some excessive bloodletting, especially during the resurrection scene (the movie met with some censorship problems back then), but Dracula hides his victims under his cloak before sucking the blood from their carotid arteries, so you might say that the movie lacks some ‘bite’. Great ending, with Dracula sinking away to icy depths.
One of the few Hammer movies (as far as I recall) that were shot in 2,35:1. The inventive use of the widescreen must have suffered enormously in those days of pan & scan.