All Things Horror Thread

[Devon Malcolm]

8 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

it’s not been a vintage year for new films.

Every year's a vintage year for new films.

[BomberPat]

fucking hate the idea of a Jason prequel. His entire backstory is in the first film. We don't need to see anything more than that. 

At the weekend I was talking to my other half about the Halloween films (we've watched 1-3 together, and she had caught a bit of the Rob Zombie Halloween 2 recently), and something I saw on Twitter - one of the issues with the sequels, and (presumably, I haven't seen them yet) the most recent trilogy, is that the people making them fundamentally misunderstood the central conflict; it's not Laurie Strode vs. Michael Myers, it's Sam Loomis vs. Michael Myers. 

That moved us on to talking about the Rob Zombie movies, and I was saying how much I hated the amount of backstory they gave to Michael Myers - they made his family alcoholic and abusive white trash, they gave him all the dull by-the-numbers "child who will become a serial killer" tropes like torturing animals and poor mental health, and so on. When the whole point is that Michael Myers was a completely ordinary suburban white kid who flipped out and inexplicably killed his family. The idea that anyone was capable of what he did is far scarier than there being a Potential Horror Movie Villain checklist that he had worked through in his origin story.

Basically, there are very few horror movies or horror villains that benefit from a prequel story. 

[mim731]

47 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

fucking hate the idea of a Jason prequel. His entire backstory is in the first film. We don't need to see anything more than that. 

At the weekend I was talking to my other half about the Halloween films (we've watched 1-3 together, and she had caught a bit of the Rob Zombie Halloween 2 recently), and something I saw on Twitter - one of the issues with the sequels, and (presumably, I haven't seen them yet) the most recent trilogy, is that the people making them fundamentally misunderstood the central conflict; it's not Laurie Strode vs. Michael Myers, it's Sam Loomis vs. Michael Myers. 

That moved us on to talking about the Rob Zombie movies, and I was saying how much I hated the amount of backstory they gave to Michael Myers - they made his family alcoholic and abusive white trash, they gave him all the dull by-the-numbers "child who will become a serial killer" tropes like torturing animals and poor mental health, and so on. When the whole point is that Michael Myers was a completely ordinary suburban white kid who flipped out and inexplicably killed his family. The idea that anyone was capable of what he did is far scarier than there being a Potential Horror Movie Villain checklist that he had worked through in his origin story.

Basically, there are very few horror movies or horror villains that benefit from a prequel story. 

Season of the Witch is the best Halloween film, and it's a hill I am willing to die on. 

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

fucking hate the idea of a Jason prequel. His entire backstory is in the first film. We don't need to see anything more than that. 

I sort of like the idea if it mostly veers away from Jason. The owners of the IP own Mrs Vorhees, young Jason and Camp Crystal Lake. Out of the three, I actually think Camp Crystal Lake has the most going for it. Build in that other stuff was happening, while Mrs Vorhees is off killing people, and occasional suggestions that Jason is alive. But concentrate primarily on the kids and the camp leaders, with spooky shit and murders happening around them, and you could have something fun. If Mrs Vorhees is the main character, I doubt it'll work. But the name of the location has some cache, and 'kids and teens in the murder woods' isn't a bad set-up.

[Merzbow]

So is it going to be a Bates Motel like show? I actually thought that was half decent for some trashy TV.

[Bus Surfer]

Anyone watching Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix? 

I've only seen the first 3 but they've all been massively enjoyable. The short, punchy format is great and the acting, scenery and overall eery feel is cracking. 

Fully recommended. 

[Keith Houchen]

10 minutes ago, Silky Kisser said:

Anyone watching Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix? 

I've only seen the first 3 but they've all been massively enjoyable. The short, punchy format is great and the acting, scenery and overall eery feel is cracking. 

Fully recommended. 

It’s on my list, think I’ll start it tonight!

[chokeout]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

fucking hate the idea of a Jason prequel. His entire backstory is in the first film. We don't need to see anything more than that. 

At the weekend I was talking to my other half about the Halloween films (we've watched 1-3 together, and she had caught a bit of the Rob Zombie Halloween 2 recently), and something I saw on Twitter - one of the issues with the sequels, and (presumably, I haven't seen them yet) the most recent trilogy, is that the people making them fundamentally misunderstood the central conflict; it's not Laurie Strode vs. Michael Myers, it's Sam Loomis vs. Michael Myers. 

That moved us on to talking about the Rob Zombie movies, and I was saying how much I hated the amount of backstory they gave to Michael Myers - they made his family alcoholic and abusive white trash, they gave him all the dull by-the-numbers "child who will become a serial killer" tropes like torturing animals and poor mental health, and so on. When the whole point is that Michael Myers was a completely ordinary suburban white kid who flipped out and inexplicably killed his family. The idea that anyone was capable of what he did is far scarier than there being a Potential Horror Movie Villain checklist that he had worked through in his origin story.

Basically, there are very few horror movies or horror villains that benefit from a prequel story. 

100% agree and I've had the same discussion a few times. Michael was just evil which is far more terrifying than him coming from a broken home and Rob Zombie ret-conning that showed that he didn't really get the character.

A story about a kid that just snaps and despite everyone's best efforts they know he's beyond saving and will do it again and again if he's given the chance.

13 minutes ago, Silky Kisser said:

Anyone watching Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix? 

I've only seen the first 3 but they've all been massively enjoyable. The short, punchy format is great and the acting, scenery and overall eery feel is cracking. 

Fully recommended. 

I'm 4 in and like any good horror anthology there's stronger segments but so far there's been nothing terrible and i'd love for it to be an annual thing. 'The Outside' had huge Tales from the crypt vibes with the way it was filmed, which had to be intentional.

For anyone that hasn't watched it yet Graveyards Rats is available to watch in Black and White as an extra and is glorious

[BomberPat]

41 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I sort of like the idea if it mostly veers away from Jason. The owners of the IP own Mrs Vorhees, young Jason and Camp Crystal Lake. Out of the three, I actually think Camp Crystal Lake has the most going for it. Build in that other stuff was happening, while Mrs Vorhees is off killing people, and occasional suggestions that Jason is alive. But concentrate primarily on the kids and the camp leaders, with spooky shit and murders happening around them, and you could have something fun. If Mrs Vorhees is the main character, I doubt it'll work. But the name of the location has some cache, and 'kids and teens in the murder woods' isn't a bad set-up.

The problem for me with that is that if there's a bunch of other spooky stuff and murders and whatever else going on around the camp, then it downplays Jason. The original film has characters pretty clearly say that strange stuff started happening at the camp after Jason drowned. If other stuff was going on before that, Jason Voorhees wouldn't be the go-to spooky story for characters within the film series. Though I suppose they could play on ideas of the Camp being cursed, that there was something going on there that "claimed" Jason from the beginning, but the danger with that is that the prequels end up with more going on than the original stories did which, again, kind of downplays Jason as the series' ultimate evil. I'm not sure I've argued that well enough.

I saw someone on Twitter say that Freddy Krueger is the only one of the major slasher movie villains that deserves the full prequel treatment, especially if they go with a story of him being innocent of the crimes the mob killed him for. I'm a little dubious about that, though, because I caught some of the remake in a bar the other week, and they seemed to hint at that, and that made for some really uncomfortable viewing when there was a chunk of the film comprised of abused kids being angry at their parents for believing them when they said they were abused. Obviously there's a more delicate way of handling that story, but I'm dubious about a schlock horror series being able to carefully navigate a story about false allegations/assumptions of abuse without being irresponsible in suggesting that victims are lying.

At the end of the day, the more you know about these characters, the less scary they are. It's inevitable with a long-running series that the killers, in wrestling terms, become the draw, because you're watching to see Jason or Freddy or Michael Myers more than the interchangeable teenagers they're murdering, but that shouldn't ever stretch to the point of humanising those characters or trying to make them somehow sympathetic.

[Carbomb]

A lot of it depends on what the backstory would be. I can't think of any kind of backstory that would add to the horror of Michael Myers any more than him simply being a blank slate that ended up evil for no reason whatsoever. 

Making Freddie Krueger a sympathetic character is bullshit. There's nothing wrong with keeping him out-and-out evil. If he were to have a backstory for when he was alive, maybe have something about him drugging the children with LSD or something, to hint at why he can attack people in dreams.

Hellraiser, for example, did not need a backstory - at least, not for the Cenobites or Pinhead. For the Lament Configuration Box, maybe, but nothing else. It's terrifying enough that the Cenobites should be pure, primal evil. 

Damien Thorn has a tremendous backstory - 2,000 years of Christian theology that we've been mostly instilled with in our upbringings, and which, even amongst atheists, we've been culturally inculcated to have a sense of the monolithic and ominous about. Good religious horrors will simply fill in the more esoteric gaps. (Also, there's the more obvious point that he'd just been born in The Omen, so you'd have to get creative to give him a prequel backstory anyway.)

[chokeout]

Not one specific horror franchise but i do have a soft spot for films trying to add a new pointless backstory to Dracula, because being a sexy immortal warlord just isn't good enough!

Rewatched John Carpenters Vampires last week and the main vampire is Terry Silver from Karate Kid 3, which for some reason had always passed me by. He was the first vampire and was created due to a botched exorcism being stopped mid way through.

Dracula 2000 I think is the one where it turns out that he is, in fact, Judas. The aversion to silver comes from him collecting the silver for ratting out JC. He tries to kill himself so is cursed to live forever and despises the religious iconography. Pointless drivel but top marks for trying.

Basically, just blame the church for creating evil and you're on the way to a mid-level B-Movie

[organizedkaos]

To be fair this Friday 13th prequel is being done by Bryan Fuller. Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham solve crimes together also felt like a very unnecessary TV series but he managed to make it something p good.

Although with him in charge there's a fair change it gets cancelled after one season or he gets booted off. However as a writer/showrunner he has a fair pedigree so for that I'm happy to give the show a chance

[Chris B]

49 minutes ago, chokeout said:

Dracula 2000 I think is the one where it turns out that he is, in fact, Judas. The aversion to silver comes from him collecting the silver for ratting out JC. He tries to kill himself so is cursed to live forever and despises the religious iconography. Pointless drivel but top marks for trying.

Basically, just blame the church for creating evil and you're on the way to a mid-level B-Movie

I remember watching that for the first time and being genuinely impressed - it's a fantastically out-there idea, and for a film that had very little going for it, I was up for them doing something batshit.

[BomberPat]

4 hours ago, Carbomb said:

Hellraiser, for example, did not need a backstory - at least, not for the Cenobites or Pinhead. For the Lament Configuration Box, maybe, but nothing else. It's terrifying enough that the Cenobites should be pure, primal evil. 

Completely. Backstory makes it knowable and quantifiable, and Cenobites should be completely beyond our comprehension. For all of HP Lovecraft's many many faults, one of the best things about his horror is that he never tries to actually explain what his monsters are, where they came from or what they want. Them being beyond our understanding is the entire point. A lot of the writers who built on his work and carried it on completely missed the point and created pantheons, and good and evil Old Gods, and a structure underpinning it all, when the whole point should be that some things are terrifying because we will never understand them. 

3 hours ago, chokeout said:

Dracula 2000 I think is the one where it turns out that he is, in fact, Judas. The aversion to silver comes from him collecting the silver for ratting out JC. He tries to kill himself so is cursed to live forever and despises the religious iconography. Pointless drivel but top marks for trying.

Basically, just blame the church for creating evil and you're on the way to a mid-level B-Movie

Terrible film, but I do kind of love that reveal, just as an attempt at a twist, and an explanation for why vampires are a thing, but without diminishing their horror. The BBC Dracula series did a similar thing of trying to explain why Dracula would be averse to the cross and sunlight, though ended up with a completely nonsensical Steven Moffat bullshit ending for their troubles. 

Zombie movies - as much as they're overdone and quite tedious - quite often tend to get it right; maybe Night Of The Living Dead happened because of radiation from a space probe, but the movie never shows us that, never establishes whether it's true or not, and it ultimately never matters. Just skipping over the whole how and the why and getting right to the horror can be much better. 

[chokeout]

23 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

 

The BBC Dracula series did a similar thing of trying to explain why Dracula would be averse to the cross and sunlight, though ended up with a completely nonsensical Steven Moffat bullshit ending for their troubles. 

 

 

Dracula with an iPad. Never has there been such a monumental dip in quality between 2 episodes