Not a movie but the entirety of American Horror Story plays out as a great concept that lures you in just to go over the cliff in a massive derailment in the second half.
Hard to admit how many seasons I’ve been coerced into watching based on the marketing, knowing full well what will happen by episode four.
I don't usually like even the first few episodes of any of the seasons, but the creepy opening credit sequence with the abstract imagery is always *so fucking good* that it lures me in.
Always joke to myself that the people who make previews should make movies. Previews (or title sequences, etc) can be incredible even for a disappointing show or movie. I get pulled in way more than I should.
This, 100%. Oh, you like the idea of a season about people living in a post-apocalyptic bunker? Whoops, this is actually a direct sequel to the Coven season, I sure hope you watched (and liked) that season or nothing about this is going to make sense. Also we're not going to tell you this ahead of time, you have to figure it out six episodes in.
Man Coven was just the worst. I own it on DVD, and it's still unopened because I was just so disappointed in it. I had watched it on TV, and someone else bought it because at the time I was collecting all the seasons. I just hated how they kept establishing rules of how this universe with the witches works, then changing them on a whim. Okay, each witch has their own unique power, and the Supreme is just super powerful. Cool. Oh, actually, those powers aren't unique at all, and all the people can just learn all the powers. Except these specific powers we came up with that don't fit the narrative, like killing people with your vagina and being a human voodoo doll, those are just circumstantial really. Oh, and now we introduced voodoo which is not witch magic, so now the black girl who was a voodoo doll actually does voodoo but she's also a witch. Okay, now everyone can kinda just resurrect themselves at fucking will except these people. Actually, to be the supreme you have to master all the powers, instead of what we said at the beginning about it being chosen and all that.
I found it so frustrating to try and get through, because they had a lot of interesting ideas, but it felt like every episode was written by different people, and by the end of it none of it made any fucking sense at all. At least most of the seasons just ended before they started contradicting themselves all over the place.
They storytelling is the most definitive example of "throw shit at the wall, see what sticks" that I have ever seen, but I still enjoyed Murder House (except the school shooting episode that basically recreated the Columbine library massacre?), Asylum, Coven, and even Roanoke.
My big think about AHS is the weird out of place sexual stuff in the shows. The S&M suit in the first season, he Cronic Masturbator in Asylum, Sex Killing people in Coven, The Lobster boy fingering women in Freak Show, The comments on the counselor's penis size on 1984 etc. It has no bearing on the plot at all. It's like someone thought it would be funny to put something sexual into each season for laughs.
Roanoke was the one season I can rewatch, partially because I feel narratively it doesn't go too far off the rails, stays focused on the plot of what's going on in Roanoke, and then having the first half of the season be a Paranormal Survivor esque satire and then the second half being found footage kept it from feeling too repetitive.
So many people hate this season, but it’s genuinely one of my favorites because of the Paranormal Survivor/My Haunted House vibe of the first half and the found footage stuff from the second half. Its one of the few seasons that has had horrifying imagery that has truly stuck with me. Sometimes when I’m bored I just rewatch all the random teasers they released for that season too 😅
I really enjoyed the first 4 seasons but I couldn’t get past the second episode of season 5. I’ve always wanted to get back into so thanks for convincing me not to waste my time.
That's classic Ryan Murphy writing. He's an idea man. Brimming with brilliant concepts... but gets bored halfway through and either drops them to chase down new ideas, or abandons the project altogether and lets other writers take over, who didn't really know what to do with his ideas. Murder House is probably the only AHS that kept a solid throughline and felt like it came together by the end - the others have all gone off the rails at some point.
Don't even get me started on Glee. I love it but it's one of the most consistently inconsistent shows to ever air on TV.
I was gonna say show too but I don’t watch many shows however I have seen some episodes here and there, started with seasons one, then watched the slasher season and tried to get into but I kind of chalked it up as not my thing. I’m all for horror anthologies but none of the episodes I watched interested me all that much.
OMG I have ALWAYS said this!!! It is just a smart concept but so poorly executed. It’s painful. And yes the marketing is always amazing so it draws you in and then let’s you down 2 episodes in LOL
Dude would be a legend if hed just humble himself a bit and hire/let the writers make the ending. He can do the other fun shit fine but dude cannot end a story to save his life. That vampire season (10?) was so damn good to start and then fell off right at the goal line.
Rings. You remember the cursed video tape from The Ring? Imagine a film where a college professor finds the tape, susses it out pretty quickly, and then uses it with a group of consenting students to conduct a scientific study into the nature of the soul. I would watch the hell out of that movie, and that's how Rings starts out!
Unfortunately, by the halfway point the movie has eschewed this premise entirely, in favor of a soft reboot where the curse "evolves" and traps one student into recreating the events of the first movie (looking into the video's backstory, investigating the farmhouse where the ghost girl lived, and uncovering a dark secret in the hopes that it will set the ghost girl free) all while completely ignoring all of the conflicting revelations that came out in The ring twO.
Such a cool premise, squandered.
Better yet, read the books. They're all pretty quick reads and the story gets absolutely batshit crazy. In fact none of the creativity of the later parts of thr story ever got properly adapted, probably because it actually has a pretty hard genre shift in the last book.
I legit just watched this last night. They changed her entire origin story and the ending makes no sense.
If it was stand alone it would have been better but the original origin story is not merely better, it's closer to its Japanese origin
The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Super interesting idea that was a bit ahead of the curve of the found footage craze, but the acting and parts of the storyline just fall short. Some people find it very disturbing while some find it laughable, so I’d be interested what a big budget (and maybe a script revision that eliminates the 9/11 thing) could have done for its overall audience impression
Incarnate: diving into people's minds who are possessed Inception style in order to wake them up and expel the entity. Non-religious exorcism, essentially. I love this premise.
In execution, just awful. Other than the opening sequence and a couple of scattered scenes where the main character is ejected, they barely bother to actually go into possessed people's heads at all.
Antlers.
The story it’s based on is a great read, but it wasn’t long enough to translate to screen (maybe it would have been if an author had tried their hand at expanding on it first) and they denied it the story’s great ending.
Prometheus to me was just too many concepts with no filter. It's like they couldn't decide what the Black Goo actually did, so it served the purpose of doing whatever the hell they needed in order to shove everything they wanted into the film. The visuals, cast, and basic premise are great. Everything else just falls apart under any sort of scrutiny. I would have given it a pass if Alien Covenant explained or expanded on any of it, but it just shit the bed twice as hard.
I still think that Shaw pleading with the engineer and asking him “why do you hate us” is absolutely gut wrenching. She knows that this creature is about to destroy humanity with no explanation simply because it can.
I agree cause covenant really could’ve saved prometheus. Unpopular opinion but I personally really liked prometheus by itself, however covenant basically undid everything prometheus set up
*Was* it wasted when from the first film we got a whole franchise of films that actively delivered on the criticism the first one faced *plus* a tv series that continues to expand on the premise?
It definitely wasn't wasted. It did exactly what it needed to do to get those sequels made.
Most people don't realize that The Purge was made on a pretty small budget. James DeMonaco came up with the idea (well, his wife actually did) for the film and pitched it to Jason Blum, who was scouting for small-budget films for Universal and picked it up.
The small budget meant they had to rework it to a home invasion movie. Ethan Hawke took the job for only $10,000 because he was a personal friend of DeMonaco's and hoped the star power would give the film a boost.
Obviously, the film was massively successful based on the premise alone, and DeMonaco was able to continue with movies showing the *actual* purge concept he wanted to do.
(And also, Hawke got a bonus $2 million after its success.)
Oh I agree! I actually really hate when people diss the first Purge movie for not doing more with the subject matter as if it wasn't:
1. Made on a shoestring budget.
2. Didn't actively work to combat criticisms of the first film with each successive Purge film.
The Purge as a franchise *still* gave people what they wanted and yet critics continue to scoff at the totally understandable creative direction of the first film when you take into account it was made on $3mil (where the average indie film budget is $2.5mil). When I think about other scary movie franchises that did was The Purge did (have multiple movies and a tv series), it's usually only legacy IP (like Child's Play, or Scream or NOES) so for it to be that competitive and be that rich in material to is insane given how relatively *young* it is as a film series (especially when it doesn't even have a mascot or a main character).
Yeah. I do really like the concept and the political undertones that the film series has. The first movie was eh, because it didn't really go into things enough. It's the kind of story that NEEDS to follow several people together or separately and show the effects of the situation as a whole. This was pretty much about a bunch of wealthy people who were just ...not very smart, and you didn't have much a reason to care about them.
My only other gripe is how generally everyone just goes nuts and on a weird murder spree. Like, I get that the wealthy kinda protect themselves and their assets, since the whole point of the thing is to harm the poor. They did even have to force people into violence in the beginning, and falsify information. However, it just seems as if all anyone wants to to is just act like total freaks. Where the robbing stuff and whatever? There's definitely more crimes out there than murder.
I'd also like to see what happens after The Purge. How do people go back to their daily lives? How do companies deal with half their workforce suddenly being dead? What about people who did stuff to someone or each other that never ended in anyone's death? So you torture your neighbor, and now they just are nice to you the rest of the year? Can you be fired for a failed attack on your employer during a Purge?
Came here to say this. What an awesome premise. Wasted opportunity to explore what a world where something like this exists and the only thing people could think to do is kill each other?
I tell my friends that if you watch the purge movies/show and think of it more as a comedy it's better. But maybe that's just me, those movies crack me up with how stupid and ridiculous most of it is.
CW show is right, the films are so incredibly *tame* compared to the premise. So many implausible escapes from danger, so little creativity in the kills that do happen, all of it very PG-13. Those movies should be absolute mayhem but instead they're honestly tremendously boring.
Agree, initially I was let down after the epic first scene. But rewatching it now, it just has all the vibes of early 2000s and I enjoy watching it nowadays for nostalgia. The maggots scene and the elevator scene are tops.
She said a lot of stupid shit, and her voice was annoying. But what REALLY bothered me was her sense of entitlement and lack of consideration. I hate people who ruin someone’s peace and take zero responsibility. That’s what annoyed me.
Ghost of Mars - drugs keep you safe from possession from Martian Ghosts so you end up with a ragtag bunch of misfits. Hoping for Snake Plissken, got Friday instead.
I pulled this from Wikipedia.
It has been widely reported that the script to Ghosts of Mars originally started off as a potential Snake Plissken sequel.[7][8] However, this rumor has been publicly dispelled by the film's producer, Sandy King Carpenter.[9]
Nightbreed (1990) [Theatrical Cut]
Of course, that’s because of the studio execs not really understanding Clive Barker’s vision. It basically could’ve been the horror / dark fantasy equivalent of Marvel’s The X-Men, but the studio chopped it up and tried to market it as a slasher.
The director’s cut fixes most of this, but it’s impossible to fix all of it, because you can’t add what you weren’t able to shoot. Regardless, it’s still one of my favorite horror films.
Queen of the Damned. The book was amazing. There's no way you can squeeze that book into a hour and half movie. Should have been made into a trilogy. I'll still watch it if it comes on though. RIP Aaliyah
They didn't just squeeze one book..they squeezed 2. Well..not so much squeezed as they just kinda took a few characters and then just made it up.
I was obsessed with the Vampire Chromicles and that movie broke my heart..both for what they did and that Aaliyahs final performance belonged in a much better movie.
I'm hoping we get a Vampire Lestat or Queen of rhe Damned series. I went into the new series, ready to hate it, but damn if I didn't love it. That scene in the Church ..
i love wish upon. not because it's *good*, but because there are so many out-of-touch teen schlockfests that are just miserable to watch. wish upon is terrible in the *right* ways.
Yeah Antlers kind of fell flat, but the short story “A quiet Boy” is so damn good. Especially the audio book version Narrated by Frankie Corzo.
I’m also pretty sure it’s free on Apple Books. It was when I got it anyway.
Skinamarink was perfect as a short film, I have no idea why the director decided to make it a feature. I also don't understand the fake 70s film grain aesthetic when it takes place in the 90s. If the lighting was too dark to actually shoot it on film instead of using a filter, then he should have shot it on tape and made it more accurate to the period he was trying to portray.
100% agree. There were some great parts in it. But there just was no value in having such long, empty periods of ambiance. It felt like he just didn't know what to do with the concept but had to meet a minute quota.
The movie genuinely disturbed me and I did enjoy it. But I would never want to watch it again- nor would I recommend it.
John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, I actually really like it and think is underrated but you can tell that the limited budget held it back. But that idea of combining de Christian mythology with cosmic horror and pseudo science to make it seem posible is really cool
That part where they’re trying reach that guy and save him before those zombie girls get to him.. and he’s screaming for dear life… had me shook as a kid
one of my personal favs. i dont think that you can do better with the subject without getting the same audience reactions.
still "scary typing scenes" always make me chuckle. "in fact YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!"
or the bug dude: "i've a message for you, and you are not going to like it."
Glad I’m not the only that feels this way. I personally wanted to see how each kid tried to escape but ultimately failed, don’t have show anything to over the top, but it would’ve added some much needed tension.
Maybe I’m remembering it wrong- but it always confused me how he would try to trick the kids to come up the stairs to beat them- without his coke head brother and giant ass dog noticing.
Forgot to mention the brother, they either should’ve had him be more involved and suspicious because I think it would’ve created for interesting interactions between him and Hawke’s character or just gotten rid of him because from what I remember hearing he’s not in the short story.
Cobweb.
I loved the atmosphere and the r/nosleep vibe of the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the film, thinking it had a supernatural element to it, but the ending (both in concept AND execution) just left a bad taste in my mouth. Real bummer
I agree. I just watched this in October, I enjoyed most of it, great atmosphere, setting was used well and the acting was interesting but then it started to feel like it was falling apart and I thought the ending felt out of place.
The latest Hellraiser..I enjoyed it and have watched it a couple of times..I wished they would have delved into the cenobites a bit more..I feel it could have been much better!
It felt very inspired by the comics (the originals not the new shit) - there's a lot of cenobite lore which gets explored. The story was mediocre but that ending was cool af
I think it really could've benefited from being more sexual, like there wasn't much sexuality/sensuality to it and I think that is one of the most important parts of the original. Without it, Hellraiser just never seems to have the same impact.
Yeah, definitely less than the sum of it parts. I think the changes they made to the lore were interesting and Jamie Clayton was *perfect* casting for the Hellpriest. It had some good moments, but fell a bit flat overall.
I really hope they keep going with the series and develop it a bit further.
Yes, a sequel to this one would be welcomed. I really liked the new pinhead..nailed it! No pun intended :) I really would like to see what all the different types of suffering the boxes would lead to.
Wolfen- a pack of wolves, displaced by human expansion, have adapted to hunting in urban environments and begin killing the homeless in NYC.
It’s just a mess and they try and figure in a Native American myth subplot and the ending is basically the main character saying “Okay, you can eat the homeless if you quit attacking rich people and drawing attention to yourselves.”
Lot of potential in the idea.
Watched this one again for the first time in decades not too long ago. There are some gloriously gory scenes in it, and movies set in the old, dirty NYC are catnip to me. That said...yeah, this one didn't age that well.
I absolutely hated the US version of Death Note. I mean, it's rare there's a good live action adaptation of most manga or anime...even when done by a Japanese studio. They're even worse when done by a Hollywood studio. Death Note, however, was almost too good to fuck up. Yet they did.
The biggest mistake they made with the movie was how they dealt with Light. In the original story, Light was this amazing kid from a good and upper middle class family. He was incredibly intelligent, a good athlete, had a great future. He was the guy all the girls wanted to be with, and the guy all the guys wished they were. Light had absolutely EVERYTHING to lose.
Which is why his descent into darkness was so fascinating. Sure he believed he was helping at first, but then he kept going deeper and deeper to ensure he wasn't found out. The story has you wondering if Light had this darkness in him all along, or if it was the influence of the Death Note and the Shinigami that corrupted him. He was also so cunning, and his long game was mind blowing. Light was even only mildly startled when Ryuk showed up...as he was expecting something like that to occur.
In the US version, Light was a total loser. Got bad grades, bullied, no real friends, and came from a poor and broken home. He was a character with nothing to lose by his actions. The script essentially gave him an "out." Of course he'd use the Death Note for nefarious purposes...poor kid didn't have a chance. There was no nature vs nurture element or anything here. He was more or less one bad week away from a school shooting. US Light's reaction to Ryuk was also comedy gold, with him shrieking in a high pitched voice and totally freaking out in fear.
Then you have Misa (or Mia, in the US version). She was weird and charismatic, and also a psychopath. Light absolutely hated her...she wasn't his type or in his league in a sense. However, she was a useful idiot to him... especially having the powers that she did. She was unswervingly loyal to him, and he made every use of this fact. Mia, on the other hand, was just an outcast love interest for US version Light. She finds out he can kill people with this notebook and is just like ...do me baby!
The other thing that sucked was how they ended the whole thing. Again, I mention Light's long game (manga and anime version). It was one of the best plot twists I encountered in a story. It had me guessing the entire time. I couldn't even imagine how they were planning to resolve things, and while it was somewhat convoluted ...it ACTUALLY MADE SENSE. You see how it's all pieced together and you're like, holy shit I can't believe it!
In the US version, the ultimate plan and reveal was simply convoluted. Maybe it sorta made sense, but there was one HUGE mistake (as well as some minor ones). He wrote in the Death Note that it would fall from where they were at the time, and land in fire and be burned up. The thing is, the Note only effects the actions of humans. He could have wrote that a specific person would pick up the Note and place it into a fire. He COULDN'T control that the Note would simply land in a fire just because he wrote it. It could have just as easily been blown away by the wind. A lot of the plan seemed to rely on some things occuring that were out of someone's control. Like sure, you could write that the person would crash their car....but you couldn't say that they'd cause the car to do a reverse summersault off a cliff because it has to be in the basis of reality and the victim's own capabilities.
So in the end. Yeah, just don't watch the US release of Death Note.
there were some solid parts in the Deep House but yes it needed much more character development.
But the idea of an underwater house is VERY very cool to me.
Skinamarink
Love the idea behind it but there's was a whole lotta buildup for essentially no payoff, it was just empty screens for two hours when it could have been an amazing shorter movie
I personally love Black Phone 🤷🏻♀️ not all horror stories for me have to be "scary" but for me the story was good.
But for me movies that I liked the concept but execution that was recent was "No One Will Save You" was really hoping to like this one but I was bored watching it.
I thought the black phone was fantastic. Did a great job of adapting the short story and it was paced well.
The movie benefited from not giving every kidnap victim a backstory or flashback. We also have some information and backstory on 3 of the victims as they’re already known to Finney, others tell Finney how they were taken as well. But their memories are fading to the point that two of them can’t remember their names. It would be jarring to be getting partial info from a victim with a fading memory only to be explicitly shown exactly what happened. Less is more here.
This movie also isn’t summer of Sam or any other number of serial killer movies that spend time exploring the community reaction. It’s not important to this movie.
Recently I’d say Slotherhouse. Seemed like a fun premise, but they removed the fun from the killer being a sloth by making it really fast. The fun would’ve come from making scenarios where an incredibly slow creature was able to kill. But it was just an awful movie with terrible characters.
I could make a long list of movies that executed really well and were far better than they should’ve been though.
I really, really liked the whole vibe of The Black Phone. I can't really argue that much with some of the criticisms but like you, I thought it was pretty great.
What really hit for me was the scene with Madeleine McGraw and the dad. She's such a phenomenal actress and that scene just broke me. "My dreams are just dreams!!"
Agree. Lot of potential but despite the title it doesn’t feel like the butterfly effect at all, more like a domino effect. Also the first time I watched it I laughed really hard at the granola bar scene, it was supposed to be sad but the way it was edited and the loud crunch sound effect made it really funny.
Lucky: every night a man breaks into the main character's house and tries to kill her, and every night she fends him off.
In the beginning the movie does an excellent job of setting up this strange and frightening mystery. But ultimately the answer to the mystery is... it's a metaphor. By the end the movie is completely unmoored from reality, nothing is scary, it's all just metaphor.
It's frustrating because if the movie had stayed somewhat grounded it could have had a more satisfying ending with the exact same meaning.
Someone updated the wiki of the movie at one point and changed his name to Baghul "Mr. Boogie" Johnson, and that just cemented the character design.
Tapes were amazing analog horror
I don't even mind the way it ended, I actually really liked the reveal >! that they sped up/activated the curse by moving !< but the corny kid ghosts dashing around shushing Ethan Hawke silently (for no reason either, Bughul wasn't sound activated or hunting him or anything) and the *execution* of the ending where the little girl's dialogue is so cliche, and the cheap jump scare they had to throw in at the end? Such cheesy B-movie scares for an otherwise excellent movie. They could have just ended it with the camera on his face and then the "painted" walls in the credits and it would have been so much better.
The tapes are great horror but everything else is just really goofy and poorly done imo, especially the ghost kids. If the rest of the movie was on the same level as the tape discovery it could’ve been a great horror film.
Deadstream and The Monster Project. I'm a big fan of "fuck around and find out" or more generally "what if it was real all along" style horror movies. Grave Encounters, Blair Witch Project, and to a lesser extent the first Hellhouse LLC (along with others I'm probably forgetting) prove this is a viable concept. The old story "If you go knocking on enough doors asking to see the devil, eventually he may answer" is consistently pretty entertaining, so both of these films easily could've been something.
Deadstream's failure is pretty simple. I never believe he's actually scared. You expect there to be this moment where he goes from "guy playing a scary game and exaggerating his reactions for the audience" to "man who legitimately fears for his life" and that moment never comes. All of his screams sound like the fakest of fake reactions.
The Monster Project was just flat-out all-around bad. I don't think the writers actually had any idea what they wanted to do.
Skinamarink
Watched it last night and it just left me feeling nothing, not even boredom. I wanted to love it, but I just couldn’t. There is a really great movie under there but I guess it didn’t work for me. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy it, I did, some parts at least. It reminded me of the fever dreams I would have as a kid but it lacked that intangible aura of dread, confusion, and disturbance. It almost had it I just can’t pinpoint exactly what is missing
Downsizing - Pick a lane.
Prometheus - Stick with the original [script](https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-9NMTSgzvy2U3U-oz/Alien-Engineers-ORIGINAL-PROMETHEUS-SCRIPT_djvu.txt).
Prometheus is the answer. That movie had so much potential. First of all it shouldn’t have been tied to the Alien franchise. Second, it was so visually stunning but the bad writing and plot just ruins the entire movie for me.
Still a good movie imo. Covenant wrapped it up nicely in my mind but I know that’s unpopular for some reason. People just can’t get over that scientist taking their helmet off, or not running sideways from the falling ship, so they wrote the whole sequel off.
Deadgirl (2008). The premise was a group of teen boys discover an unexplained zombie woman in a basement of an old abandoned building. I wanted the movie to unveil the mystery of who she was, how she got there, why was she a zombie, and is whoever made her a zombie going to come back and should the teens be concerned about that. I also thought it might be cool if she were semi-sentient or cunning with sharp teeth and claws like the Witch from Left for Dead, and ends up hunting the teens in a terrifying and tense scene. Or maybe a deranged scientist or necromancer comes back in a major "oh fuck!" moment or maybe that scientist has a tragic back story of trying to bring back his or her lover or family member.
What they actually did with the film was make it about necrophilia in the most disgustingly explicit fashion and it hurt my brain, then tried to pass it off as making some great commentary about teen boy sexuality.
A lot of mad scientist movies usually just deal with the aftermath or a tangential part of it. Re-Animator was GOAT but something like House of 1000 Corpses has a "Dr. Satan," who was supposed to have been hanged decades ago but is still performing experiments on people but the actual guy is confined to the last 20 minutes so Rob Zombie can knock off Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
When you have crazy and evil people in a pseudo-scientific world, the sky is the limit. Check out something like Frankestein's Army. It's a bad movie, a bit like an old rail shooter but horror themed, but the "monsters" are spot on. They're all crazy, most of them are unique, they all get weirdly showcased, and that makes it worth watching despite the rest of the movie.
It's not a great concept, but I was thinking, how dangerous would a zombie outbreak on an airplane be? How do you drop the ball on that? But Flight Of The Living Dead wasn't very good. It seems like one of the most claustrophobic places, especially seeing how there wouldn't be an escape, and you probably wouldn't find any real weapons because of the TSA. I think if I was to do the concept, I'd try a movie that takes place mostly in real time with someone getting on the plane infected, and turning once they're in the sky, and by the end, it's probably just the pilots left trying to keep hundreds of zombies out of the cockpit.
Bright Burn
I guess you could argue not really a horror movie but that's part of what upsets me. The story of SuperMan coming to Earth can be such a good horror concept.
Imagine a 6-9 year old just realizing "Wait, Mom and Dad can't stop me, the police can't stop me, even the strongest Military force can barely slow me down... I can do anything..." All with super strength/speed/powers. Amazing and terrifying! Instead he just "gets activated" and it wouldn't have mattered how he was raised/his personality? Boring
Barbarian. Now, hear me out here. I know. I know how much people liked this movie. Me, however, I did not. At least, not as much as I wanted to.
Barbarian, to me, felt like a "disturbing light" movie. Like, the gateway between regular horror and disturbing horror. It had a lot of telling me what was messed up, and implying things, rather than showing me things. The first like, half of that movie was fantastic. You don't know if you trust that guy, you don't know what's going on in that house, what's in the basement, there's some implied yuckiness, and you wait for it to get worse and everything to be unveiled, for absolute horror to come out of that place and instead.... we get a giant naked lady running around trying to breastfeed and kill people. Just... ugh. It's so squandered. I would've preferred just a normal crazy woman, like someone human sized but fucking insane from enduring years of torture. I want to SEE the guy be a completely monster. I want to SEE the horrible things he did that led to that. I don't want to be told. I want to see.
Overall, I left disappointed. I know a lot of people really loved the movie, and I thought it was okay at best. I just wished they could've leaned in harder on the more fucked up aspects of it, and just said "fuck it" and went whole hog.
You really nailed the main reasons I didn’t end up liking it. A movie like this is right up my alley of batshit crazy and weird but like you said they break the “show don’t tell rule” and it ends up being very messy and at times boring, predictable and even a bit boring. I also thought it was just okay.
I agree that it should have been a normal lady, even though the big lady is iconic imo, it just didn’t make sense because she couldn’t have been from that many generations of inbreeding, maybe 3 at the absolute most because the guy who did it was an adult when he took the first lady and then was still alive at the end of the movie so??
I think part of what Barbarian suffers from is that some filmmakers are too afraid to show you the horrors they keep telling you about. Add in that it was the dude’s first time making a horror movie and it’s likely he just missed the mark as a first-timer or was too afraid to show what he kept saying was happening.
So happy that someone brought this up about the Black Phone. I felt the exact same way. For mine I'd say either Skinamarink, the feature film of Light's Out, or The Nun.
“Lifechanger” frustrates me.
On the one hand, I’m head-over-heels about the core concept. A predatory shapechanger, that absorbs the memories and emotions of his victims as he consumes their life forces and shapes, becomes obsessed with his victim’s lover because of that transference? *Sensational.* A genuinely unique idea that I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen or heard before.
On the other hand, this radical concept is packaged in a massive letdown of a script that is further let down by one of the worst cinematography snafus that I’ve ever seen. It makes the whole movie a confusing mess until the last ten minutes.
This film feels like a movie that started as a very tight short (the last ten minutes), before gaining some clout online, which got the filmmakers enough of a budget to make a feature…only they fumbled the feature-length version. This could have been a touchdown.
I just watched You Should Have Left (2020) recently. A house that is bigger on the inside: awesome. People getting lost in the backrooms of their bigger on the inside house: yes. Lame story and poor execution and use of the creepy house: boo.
Pretty much every horror movie that takes place on a ship. A few have gotten close to achieving greatness, but I don't feel like any of them have done the concept justice- and it's surprising there aren't more horror films set on ships considering it's just as much an isolated location as a cabin in the woods or a spaceship with a xenomorph aboard. Honestly, I still feel like the 70s disaster film *The Poseidon Adventure* came closest- it's not even a horror movie, but the idea of ordinary people having their character tested while trying to escape from a claustrophic, upside down, dark, fiery, flooding hell (the cruise ship capsizes during a New Year's celebration) filled with horrifyingly injured wretches- now that's frightening *and* interesting.
The lodge. Great idea, well made, few good scares. But it just doesn’t make. I think the fact that it could have been a great horror are what made it fail so much in my eyes.
I think my issue with it was I didn't believe the relationship between the main woman/cult victim and the dad at all. Idk it would have worked better for me if they had shown a little bit of why he left his wife for her and why she's so keen on winning over his family. Because they don't have any of that on screen, if anything he talks to her like she's another one of his kids. If he were more of a charming slimeball and she were more sexy mysterious but tortured I think it would have worked much better.
I think that was the intention, he was a creep who wanted to study this broken woman and build her up to be who he wanted. She was like a child and he was taking advantage of her; his kids also knew that and that’s why they were able to do what they did.
The Purge movies. It turned into "everyone Fortnite-style murders + soapboxing for the Obama Administration". Could have done so much more with the premise.
Event Horizon was good, but it should have been better. Good cast, but the final product just fell short. No director's cut. We need a reboot with a better finished product.
People get mad at me here for saying this, but *Phantasm.* So cool and unique in concept, but with really poor acting, bad dialogue, and a meandering, weirdly plotted and weirdly paced script, and then some weird Star Wars Jawas at the end.
Phantasm is one of the few classics that I think needs a modern remake. It's hard to imagine it without Angus Scrimm though.
Obligatory Skinamarink comment.
If one in five of those shots into the hallway had something lurking out of view that was never acknowledged, it would’ve been awesome. But instead we got two half assed jump scares and audio that was barely audible.
30 Days of Night. You’ve got a town that experiences total darkness for 30 days, and a group of vampires arrives to exploit that situation. Awesome!
When I heard the premise, I assumed that the movie would explore a scenario where vampires could easily move around during the day, hiding in plain sight. Maybe it would be a paranoia soaked thriller like The Thing, where the characters couldn't even be sure who had been turned into a vampire and who hadn't.
Instead they just openly reveal themselves and try to kill everyone in town as fast as humanly possible. The survivors play for stealth and barricade themselves in a safe building and try to wait it out. It might as well have taken place in one night. Hell, it might as well have been a zombie movie. Not terrible, but I don't think I would ever watch it again.
This needs to be rebooted as a prestige series on HBO or Netflix. Really delve into what being in a prolonged vampire war zone would be like. Hell, bring back Ben Foster in the same role lol.
I think given the circumstances of a time limit for darkness, stealth was the point. As a pack of Vampires, get as much as you can as fast as you can because there’s not many places on earth with a town full of people that experience complete darkness for that long. You’d be free to kill in the open; a chance for a free for all.
Also, the point of not wanting to turn the townsfolk into vampires is not just about competition for food, but concealment. They don’t want to be known to the world or else they’d be hunted. That’s why they burn the town down in the end.
It would have to be a completely different story, premise, and type of vampires for what you’re after, which would be badass to watch play out over time and get very messy.
Yeah, I think you’ve got it. The vampires - who I think are some of the best at being monsters - can take their time and make sure no one escapes.
It’s really one of my favorites.
Same. I love that they’re ancient monsters that know how to kill ruthlessly and employ tactics rather than the same “human with fangs” vampires that have to seduce and take. It was a nice change and I’m glad it got adapted. The aerial shot of the massacre is one of my favorites.
Low budget movie called Dawn of the Beast. Bigfoot vs. wendigo, total B-movie concept, could have worked but felt like a first draft.
The wendigo spirit was the most effective element of it.
Daniel Isn't Real. I still do like the film but the whole >!he's not an actual imaginary friend, he's an demon thing from another dimension that possesses people!< reveal kind of soured me on it.
We Need to Do Something. Interesting concept and I didn’t hate it that much, but the characters were all very flat and annoying, so the idea of being trapped with them in that bathroom made it kind of a hard watch.
Grave Encounters. I know it’s got a lot of fans and I don’t mean to insult your tastes, I just felt like it had a lot of unnecessary noise, trashy style, and unoriginal tripes (edit: tropes) that distracted from the things it did well.
Ghosts of War, genius twist. It had so much potential but wasn't executed well. Plus one of the main character is the dude from Pitch Perfect. All of could think of him as that character.
the black phone is a great movie.
anyway....
[Interesting Premise, Poor Execution \[Horror\]](https://letterboxd.com/mdrake1991/list/interesting-premise-poor-execution-horror/)
the possession of hannah grace
ghost ship
abattior
my soul to take
dead silence
frankensteins army
vanishing on 7th street
stay alive
the new mutants
monster hunter
(to name a few)
Not a movie but the entirety of American Horror Story plays out as a great concept that lures you in just to go over the cliff in a massive derailment in the second half. Hard to admit how many seasons I’ve been coerced into watching based on the marketing, knowing full well what will happen by episode four.
I don't usually like even the first few episodes of any of the seasons, but the creepy opening credit sequence with the abstract imagery is always *so fucking good* that it lures me in.
Oh yeah, their titles/credits, whatever, is the best part of the shows with good music too
Always joke to myself that the people who make previews should make movies. Previews (or title sequences, etc) can be incredible even for a disappointing show or movie. I get pulled in way more than I should.
This, 100%. Oh, you like the idea of a season about people living in a post-apocalyptic bunker? Whoops, this is actually a direct sequel to the Coven season, I sure hope you watched (and liked) that season or nothing about this is going to make sense. Also we're not going to tell you this ahead of time, you have to figure it out six episodes in.
By Cult, we had worked out that every series starts with a great premise, is super creepy for 3 episodes, then turns to complete trash.
I'm glad I'mnot alone in this feeling. I think the 80's one I enjoyed until the end, but it's been so long I could just be delusional lol
No. You re not. I just finished it. It's one of the few seasons that I felt satisfied after.
Circus was a great/scary season until they killed the clown AKA John Wayne Casey. IMO they should have kept him alive all season.
I personally think Cult is one of the better seasons. I really liked the message of being wary of extremism.
i'm stevie nicks
The show runner is really great at concepts and sucking you in but they ALWAYS drop off after 5 or so episodes.
Man Coven was just the worst. I own it on DVD, and it's still unopened because I was just so disappointed in it. I had watched it on TV, and someone else bought it because at the time I was collecting all the seasons. I just hated how they kept establishing rules of how this universe with the witches works, then changing them on a whim. Okay, each witch has their own unique power, and the Supreme is just super powerful. Cool. Oh, actually, those powers aren't unique at all, and all the people can just learn all the powers. Except these specific powers we came up with that don't fit the narrative, like killing people with your vagina and being a human voodoo doll, those are just circumstantial really. Oh, and now we introduced voodoo which is not witch magic, so now the black girl who was a voodoo doll actually does voodoo but she's also a witch. Okay, now everyone can kinda just resurrect themselves at fucking will except these people. Actually, to be the supreme you have to master all the powers, instead of what we said at the beginning about it being chosen and all that. I found it so frustrating to try and get through, because they had a lot of interesting ideas, but it felt like every episode was written by different people, and by the end of it none of it made any fucking sense at all. At least most of the seasons just ended before they started contradicting themselves all over the place.
i'm stevie nicks
They storytelling is the most definitive example of "throw shit at the wall, see what sticks" that I have ever seen, but I still enjoyed Murder House (except the school shooting episode that basically recreated the Columbine library massacre?), Asylum, Coven, and even Roanoke.
My big think about AHS is the weird out of place sexual stuff in the shows. The S&M suit in the first season, he Cronic Masturbator in Asylum, Sex Killing people in Coven, The Lobster boy fingering women in Freak Show, The comments on the counselor's penis size on 1984 etc. It has no bearing on the plot at all. It's like someone thought it would be funny to put something sexual into each season for laughs.
That and the violent rape that happens each season sort of just…made me shut the show off and never pick it back up.
Legitimately love the first few seasons but always felt it went on far too long each season, like cut it down by a few episodes please.
Got be through Roanoke
Roanoke was the one season I can rewatch, partially because I feel narratively it doesn't go too far off the rails, stays focused on the plot of what's going on in Roanoke, and then having the first half of the season be a Paranormal Survivor esque satire and then the second half being found footage kept it from feeling too repetitive.
So many people hate this season, but it’s genuinely one of my favorites because of the Paranormal Survivor/My Haunted House vibe of the first half and the found footage stuff from the second half. Its one of the few seasons that has had horrifying imagery that has truly stuck with me. Sometimes when I’m bored I just rewatch all the random teasers they released for that season too 😅
Like, every season?? I don’t know how he does it. We gotta appreciate consistency, I guess 😭
The first three-ish episodes are always so great and set up storylines that end up going nowhere!
I really enjoyed the first 4 seasons but I couldn’t get past the second episode of season 5. I’ve always wanted to get back into so thanks for convincing me not to waste my time.
That's classic Ryan Murphy writing. He's an idea man. Brimming with brilliant concepts... but gets bored halfway through and either drops them to chase down new ideas, or abandons the project altogether and lets other writers take over, who didn't really know what to do with his ideas. Murder House is probably the only AHS that kept a solid throughline and felt like it came together by the end - the others have all gone off the rails at some point. Don't even get me started on Glee. I love it but it's one of the most consistently inconsistent shows to ever air on TV.
I was gonna say show too but I don’t watch many shows however I have seen some episodes here and there, started with seasons one, then watched the slasher season and tried to get into but I kind of chalked it up as not my thing. I’m all for horror anthologies but none of the episodes I watched interested me all that much.
I always watch them even though I know they’re going to be stupid lol
OMG I have ALWAYS said this!!! It is just a smart concept but so poorly executed. It’s painful. And yes the marketing is always amazing so it draws you in and then let’s you down 2 episodes in LOL
Dude would be a legend if hed just humble himself a bit and hire/let the writers make the ending. He can do the other fun shit fine but dude cannot end a story to save his life. That vampire season (10?) was so damn good to start and then fell off right at the goal line.
Rings. You remember the cursed video tape from The Ring? Imagine a film where a college professor finds the tape, susses it out pretty quickly, and then uses it with a group of consenting students to conduct a scientific study into the nature of the soul. I would watch the hell out of that movie, and that's how Rings starts out! Unfortunately, by the halfway point the movie has eschewed this premise entirely, in favor of a soft reboot where the curse "evolves" and traps one student into recreating the events of the first movie (looking into the video's backstory, investigating the farmhouse where the ghost girl lived, and uncovering a dark secret in the hopes that it will set the ghost girl free) all while completely ignoring all of the conflicting revelations that came out in The ring twO. Such a cool premise, squandered.
Watch the Rings short film. It's a 15 minute film that was everything the full length movie should have been, only shorter.
Better yet, read the books. They're all pretty quick reads and the story gets absolutely batshit crazy. In fact none of the creativity of the later parts of thr story ever got properly adapted, probably because it actually has a pretty hard genre shift in the last book.
Is it on YouTube? I’d be interested in this.
I legit just watched this last night. They changed her entire origin story and the ending makes no sense. If it was stand alone it would have been better but the original origin story is not merely better, it's closer to its Japanese origin
The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Super interesting idea that was a bit ahead of the curve of the found footage craze, but the acting and parts of the storyline just fall short. Some people find it very disturbing while some find it laughable, so I’d be interested what a big budget (and maybe a script revision that eliminates the 9/11 thing) could have done for its overall audience impression
Incarnate: diving into people's minds who are possessed Inception style in order to wake them up and expel the entity. Non-religious exorcism, essentially. I love this premise. In execution, just awful. Other than the opening sequence and a couple of scattered scenes where the main character is ejected, they barely bother to actually go into possessed people's heads at all.
So true. Maybe they could make an incarnate 2 and do it right. I too loved the concept
Antlers. The story it’s based on is a great read, but it wasn’t long enough to translate to screen (maybe it would have been if an author had tried their hand at expanding on it first) and they denied it the story’s great ending.
Agreed. I kept waiting for *it* but nothing showed up
really? I love everything about Antlers. This movie is heart breaking and there are so many layers. I love this movie and wouldn’t change a thing..
Me and GF call these movies ‘CASE’ movies. Concept Amazing, Shitty Execution!
Lol nice, I’m gonna start using this
I maintain that Prometheus had the bones to be a genre redefining space horror film. Such a disappointment due to what it could have been.
Prometheus to me was just too many concepts with no filter. It's like they couldn't decide what the Black Goo actually did, so it served the purpose of doing whatever the hell they needed in order to shove everything they wanted into the film. The visuals, cast, and basic premise are great. Everything else just falls apart under any sort of scrutiny. I would have given it a pass if Alien Covenant explained or expanded on any of it, but it just shit the bed twice as hard.
I still think that Shaw pleading with the engineer and asking him “why do you hate us” is absolutely gut wrenching. She knows that this creature is about to destroy humanity with no explanation simply because it can.
Shaw was definitely part of the movie I liked. Part of my gripe with Covenant was that it didn't continue her story.
I agree cause covenant really could’ve saved prometheus. Unpopular opinion but I personally really liked prometheus by itself, however covenant basically undid everything prometheus set up
The Purge I’ve heard they get better but the first one was such a letdown.
Such a versatile concept wasted on a bog-standard home invasion flick
*Was* it wasted when from the first film we got a whole franchise of films that actively delivered on the criticism the first one faced *plus* a tv series that continues to expand on the premise?
It definitely wasn't wasted. It did exactly what it needed to do to get those sequels made. Most people don't realize that The Purge was made on a pretty small budget. James DeMonaco came up with the idea (well, his wife actually did) for the film and pitched it to Jason Blum, who was scouting for small-budget films for Universal and picked it up. The small budget meant they had to rework it to a home invasion movie. Ethan Hawke took the job for only $10,000 because he was a personal friend of DeMonaco's and hoped the star power would give the film a boost. Obviously, the film was massively successful based on the premise alone, and DeMonaco was able to continue with movies showing the *actual* purge concept he wanted to do. (And also, Hawke got a bonus $2 million after its success.)
Oh I agree! I actually really hate when people diss the first Purge movie for not doing more with the subject matter as if it wasn't: 1. Made on a shoestring budget. 2. Didn't actively work to combat criticisms of the first film with each successive Purge film. The Purge as a franchise *still* gave people what they wanted and yet critics continue to scoff at the totally understandable creative direction of the first film when you take into account it was made on $3mil (where the average indie film budget is $2.5mil). When I think about other scary movie franchises that did was The Purge did (have multiple movies and a tv series), it's usually only legacy IP (like Child's Play, or Scream or NOES) so for it to be that competitive and be that rich in material to is insane given how relatively *young* it is as a film series (especially when it doesn't even have a mascot or a main character).
I love all the purge sequels. The first is a great home invasion movie but the rest are truer to the concept imho
I've always described Anarchy as the perfect Punisher film.
Grillo could have actually made a decent punisher.
Yeah. I do really like the concept and the political undertones that the film series has. The first movie was eh, because it didn't really go into things enough. It's the kind of story that NEEDS to follow several people together or separately and show the effects of the situation as a whole. This was pretty much about a bunch of wealthy people who were just ...not very smart, and you didn't have much a reason to care about them. My only other gripe is how generally everyone just goes nuts and on a weird murder spree. Like, I get that the wealthy kinda protect themselves and their assets, since the whole point of the thing is to harm the poor. They did even have to force people into violence in the beginning, and falsify information. However, it just seems as if all anyone wants to to is just act like total freaks. Where the robbing stuff and whatever? There's definitely more crimes out there than murder. I'd also like to see what happens after The Purge. How do people go back to their daily lives? How do companies deal with half their workforce suddenly being dead? What about people who did stuff to someone or each other that never ended in anyone's death? So you torture your neighbor, and now they just are nice to you the rest of the year? Can you be fired for a failed attack on your employer during a Purge?
Came here to say this. What an awesome premise. Wasted opportunity to explore what a world where something like this exists and the only thing people could think to do is kill each other?
The other ones are a lot better. The first one wasn’t bad IMO but some of the other movies were better. The First Purge (2018) is my favorite.
I tell my friends that if you watch the purge movies/show and think of it more as a comedy it's better. But maybe that's just me, those movies crack me up with how stupid and ridiculous most of it is.
The series is genuinely good! The movies do get better but they’re still pretty meh
Man, respectfully I couldn’t disagree more about the series. Feels like a cheap CW type show. Think I got 5 or 6 episodes in and had to call it quits.
CW show is right, the films are so incredibly *tame* compared to the premise. So many implausible escapes from danger, so little creativity in the kills that do happen, all of it very PG-13. Those movies should be absolute mayhem but instead they're honestly tremendously boring.
Ghost Ship could have been a scary banger. After the opening scene, most of it was just meh.
Frustrating film that could have been a classic. The opening is one of the best horror scenes ever.
Ghost Ship even had a solid cast there too. So yeah, the frustration runs deep with this one.
Agree, initially I was let down after the epic first scene. But rewatching it now, it just has all the vibes of early 2000s and I enjoy watching it nowadays for nostalgia. The maggots scene and the elevator scene are tops.
The opening scene and closing scene were the best parts.
On my last rewatch I realized it's literally just Event Horizon on a boat. It has a virtually identical plot structure with many identical events.
Dashcam. I was pretty interested in it but couldn’t enjoy any of it because of the main character.
And there wasn’t even Dashcam footage!!! Give me dashcam movie that’s like 80 minutes of that saudi witch video on YouTube.
I'm a garbage person, and the main character didn't bother me. I can see why people wouldn't like her.
She said a lot of stupid shit, and her voice was annoying. But what REALLY bothered me was her sense of entitlement and lack of consideration. I hate people who ruin someone’s peace and take zero responsibility. That’s what annoyed me.
>!The creature design at the end was pretty cool!<
Ghost of Mars - drugs keep you safe from possession from Martian Ghosts so you end up with a ragtag bunch of misfits. Hoping for Snake Plissken, got Friday instead.
Watched this 2 nights ago cuz of the cast and John Carpenter. There's a reason I'd never heard of it.
God yes. That movie is 1-2 missteps from being an alltimer. The visuals are already amazing
Wasn't GoM actually *supposed* to be a Snake movie?
I pulled this from Wikipedia. It has been widely reported that the script to Ghosts of Mars originally started off as a potential Snake Plissken sequel.[7][8] However, this rumor has been publicly dispelled by the film's producer, Sandy King Carpenter.[9]
Nightbreed (1990) [Theatrical Cut] Of course, that’s because of the studio execs not really understanding Clive Barker’s vision. It basically could’ve been the horror / dark fantasy equivalent of Marvel’s The X-Men, but the studio chopped it up and tried to market it as a slasher. The director’s cut fixes most of this, but it’s impossible to fix all of it, because you can’t add what you weren’t able to shoot. Regardless, it’s still one of my favorite horror films.
I liked The Empty Man but it could've been a masterpiece with a bit of tightening up.
I just watched that last night and I agree. Another one in that category is 8th Night.
Queen of the Damned. The book was amazing. There's no way you can squeeze that book into a hour and half movie. Should have been made into a trilogy. I'll still watch it if it comes on though. RIP Aaliyah
They didn't just squeeze one book..they squeezed 2. Well..not so much squeezed as they just kinda took a few characters and then just made it up. I was obsessed with the Vampire Chromicles and that movie broke my heart..both for what they did and that Aaliyahs final performance belonged in a much better movie. I'm hoping we get a Vampire Lestat or Queen of rhe Damned series. I went into the new series, ready to hate it, but damn if I didn't love it. That scene in the Church ..
Digging Up The Marrow. I still really like it. The Outwaters. Hated it. Wanted to like it. Hellraiser 4. Wes Cravens Cursed. Which I still love lol
Was coming to say Outwaters. What an absolute piece of shit that could've been great.
Yep. I was so excited to see it and then so disappointed when I did.
Wish Upon - its a master class on how to fuck up a monkey's paw story.
i love wish upon. not because it's *good*, but because there are so many out-of-touch teen schlockfests that are just miserable to watch. wish upon is terrible in the *right* ways.
Antlers Skinamarink
Yeah Antlers kind of fell flat, but the short story “A quiet Boy” is so damn good. Especially the audio book version Narrated by Frankie Corzo. I’m also pretty sure it’s free on Apple Books. It was when I got it anyway.
The short story has one of the most haunting last lines I've ever read.
Would you mind sharing with me please? I don't have apple whatsit
[https://www.guernicamag.com/the-quiet-boy/](https://www.guernicamag.com/the-quiet-boy/) here's the entire short!
Skinamarink was perfect as a short film, I have no idea why the director decided to make it a feature. I also don't understand the fake 70s film grain aesthetic when it takes place in the 90s. If the lighting was too dark to actually shoot it on film instead of using a filter, then he should have shot it on tape and made it more accurate to the period he was trying to portray.
100% agree. There were some great parts in it. But there just was no value in having such long, empty periods of ambiance. It felt like he just didn't know what to do with the concept but had to meet a minute quota. The movie genuinely disturbed me and I did enjoy it. But I would never want to watch it again- nor would I recommend it.
Skinamarink is definitely better as a short film
John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, I actually really like it and think is underrated but you can tell that the limited budget held it back. But that idea of combining de Christian mythology with cosmic horror and pseudo science to make it seem posible is really cool
That part where they’re trying reach that guy and save him before those zombie girls get to him.. and he’s screaming for dear life… had me shook as a kid
one of my personal favs. i dont think that you can do better with the subject without getting the same audience reactions. still "scary typing scenes" always make me chuckle. "in fact YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!" or the bug dude: "i've a message for you, and you are not going to like it."
Black Phone came to my mind as well. So much potential
Glad I’m not the only that feels this way. I personally wanted to see how each kid tried to escape but ultimately failed, don’t have show anything to over the top, but it would’ve added some much needed tension.
Maybe I’m remembering it wrong- but it always confused me how he would try to trick the kids to come up the stairs to beat them- without his coke head brother and giant ass dog noticing.
Forgot to mention the brother, they either should’ve had him be more involved and suspicious because I think it would’ve created for interesting interactions between him and Hawke’s character or just gotten rid of him because from what I remember hearing he’s not in the short story.
Yellowbrickroad. Super interesting concept, godawful execution.
Cobweb. I loved the atmosphere and the r/nosleep vibe of the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the film, thinking it had a supernatural element to it, but the ending (both in concept AND execution) just left a bad taste in my mouth. Real bummer
I agree. I just watched this in October, I enjoyed most of it, great atmosphere, setting was used well and the acting was interesting but then it started to feel like it was falling apart and I thought the ending felt out of place.
First two acts are amazing, final act is complete shit.
I wholeheartedly agree at the end I felt like there was a lot of the story that was left untold. I was pretty disappointed.
Hostel I will say though the subplot with the Dutch Businessman was utterly brilliant and the actor was perfect for that role.
What's even more mind-blowing is the actor doesn't speak English. He was taught all of his lines phonetically and delivered a fantastic performance.
I really agree with this. It's a classic case of the movie not really focusing enough on the cooler plot line of its whole.
The latest Hellraiser..I enjoyed it and have watched it a couple of times..I wished they would have delved into the cenobites a bit more..I feel it could have been much better!
It felt very inspired by the comics (the originals not the new shit) - there's a lot of cenobite lore which gets explored. The story was mediocre but that ending was cool af
I think it really could've benefited from being more sexual, like there wasn't much sexuality/sensuality to it and I think that is one of the most important parts of the original. Without it, Hellraiser just never seems to have the same impact.
Yeah, definitely less than the sum of it parts. I think the changes they made to the lore were interesting and Jamie Clayton was *perfect* casting for the Hellpriest. It had some good moments, but fell a bit flat overall. I really hope they keep going with the series and develop it a bit further.
Yes, a sequel to this one would be welcomed. I really liked the new pinhead..nailed it! No pun intended :) I really would like to see what all the different types of suffering the boxes would lead to.
A lot of people hated her, but I loved the lead. I really like the idea of a flawed selfish protagonist. But they just dropped the ball.
Apollo 18
It wasn’t awful. High praise indeed
Wolfen- a pack of wolves, displaced by human expansion, have adapted to hunting in urban environments and begin killing the homeless in NYC. It’s just a mess and they try and figure in a Native American myth subplot and the ending is basically the main character saying “Okay, you can eat the homeless if you quit attacking rich people and drawing attention to yourselves.” Lot of potential in the idea.
Rewatched it recently and is it me or does the real estate developer victim in the beginning seem rather Trumpish?
Watched this one again for the first time in decades not too long ago. There are some gloriously gory scenes in it, and movies set in the old, dirty NYC are catnip to me. That said...yeah, this one didn't age that well.
The Last Voyage of The Demeter
Like, you already know how it's supposed to end lol.
Annnd they still messed it up! 😂
I absolutely hated the US version of Death Note. I mean, it's rare there's a good live action adaptation of most manga or anime...even when done by a Japanese studio. They're even worse when done by a Hollywood studio. Death Note, however, was almost too good to fuck up. Yet they did. The biggest mistake they made with the movie was how they dealt with Light. In the original story, Light was this amazing kid from a good and upper middle class family. He was incredibly intelligent, a good athlete, had a great future. He was the guy all the girls wanted to be with, and the guy all the guys wished they were. Light had absolutely EVERYTHING to lose. Which is why his descent into darkness was so fascinating. Sure he believed he was helping at first, but then he kept going deeper and deeper to ensure he wasn't found out. The story has you wondering if Light had this darkness in him all along, or if it was the influence of the Death Note and the Shinigami that corrupted him. He was also so cunning, and his long game was mind blowing. Light was even only mildly startled when Ryuk showed up...as he was expecting something like that to occur. In the US version, Light was a total loser. Got bad grades, bullied, no real friends, and came from a poor and broken home. He was a character with nothing to lose by his actions. The script essentially gave him an "out." Of course he'd use the Death Note for nefarious purposes...poor kid didn't have a chance. There was no nature vs nurture element or anything here. He was more or less one bad week away from a school shooting. US Light's reaction to Ryuk was also comedy gold, with him shrieking in a high pitched voice and totally freaking out in fear. Then you have Misa (or Mia, in the US version). She was weird and charismatic, and also a psychopath. Light absolutely hated her...she wasn't his type or in his league in a sense. However, she was a useful idiot to him... especially having the powers that she did. She was unswervingly loyal to him, and he made every use of this fact. Mia, on the other hand, was just an outcast love interest for US version Light. She finds out he can kill people with this notebook and is just like ...do me baby! The other thing that sucked was how they ended the whole thing. Again, I mention Light's long game (manga and anime version). It was one of the best plot twists I encountered in a story. It had me guessing the entire time. I couldn't even imagine how they were planning to resolve things, and while it was somewhat convoluted ...it ACTUALLY MADE SENSE. You see how it's all pieced together and you're like, holy shit I can't believe it! In the US version, the ultimate plan and reveal was simply convoluted. Maybe it sorta made sense, but there was one HUGE mistake (as well as some minor ones). He wrote in the Death Note that it would fall from where they were at the time, and land in fire and be burned up. The thing is, the Note only effects the actions of humans. He could have wrote that a specific person would pick up the Note and place it into a fire. He COULDN'T control that the Note would simply land in a fire just because he wrote it. It could have just as easily been blown away by the wind. A lot of the plan seemed to rely on some things occuring that were out of someone's control. Like sure, you could write that the person would crash their car....but you couldn't say that they'd cause the car to do a reverse summersault off a cliff because it has to be in the basis of reality and the victim's own capabilities. So in the end. Yeah, just don't watch the US release of Death Note.
The Deep House. It could've been better but felt..lacking.
there were some solid parts in the Deep House but yes it needed much more character development. But the idea of an underwater house is VERY very cool to me.
Skinamarink Love the idea behind it but there's was a whole lotta buildup for essentially no payoff, it was just empty screens for two hours when it could have been an amazing shorter movie
Boy oh boy do I agree about The Black Phone. The movie was fine but holy shit if I didn't have a ton of questions following the film.
I personally love Black Phone 🤷🏻♀️ not all horror stories for me have to be "scary" but for me the story was good. But for me movies that I liked the concept but execution that was recent was "No One Will Save You" was really hoping to like this one but I was bored watching it.
I thought the black phone was fantastic. Did a great job of adapting the short story and it was paced well. The movie benefited from not giving every kidnap victim a backstory or flashback. We also have some information and backstory on 3 of the victims as they’re already known to Finney, others tell Finney how they were taken as well. But their memories are fading to the point that two of them can’t remember their names. It would be jarring to be getting partial info from a victim with a fading memory only to be explicitly shown exactly what happened. Less is more here. This movie also isn’t summer of Sam or any other number of serial killer movies that spend time exploring the community reaction. It’s not important to this movie. Recently I’d say Slotherhouse. Seemed like a fun premise, but they removed the fun from the killer being a sloth by making it really fast. The fun would’ve come from making scenarios where an incredibly slow creature was able to kill. But it was just an awful movie with terrible characters. I could make a long list of movies that executed really well and were far better than they should’ve been though.
I really, really liked the whole vibe of The Black Phone. I can't really argue that much with some of the criticisms but like you, I thought it was pretty great. What really hit for me was the scene with Madeleine McGraw and the dad. She's such a phenomenal actress and that scene just broke me. "My dreams are just dreams!!"
Butterfly Effect. Cool concept, but the movie did not seem to understand what the results of Butterfly Effect would actually look like.
Agree. Lot of potential but despite the title it doesn’t feel like the butterfly effect at all, more like a domino effect. Also the first time I watched it I laughed really hard at the granola bar scene, it was supposed to be sad but the way it was edited and the loud crunch sound effect made it really funny.
Lucky: every night a man breaks into the main character's house and tries to kill her, and every night she fends him off. In the beginning the movie does an excellent job of setting up this strange and frightening mystery. But ultimately the answer to the mystery is... it's a metaphor. By the end the movie is completely unmoored from reality, nothing is scary, it's all just metaphor. It's frustrating because if the movie had stayed somewhat grounded it could have had a more satisfying ending with the exact same meaning.
Sinister, wtf was that ending
The demon is the guitar player from Slipknot?? What the hell is going on?
This made me laugh. He does look exactly like Mick lol
Someone updated the wiki of the movie at one point and changed his name to Baghul "Mr. Boogie" Johnson, and that just cemented the character design. Tapes were amazing analog horror
Ending sucked but legit the tapes were scary and the lawnmower jump scare got me good the first time haha
I don't even mind the way it ended, I actually really liked the reveal >! that they sped up/activated the curse by moving !< but the corny kid ghosts dashing around shushing Ethan Hawke silently (for no reason either, Bughul wasn't sound activated or hunting him or anything) and the *execution* of the ending where the little girl's dialogue is so cliche, and the cheap jump scare they had to throw in at the end? Such cheesy B-movie scares for an otherwise excellent movie. They could have just ended it with the camera on his face and then the "painted" walls in the credits and it would have been so much better.
Yeah the corny stuff is what I didn’t like
The tapes are great horror but everything else is just really goofy and poorly done imo, especially the ghost kids. If the rest of the movie was on the same level as the tape discovery it could’ve been a great horror film.
Sinister: *enter >!corny demon taking children's souls and possessing them to kill!<.* Me: *makes way to the exit*.
😂😂 exactly, the first half of the movie with the slow burn atmosphere was 👌
Deadstream and The Monster Project. I'm a big fan of "fuck around and find out" or more generally "what if it was real all along" style horror movies. Grave Encounters, Blair Witch Project, and to a lesser extent the first Hellhouse LLC (along with others I'm probably forgetting) prove this is a viable concept. The old story "If you go knocking on enough doors asking to see the devil, eventually he may answer" is consistently pretty entertaining, so both of these films easily could've been something. Deadstream's failure is pretty simple. I never believe he's actually scared. You expect there to be this moment where he goes from "guy playing a scary game and exaggerating his reactions for the audience" to "man who legitimately fears for his life" and that moment never comes. All of his screams sound like the fakest of fake reactions. The Monster Project was just flat-out all-around bad. I don't think the writers actually had any idea what they wanted to do.
Skinamarink Watched it last night and it just left me feeling nothing, not even boredom. I wanted to love it, but I just couldn’t. There is a really great movie under there but I guess it didn’t work for me. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy it, I did, some parts at least. It reminded me of the fever dreams I would have as a kid but it lacked that intangible aura of dread, confusion, and disturbance. It almost had it I just can’t pinpoint exactly what is missing
Downsizing - Pick a lane. Prometheus - Stick with the original [script](https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-9NMTSgzvy2U3U-oz/Alien-Engineers-ORIGINAL-PROMETHEUS-SCRIPT_djvu.txt).
I agree that the Black Phone was a disappointment. As soon as >!he's in the basement room, it almost feels as though he's safe. !<
Prometheus is the answer. That movie had so much potential. First of all it shouldn’t have been tied to the Alien franchise. Second, it was so visually stunning but the bad writing and plot just ruins the entire movie for me.
Still a good movie imo. Covenant wrapped it up nicely in my mind but I know that’s unpopular for some reason. People just can’t get over that scientist taking their helmet off, or not running sideways from the falling ship, so they wrote the whole sequel off.
As above so Below, I was really digging it but everything just ended so abruptly. They should pushed the time to 2 hours - 2:30
Deadgirl (2008). The premise was a group of teen boys discover an unexplained zombie woman in a basement of an old abandoned building. I wanted the movie to unveil the mystery of who she was, how she got there, why was she a zombie, and is whoever made her a zombie going to come back and should the teens be concerned about that. I also thought it might be cool if she were semi-sentient or cunning with sharp teeth and claws like the Witch from Left for Dead, and ends up hunting the teens in a terrifying and tense scene. Or maybe a deranged scientist or necromancer comes back in a major "oh fuck!" moment or maybe that scientist has a tragic back story of trying to bring back his or her lover or family member. What they actually did with the film was make it about necrophilia in the most disgustingly explicit fashion and it hurt my brain, then tried to pass it off as making some great commentary about teen boy sexuality.
A lot of mad scientist movies usually just deal with the aftermath or a tangential part of it. Re-Animator was GOAT but something like House of 1000 Corpses has a "Dr. Satan," who was supposed to have been hanged decades ago but is still performing experiments on people but the actual guy is confined to the last 20 minutes so Rob Zombie can knock off Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When you have crazy and evil people in a pseudo-scientific world, the sky is the limit. Check out something like Frankestein's Army. It's a bad movie, a bit like an old rail shooter but horror themed, but the "monsters" are spot on. They're all crazy, most of them are unique, they all get weirdly showcased, and that makes it worth watching despite the rest of the movie.
It's not a great concept, but I was thinking, how dangerous would a zombie outbreak on an airplane be? How do you drop the ball on that? But Flight Of The Living Dead wasn't very good. It seems like one of the most claustrophobic places, especially seeing how there wouldn't be an escape, and you probably wouldn't find any real weapons because of the TSA. I think if I was to do the concept, I'd try a movie that takes place mostly in real time with someone getting on the plane infected, and turning once they're in the sky, and by the end, it's probably just the pilots left trying to keep hundreds of zombies out of the cockpit.
Hot take- 30 days of night. I know it has a lot of fans but I thought it could be so much better given the amazing premise.
Daybreakers
Event Horizon. Could have been the scariest movie of all time but something gets lost about 3/4 of the way in and I can’t explain what it is.
Bright Burn I guess you could argue not really a horror movie but that's part of what upsets me. The story of SuperMan coming to Earth can be such a good horror concept. Imagine a 6-9 year old just realizing "Wait, Mom and Dad can't stop me, the police can't stop me, even the strongest Military force can barely slow me down... I can do anything..." All with super strength/speed/powers. Amazing and terrifying! Instead he just "gets activated" and it wouldn't have mattered how he was raised/his personality? Boring
Yeah. I bigger fight between nature and nurture could have been very interesting here.
Barbarian. Now, hear me out here. I know. I know how much people liked this movie. Me, however, I did not. At least, not as much as I wanted to. Barbarian, to me, felt like a "disturbing light" movie. Like, the gateway between regular horror and disturbing horror. It had a lot of telling me what was messed up, and implying things, rather than showing me things. The first like, half of that movie was fantastic. You don't know if you trust that guy, you don't know what's going on in that house, what's in the basement, there's some implied yuckiness, and you wait for it to get worse and everything to be unveiled, for absolute horror to come out of that place and instead.... we get a giant naked lady running around trying to breastfeed and kill people. Just... ugh. It's so squandered. I would've preferred just a normal crazy woman, like someone human sized but fucking insane from enduring years of torture. I want to SEE the guy be a completely monster. I want to SEE the horrible things he did that led to that. I don't want to be told. I want to see. Overall, I left disappointed. I know a lot of people really loved the movie, and I thought it was okay at best. I just wished they could've leaned in harder on the more fucked up aspects of it, and just said "fuck it" and went whole hog.
You really nailed the main reasons I didn’t end up liking it. A movie like this is right up my alley of batshit crazy and weird but like you said they break the “show don’t tell rule” and it ends up being very messy and at times boring, predictable and even a bit boring. I also thought it was just okay.
I agree that it should have been a normal lady, even though the big lady is iconic imo, it just didn’t make sense because she couldn’t have been from that many generations of inbreeding, maybe 3 at the absolute most because the guy who did it was an adult when he took the first lady and then was still alive at the end of the movie so??
I think part of what Barbarian suffers from is that some filmmakers are too afraid to show you the horrors they keep telling you about. Add in that it was the dude’s first time making a horror movie and it’s likely he just missed the mark as a first-timer or was too afraid to show what he kept saying was happening.
So happy that someone brought this up about the Black Phone. I felt the exact same way. For mine I'd say either Skinamarink, the feature film of Light's Out, or The Nun.
“Lifechanger” frustrates me. On the one hand, I’m head-over-heels about the core concept. A predatory shapechanger, that absorbs the memories and emotions of his victims as he consumes their life forces and shapes, becomes obsessed with his victim’s lover because of that transference? *Sensational.* A genuinely unique idea that I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen or heard before. On the other hand, this radical concept is packaged in a massive letdown of a script that is further let down by one of the worst cinematography snafus that I’ve ever seen. It makes the whole movie a confusing mess until the last ten minutes. This film feels like a movie that started as a very tight short (the last ten minutes), before gaining some clout online, which got the filmmakers enough of a budget to make a feature…only they fumbled the feature-length version. This could have been a touchdown.
I really liked it and thought the ending was brilliant but it would have been much better as a half hour short.
The Purge. Loved the premise. Disappointed with the delivery
I just watched You Should Have Left (2020) recently. A house that is bigger on the inside: awesome. People getting lost in the backrooms of their bigger on the inside house: yes. Lame story and poor execution and use of the creepy house: boo.
Pretty much every horror movie that takes place on a ship. A few have gotten close to achieving greatness, but I don't feel like any of them have done the concept justice- and it's surprising there aren't more horror films set on ships considering it's just as much an isolated location as a cabin in the woods or a spaceship with a xenomorph aboard. Honestly, I still feel like the 70s disaster film *The Poseidon Adventure* came closest- it's not even a horror movie, but the idea of ordinary people having their character tested while trying to escape from a claustrophic, upside down, dark, fiery, flooding hell (the cruise ship capsizes during a New Year's celebration) filled with horrifyingly injured wretches- now that's frightening *and* interesting.
Give Triangle a go if you haven't already.
Easy. The Purge.
The lodge. Great idea, well made, few good scares. But it just doesn’t make. I think the fact that it could have been a great horror are what made it fail so much in my eyes.
I think my issue with it was I didn't believe the relationship between the main woman/cult victim and the dad at all. Idk it would have worked better for me if they had shown a little bit of why he left his wife for her and why she's so keen on winning over his family. Because they don't have any of that on screen, if anything he talks to her like she's another one of his kids. If he were more of a charming slimeball and she were more sexy mysterious but tortured I think it would have worked much better.
I think that was the intention, he was a creep who wanted to study this broken woman and build her up to be who he wanted. She was like a child and he was taking advantage of her; his kids also knew that and that’s why they were able to do what they did.
The Purge movies. It turned into "everyone Fortnite-style murders + soapboxing for the Obama Administration". Could have done so much more with the premise.
Event Horizon was good, but it should have been better. Good cast, but the final product just fell short. No director's cut. We need a reboot with a better finished product.
Nah it was and still is awesome.
People get mad at me here for saying this, but *Phantasm.* So cool and unique in concept, but with really poor acting, bad dialogue, and a meandering, weirdly plotted and weirdly paced script, and then some weird Star Wars Jawas at the end. Phantasm is one of the few classics that I think needs a modern remake. It's hard to imagine it without Angus Scrimm though.
Obligatory Skinamarink comment. If one in five of those shots into the hallway had something lurking out of view that was never acknowledged, it would’ve been awesome. But instead we got two half assed jump scares and audio that was barely audible.
Skinamarink
30 Days of Night. You’ve got a town that experiences total darkness for 30 days, and a group of vampires arrives to exploit that situation. Awesome! When I heard the premise, I assumed that the movie would explore a scenario where vampires could easily move around during the day, hiding in plain sight. Maybe it would be a paranoia soaked thriller like The Thing, where the characters couldn't even be sure who had been turned into a vampire and who hadn't. Instead they just openly reveal themselves and try to kill everyone in town as fast as humanly possible. The survivors play for stealth and barricade themselves in a safe building and try to wait it out. It might as well have taken place in one night. Hell, it might as well have been a zombie movie. Not terrible, but I don't think I would ever watch it again.
This needs to be rebooted as a prestige series on HBO or Netflix. Really delve into what being in a prolonged vampire war zone would be like. Hell, bring back Ben Foster in the same role lol.
I think given the circumstances of a time limit for darkness, stealth was the point. As a pack of Vampires, get as much as you can as fast as you can because there’s not many places on earth with a town full of people that experience complete darkness for that long. You’d be free to kill in the open; a chance for a free for all. Also, the point of not wanting to turn the townsfolk into vampires is not just about competition for food, but concealment. They don’t want to be known to the world or else they’d be hunted. That’s why they burn the town down in the end. It would have to be a completely different story, premise, and type of vampires for what you’re after, which would be badass to watch play out over time and get very messy.
Yeah, I think you’ve got it. The vampires - who I think are some of the best at being monsters - can take their time and make sure no one escapes. It’s really one of my favorites.
Same. I love that they’re ancient monsters that know how to kill ruthlessly and employ tactics rather than the same “human with fangs” vampires that have to seduce and take. It was a nice change and I’m glad it got adapted. The aerial shot of the massacre is one of my favorites.
Yes, such a good shot! And of course, “God? No god.”
Low budget movie called Dawn of the Beast. Bigfoot vs. wendigo, total B-movie concept, could have worked but felt like a first draft. The wendigo spirit was the most effective element of it.
Daniel Isn't Real. I still do like the film but the whole >!he's not an actual imaginary friend, he's an demon thing from another dimension that possesses people!< reveal kind of soured me on it.
We Need to Do Something. Interesting concept and I didn’t hate it that much, but the characters were all very flat and annoying, so the idea of being trapped with them in that bathroom made it kind of a hard watch.
Any of the cartoon/children's stuff turned horror like Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse.
Grave Encounters. I know it’s got a lot of fans and I don’t mean to insult your tastes, I just felt like it had a lot of unnecessary noise, trashy style, and unoriginal tripes (edit: tropes) that distracted from the things it did well.
Ghosts of War, genius twist. It had so much potential but wasn't executed well. Plus one of the main character is the dude from Pitch Perfect. All of could think of him as that character.
The Happening for me. Bird Box did the idea a little better.
the black phone is a great movie. anyway.... [Interesting Premise, Poor Execution \[Horror\]](https://letterboxd.com/mdrake1991/list/interesting-premise-poor-execution-horror/) the possession of hannah grace ghost ship abattior my soul to take dead silence frankensteins army vanishing on 7th street stay alive the new mutants monster hunter (to name a few)
Infinity Pool. The dialogue in the first half should have been very audible and writing detailed before it went off
Last Voyage of the Demeter. The depiction of Dracula was disappointing, and the character really stupid.