Horror

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I recently read The Exorcist (the original novel) and re-watched the movie for the first time in over a decade. It still holds up really well. It's easy to take popular movies for granted, especially one so extremely ingrained in pop-culture as this one, but it doesn't hurt to remind yourself of why that status is justified every once in a while.

I'm also thinking of checking out The Exorcist III, since it seems to have a pretty strong cult following these days.

[Avaitor]

Scream Factory is on a roll for announcing Collectors Edition releases. First they've announced The Thing, then Carrie, and then they pull out Exorcist III and Child's Play on the same day!

I don't have The Thing yet, so I'm glad to pick that up. Carrie, however, I do own, so I'd probably wait until I can find this for pretty cheap. I haven't seen Exorcist III, but it sounds like something I would enjoy, as it looks like a welcomely different spiritual successor, ala Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Halloween III. Child's Play, though, I'm not very interested in.

[Avaitor]

Are we still doing the 31 Days of Horror thing this year?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been internally debating on it. Since I have a job now my time is short on weekdays. That said I still want to do one, so I'll let you know what I decide by the end of the week.

[Avaitor]

If it's going to be tough for you to update every day, maybe we can collaborate on posting the day's movies together.

I do feel like we have at least one more good year of this series in us, if not more.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Sure, if you or anyone is willing to help then I'm all for it. I have a lot more films that I would like to talk about, so I could presumably keep this going for a few more years, myself.

In that case just let me know if you want the set-up and rules to be the same as last year or if there is anything that you would like to tweak.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, Avaitor, do you think that you'll be up for helping out with the project this year?

Also, I just watched Blair Witch. Why? Well, out of curiosity more than anything else. I wanted to see how they would update it. Say what you want about the original, but personally I found it to be genuinely well-done for what it set out to do, and its commitment to not trying to feel like an actual film but rather a loosely scrapped together string of amateur footage, in addition to it leaving any actual "horrific" imagery completely up to your imagination. That's something that most found footage movies that have come since seem to forget, and IMO retroactively give the first Blair Witch movie a much worse image than it really deserves.

As for this movie, people were hyping it up simply because it had Adam Wingard's name attached to it. In all honesty, I find him to be a tad overrated. While his two feature-films are certainly entertaining on a base level, they are riddled with pretty predictable plots and bafflingly stupid characters. And, as I expected, this movie was just that, but without any of the entertainment value. It's literally just a retread of the first movie but with way too much over acting and production value put into it to the point of feeling unintentionally silly.

[Avaitor]

Yeah, I can! Does anyone want to start nominating stuff now?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Same rules as before. Nominate any horror movie that you want, so long as it hasn't already been featured in a previous year (I'm too lazy to put up a list, but I'll let you know if something has been used before). Max of 6 nominations per person for right now. I'll increase it if we don't have enough spots filled by the end of the week. Here are my choices:

1. The Conjuring 1/2
2. Sinister
3. The Crow
4. ParaNorman
5. Bone Tomahawk
6. The Descent

Part of me wants to nominate Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in honor of Gene Wilder. You could argue with me that it's not a horror movie, but I could just argue back that it's clearly a horror movie in disguise as a family picture....

But, I ultimately decided on ParaNorman as my family movie pick instead.

[Rynnec]

3. The Crow

Huh, I was just about to nominate that movie myself (and specifically on Devil's Night). Great minds think alike I suppose.

I'll nominate the two Hellboy movies and Event Horizon. The former are a loose fit but they do have some horror elements to them, but feel free to disqualify them if they don't meet the criteria. The latter I've been meaning to see for some time now after seeing it compared to Warhammer 40k and Doom, so this'll be a great opportunity for me to watch it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Both Hellboy movies are A-OK with me!

Do you want them featured as separate entries or would you rather mash them up to be on the same day like we did with the first two Blade movies last year?

I recently rediscovered The Crow when I re-watched it on Netflix earlier this year, for the first time in over a decade. For an early comic book movie, it holds up astoundingly well, IMO. It's easily one of my top ten favorites of all time in the genre, along with Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

[Rynnec]

It depends on how many entries we get this year. If we're hurting for nominations, then yeah, separate them, otherwise keep them on the same date.

[Avaitor]

Green Room
The Witch
Murders in the Rue Morgue (32)
Dracula's Daughter
Halloween II

Pretty basic reasons for my choices. Two recent, very well-received horror flicks that I've been meaning to get to, two overlooked Universal classics, and one of the Halloween Horror Nights house choices, which has some points that I want to get to.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, no limits to nominations. Let's just fill this month up. It looks like only three of us on here actually give a shit about horror movies, anyways.

Let The Right One In
We Are Still Here
Insidious
Young Frankenstein

[Avaitor]

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

I wanted to put this in earlier, but I forgot. I'll come up with more later.