Re: Top Five Films
Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 10:36 am
No-One Lives
Dark Tourist
You're Next
Odd Thomas
Cheap Thrills.
Dark Tourist
You're Next
Odd Thomas
Cheap Thrills.
That's a yes and no from me. I turned 52 the day before Frightfest this year and it's certainly true after 40 years of regular cinema going I'm getting harder and harder to please, especially when it comes to gore and scares. Nothing for me will ever match the sheer crap your pants intensity of seeing The Exorcist on a re-release in 1977 (my first X rated movie and we'd managed to sneak in under age as well) or the electric atmosphere of Carpenters Halloween a year later with every woman in the packed auditorium (and probably some of the blokes as well) screaming the place down. You can't buy moments like that anymore. As the years have passed those kind of moments have become ever fewer and far between, especially in this remake era where everything is just being rehashed and reheated for a new generation. That's why the likes of a Martyr's, The Woman or Human Centipede are always going to be welcome as it's something different that reminds me why I still stick with the genre. If it was all reworkings of Nightmare On Elm Street and Evil Dead I'd have given up long ago. That said, I always like to compare scores out of 10 with Richard every year (well, ok, Richard scores them out of 5) and nearly didn't this year until he caught me just as I was leaving the Phoenix early Tuesday morning! And it's fair to say, while we agree on quite a few movies there's certainly others I know Richard for one is never going to like no matter how well made they are (this years I Spit On Your Grave was pretty poor no matter what your tastes but I really rated the remake from a couple of years back). Age certainly plays a part. The older you get the more predictable a lot of it becomes. But the old adage about everyone having different tastes is still valid, even when you can see that bus pass looming on the horizon!steve806 wrote:I note Richard Streets top 5 is pretty similar to mine (I didn't see Your Next and should have put Odd Thomas not No One Lives - senior moment) and believe he and I are of a similar age (47) and have a similar festival history (shock around the clock/Eurofests etc - we previously discussed this on here Richard and were going to say hi at a previous Frightfest but it never happened - must say hi and get a coffee if we both go to Halloween) and I wondered if their is a correlation between age and the films we rated or otherwise.
So I just wondered if people choices bore any relation to their age or not?
Speaking as a 49-year-old, I'm still capable of getting spooked by films, it doesn't necessarily have to be anything original, it just has to have "something" which pushes my buttons. The slow build-up and sense of not knowing what's coming next usually does the trick.steve806 wrote:Totally agree regarding Exorcist, Halloween (my favourite horror movie - a purpose built scare machine that's never been bettered and the first horror movie that genuinely scared me) etc, though I suppose the point is that the Conjuring, Your Next etc etc provide the same thrill to the younger audience now and we are now so old we have become desensitised. Not many films have made the hears on the back of my neck stand up in recent years.
Not sure if I qualify as a young frightfester as I'm 34, but younger anyway. I agree with what you're saying, I don't think it's totally down to age, but after watching horror films for a long time, or attending Fright Fest regularly for years, you certainly become desensitised to gore to the point where it takes something genuinely out of the ordinary to shock you, and if something does shock me, I find it genuinely noteworthy. As for genuinely scary films, I think that's a much rarer thing, the only Fright Fest films I've found scary since I started attending (2007) are The Orphanage, House Of The Devil, Sinister and The Conjuring...outside Fright Fest there's maybe 10 (if that) films that I've seen that are scary. I don't think it's a new generation of films thing, even though The Conjuring might not hve genuinely scared you, or had as much of an effect on you as The Shining or Halloween, you have to admit it's a well made, tense and spooky film that manages to be quite scary. I don't think you can lump You're Next it the same category as the The Conjuring as it's a very different film; You're Next is an action film all about jump scares, which are much easier to do and don't stay with you for as long. I enjoyed both, but would recommend You're Next as a fun action movie to go see at the cinema and have a laugh with, whereas I would recommend The Conjuring as an excellent scary horror film. I guess what I'm saying is for me The Shining will always be the scariest movie I've seen, and Halloween is up there too, and I'm somewhat desensitised from horror movies, but I still can appreciate the likes of Insidious, The Conjuring and House Of The Devil as scary films, and I don't think I would like to get so desensitised to the point where I can't go and see a well made modern horror movie and find it scary, and I hope that never happens.steve806 wrote:We seem to be on broadly the same page Aylmer, though I am with Richard on the I Spit on Your Grave remake - no matter the production value the story is low rent for me - I never got that it was a female revenge movie, its a film for guys and a pretty distasteful and pointless one IMO.
Totally agree regarding Exorcist, Halloween (my favourite horror movie - a purpose built scare machine that's never been bettered and the first horror movie that genuinely scared me) etc, though I suppose the point is that the Conjuring, Your Next etc etc provide the same thrill to the younger audience now and we are now so old we have become desensitised. Not many films have made the hears on the back of my neck stand up in recent years.
Interesting to see now if a younger frightfester will provide an opposing view??
I find the slow and quiet build-up to a scare is a set-piece that's too well signposted in most modern horror, one of the main reasons I didn't jump once during Banshee Chapter while others found it terrifying. The only part of any film I found spooky was the robotic eye segment of V/H/S/2, that really unsettled me - obviously the "something" that pushes my buttons. For everyone raving about the Safe Haven segment, I thought it was a great story, but not in the least bit scary. I'm 42, by the way.The Soapmaker wrote:Speaking as a 49-year-old, I'm still capable of getting spooked by films, it doesn't necessarily have to be anything original, it just has to have "something" which pushes my buttons. The slow build-up and sense of not knowing what's coming next usually does the trick.
I agree, the eye segement of V/H/S/2 was the closest we got to anything scary. I even found the house itself quite creepy, even though it was a modern Hollywood house it seemed quite isolated and exposed, I wouldn't want to live in a place like that.DJBenz wrote:The only part of any film I found spooky was the robotic eye segment of V/H/S/2, that really unsettled me - obviously the "something" that pushes my buttons. For everyone raving about the Safe Haven segment, I thought it was a great story, but not in the least bit scary. I'm 42, by the way.
I'm pretty sure I must have seen an "X" film or two on the TV long before I turned 18, but my first in the cinema was John Carpenter's The Thing. I thought it was actually on my 18th birthday, but a quick look at the BBFC site has revealed that they didn't actually pass it until about a week after that.streetrw wrote:I'm 49, and I got to watching horror movies just as the video nasties campaign was taking effect; we didn't get our first VCR until 1983 and it being a family machine, I didn't get to see many horrors by myself. (I'm also unusual, perhaps unique, in that I never saw any films underage.)