MUWT 2: The Quickening

[thecatamites]

for me scary stuff is essentially just anything with really bad vibes and the sense that the fictional framework is not gonna be strong enough to act as a bulwark against them. I remember having a really hard time getting past the title screen of zombies ate my neighbours just because the big spiral and exaggerated atmospheric synth music made me feel it would show me something genuinely horrible at any second.

I remember liking event horizon as a kid bc I guess i liked that it was kind of a longform vaguely creepy setup but in a scifi format that made it feel more like a procedural explorative thing? just like Sphere, the children’s favourite.

anyway here is my Halloween movie report:

Theatre of Blood - another Vincent Price one in the vein of Dr Phibes, i liked it a lot, maybe even more than that earlier one? it doesn’t have the same amount of crazed visual invention but V Price gets to talk more in it and dress up in goofy disguises, it’s paced faster, shot on location in London in the 70s so there are many interesting looking streets and horrible interiors. milo o’shea plays the main policeman! there’s a good swordfighting scene that takes place in a gymnasium, and they do the thing of jumping on the nearby equipment and swinging on the ropes and such, but it keeps escalating to the point where they’re eventually both fencing with each other while bouncing up and down on two separate giant trampolines.

eXistenZ - i still like this one, it’s maybe still playing on ideas from Videodrome but i enjoy seeing game stuff interpreted from the same perspective. the fleshy pod things playing on weirdly organic looking ergonomic controllers, the way people rub spit and chapstick on the bio-ports before plugging in a la blowing on the insides of a NES cart. the fact that even the ultra-immersive movie videogame is still depicted as pretty janky and awkward and bearing only a loose and uncertain relationship to any concept of choice. also “hit by a car” is probably one of the higher tier background sightgag videogames honestly

[iguferon]

HIT BY CAR is one of my favorite parts of existenz, but I also love how everyone degenerates into '90s FMV adventure game animation loops within like 10 seconds of having delivered their line. The guy in the game store is so fucking good at it too

[thecatamites]

also the fact that everybody in the game world has an extremely outsize accent!! and that the characters remark on how the world around them is so bizarrely, pointlessly grody looking at all times. really enjoy that it’s a whole vision of the format seemingly projected forth from a handful of cd-rom adventure games.

[daphaknee]

theatre of blood reminded me of a freddy movie with theatre nerds it was a lot of fun

ALSO YES EXISTENZ – i remember when it came out people were like HAS THIS MAN EVER PLAYED A VIDEOGAME but he like understands videogame logic more deeply than almost every videogame movie ive seen

like shootemup and existenz do so much with videogame logic without being about a specific game franchise

[Tulpa]

Yeah existenz showed that cronenberg got video games on a fundamental level

If you want to see something not understand video games on a fundamental level, watch the Baywatch Nights episode “Nights to Dragon One”

[Father.Torque]

What’s the one we watched in the gaywatch with maybe Christopher Lambert about the killer VR arcade machine

That really… got something… about videogames

[u_u]

Easter egg that the film is in the Crash Cinematic Universe

[u_u]

@daphaknee

im not bragging or whatever, im working on understanding what it means when people talk about something that isn’t real giving them nightmares or scarring them

i wish i could explain it! the weird thing is i was fucking mortally afraid of Aliens Getting Me for a lot of my childhood, and had this weird fixation on the Giger Aliens due to their ubiquity in pop culture long before I saw the movie. But I was mostly afraid of The Greys catching me and doing weird experiments on my butt or whatever. Like I would lay awake at night convinced that this was the night they were gonna come fuck me up, and I think this was entirely inspired by promos for the X-Files, the trailer for Fire in the Sky, and probably some Unsolved Mysteries type TV show I accidentally watched

This was when I was a lot younger though

Anyway at some point the Alien fixation turned to fascination and I watched and really loved all of the Aliens movies.

(The same thing happened with Nightmare on Elm Street when I was a kid who accidentally saw part of one on TV in a hotel or something. Then when Freddy Vs Jason came out I became super obsessed with the series.)

Event Horizon came out the same year Alien Resurrection did, it’s funny in my mind I had already seen Alien Resurrection but I guess Event Horizon came out before it did. Maybe I was just hype about it from the trailer?

But anyway EH’s trailers really did not give anything away about the actual plot, which is in retrospect kind of brilliant, and the first 3/4 of the movie are such a slow burn. The end is just so intense! I don’t know how to describe it. I think I just have an overactive imagination or something. Like, as a kid this meant I could be ridiculously, viscerally scared of things that absolutely 100% do not exist because like… what if they DID…

Now as an adult I know that all this shit is made up, and moreover like… I understand how horror films work and know about editing and special effects and stuff. But I still have a very visceral reaction to things that have a lot of jump scares, or like if there’s a sequence that you know is leading up to a skullface* leaping out or a psycho killer ripping out someone’s guts or etc. my heart starts racing in an almost panic-attack-y kind of way. It’s fucked up! I also cry in every movie that has like even slightly effective representations of like dads respecting their children or whatever. I’m just a rube I guess!

*when I was an extremely stoned film studies student I used to rant a lot about the “skullface” concept, which is different from a normal jump scare, in that it is a sudden but expected reveal of a practical effect, usually a skull or a disfigured face or something, that is the narrative payoff to either an off-screen death or accident or some other more significant event. Like when the severed arm falls on Laura Dern in Jurassic Park, that’s a total Skullface moment.

The other characteristic skullface moments are when the chair turns around and there’s like a skeleton sitting in it. I can’t even remember any movies where this happens but… it happens a lot. that’s what inspired the name.

[Brooks]

Holy shit put the skullface post in a museum immediately

I’ve had exactly this thing in my head forever too, nameless, waiting

For you

[HOBO]

[wonder_momo]

i think this was the thread where i said i’d watch all the nightmare on elm street movies in october

well

i got busy, but, i’m gonna watch elm street 3 for halloweed. i’m sick and got nothing else to do and i hear it’s really good

i watched 2 with a bunch of friends a couple weeks ago? and we all loved it so much. it was hilarious. we’re all queers screaming at the tv about how gay it is and oh my god i loved the lead. his acting was amazing. god.

[wonder_momo]

holds my head in my hands

i got all ready to watch and then i realized i’m an adult with responsibilities i can’t ignore atm

[HOBO]

FUCK THESE ADS

I’ve never seen or read Communion but I am pretty sure if it didn’t exist my life would be way different cuz being aware of that shit gave me such fucking terrors. All those sleepless nights…!

[GherkinForce]

Oh god I think I remember these ads

I think my dad bought a bunch of those books

[shrug]

we watched the first one in the gaywatch and I was very impressed with Nancy’s brow game

[km]

I just don’t like being scared I guess? Like I worry enough in real life why would I want to do it recreationally? Maybe this is weird but if I read a summary of the plot before I see it I do much better.

I don’t necessarily dislike creepy stuff but anything with jump scares is right out

[Rudie]

I hate gore and death but love fantastic unreal worlds which is real common in Horror.

[daphaknee]

jump scares suck ass. there is a one in ten chance if you’re just like ‘hey daphny’ that ill get spooked and jump. leave my lizard brain alone, FILM

---

nancy’s eyebrows were wonderful

[wonder_momo]

when the pig scene happened as i watched 3 tonight i said “skullface” to myself

[wonder_momo]

i don’t know, tbh, what the significant payoff was for it, besides the fact that There’s A Pig With An Apple In Their Mouth And You Bet Your Britches That They Are Gonna Suddenly Start Talking