Racketboy Month of Horror 14: Please Call First

[Raging Justice]

Just out of curiosity, are any of you into any of these online, fan made, horror series. Stuff like the Backrooms by Kane Pixels for example, or Gemini Home Entertainment. There seems to be some pretty creepy stuff people regularly release on youtube.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I have not watched it, but my teenage children say backrooms is super creepy. I suspect there’s some really good stuff out there. Any other recommendations?

[Raging Justice]

I have not watched it, but my teenage children say backrooms is super creepy. I suspect there’s some really good stuff out there. Any other recommendations?

I've also heard of LOCAL58TV. Be careful though, there's a video called "Real Sleep", which features images and subliminal messages that is said to give viewers actual nightmares. Supposedly it's based off of real life psychological experiments and can mess with your mind. A youtuber who was covering The Local 58 said that "Real Sleep" is legit and did actually give him nightmares so he told his viewers to be aware of that before they decide to watch. Creepy stuff.

The Backrooms is interesting to me because as a gamer, the idea of glitching out of the world being applied to real life is particularly unnerving. Plus, there is something about liminal spaces that is just unsettling for some reason. There are even some horror movies that use this to make the audience uncomfortable.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Last night of horror movie month pre-gaming!

Tonight’s movie was Insidious. It is a rock solid horror film in which Ethan Hawke plays an asshole true crime writer who moves his (really hard sleeping!) family into a murder house. He discovers a box of 8mm snuff films in the attic, and we’re off to the races! As @michi noted, he has some weird aversion to turning on lights, and his wife is always serving him breakfast for some reason. He also makes really bad decisions, and he has no idea he’s in a horror film until it’s way too late. Still, he’s a good actor, and he sells it. The movie also genuinely scary, which I appreciated. Recommended!

Scream at prfsnl gmr’s Pre-Gaming Watchlist of Blood!

Altered States -
As Above So Below -
Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter -
Dead & Buried -
Evil Dead Rise -
Insidious -
In The Mouth of Madness -
Malevolent -
The Pope’s Exorcist -
Run Rabbit -
The Stepfather -
Tenebrae -
Train to Busan -
Unseen -
Vivarium -

[Michi]

Happy Horror Month!

As part of my "theme" for the month I watched....


Castle Freak <--- Link



A family inherits the castle of a distant relative, but nobody bothered to tell them about the angry, tortured man their old, dead relative was keeping in the basement.

Oh, and he just escaped.

Downside: It's a mid-90s Full Moon film, so it has a cheap-ass budget.

Upside: It's directed by Stuart Gordon, and stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Hot damn!

Really though, beyond some really stupid plotting issues (pretty sure ol' Castle Freak would have been long dead by the time the attorneys found Combs n' Company and they ever set foot in the castle, but whatever...), this is a very entertaining horror movie. Good acting, GREAT atmosphere, and very impressive special effects. I liked it.

Go watch it if you haven't already.


But I also watched....

Annihilation



A meteor strike on the coast leads to a strange sort of bio-dome forming that starts to effect the evolution and biology of all nearby lifeforms. As the dome slowly grows and begins to overtake all the nearby areas, the only thing standing in the way of the Earth being taken over by an alien that looks like a Windows XP screensaver is a Natalie Portman and a match.

I watched this before it left Netflix and.... Well, it's very pretty. But also very predictable and not all that scary. Except for the scenes involving the "bear." Those were super creepy. So, yeah, I wasn't all that impressed in general, but at least it was a nice movie to look at.


And...


Corruption



While at a swinging 60s party, the face of Dr. Rowan's model girlfriend is burnt in a horrible accident. Feeling guilty for his part in her disfigurement, Rowan throws himself into research in an attempt to find a cure, which he does... by cutting out the pituitary gland of a dead patient and using it's fluid. The procedure works, but only temporarily, forcing Rowan to continually turn to living victims in order to find the parts he needs to try to keep his girlfriend happy.

This one is weird. So of course I liked it. It's cheesy as all hell, but watching Peter Cushing stab prostitutes and attack random women on trains kinda makes it worth it. Also, this is a film with immense style. It almost feels like a giallo, in a way. It's unabashedly, decadently 60s, with the patterns and the colors and the fashion (dear god, the fashion...). Unfortunately the furniture doesn't match the sweet, sweet outfits, as the doc is a very stuffy British man with a house full of antiques. So prfsnl_gmr and his wife won't be impressed by the furniture. But if you guys dig Austin Powers-like clothing styles then this film is full of eye candy.

[prfsnl_gmr]

But, michi, Corruption is not a “woman’s picture” according to the poster. How is my wife supposed to watch it?

I appreciate the recommendation.

Also, Annihilation is a very OK movie based on a totally awesome book. If you even kind of liked the film, you definitely should definitely read the book. In fact, you should read the entire Southern Reach trilogy because it rules.

[PretentiousHipster]

Annihilation kind of felt like a bootleg Tarkovsky in a way to me.

Intruder (1989) - I am honestly shocked. Some of it is a bit silly in the standard 80s slasher way, but it's definitely a cut above the usual quality of theirs. Some weird twists, but the rare cases of humour still works, which usually is a killer for me in that genre. The camerawork though? HOLY SHIT. Seriously some of the best I've seen in an 80s horror film. Stylized at its absolute best. It seriously reminded me of Raul Ruiz's work.

[Ack]

I can also vouch for the quality of Annihilation's source material. The book is a delightfully creepy scientific excursion that reminded me more than a little of some of the bizarre terrors of Roadside Picnic, the basis for Tarkovsky's Stalker. Give at least the first a read, Michi!

Also, for those of you who are into PC FPS, the amazing CULTIC just dropped a new level, Interlude, which gives a fantastic experience roaming the darkened halls of a Hellbound police station. I recommend it.

And I also recommend this:



M3GAN

Horror films anchored by messed up kids can be a mixed bag, but I am happy to say I had an absolute blast with M3GAN, primarily because of child actress Amie Donald, who provided the movement for the killer robot doll. While she didn't do the voice, her choreography and stuntwork is amazing and disturbing, from the weird dance that got popular on social media to her dropping down on all fours and hunting a kid like an angry bear. There are plot points that warrant further explanation, like how the robot's self-aware nature appears to have begun long before she was assigned to her child owner, but for a cold look at an AI with little in the way of ethics to force a primary directive, M3GAN succeeds. It also succeeds in making me understand why human frailty could so easily be preyed upon in such a situation, particularly from a child. M3GAN is, after all, effectively manipulating and preying upon her hosts, finding ways to insert herself as necessary by pulling on emotions and gaslighting or simply killing when necessary.

That said, nobody gets killed by a basketball thrown through their head, so...still not the best killer robot girl movie.

[Limewater]

I watched Ernest Scared Stupid with my son. At one point he commented that "The CGI on the troll is really good."

What a world we live in.

I will say, though, 32 years later, that troll does still look really good.

[prfsnl_gmr]

October, sadly, started off with a bit of a whimper this year…We watched David Cronenberg’s Rabid last night, and it’s a very just OK zombie movie. In it, Marilyn Chambers ( ) plays a young woman who develops some sort of stinger under her armpit after an experimental skin graft. She uses the stinger to drink blood, I guess? Because she can’t eat anything else? People she stings get a new form of rabies and start foaming at the mouth. They also want to eat other people, and they pass on the disease by biting (which makes more sense). Despite the very weird premise, the movie is pretty dull, and it’s only 25% as scary as it should be. Also, the very boring male lead alternates between mumbling his lines and ACTING!!! Just pretty weak overall and not recommended. (Available for streaming on Lanopy and Prime Video)

EDIT: October picked way up tonight with The Girl with All the Gifts. It is a very solid zombie action horror film that takes the “zombies don’t eat other zombies” trope and runs with it. In it, a group of scientists travel with an infected, but (mostly) asymptomatic, carrier of the zombie pathogen to London. Their goal is to creat a vaccine, but things don’t go to plan…Really, really great zombie film that I ended up enjoying even more that the excellent Train to Busan. Super scary and very highly recommended. (Available for streaming on Kanopy)

Your Blood Runs Cold at the Sight of prfsnl gmr’s October Horror Movie List Spook-tacular!

The Girl with All the Gifts -
Rabid -

Scream at prfsnl gmr’s Pre-Gaming Watchlist of Blood!

Altered States -
As Above So Below -
Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter -
Dead & Buried -
Evil Dead Rise -
Insidious -
In The Mouth of Madness -
Malevolent -
The Pope’s Exorcist -
Run Rabbit -
The Stepfather -
Tenebrae -
Train to Busan -
Unseen -
Vivarium -