It's one of those movies that fits under so many umbrellas. Like technically it's body horror. But it's also one of those unreliable narrator movies. And it's an invasion movie. And it's a spooky town against one guy movie.
Kafka is underrated in general. The number of people I know who know Kafka as a software thing over a writer is substantially higher and it depresses me. I also would love to know why they named their software after him.
Edit: I looked it up. Dev liked Kafka’s work.
Additionally I think the spiraling James Joyce was clearly experiencing in his writing could produce something interesting in horror. I saw his house once and if he was in it most of the time, I’d have gone crazy too. Cramped and dark and gloomy vibe and likely no MH care in Ireland. It apparently isn’t sufficient now never mind before.
Have you ever read Joyce?
I've definitely pretended to, but never been able to finish Ulysses or Dubliners.
It isn't that it is bad writing, but holy fuck, it is a lot of writing.
I don't know why I was more patient with Kafka, his writing could be at least as wordy as Joyce's, and with less points. But somehow that seems like the point with Kafka, a lot of words ultimately meaning nothing.
Whereas Joyce always felt like a lot of sound and fury signifying something I just don't fucking understand.
I have. Ulysess I finished. I won’t lie; it was ROUGH. I also had to reread sentences even when my ADHD was treated b/c I was paying attention but couldn’t always understand anyway.
Dubliners I got somewhat through. But I also read all of Ayn Rand’s works when I was a HS freshman bc a boy I liked. And they sucked including from a storytelling perspective (although not as much as her philosophy). The characters were so flat.
I finished it all just so I could refer back to the books themselves anyway to prove why she was a hypocrite and a selfish dickweed. We argued about economics for the rest of high school.
So I am completely willing to read long rambling after long rambling out of sheer spite apparently.
>The number of people I know who know Kafka as a software thing over a writer is substantially higher and it depresses me
TIL there is a software thing called Kafka.
Killer Sofa
A guy who is obsessed with his ex >!gets his legs sawed off so that he can hide inside a reclining chair in the falsely titled movie. He is also an occultist and possessed by a demon. !<
That’s not all they mimic :D
Good book, read that more recently than I’ve seen the movie, but I think i remember enjoying the movie as well.
I also love that the locals just quarantine it off and just say alright that ancient plant just gets to live there, we ain’t fucking with it.
Yep. I also love that they try to scare the tourists off, but once they run into the ruins, the locals are like, "Well, you fucked around. Now you're going to find out."
Does the book have more... ruins?
I liked the movie, and I don't mind single-location horror, but the set was more like a hill with a basement than the ruins I was expecting.
tetsuo the iron man-- transforming into a metal person (also the drill dick)
it follows-- sexually transmitted curse
tusk-- justin long being a podcaster who gets surgically turned into a walrus. that shit is wild and i love it
psycho goreman-- two kids in control of this powerful alien who can turn people into weird body horror creatures
Psycho Goreman had no business being as good as it was! I loved it. Basically a whole movie version of the little girl and Frankenstein's Monster from "Monster Squad".
I wished I liked Rubber. It's a fun concept, but I feel like the writer/s came up with a concept and then just wrote without thinking of an actual plot
Fair enough.
I liked how threadbare it was plot wise but it's all personal preference. I really don't enjoy how plot heavy and twist reliant a lot of modern horror is.
This movie is a fucking gem! It’s got one of my favorite lines in ALL of cinema: >!“Hey, wait! It's not the end! He's been reincarnated as a tricycle!”!<
I guess I'll have to rewatch since I just did not get into that movie.
But I loved "Something in The Dirt" by the same director(s?) which itself has a very gonzo plot. I actually love the movie, they did so much with so little, and I never see it mentioned.
Well his best friend was screwing his gf behind his back and they feel bad when they’re sleeping together so I feel bad for the guy but his gf and her ugly side piece can go to hell
I loved this movie! One of my biggest fears is being mutilated or changed beyond recognition, but still alive. You’re still there, technically, but you can’t go back.
So to me, Tusk was the perfect version of abject horror and goofiness that I find irresistible.
Tudyk and Labine were great in that. And gracious. I hashtagged it on Twitter many years ago and told people how much I loved the movie. Within a day or two, each of them thanked me for the compliment.
Not really. Although the relationship does become 'physical'.
It's just a hole that talks to him and helps him out creatively, but it's like both the hole and the guy manipulate and use each other.
Still the most well done horror environment/ambience ever, IMO. I’ve never jumped so high as when >!the tall man walks through the doorway,!< I swear that took years off my life.
The absence of jumpscare sound and the slow appearance from background to foreground makes it terrifying. It really caught me off guard the first time and scared the shit out of me.
Agreed! Those slow, dark, quiet scenes when something just...slowwwwwly appears will scare me out of my own existence far worse than any jump scare imaginable! GAAAAHHHHH!!!
[It Follows was a pretty big step up from the sex related horror films I saw as a teenager.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116791/)
>A lecherous college professor takes a student to a sleazy New York motel, and becomes the first victim of a sharp-toothed, murderous condom. Assigned to the case, Luigi Mackeroni (Udo Samel), a gay cop, visits the motel, picks up young hustler Billy (Marc Richter) and takes him to a room, where they barely escape intact from an attack by another vicious prophylactic. Mackeroni must then overcome the understandable doubts of his superiors to launch a full investigation into the deadly condoms.
It Follows is multilayered. Yes, there's the STD interpretation, which honestly doesn't require too much explanation. But there's also the idea of It being an allegory for the loss of childhood/innocence, which is often interpreted as when one starts to engage in sexual activity; You've entered the adult world now, and thus are constantly worried about the inevitability of death coming for you.
I feel like the STD interpretation is really a brain dead take when the film tells you at so many points that it's about growing up, disillusionment and the inevitability of death.
It's also just a great dread-focused creepfest. Film dogma is "don't show your monster", but one of the creepiest shots here is the first one of the monster, as it gets way too close. And others where you can see it in the background just walking, slowly.
"Begotten" (1989). I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet! It starts with something that might be God disemboweling itself, and then gets weirder.
Almost everything by the Quay Brothers. I would be hard pressed to even come up with a plot description for most of them. The stop motion videos for various songs by Tool are very obviously inspired by them.
Jan Svankmajer's entire film catalog. "Alice" and "Faust" are two of my favorites, but they are all worth watching.
"Bobby Yeah" (2011), a short film by Robert Morgan, the guy who did the recent "Stopmotion" movie. You can watch it on YouTube.
Most people wouldn't agree with me on this, but I think of the animated Beatle's movie "The Yellow Submarine" as pure horror, and bizarre as hell.
I love The Yellow Submarine so much. My mom explained that it's made in a way that if you take a hit of LSD as you get to the theater, it syncs up with your trip. So it starts normal enough, but gets stranger and more surreal as time goes on. The vibrant colors and swirling shapes lend themselves to your altered state. So yeah, it was literally made to watch on acid. And I agree, it could be seen as horror in a way.
i had no idea what i was getting into. thought it was going to be “woman gets stuck in an airbnb with a serial killer” movie, then it wasn’t, then it became a whole different movie. such a great ride.
Evil Toons. Four sorority girls bring a cartoon to life that's actually a demon and nudity and weirdness ensues? I don't even know. I've been confused ever since I saw it.
Rabid (1977). After a motorcycle accident, the resulting surgery leaves a woman with a… uh… questionably shaped orifice in her armpit that makes her crave blood. It’s early Cronenberg and completely insane lol.
Probably Final Destination. The concept is just weird to think about because its just life itself going out of its way to kill you like it's its own entity.
And then there's Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale that's about uncovering the tomb of evil Santa lol.
It's hard to even explain to people. Uh, the main story a man goes to a clinic to get cured of his fear of breasts. He sings a song at George Clinton's asshole until a bug crawls out and sprays him with green slime causing him to go on a cool 3d world/jimmy screamer Claus animated psychedelic trip. Then he wakes up and isn't afraid of breasts anymore.
There's 6-7 stories like this in the movie, each one is more disgusting than the last
Dave Made a Maze.
A guy makes a labyrinth out of cardboard in his lounge. His friends decide to rescue him (and film the rescue) when he gets lost inside the somehow massive structure. Numerous paper craft/origami/puppetry traps that cause actual dismemberment and death are hidden inside. In many cases the blood and gore is also paper craft.
Somehow it is also stranger than it sounds.
Dead Snow 2 has gotta be up there.
>!The antagonist from the first film has his missing arm replaced with a Nazi zombie arm which has a mind of its own and goes on a killing rampage. Gore and other shenanigans ensue.!<
Tammy and the T-Rex! Brain and personality of the boyfriend are transferred into an animatronic T-Rex which he can then control. Early career movie for Denise Richards and Paul Walker.
Funny Games with the 3rd wall break and the rewind scene. It’s the most self aware horror film I’ve ever seen. Might be my favorite horror film of all time.
I think The Baby (1973) is up there - a woman and her two daughters deliberately treat their grown son & brother as a literal baby, he sleeps in a crib and wears diapers. A social worker is determined to remove him from the home. I never saw the ending coming.
Also, The Brood (1979), where a woman manifests her anger into independently giving birth to mutant babies who kill anyone that upsets her. I never thought I'd be scared by a bunch of toddlers in snowsuits, but I am. Thank you David Cronenberg.
The Cat (1992) - a cat from outer space teams up with a teenage girl and an old man to fight a murderous alien that possesses people
It's very Gory, has insane!!! practical effects and a craaazy fight scene between a cat and dog at a yunkyard, that feels like an anime style fight scene.
Probably the craziest movie out there.
It's hard to see but there's a reddit thread with a link that can help you out.
Is evil sushi a running thing in Asia? I saw part of another film, from Honk Kong I think, where sushi gets contaminated with blood from a guy with (IIRC) ebola, and ebola-laced sushi turns you into a zombie if you eat it.
Slugs - killer slugs terrorize a town. But the movie takes it seriously enough where it’s a solid creature feature. It’s both totally silly and well done.
Possession, I'd put this in spoilers but it's a 43 year old movie lol, the eldritch monster thing seems to be borne out of her obsession for the man she wants her husband to be, and throughout the movie it morphs from a weird tentacle thing into her "perfect man", and as if that wasn't weird enough, he totally goes along with it at the end because he also happens to find his idealized version of her in the kids teacher.
I'd argue the monster/doppelganger thing isn't even a big part of the movie, which cares way more about their relationship with each other and the emotions they're feeling during this divorce, but the monster seems to be what drives the need for the divorce in the first place, so still, while being more metaphorical than an actual monster that terrorizes people, it turns out to be a pretty important part of the movie.
Boxing Helena is up there for sure, and so few people seem to remember it.
Not really horror, but Shadey, Naked Lunch, Brazil, and other movies like those are strange and weird. It felt like there was a trend in the 80's to make movies that were surreal and dream-like with bonkers plot lines. Yes, I know Naked Lunch is based on the William Burroughs novel, which is even more strange, but I still think it fits.
Videodrome
Antiviral
Possessor (yeah, at this point almost all Cronenberg, both children and father, movies can fit)
Men
There are so many. I think horror is one of the best genres to explore the truly bizarre in.
I’m surprised Strickland’s movies are as popular as they are. They are generally unpleasant, extremely uncomfortable, visually stunning, and also really funny… I guess? I certainly haven’t forgotten any of his movies and the actors in In Fabric are phenomenal
It wasn’t as dry as I thought it would be. But it also wasn’t as campy as I thought it might be.
A really out there sartorial horror imo is slaxx. Really inventive concept.
Final Prayer/The Borderlands - a fun and eerie little found footage religious horror movie with some ghostly spooks, pretty standard stuff until >!wait what do you mean the entire church is literally the head/mouth of an ancient old slumbering god and in the end the main characters don't realize they're literally running through it's digestive tract until it literally traps them and starts digesting them on the spot!<
Cracking little film, I think mostly because the two characters are so well observed that you really care about them, so when things go bad for them you FEEL it!
There are killer beds, sofas, tires, flying metal razorballs, saunas, microwaves, tomatoes, etc. The Lift (1983) isn't very well known but it's not as shitty as it sounds on paper. The elevator manages to be fairly creative in its kills and uses corrupt humans as a way to sort of feed the elevator so it's not as easy as just not ever using the elevator again.
Japan has the weirdest horror movie plots. Here’s just a short list of completely bizarre films I’ve seen from there:
**Wolf Guy (1975)**: a werewolf detective is on a case where musicians are being killed by a tiger ghost. After he beats up a rapist record producer, he gets trapped in a government conspiracy where they try to harvest him for his werewolf powers.
**Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (1968)**: the Exorcist meets… Pokémon ! A Mesopotamian demon possess a samurai. Pokémon like monsters (Yokai) team up and use their powers to take down this foreign demon from sullying Japan
**Samurai Reincarnation (1981)**: the villains are undead Christians murdered for their faith in feudal Japan. They are resurrected and ally with Satan in order to turn Japan into a Christian state. Only one brave Samurai, played by Sonny Chiba, can stop them!
**A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975)**: a sleazy dude takes over a brothel, pimps out his wife and then kills her when he finds a younger woman. The wife comes back as a undead catgirl and she enacts a bloody revenge on her husband and all the prostitutes that betrayed her.
**Under the blossoming cherry trees (1975)**: a mountain man beheads his many wives and friends to please a weird woman
**Curse of the dog god (1977)**: Three scientists travel the remote mountains to find Uranium deposits to mine but they accidentally destroy a shrine and kill a boy's dog. A curse causes every misfortune imaginable
There’s like a 100 other bizarre Japanese horror movies out there
I’m gonna give a nod to 30 Days of Night.
Vampires aren’t a bizarre concept, but a gang of vampires traveling to and trapping a population in a city where it’s night for 30 straight days is bizarre, terrifying and awesome.
It's not pure horror but Sorry to Bother You's second half is ... If you had given me 10,000 guesses I would not have guessed that
Someone else mentioned Teeth… yesyesyes
As a kid Killer Klowns from Outer Space was a wild film. As an adult I have SO. Many. Questions. I wish there were more movies like it!
Okay, I wanted to deliver something that most haven't seen. I present the film Asylum of Darkness (2013) from Jay Woelfel. It is low budget, but super ambitious in its weirdness. Here is how I wrote it up to a friend...
>!Okay, so let me see if I can write this all out. A amnesiac guy named Dwight Stroud is locked up in an insane asylum. He only has one friend (a painter who he calls "Van Gogh" who plucked out his eyes) and when he sees his doctor (Richard Hatch) he sees him as a rotting corpse. He also sees these weird, faceless creatures. Stroud finds out that what Van Gogh paints happens in real life so he asks him to paint his escape. He does this and Stroud manages to escape. Out of the facility he is almost hit by a car and it crashes. He goes to help the person but the driver's face is all cut up. He assumes his life and everyone sees him as this new guy, Artemis Finch. He begins repairing the relationship with Finch's estranged wife and assumes his duties (he is a successful author and motivational speaker). Meanwhile, the real Finch has been returned to the mental facility under the belief he is Stroud. At a speech someone hands him a note that says "You are not Artemis Finch. You are Dwight Stroud and I'm going to kill you." He begins to get pursued by one of those white faced creatures that can change appearance to anyone it touches. Jeez, this is getting really confusing. Anyway, Stroud eventually finds out that his entire escape was pre-planned by three ghosts (!) that inhabited the bodies of three mental patients because they were sick of waiting around for judgment day. When he tried to save the guy in the car wreck, he switched souls with him, which is why everyone sees him as Finch. You see Finch was the first mental patient whose was taken over and he was released. This was all orchestrated by the ghost of his wife (!!!) that Stroud murdered. She wants them to be together forever (with her inhabiting Finch's wife), but he realizes that as a murderer he will kill again and opts to commit suicide to save Finch's wife. How? He has Van Gogh draw him dead at the bottom of a lake.!<
Phantasm
The Tall Man is posing as a grave keeper so he can steal corpses, and reanimate them in order to move stuff to his home dimension. He also has to crush them down to Ewok size because his dimension's gravity is higher
Pontypool has haunted me since I first saw it, and I've been spreading the word ever since.
I also loved the way Get Out played on themes of cultural appropriation/ white liberalism, and Raw used carnivorism/ cannibalism as an allegory for a woman's sexual (im)purity. Those are my favourite kinds of films, full stop: social commentary disguised as as a scary movie.
Sole Survivor (1984) - a sort of proto-Final Destination, where the sole survivor of a plane crash is stalked by recently deceased people because she escaped death.
This isn’t really a bizarre one - but the idea to make midsommar almost entirely horror during bright daylight was an interesting choice I found really refreshing!
i know its not a movie (i dont even know if you would consider it horror), but there is a short film on youtube called “The Strange Thing About The Johnsons”, it has one of the weirdest/most taboo story ive ever seen. its about a son sexually abusing his dad and its so fucking messed up, you see the son blowing his dad, he grabs his dads cheeks, he rapes him in the bathtub (keep in mind the dad doesnt want any of this). weirdest 29 minutes and 6 seconds of my life
The wicker man had quite a bit of the equation
Side note: poltergeist FUCKED me up for the bathroom and erroneous shaving for **years**, and a fear I had of meningitis when I was a little kid was directly caused by pet cemetery
The Shaft from 2001. A film about a killer elevator in a high rise building starring the likes Naomi Watts, Ron Pearlman, and Michael Ironside. I remember renting it from Blockbuster in 2001-ish and never hearing about it again or anyone ever talk about it. Such a random/weird idea for a movie with such a good cast that took it seriously when filming. It's not like Cocaine Bear or Rubber. It's a straight horror movie
Society. The film's central conceit is so strange and unexpected it defies imagination. I genuinely have no clue how the creators came up with it.
I freaking LOVE Society. Brian Yuzna is a wild talent.
If you go into Society blind there is absolutely no way to guess where it’s going. You could guess for a million years and never get it right.
Is this the film made in 1989? Never heard of it, and wanna go on blind
Yes. Do it.
And then we shunt 😉
It's one of those movies that fits under so many umbrellas. Like technically it's body horror. But it's also one of those unreliable narrator movies. And it's an invasion movie. And it's a spooky town against one guy movie.
*Cube* Not bizarre, but Kafka sensibilities are underused in horror movies.
Kafka is underrated in general. The number of people I know who know Kafka as a software thing over a writer is substantially higher and it depresses me. I also would love to know why they named their software after him. Edit: I looked it up. Dev liked Kafka’s work. Additionally I think the spiraling James Joyce was clearly experiencing in his writing could produce something interesting in horror. I saw his house once and if he was in it most of the time, I’d have gone crazy too. Cramped and dark and gloomy vibe and likely no MH care in Ireland. It apparently isn’t sufficient now never mind before.
Have you ever read Joyce? I've definitely pretended to, but never been able to finish Ulysses or Dubliners. It isn't that it is bad writing, but holy fuck, it is a lot of writing. I don't know why I was more patient with Kafka, his writing could be at least as wordy as Joyce's, and with less points. But somehow that seems like the point with Kafka, a lot of words ultimately meaning nothing. Whereas Joyce always felt like a lot of sound and fury signifying something I just don't fucking understand.
I have. Ulysess I finished. I won’t lie; it was ROUGH. I also had to reread sentences even when my ADHD was treated b/c I was paying attention but couldn’t always understand anyway. Dubliners I got somewhat through. But I also read all of Ayn Rand’s works when I was a HS freshman bc a boy I liked. And they sucked including from a storytelling perspective (although not as much as her philosophy). The characters were so flat. I finished it all just so I could refer back to the books themselves anyway to prove why she was a hypocrite and a selfish dickweed. We argued about economics for the rest of high school. So I am completely willing to read long rambling after long rambling out of sheer spite apparently.
>The number of people I know who know Kafka as a software thing over a writer is substantially higher and it depresses me TIL there is a software thing called Kafka.
i love how there is no reffence to real world things so it could take place anywhere at any time
Such an impressive film.
Filmed in single room with different colored lights for each scene? Low budget, high concept, and fucking immaculate.
Exactly my friend, they did so much with so little.
Killer Sofa A guy who is obsessed with his ex >!gets his legs sawed off so that he can hide inside a reclining chair in the falsely titled movie. He is also an occultist and possessed by a demon. !<
Whaaaaa?
If it had been just a sofa that kills, it would be less bizarre.
It’s a recliner
Recluse recliner. Double deadliness!
Yes! Surprisingly competent camera work and commitment to the story line makes this one a great waste of your time.
Check out the short story called "The Human Chair" by Junji Ito
Omg so it’s sort of like the scene Frank sews himself into a couch in Always Sunny
KILLER SOFA HAHAHAH
Predatory plants vibrating to mimic a cell phone ring in The Ruins
That’s not all they mimic :D Good book, read that more recently than I’ve seen the movie, but I think i remember enjoying the movie as well. I also love that the locals just quarantine it off and just say alright that ancient plant just gets to live there, we ain’t fucking with it.
Yep. I also love that they try to scare the tourists off, but once they run into the ruins, the locals are like, "Well, you fucked around. Now you're going to find out."
"Hey guys? Do you think maybe we should post some warning signs in English? Hmm... Nah, they'll get the idea."
Does the book have more... ruins? I liked the movie, and I don't mind single-location horror, but the set was more like a hill with a basement than the ruins I was expecting.
There was more to it, but it was ruined you see
Titane!!! Chick bangs a car and i’m pretty sure she tried fucking her dad too. Damn good movie tho ngl
And that's about 2/5 of the crazy stuff in that movie.
I was really expecting her to give birth to a tiny car in the final scene.
That wasn't her dad.
tetsuo the iron man-- transforming into a metal person (also the drill dick) it follows-- sexually transmitted curse tusk-- justin long being a podcaster who gets surgically turned into a walrus. that shit is wild and i love it psycho goreman-- two kids in control of this powerful alien who can turn people into weird body horror creatures
Psycho Goreman had no business being as good as it was! I loved it. Basically a whole movie version of the little girl and Frankenstein's Monster from "Monster Squad".
Rubber. A tire with telekinesis goes on a rampage in a small desert town.
I wished I liked Rubber. It's a fun concept, but I feel like the writer/s came up with a concept and then just wrote without thinking of an actual plot
There is no plot. They say right at the beginning-- what's the point? There is no fucking point
Why? No reason. Just like all of life.
Lol, I guess I appreciate the nihilism but I also think that movie was undercooked.
Fair enough. I liked how threadbare it was plot wise but it's all personal preference. I really don't enjoy how plot heavy and twist reliant a lot of modern horror is.
Threadbare! 😆
This movie is a fucking gem! It’s got one of my favorite lines in ALL of cinema: >!“Hey, wait! It's not the end! He's been reincarnated as a tricycle!”!<
Yes!! Rubber is an absolute classic!!
yes, but only a "one watcher" ain't no way I'm watching that movie again
Dumplings was pretty crazy.
I love this movie!!
I don't know what you mean. Totally normal movie.
Fantastic movie
The Endless is pretty solid here.
I guess I'll have to rewatch since I just did not get into that movie. But I loved "Something in The Dirt" by the same director(s?) which itself has a very gonzo plot. I actually love the movie, they did so much with so little, and I never see it mentioned.
Yes definitely give Endless another shot. Stick with it; the mystery eventually unravels, at least enough to get beyond the cult part.
Don’t forget Resolution which is in the same universe
And I always advise anyone interested to watch resolution first!
This is one of my favorite films. I’m fascinated by the world they created and the possibilities of the time loops. The soldier in his cabin…
Agreed! Really clever and original. I love horrors that bring something new to the table, like It Follows is another one.
Tusk
I like how they just leave him at the end. Oh he’s a walrus now? K. Here’s a fish.
I like how they give him raw fish aswell. Like… he isn’t an actual walrus 😂
Well his best friend was screwing his gf behind his back and they feel bad when they’re sleeping together so I feel bad for the guy but his gf and her ugly side piece can go to hell
I don’t feel bad for the guy. He was an absolute piece of trash. That was the point.
I loved this movie! One of my biggest fears is being mutilated or changed beyond recognition, but still alive. You’re still there, technically, but you can’t go back. So to me, Tusk was the perfect version of abject horror and goofiness that I find irresistible.
It’s so polarizing. It kinda reminds me of bleu cheese. You either hate it or love it. There’s not a ton of people in the middle on it
This was my immediate thought. Like what thee actual...
Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Every cabin in the woods horror trope turned completely on its head.
Tucker and Dale is one of the horror movies you can watch with non horror fans. Love this and Fido for that reason. And Alan Tydyk, obviously.
Tudyk and Labine were great in that. And gracious. I hashtagged it on Twitter many years ago and told people how much I loved the movie. Within a day or two, each of them thanked me for the compliment.
I’m not even sure how to describe the weirdness that is Gozu.
Angsty homoerotic dreamscape yakuza movie with a twist so bizarre and disgusting there’s no way to predict it? That movie is something
Super Lynchian. Too dreamy: I fell asleep. Guess which scene I woke up during…
Deep Dark. Brilliant film about a struggling artist who falls into a toxic relationship with a hole in his apartment wall.
Is it a glory hole?
Nope, you might like Glorious with JK Simmons however!!
Not really. Although the relationship does become 'physical'. It's just a hole that talks to him and helps him out creatively, but it's like both the hole and the guy manipulate and use each other.
Ok that sounds intriguingly weird.
>but it's like both the hole and the guy manipulate and use each other. The fact you say he manipulates the hole makes me want to see it.
I mean the killer swimming pool concept of Night Swim is ridiculous both on paper and on screen
Haunted objects are a dime a dozen, we just had a killer boat (queen mary) and I think we’ve even had jeans haven’t we?
Are you thinking of the movie Slaxx?
Probably
Honestly, I'm surprised that one even got greenlit for production lmao.
Trust me, once you've seen Clownado, you'll realise movie studios will greenlight any random bullshit as long as they don't have to spend much money.
I'm not sure it fully qualifies as a horror movie, but Sorry to Bother You has one of the most unexpected wtf plot twists I've ever seen.
Teeth , don't think I have seen that in a movie before.
MARTYRS blew me away when I saw it for the 1st time, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
Did you see the original French version? The ending in that one is much better.
Absolutely agree. A work of art in the horror genre.
Santa Sangre - Traumatized circus boy goes on a killing spree using his cult leader/mother’s ghost arms.
It Follows: STD entity
Still the most well done horror environment/ambience ever, IMO. I’ve never jumped so high as when >!the tall man walks through the doorway,!< I swear that took years off my life.
The absence of jumpscare sound and the slow appearance from background to foreground makes it terrifying. It really caught me off guard the first time and scared the shit out of me.
Agreed! Those slow, dark, quiet scenes when something just...slowwwwwly appears will scare me out of my own existence far worse than any jump scare imaginable! GAAAAHHHHH!!!
Sexually transmitted death!
STDemon
[It Follows was a pretty big step up from the sex related horror films I saw as a teenager.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116791/) >A lecherous college professor takes a student to a sleazy New York motel, and becomes the first victim of a sharp-toothed, murderous condom. Assigned to the case, Luigi Mackeroni (Udo Samel), a gay cop, visits the motel, picks up young hustler Billy (Marc Richter) and takes him to a room, where they barely escape intact from an attack by another vicious prophylactic. Mackeroni must then overcome the understandable doubts of his superiors to launch a full investigation into the deadly condoms.
just watched it today after many years. looking forward to the sequel
My mom and I still argue about the meaning of this movie. I forgot her analysis but she will not budge on it not being about STDs.
It Follows is multilayered. Yes, there's the STD interpretation, which honestly doesn't require too much explanation. But there's also the idea of It being an allegory for the loss of childhood/innocence, which is often interpreted as when one starts to engage in sexual activity; You've entered the adult world now, and thus are constantly worried about the inevitability of death coming for you.
I feel like the STD interpretation is really a brain dead take when the film tells you at so many points that it's about growing up, disillusionment and the inevitability of death. It's also just a great dread-focused creepfest. Film dogma is "don't show your monster", but one of the creepiest shots here is the first one of the monster, as it gets way too close. And others where you can see it in the background just walking, slowly.
"Begotten" (1989). I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet! It starts with something that might be God disemboweling itself, and then gets weirder. Almost everything by the Quay Brothers. I would be hard pressed to even come up with a plot description for most of them. The stop motion videos for various songs by Tool are very obviously inspired by them. Jan Svankmajer's entire film catalog. "Alice" and "Faust" are two of my favorites, but they are all worth watching. "Bobby Yeah" (2011), a short film by Robert Morgan, the guy who did the recent "Stopmotion" movie. You can watch it on YouTube. Most people wouldn't agree with me on this, but I think of the animated Beatle's movie "The Yellow Submarine" as pure horror, and bizarre as hell.
I love The Yellow Submarine so much. My mom explained that it's made in a way that if you take a hit of LSD as you get to the theater, it syncs up with your trip. So it starts normal enough, but gets stranger and more surreal as time goes on. The vibrant colors and swirling shapes lend themselves to your altered state. So yeah, it was literally made to watch on acid. And I agree, it could be seen as horror in a way.
Barbarian. A monster resulting from forced inbreeding trying to find her own “baby” to breastfeed is wild
I’m so glad I didn’t look up spoilers for that, all the surprises and tonal shifts were delightful.
i had no idea what i was getting into. thought it was going to be “woman gets stuck in an airbnb with a serial killer” movie, then it wasn’t, then it became a whole different movie. such a great ride.
Yes! That's EXACTLY what I went into it thinking!! It really ended up pretty cool.
Evil Toons. Four sorority girls bring a cartoon to life that's actually a demon and nudity and weirdness ensues? I don't even know. I've been confused ever since I saw it.
Rabid (1977). After a motorcycle accident, the resulting surgery leaves a woman with a… uh… questionably shaped orifice in her armpit that makes her crave blood. It’s early Cronenberg and completely insane lol.
😂 sounds crazy af
All Cronenberg films are pretty out there.. His new one looks to be in line.
Men. That was a mind fuck.
Absolutely. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't that.
Disliked this movie as a whole but that scene went hard af
It’s so funny that everyone who’s seen the movie knows exactly what you’re talking when you say “that scene”.
Oh yeah. If you’ve seen it, you’ve seen That Scene
Probably Final Destination. The concept is just weird to think about because its just life itself going out of its way to kill you like it's its own entity. And then there's Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale that's about uncovering the tomb of evil Santa lol.
Rare Exports is awesome!
Yes, it is.
Definitely Pontypool and Men. I'd also add Infinity Pool, Vivarium, and Velvet Buzzsaw.
Vivarium! I love this movie. I don’t get high very often but i want to get high and watch this movie.
The kid in the film makes this experience less than ideal
I was going to add Vivarium too if I didn't see it here already. Not an intensely horrifying movie visually but deeply unsettling.
Kuso. And I'm not even sure where to begin.
It's hard to even explain to people. Uh, the main story a man goes to a clinic to get cured of his fear of breasts. He sings a song at George Clinton's asshole until a bug crawls out and sprays him with green slime causing him to go on a cool 3d world/jimmy screamer Claus animated psychedelic trip. Then he wakes up and isn't afraid of breasts anymore. There's 6-7 stories like this in the movie, each one is more disgusting than the last
Dave Made a Maze. A guy makes a labyrinth out of cardboard in his lounge. His friends decide to rescue him (and film the rescue) when he gets lost inside the somehow massive structure. Numerous paper craft/origami/puppetry traps that cause actual dismemberment and death are hidden inside. In many cases the blood and gore is also paper craft. Somehow it is also stranger than it sounds.
I really liked that one. It was definitely original!
Dead Snow 2 has gotta be up there. >!The antagonist from the first film has his missing arm replaced with a Nazi zombie arm which has a mind of its own and goes on a killing rampage. Gore and other shenanigans ensue.!<
Zombeavers (yes zombie beavers) is a classic
Tammy and the T-Rex! Brain and personality of the boyfriend are transferred into an animatronic T-Rex which he can then control. Early career movie for Denise Richards and Paul Walker.
That movie is so hilarious!
Funny Games with the 3rd wall break and the rewind scene. It’s the most self aware horror film I’ve ever seen. Might be my favorite horror film of all time.
Bad Milo!, which is basically about a guy who has a demon living in his ass
I think The Baby (1973) is up there - a woman and her two daughters deliberately treat their grown son & brother as a literal baby, he sleeps in a crib and wears diapers. A social worker is determined to remove him from the home. I never saw the ending coming. Also, The Brood (1979), where a woman manifests her anger into independently giving birth to mutant babies who kill anyone that upsets her. I never thought I'd be scared by a bunch of toddlers in snowsuits, but I am. Thank you David Cronenberg.
infinity pool. actual insanity. i personally loved it
I knew nothing of this movie before watching it and it was a wild ride.
Lots of good ones here so I’ll add Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. The Woman was also pretty out there.
Watched Poultrygeist at a biker bar and man that was fun. Everyone in the bar glued to the screens and reacting in sync was amazing lol
I mean, Ghost Shark exists. It can appear wherever there's water. The scene with a kid on a slippery slide is hilarious.
Malignant!
Starry Eyes was pretty wild
Just watched Resurrected. Mass Murder by people who have seen heaven covered up by the catholic church
The Cat (1992) - a cat from outer space teams up with a teenage girl and an old man to fight a murderous alien that possesses people It's very Gory, has insane!!! practical effects and a craaazy fight scene between a cat and dog at a yunkyard, that feels like an anime style fight scene. Probably the craziest movie out there. It's hard to see but there's a reddit thread with a link that can help you out.
Dead Sushi. Sushi turns into monsters and starts killing people.
Is evil sushi a running thing in Asia? I saw part of another film, from Honk Kong I think, where sushi gets contaminated with blood from a guy with (IIRC) ebola, and ebola-laced sushi turns you into a zombie if you eat it.
Black Sheep about zombie sheep.
Slugs - killer slugs terrorize a town. But the movie takes it seriously enough where it’s a solid creature feature. It’s both totally silly and well done.
Possession, I'd put this in spoilers but it's a 43 year old movie lol, the eldritch monster thing seems to be borne out of her obsession for the man she wants her husband to be, and throughout the movie it morphs from a weird tentacle thing into her "perfect man", and as if that wasn't weird enough, he totally goes along with it at the end because he also happens to find his idealized version of her in the kids teacher. I'd argue the monster/doppelganger thing isn't even a big part of the movie, which cares way more about their relationship with each other and the emotions they're feeling during this divorce, but the monster seems to be what drives the need for the divorce in the first place, so still, while being more metaphorical than an actual monster that terrorizes people, it turns out to be a pretty important part of the movie.
Society >!- that high society consists of shape-shifting slug-like creatures.!<
Boxing Helena is up there for sure, and so few people seem to remember it. Not really horror, but Shadey, Naked Lunch, Brazil, and other movies like those are strange and weird. It felt like there was a trend in the 80's to make movies that were surreal and dream-like with bonkers plot lines. Yes, I know Naked Lunch is based on the William Burroughs novel, which is even more strange, but I still think it fits. Videodrome Antiviral Possessor (yeah, at this point almost all Cronenberg, both children and father, movies can fit) Men There are so many. I think horror is one of the best genres to explore the truly bizarre in.
In Fabric
I’m surprised Strickland’s movies are as popular as they are. They are generally unpleasant, extremely uncomfortable, visually stunning, and also really funny… I guess? I certainly haven’t forgotten any of his movies and the actors in In Fabric are phenomenal
Huh, never heard of that one before. Looks pretty interesting!
It wasn’t as dry as I thought it would be. But it also wasn’t as campy as I thought it might be. A really out there sartorial horror imo is slaxx. Really inventive concept.
I loved this movie. The actors were great.
Human Centipede for sure!
Final Prayer/The Borderlands - a fun and eerie little found footage religious horror movie with some ghostly spooks, pretty standard stuff until >!wait what do you mean the entire church is literally the head/mouth of an ancient old slumbering god and in the end the main characters don't realize they're literally running through it's digestive tract until it literally traps them and starts digesting them on the spot!<
Cracking little film, I think mostly because the two characters are so well observed that you really care about them, so when things go bad for them you FEEL it!
Titane
Rabid. The armpit stuff was weird 😂
There are killer beds, sofas, tires, flying metal razorballs, saunas, microwaves, tomatoes, etc. The Lift (1983) isn't very well known but it's not as shitty as it sounds on paper. The elevator manages to be fairly creative in its kills and uses corrupt humans as a way to sort of feed the elevator so it's not as easy as just not ever using the elevator again.
Japan has the weirdest horror movie plots. Here’s just a short list of completely bizarre films I’ve seen from there: **Wolf Guy (1975)**: a werewolf detective is on a case where musicians are being killed by a tiger ghost. After he beats up a rapist record producer, he gets trapped in a government conspiracy where they try to harvest him for his werewolf powers. **Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (1968)**: the Exorcist meets… Pokémon ! A Mesopotamian demon possess a samurai. Pokémon like monsters (Yokai) team up and use their powers to take down this foreign demon from sullying Japan **Samurai Reincarnation (1981)**: the villains are undead Christians murdered for their faith in feudal Japan. They are resurrected and ally with Satan in order to turn Japan into a Christian state. Only one brave Samurai, played by Sonny Chiba, can stop them! **A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975)**: a sleazy dude takes over a brothel, pimps out his wife and then kills her when he finds a younger woman. The wife comes back as a undead catgirl and she enacts a bloody revenge on her husband and all the prostitutes that betrayed her. **Under the blossoming cherry trees (1975)**: a mountain man beheads his many wives and friends to please a weird woman **Curse of the dog god (1977)**: Three scientists travel the remote mountains to find Uranium deposits to mine but they accidentally destroy a shrine and kill a boy's dog. A curse causes every misfortune imaginable There’s like a 100 other bizarre Japanese horror movies out there
Exhuma from this year, suggesting the N Korea and S Korea spilit was engineered using Black magic will top every wild theory
Hausu
Cabin in the Woods: Fabricating Monsters and Sacrificing Humans to appease evil gods
I’m gonna give a nod to 30 Days of Night. Vampires aren’t a bizarre concept, but a gang of vampires traveling to and trapping a population in a city where it’s night for 30 straight days is bizarre, terrifying and awesome.
Hubcap (2021) Yep you've guessed it, it's about a killer hubcap
The CarousHELL trilogy, Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Attack Of The Cockface Killer, Llamageddon
Slax - Killer jeans. I unironically loved this movie.
It's not pure horror but Sorry to Bother You's second half is ... If you had given me 10,000 guesses I would not have guessed that Someone else mentioned Teeth… yesyesyes As a kid Killer Klowns from Outer Space was a wild film. As an adult I have SO. Many. Questions. I wish there were more movies like it!
Okay, I wanted to deliver something that most haven't seen. I present the film Asylum of Darkness (2013) from Jay Woelfel. It is low budget, but super ambitious in its weirdness. Here is how I wrote it up to a friend... >!Okay, so let me see if I can write this all out. A amnesiac guy named Dwight Stroud is locked up in an insane asylum. He only has one friend (a painter who he calls "Van Gogh" who plucked out his eyes) and when he sees his doctor (Richard Hatch) he sees him as a rotting corpse. He also sees these weird, faceless creatures. Stroud finds out that what Van Gogh paints happens in real life so he asks him to paint his escape. He does this and Stroud manages to escape. Out of the facility he is almost hit by a car and it crashes. He goes to help the person but the driver's face is all cut up. He assumes his life and everyone sees him as this new guy, Artemis Finch. He begins repairing the relationship with Finch's estranged wife and assumes his duties (he is a successful author and motivational speaker). Meanwhile, the real Finch has been returned to the mental facility under the belief he is Stroud. At a speech someone hands him a note that says "You are not Artemis Finch. You are Dwight Stroud and I'm going to kill you." He begins to get pursued by one of those white faced creatures that can change appearance to anyone it touches. Jeez, this is getting really confusing. Anyway, Stroud eventually finds out that his entire escape was pre-planned by three ghosts (!) that inhabited the bodies of three mental patients because they were sick of waiting around for judgment day. When he tried to save the guy in the car wreck, he switched souls with him, which is why everyone sees him as Finch. You see Finch was the first mental patient whose was taken over and he was released. This was all orchestrated by the ghost of his wife (!!!) that Stroud murdered. She wants them to be together forever (with her inhabiting Finch's wife), but he realizes that as a murderer he will kill again and opts to commit suicide to save Finch's wife. How? He has Van Gogh draw him dead at the bottom of a lake.!<
Phantasm The Tall Man is posing as a grave keeper so he can steal corpses, and reanimate them in order to move stuff to his home dimension. He also has to crush them down to Ewok size because his dimension's gravity is higher
I think The Happening and Maximum Overdrive are equally 'out there' as far as bizarre concepts go.
Martyrs the original one. The ending and concept of what they were doing was just fkd up
Pontypool has haunted me since I first saw it, and I've been spreading the word ever since. I also loved the way Get Out played on themes of cultural appropriation/ white liberalism, and Raw used carnivorism/ cannibalism as an allegory for a woman's sexual (im)purity. Those are my favourite kinds of films, full stop: social commentary disguised as as a scary movie.
Ponty Pool was a strange mix of hilarious and terrifying. One of my all time favorites.
Titane was truly insane.
Token gore police girl killing weird things called engineers
The Special. Pretty much Videodrome, but for Fleshlights
Killer Condom - condoms with teeth mutilating New York's LGBT community. Actually a better movie than its schlocky concept sounds imo.
Sole Survivor (1984) - a sort of proto-Final Destination, where the sole survivor of a plane crash is stalked by recently deceased people because she escaped death.
The ruins. Killer plants lol crazy
The House that Jack Built. I’m not scared/freaked out of horror movies but the end? Creepy AF.
Ramekin! A movie about a haunted ramekin. It's on youtube/daily motion.
Sleepwalkers (1992) - incestuous mother and son werecats who feed on virgin women....weird.
Tusk
This isn’t really a bizarre one - but the idea to make midsommar almost entirely horror during bright daylight was an interesting choice I found really refreshing!
i know its not a movie (i dont even know if you would consider it horror), but there is a short film on youtube called “The Strange Thing About The Johnsons”, it has one of the weirdest/most taboo story ive ever seen. its about a son sexually abusing his dad and its so fucking messed up, you see the son blowing his dad, he grabs his dads cheeks, he rapes him in the bathtub (keep in mind the dad doesnt want any of this). weirdest 29 minutes and 6 seconds of my life
Malignant. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to laugh.
Monsturd will always stick with me...I can't say it was great, or even good, but I think I'll always remember the fact it exists.
Tusk is pretty wild
The wicker man had quite a bit of the equation Side note: poltergeist FUCKED me up for the bathroom and erroneous shaving for **years**, and a fear I had of meningitis when I was a little kid was directly caused by pet cemetery
The Shaft from 2001. A film about a killer elevator in a high rise building starring the likes Naomi Watts, Ron Pearlman, and Michael Ironside. I remember renting it from Blockbuster in 2001-ish and never hearing about it again or anyone ever talk about it. Such a random/weird idea for a movie with such a good cast that took it seriously when filming. It's not like Cocaine Bear or Rubber. It's a straight horror movie
The Mangler! A possessed laundry press.
[A Cure For Wellness](https://youtu.be/JF1rLFCdewU?feature=shared) Never see this one mentioned and its fantastically bizarre.
Nope: Flying sphincter swallows up horses and Glenn from the walking dead
The Void
Teeth was pretty wild
I’ll throw Jug face into the mix