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liesmyth · 23 days

Note

Any fiction recommendations? I’ve repeatedly read Locked Tomb, natch. I’d love something similarly brainwork inducing but maybe a touch lighter. Also not fantasy or sci fi…I need something to listen to while I do a ton of chores, and those can be hard (for me) because the unfamiliar proper nouns get confusing. :/

anon!! I'm terrible at reccing anything based on “if you liked TLT” because TLT is like five different genres in a trench coat, but I TRIED (⭐) Here are some brainworm-y recs that aren't sff — where by brainworm-y I mean that they stayed with me for a while after I finished them, but aren't overly confusing. (most of them are books, but available on audio)

Podcasts: a tumblr pal recced me the deviser based on me liking the eldritch elements of tlt; it's short and horror-y, and I really enjoyed it.

I haven't checked out the new TMA yet but I see many TLT peeps who are enjoying it (or S1 of the original The Magnus Archives could be a good entry point if you haven't ever listened to it)

TV: Unfortunately I hardly ever watch live action stuff BUT if you haven't seen either IWTV (the series not the film) or Yellowjackets, I do rec those! There's a lot of overlap between these fans and TLT fandom on my dash. His Dark Materials also goes hard and you might enjoy it (dysfunctional characters! worldbuilding! religious weirdness!) but it has more sff elements than other stuff I've recced. Oddball out of nowhere but The Great is a fun show if you enjoy the meme moments of TLT + people being gleefully horrible + having feelings despite your best intentions

Animanga: Utena (!!!!!) also Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, which occupies a very similar space to TLT in my brain

Books!

✧ I went through my “women unhinged” goodreads shelf and found some books that are avaliable in audio format, and might appeal. These are wildly varied in scope and ngl the criterion was just “at least one person (besides myself) who enjoyed tlt also this book” and the similarities stop there. It's all vibes baby! Still, I tried

my heart is a chainsaw by stephen graham jones (horror, slasher), bunny by mona awad (horror, wildly unhinged), the witching hour by anne rice (horror, gothic)

matrix by lauren groff (historical, lesbian nuns), anything by sarah waters (historical fiction + lesbians), rebecca by daphne du maurier (historical, gothic)

the plot by jean hanff korelitz (litfic, thriller), sadie by courtney summers (thriller, coming of age). anything by gillian flynn (thrillers with terrible women).

✧ I really enjoy Tana French thrillers for the strong sense of place, great prose, and the complete emotional turmoil of her character-centric narratives. If anything sounds up your alley, I enjoyed the witch's elm + dublin murder squad series. They're murder mystery procedural but the messy characters really elevate the novels. Available in audiobook also

✧ American Elsewhere, technically scifi but set in New Mexico. Somehow, cosmic horrors who have taken over a quaint little town and worse! They are enforcing HETERONORMATIVITY upon it! They also have tentacles. The main character rocks

✧ Sundial by Catriona Ward: insane, gripping psychological horror. A mother and her unsettling daughter take a trip to the isolate desert ranch where the main chracter grew up. Surrounded by unsettling science experiments

✧ A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan: when the parasocial relationship is so strong, it accidentally summons a hellmonster from another dimension

✧ SFF adjacent, sorry, but set in the real world (historical, tho) — Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, a middle grade novel with fairytale elements that gave me more brainworms than any kids book ought to, mostly because I LOVED the main character. She occupies a very similar place in my brain as Gideon does. This is actually the only book on the list that I'm not sure is available in audio format, but if you get a chance and it's up your alley, I'd check it out

I hope there's at least ONE thing you'll like in here! lmk (also. lmk if you don't have access to a way to borrow audiobooks but would like to)

#anonymous #ask

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thewarmestplacetohide · 9 months

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<3 your blog! trying to watch more international films and i know there's some classics from Asia. do you have any recs for Asian horror

thank you!!

here are my favorite Asian horror films (note: a lot of these contain triggering content, so please do research beforehand if that's an issue):

Japan

ゴジラ/Godzilla (1954; creature feature, science fiction): US nuclear testing off the coast of Japan creates a giant lizard creature that rampages through Tokyo

藪の中の黒猫/Kuroneko (1968; ghosts): a woman and her daughter-in-law come back as vengeful spirits after they're murdered by samurai

ハウス/House (1977; horror comedy, ghosts): a group of schoolgirls visit a haunted mansion

天使のたまご/Angel's Egg (1985; dark fantasy, surrealist, animated): in a ruined world, a young girl cares for a giant egg

吸血鬼(バンパイア)ハンターD/Vampire Hunter D (1985; vampires, animated): when a woman is betrothed to a vampire, she hires a vampire hunter in an attempt to escape

アキラ/Akira (1988; science fiction, animated): 31 years after a nuke was dropped on Tokyo, a young man tries to save his friend from government experiments

鉄男/Testuo: The Iron Man (1989; techno horror, body horror): a man finds his flesh is cursed to turn to iron

パーフェクトブルー/Perfect Blue (1997; psychological horror, animated): a pop star is driven mad by a stalker

リング/Ring (1998; techno horror, ghosts): a videotape curses anyone who watches it to die in seven days

オーディション/Audition (1999; psychological thriller): a widower auditioning women to be his new wife makes a deadly choice

バトル・ロワイアル/Battle Royale (2000; science fiction, psychological thriller): a group of students are put on an island and told to slaughter each other

回路/Pulse (2001; techno horror, ghosts): a group of young people in Tokyo discover a website that claims to show you ghosts

殺し屋１/Ichi the Killer (2001; psychological thriller, slasher): a sadomasochistic Yakuza enforcer goes on a rampage

仄暗い水の底から/Dark Water (2002; ghosts): a divorced mother and her young daughter move into a haunted apartment building

ノロイ/Noroi: The Curse (2005; occult, found footage): a paranormal investigator tries to tie together a series of supernatural events

シン・ゴジラ/Shin Godzilla (2016; creature feature, science fiction): a giant lizard kaiju attacks Tokyo

カメラを止めるな!/One Cut of the Dead (2017; horror comedy, zombies): people making a cheap zombie flick find themselves in the middle of a real zombie outbreak

South Korea

올드보이/Oldboy (2003; psychological thriller): after being imprisoned in a room for fifteen years, a man hunts down the ones responsible

괴물/The Host (2006; creature feature, science fiction): a monster made when American chemicals were spilled into the Han River emerges to attack a community

박쥐/Thirst (2009; vampires): a Catholic priest is turned into a vampire by a blood transfusion

악마를 보았다/I Saw the Devil (2010; psychological thriller): a man goes on a brutal revenge mission after the murder of his wife

늑대소년/A Werewolf Boy (2012; werewolves, dark fantasy): a girl moves to a country home, where she befriends a strange, feral boy

부산행/Train to Busan (2016; zombies): a zombie plague breaks out on a train

서울역/Seoul Station (2016; zombies, animated): a zombie plague breaks out at a train station; companion film to Train to Busan

아가씨/The Handmaiden (2016; psychological thriller): a woman hired to be a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress plans to defraud her

곤지암/Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018; ghosts, found footage): a group of influencers livestream themselves exploring a supposedly haunted institution

#살아있다/#Alive (2020; zombies): a young man is trapped in his apartment during a zombie outbreak

Hong Kong

殭屍先生/Mr. Vampire (1985; horror comedy, vampires): a Taoist priest must fight jiangshi that descend upon a village

餃子/Dumplings (2004; psychological thriller): a woman obsessed with staying young eats dumplings stuffed with strange meat

維多利亞壹號/Dream Home (2010; slasher): a woman goes on a killing spree to get her dream apartment

India

Bhoot/Ghost (2003; ghosts): a Mumbai businessman and his wife move into a haunted flat

Ek Thi Daayan/Once There was a Witch (2013; supernatural horror): a magician seeks protection from a witch who has haunted him since childhood

Tumbbad (2018; dark fantasy, occult): a father and son seek treasure in a castle inhabited by an evil god

Bulbbul (2020; dark fantasy): the village of a child bride, now grown, is attacked by a chudail

Indonesia

Pengabdi Setan/Satan's Slaves (2017; occult): a woman returns from the dead to haunt her children (this is a remake of a film from the 80s, which i have not yet seen)

Sebelum Iblis Menjemput/May the Devil Take You (2018; occult): a woman and her step-family visit her sick father's old home in search of what ails him

Iran

دختری در شب تنها به خانه می‌رود/A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014; vampires): a vampire targets a small Iranian town, attacking men who mistreat women (technically an American production)

زیر سایه/Under the Shadow (2016; occult): during the War of the Cities, a woman and her young daughter are haunted by djinns

Thailand

ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ/Shutter (2004; ghosts): a man begins capturing strange figures in his camera

Turkey

Baskin (2015; occult, dark fantasy, surrealist): a group of police officers discover a gateway to hell

Taiwan

哭悲/The Sadness (2021; bio horror): a virus spreads through Taipei, compelling all who are infected to commit the worst crimes they can imagine

#ask #anon #rec list #long post

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melodiesofmidnight · 4 months

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I want to talk about violence in Phantom of the Paradise for a moment.

Paul Williams once said in an interview that:

"You go back to, in our society, we were, as Americans, sitting and watching the footage from Vietnam. There were cameras following the fighting. We're sitting there with our TV dinners watching the war in Vietnam. And, at some point, it felt like something really evolved at this point.

But the news was becoming entertainment. And the line between the two, between the news and entertainment, our reality began to blur. And so when that amazing moment in the movie, when Beef was killed on stage and the kids think it's part of the show, I think that's a really pivotal moment [...] and it just feels like that was basically the heart of the picture."

It seems to me that this truth, which, at the time, may have seemed to be an overly-thoughtful consideration of the film's intended meaning, has now been augmented into something of so formidable a magnitude as to seem so obvious that it hardly warrants mentioning: and that is intentional.

*Further commentary under the Read More.*

In an ideal society, of course, this aspect of the film would be lost to us, a symptom of a bygone and barbaric society whose methods of entertainment would find themselves comfortably classified as having evolved from those of the Romans.

The "heart of the picture," as Paul put it, however, has only become more familiar to us as Time has steadily marched onward, and may now be so ubiquitous a phenomenon that we suffer the same blindness as those inhabiting said ideal society: we simply do not really analyze the violence. It is hardly mentioned in pertinence to this film in the realm of critical analysis, as that is just standard film fare: we hardly pause to consider its position within the film, or what the depiction of this violence may be trying to say: it is simply not particularly remarkable to us.

And why should it be?

Since the advent of the Internet, real violence has become so easily accessible to us that even a quick Google search can bring you within a finger's breadth of witnessing atrocities mankind was never meant to see.

Many of us grew up in the nascent, more unregulated days of the Internet, where kids passed shock sites between them like naughty magazines, and when places like LiveLeak consolidated into one convenient location the truly horrific realities of the world: beheadings, murders, war crimes, car crashes, cartel torturings...if it featured real, unadulturated human suffering, it had an ever-growing audience. People In the Know referenced these videos to one another, winking at the in-jokes made at the expense of real humans whose horrific deaths they had themselves witnessed.

Even in the current age, these things blur the lines between fantasy and reality for modern youths the way war footage may have for the youths of the Vietnam era: death is a spectacle, be it real or simulated.

We tell ourselves vehemently that we can distinguish between the two - between real and simulated violence - and, while this may be true in parsing the difference between fantasy and reality, can we parse the difference between its effect on us personally? Is every instance of real violence we witness truly as raw to us as it was the first time we saw it?

Ostracized teenage boys gather together to idolize school shooters the way horror fans may gather together to admire their favourite fictional slasher. People respond to a low death toll in mass shootings the way they may react to saving nearly all the characters in their favourite horror game: "Oh, just two got killed? That's not so bad."

Sure, it seems silly to us while watching the film that the audience doesn't recognize that Beef was truly killed whilst onstage, because of course they should have -- we would have. However, would we have cared? There have even recently been instances of people continuing to party on while their friends lie dying of alcohol poisoning on the couch, or of people livestreaming the murder of their partner while their viewers cheer them on, or even people who have displayed the body of a celebrity at a nightclub event.

People trample each other over 5% off sales on televisions and shoot each other's children over a perceived slight on the roadway. People commit random acts of violence against each other every single day, and, of late, have been livestreaming it: recording it for people all over the world to watch -- and they do. They gather en masse to watch, and, when a half-hearted attempt is made to remove the video from being accessible, people scour the Internet to find it: to be part of the group In the Know--to have something to talk about. An assassination live on television, coast to coast? Now that's entertainment!

I think the violence aspect of Phantom of the Paradise is terribly overlooked, and such really only speaks to the relevance of that particular criticism against our society, which still rings so true as to be invisible to us. Haha, the person in the movie killed another person with a bird hat, isn't that silly? Haha, the singer onstage got electrocuted to death, that's so absurd. Haha, that girl put on Winslow's mask after he died without even checking on him. Haha, everyone's partying even though four people just died. Isn't that silly?

And why shouldn't we find it silly, rather than horrifying? After all, we saw worse than that when we were six.

#phantom of the paradise #potp #brian de palma #paul williams #winslow leach #swan potp #beef potp #film analysis #meta

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sprite-real · 2 years

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Songs that I think Slashers would listen too:

Some S/O mentions! No warnings other than music and some minor cursing.

Please do not steal or repost this anywhere, my efforts were put into my writing.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Michael Myers

I feel like he wouldn’t listen too music with words, only selective ones like sweet and calming voices, but other than that, I can only really see him listening to music like meditation music with rain over it. He needs to relax sometimes.

Bubba Sawyer

LORD SAVE ME FROM MY FANTASIES (actually don’t lmao) I believe 100% he is into those lovey dovey songs, and he dances with his S/O to songs like Classic by MKTO, maybe Love Story by Taylor Swift. You and him would have picnics and he’d just turn on the radio and offer you his hand, then you’d to would just dance, it always ends up with you two laughing and hugging each other closely!

Thomas Hewitt

I don’t see Tommy really listening to a lot of music, but when he does feel like listening, it’s VERY similar to what Bubba would listen too, (Michael as well, but that’s when he’s really stressed,) he’d listen to Put Your Head On My Shoulder by Paul Anka. I can just see him putting it on and then gently slow dancing with his S/O too like— 🥺🥺

Billy Loomis

Edgy is one way to describe his music tastes, he would have had a playlist made for him by Stu called “My Mom Left Me” (LOL SORRY). But on a serious note he’d like Twenty One Pilots, for sure and probably Melanie Martinez. Particular songs I’d think he’d really like is idfc by blackbear and Mr. Brightside by The Killers. His music usually goes off of how he feels (same honestly).

Stu Macher

OKAY HE WOULD HAVE A KILLER PLAYLIST, like he would be the type to have that shit playing while he’s on the hunt. Top two are I Can’t Decide by Scissor Sisters and Blood and Bones by The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra. Those two songs just match his level of personality almost perfectly.

Lester Sinclair

He would listen to happy upbeat music, no questions asked. He also would like country, (but as I don’t listen to country I can’t really list any artists, that one is up to you (:). He would love Happy by Pharrell Williams and Best Day Of My Life by American Authors. He’ll have his windows rolled down and singing his heart out.

Bo Sinclair

He’d also like country and rock. There are other songs too, I feel like he’d put himself in some scenarios in his mind, like being the troublemaker in Troublemaker by Olly Murs, or Bad Word by Panicland. It boosts his ego when his mind starts running with these songs playing in the background.

Vincent Sinclair

Another man who’d listen to some love songs and focus music. Love songs are his inspiration when he’s in an art block and trying to do an art piece with him and his S/O, and he’ll put on My Type by Saint Motels and Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley. (Bonus one: Hey, Soul Sister by Train.) Focus music helps him stay focused on his project for hours.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

I promise I’ll watch more slasher films, sorryyyy the Sinclair brothers and both Leatherface’s were the only exceptions but I WILL be watching their movies soon, I’ve got a list for what films I’ll be watching, Friday the 13th is the top one (aside from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of Wax) :)!

…What if I actually made playlists for them? 👀 Let me know if y’all would want that.

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richincolor · 10 months

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New Releases

A bunch of fun books out this week. What will you be reading?

You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron Bloomsbury YA

This heart-pounding slasher by New York Times bestselling author Kalynn Bayron is perfect for fans of Fear Street.

Charity Curtis has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business.

But the last weekend of the season, Charity’s co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity’s role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they’ll need figure out what this killer is after. Is there is more to the story of Mirror Lake and its dangerous past than Charity ever suspected?

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham First Second

A moving young adult graphic memoir about a Vietnamese immigrant boy’s search for belonging in America, perfect for fans of American Born Chinese and The Best We Could Do !

Thien’s first memory isn’t a sight or a sound. It’s the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It’s the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam.

After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle to survive. Things don’t get much easier once they resettle in California. And through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Strawberries come to signify struggle as Thien’s mom and dad look for work. Potato chips are an indulgence that bring Thien so much joy that they become a necessity.

Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search– for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream.

This Town is on Fire by Pamela N. Harris Quill Tree Books

From the critically acclaimed author of When You Look Like Us comes a page-turning YA contemporary novel about what happens when the latest “Becky” on the internet is your best friend. A lot is up in the air in Naomi Henry’s her spot as a varsity cheer flier, her classmates’ reaction to the debut of her natural hair, and her crush on the guy who’s always been like a brother to her. With so much uncertainty, she feels lucky to have a best friend like Kylie to keep her grounded. After all, they’re practically sisters—Naomi’s mom took care of Kylie and her twin brother for years. But then a video of Kylie calling the cops on two Black teens in a shopping store parking lot goes viral. Naomi is shaken, and her town is reeling from the publicity. While Naomi tries to reckon with Kylie, the other Black students in their high school are questioning their friendship, and her former friends are wondering where this new “woke” Naomi came from. Although Naomi wants to stand by her best friend, she now can’t help but see everything in a different light. As tensions in her town escalate, Naomi finds herself engaging in protests that are on the cusp of being illegal. And then a bomb explodes, and someone is found dead. Will Naomi be caught in the center of the blast?

And Break Pretty Things (Sacred Bone #1) by Lena Jeong HarperCollins

Inspired by Korean history and myths, the first book in the Sacred Bone series is a rich and evocative high-stakes fantasy that is perfect for fans of Gallant and Six Crimson Cranes.

Mirae was meant to save her queendom, but the ceremony before her coronation ends in terror and death, unlocking a strange new power within her and foretelling the return of a monster even the gods fear. Amid the chaos, Mirae’s beloved older brother is taken—threatening the peninsula’s already tenuous truce.

Desperate to save her brother and defeat this ancient enemy before the queendom is beset by war, Mirae sets out on a journey with an unlikely group of companions while her unpredictable magic gives her terrifying visions of a future she must stop at any cost.

An Echo in the City by K.X. Song Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Sixteen-year-old Phoenix knows her parents have invested thousands of dollars to help her leave Hong Kong and get an elite Ivy League education. They think America means big status, big dreams, and big bank accounts. But Phoenix doesn’t want big; she just wants home. The trouble is, she doesn’t know where that is… until the Hong Kong protest movement unfolds, and she learns the city she’s come to love is in danger of disappearing.

Seventeen-year-old Kai sees himself as an artist, not a filial son, and certainly not a cop. But when his mother dies, he’s forced to leave Shanghai to reunite with his estranged father, a respected police officer, who’s already enrolled him in the Hong Kong police academy. Kai wants to hate his job, but instead, he finds himself craving his father’s approval. And when he accidentally swaps phones with Phoenix and discovers she’s part of a protest network, he finds a way to earn it: by infiltrating the group and reporting their plans back to the police.

As Kai and Phoenix join the struggle for the future of Hong Kong, a spark forms between them, pulling them together even as their two worlds try to force them apart. But when their relationship is built on secrets and deception, will they still love the person left behind when the lies fall away?

#new releases #weneeddiversebooks

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haveyoureadthisfantasybook · 5 months

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Do you draw a line between :

- fantasy and horror

- fantasy and gothic

- fantasy and magical realism

- fantasy and fairytale retellings

(All with supernatural elements, obviously)

Asking because the distinction isn't often made in my own language

the answer for all of these is yes and no. putting this under a read more because it’s pretty long.

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fantasy and horror are a Venn diagram: there is fantasy that does not include horror, and there is realist horror and sci-fi horror that involves no fantastic elements — something like Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead, for example, or (in a different medium) a slasher like the Scream films is horror but not fantasy. something like Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth, meanwhile, is both horror and fantasy (to give an example of something currently queued). there are several other texts in the horror-fantasy overlap queued, so if you have something in this area you’re all set!

—————————————

the gothic is perhaps more difficult because even when it has fantastic elements it generally relies on those elements being concealed (that is, it’s what Farah Mendlesohn would call “liminal fantasy” or what Rosemary Jackson called “paraxial” fantasy). in this case I would ask the following questions:

does the text contain an unequivocally fantastic element (something that, as Samuel Delany puts it, “could not happen” — some sign of magic or the supernatural)? a text like William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, for example, is clearly Southern gothic but does not involve any speculative elements.

was the text composed as fantasy or as literary fiction? while Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung / The Metamorphosis (not strictly gothic but bear with me) obviously centers on a speculative element, I hesitate to identify it as fantasy because it’s clearly not engaged with either the genre conventions “fantasy” as such that coalesced in the late 1960s or with the fields of pulp and popular fiction that preceded the construction of fantasy as an independent genre. this doesn’t absolutely exclude it (or other texts like it), though — Haïlji’s The Republic of Užupis falls into this category, and I felt comfortable including that here.

for fiction published in the English-speaking world or other areas where there exists a separate fantasy market, is the text published and marketed as fantasy or as literary fiction? if I went to a bookstore specializing in fantasy, would I be able to find this book on the shelves there? genre often resides at least as much in location on bookstore and library shelves as it does in any inherent quality of a given text.

if you’re on the fence about something, feel free to submit it, and if I reject it I can explain my reasoning.

there’s also a lot of stuff published these days that’s described as “gothic” but doesn’t actually conform to the conventions of the gothic (having open fantastic elements, e.g.). stuff in this category is likely to be actively marketed as fantasy, circumventing the problem, but I thought I’d flag it here, too.

—————————————

this will perhaps be a controversial stance, but as a rule I don’t consider magic(al) realism to be fantasy. a text like Alejo Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo / The Kingdom of This World — in conjunction with which Carpentier developed the idea of lo real maravilloso — is using apparently “fantastic” elements clearly within a “literary” and, ultimately, fundamentally realist framework: Carpentier’s contention, explored by later Boom writers, is that aspects of life in Latin America as experienced by Latin Americans cannot be adequately accounted for or expressed within the bounds of traditional European realism.

this opens a much bigger can of worms re the social construction of “reality” in and by Western literary realism — Daniel Heath Justice, for example, has critiqued the reduction of work by Indigenous writers to the realm of “mere” allegory or simply to unreality. I’m not satisfied with Justice’s solution to the problem (the concept of “wonderworks”), because I think it cedes too much ground to Western literary realism’s claim to a monopoly on the real, but his underlying point stands. I have increasingly found that “magic(al) realism” is used, in popular contexts, less as a serious engagement with the theoretical problems that the authors of the Boom were grappling with and more as

a way to bracket off as “unreal” work by Indigenous, African, and other authors who are writing from within a different baseline realism than Western literary realism presupposes, without seriously engaging with the ways this work interrogates the hegemonic constructed “real” that Western states use to justify, for example, the destruction of Indigenous sacred sites for resource extraction purposes;

alternately, a kind of “fantasy lite” that wants to stay within the realm of “literary fiction” rather than risk being tarred with the genre label “fantasy”; or

a label for things that are simply fantasy, not engaged with any of the theoretical problems that define magic(al) realism as a genre, but are either liminal fantasy or more realism-adjacent than secondary-world fantasy or urban fantasy.

things in categories 1 and 2 I would generally exclude from the category of fantasy (if you don’t want to be here, I don’t want you here either!); things in category 3 I would probably consider fantasy (and not consider magic(al) realism).

my second and third questions / points about the gothic are also relevant here, and help clarify some fringe cases. Gabriel García Márquez and Alejo Carpentier were clearly working in the realm of literary fiction and not the “popular” literature that has come to be grouped under the label “fantasy”; conversely, Jorge Luis Borges was heavily influenced by anglophone pulp writers, including H.P. Lovecraft — I am comfortable identifying texts like “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” as “fantasy” (for all that they predate the genre).

—————————————

my questions about the gothic also more or less apply to fairytale retellings; if it includes clear fantastic elements and is published / marketed as fantasy, it’s definitely fantasy. if it includes clear fantastic elements but isn’t clearly written or marketed as fantasy, I’d decide on a case by case basis.

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another question I think about in relation to all of these categories is: if someone came to me and said they liked N.K. Jemisin, Patricia McKillip, and Charles de Lint, do I feel I could recommend this book to them and expect them to enjoy it on the basis of some similarity to these other authors?

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ALL OF THIS SAID, genre conventions are fake and there are no inherent characteristics of a text that absolutely determine whether it belongs to one genre or another. when in doubt, feel free to submit something, and if I have questions about a submission or am inclined to reject it on genre grounds, I’ll either ask for clarification or explain my reasoning. thus far the only thing I’ve rejected on genre grounds has been a science fiction novel with no fantasy elements.

#faq

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estelscinema · 2 years

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American Psycho

A wealthy banking executive in New York City hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

American Psycho is probably one of my favorite movies. Its twisted take on the classic slasher horror is captivating. Instead of focusing on the horror of the kills, it instead focuses on the unreliable serial killer, Patrick Bateman. It delves deep character study that delves into his massive ego and his need to fit in, while his homicidal tendency continues to grow. What makes it even more fascinating, is how he is not really different from everyone around him, they are only missing homicidal fantasies. From the monotone and shallowness to the business card dick measuring contest, the characters within American Psycho have an egotistical vibe that I've never seen before in film. Lastly, besides the great character study within this film, it has some fantastic slasher kills that are definitely some of my favorites.

With the fantastic slew of characters came some fantastic acting. It still amazes me to this date that Christain Bale did not get an Oscar nomination for his performance in this film. He perfectly portrays the charismatic, but monotone and egotistical serial killer. Bale's performance is enthralling and showcases a range that many actors are unable to achieve. Willen Dafoe was also another performance I greatly enjoyed. Finally, watching Jared Leto get hacked to pieces is very satisfying.

Throughout the film, you can feel the corporate monotone that our characters are surrounded by. From the minimalistic white apartments to the wide variety of business suits, you can feel the ego of these characters. The film is beautifully shot. Lastly, I will never be able to hear "Hip to be square" in the same light ever again.

I am giving, American Psycho, an A.

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kevinsreviewcatalogue · 1 year

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Review: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and some language

Score: 4 out of 5

The Evil Dead series has what may be the single best track record for quality out of any Hollywood horror franchise. With the big slasher franchises of the ‘80s, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I can name at least three movies from each series that are downright wretched. The Universal monsters fell off in quality during World War II and only came back when they let Abbott and Costello do an officially sanctioned parody of them. Saw fell off starting with the fourth movie and never fully recovered, even if it still had some decent movies afterwards. Even Scream and Final Destination each have one bad or otherwise forgettable movie marring their otherwise perfect records. Evil Dead, though? The original trilogy is golden and has something to offer for everyone, whether you prefer the first movie’s campy but effective low-budget grit, the second movie’s slapstick horror-comedy approach, or Army of Darkness’ wisecracking medieval fantasy action. The spinoff TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead was three seasons’ worth of horror-comedy goodness that fleshed out the franchise’s lore. Even the remake was awesome, a gritty, ultraviolent bloodbath that took the first film’s more serious tone and put an actual budget and production values behind it, making for one of the most graphic horror movies to ever get a wide release in American theaters. This latest film delivers on the same, with a tone and levels of violence akin to the remake and most of its strengths as a pure, straightforward, whoop-your-ass horror movie with lots of muscle and little fat once it gets going. It may not be revolutionary, but Evil Dead Rise is still as good as it gets, and exactly what I hoped for given this series’ high bar.

Like its predecessors barring Army of Darkness, this is a self-contained story set within an isolated, closed-off location, in this case the top floor of a Los Angeles apartment complex instead of a cabin in the woods. Our protagonists this time are a family, led by the single mother and tattoo artist Ellie with three kids, the teenage DJ son Dan, the teenage activist daughter Bridget, and the adolescent daughter Kassie, as well as Ellie’s sister Beth. After an earthquake reveals an old vault beneath the apartment complex (which used to be a bank), Dan explores it and discovers the Naturom Demonto, an evil-looking book bound in human flesh, along with three records recorded by the renegade priest who had last had that book a hundred years ago. Dan takes the book and the records back home, plays the latter on his turntable, and turns this into a proper Evil Dead movie, with Ellie winding up the first one possessed by the demon it unleashes.

Much like how the remake built its human drama around Mia’s friends staging an intervention for her, so too does this film root its central dynamic in the relationships between its human characters, in this case crafting a dysfunctional yet believable family. Lily Sullivan as Beth and Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie are the film’s MVPs, making their characters flawed yet sympathetic figures whose perspectives are understandable but who both clearly made mistakes in managing their relationship. Beth, an audio technician for a rock band, is visiting Ellie because she just found out she’s pregnant, but is naturally hesitant to tell her sister, given that Ellie sees Beth as a glorified groupie and still harbors some resentment for the fact that Beth wasn’t there for Ellie when her husband left her. News of a pregnancy would do little more than confirm Ellie’s suspicions of Beth and her lifestyle. After all, Beth abandoned Ellie and failed to return her calls, and Ellie readily sees that Beth’s motive for visiting is self-serving even without Beth telling her exactly why she’s there. Ellie herself isn’t blameless in the breakdown of their relationship, though. She clearly has a chip on her shoulder, somebody who sees herself as the more responsible sibling even though Beth is the one with a successful career while she’s living in a run-down apartment struggling to raise three kids after her husband walked out on her.

All of that is heightened when Ellie gets possessed, as the demon, inheriting all of Ellie’s memories, uses them to taunt Beth and go completely mask-off on all the things that she wouldn’t directly say in life, calling Beth a whore and her own children leeches. Not only do we get the metaphor of a family tearing itself apart made literal, it’s here where Sutherland truly shines as not just a working-class single mother but also as the terrifying demonic parody thereof that she turns into, demonstrating what separates the Evil Dead series’ “Deadites” from many other zombies: their sense of personality. The series takes George A. Romero’s already scary idea, that of a ravenous monster that looks human, used to be human, and is able to turn others into similar monsters with just a bite or a scratch, and adds the twist of a demonic component that gives the monster that person’s intelligence and memories as well, which it then uses to torment the people who knew them in life before it devours their souls. While the more comedic direction that the “main” series films and the TV series went in is more iconic, the remake showed that there’s just as much room for a straightforward horror take on the idea of combining a zombie film with a demonic possession film, and this movie takes that idea and runs with it even if it still retains a measure of camp in some of the one-liners and gore gags.

Dan and Bridget’s relationship, too, takes center stage in the second act as they have two very different reactions to the evil book that Dan brought back to their apartment, with Morgan Davies as Dan and Gabrielle Echols as Bridget giving their characters plenty of life and personality. Bridget is suspicious from the word “go”, and when Ellie gets possessed, she blames Dan for unleashing a dark, evil force in their lives, with implications that they had a fraught relationship even before this. Even Kassie, the youngest among them, was good, with Nell Fisher taking a role that could’ve easily turned annoying and making her character feel believably scared without being completely helpless or whiny, getting in one of my favorite lines when, after Beth tries to calm her down and tell her that they’ll be okay, she responds by telling Beth that she’ll be a great mother because she knows how to lie to kids. The only weak link in the cast was the family’s neighbors, who show up briefly early on but all of whom clearly existed as cannon fodder for Ellie to slaughter in a single sequence in the second act, even though some of them felt like they’d wind up more important or at least get more scenes to shine before they were killed. With how little they’re in the film, you could almost feel the pandemic filming conditions, getting the sense that some of them (particularly Gabe and the shotgun-wielding Mr. Fonda) were originally written to have larger roles but they couldn’t find a way to have that many actors on set at once.

Another thing I felt that made up for it, though, was this film’s unflinching brutality. One of the other things that even the more lighthearted entries in this series are known for is their absolute geysers of blood and gore, the fact that most of the carnage is inflicted on zombies seemingly giving it a pass in the eyes of an MPAA that normally slaps this kind of shit with an NC-17 when it’s done to living humans. And here, we get it all. Stabbings, a cheese grater to the leg, somebody getting scalped, an eye bitten out, multiple decapitations, a wooden spear through the mouth, Deadites puking up everything from vomit to blood to bugs, the good old shotgun and chainsaw (this series’ old favorites) taking off limbs, a woodchipper, and some gnarly Deadite makeup, most notably the freakish, multi-limbed monster at the very end. This movie does not play around, and it is not for the squeamish. The only gore scene that didn’t really work for me was one Deadite transformation that was let down by some dodgy effects shots of fake-looking black blood coming out of somebody’s face; the rest, however, was some seriously nasty-looking, mostly practical stuff. That’s not to say it’s just a parade of violence with no tension, though. Director Lee Cronin employs all the classic Sam Raimi tricks that have become staples of this series as much as Raimi’s career in general, knowing when to keep the monsters in the shadows, lurking ominously behind our characters, or coldly mocking them. Ellie especially is a key source of the film’s less bloody but no less effective scares, especially with how she tries to manipulate Kassie into letting her back into their apartment, as are the scenes of characters succumbing to possession and hearing voices in their head taunting them. Once the film gets going – and you will know when it gets going – it never once lets up or gives you much room to breathe, instead maintaining a heightened level of terror and suspense throughout.

The Bottom Line

This was a welcome return to the big screen for a classic horror franchise, especially with how certain plot threads at the beginning and end leave the door open for a sequel that, going by the box office returns this past weekend, is likely inevitable at this point. Right now, the Evil Dead series is five-for-five in my book.

#evil dead #evil dead rise #horror #horror movies #zombie #zombie movies #supernatural horror #alyssa sutherland #lily sullivan #morgan davies #nell fisher #gabrielle echols #sam raimi #bruce campbell #2023 #2023 movies

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dwellordream · 2 years

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“But what of horror’s traditional themes of struggle and survival, of rescuing the possibilities of life and community from an encounter with monstrosity and death? The Living Dead trilogy plays with these themes in a manner that defies conventional expectations. Indeed, it is this aspect of the films that has been most thoroughly discussed by sympathetic commentators, like Robin Wood and Kim Newman. All three films have white women or black men as their chief protagonists, the only characters with whom the audience positively identifies as they struggle to remain alive and to resist and escape the zombies.

The black man in Night is the sole character in the film who is both sympathetic and capable of reasoned action. The woman protagonist in Dawn rejects the subordinate role in which the three men, wrapped up in their male bonding fantasies, initially place her; she becomes more and more active and involved as the film progresses. The woman scientist in Day is established right from the start as the strongest, most dedicated, and most perspicacious of the besieged humans. In both Dawn and Day, the women end up establishing tactical alliances with black men who are not blindly self-centered in the manner of their white counterparts.

All these characters are thoughtful, resourceful, and tenacious; they are not always right, but they continually debate possible courses of action and learn from their mistakes. They seem to be groping toward a shared, democratic kind of decision making. In contrast, white American males come off badly in all three films. The father in Night considers it his inherent right to be in control, although he clearly lacks any sense of how to proceed; his behavior is an irritating combination of hysteria and spite.

The two white men among the group in Dawn both die as a result of their adolescent need to indulge in macho games or to play the hero. The military commanding officer in Day is the most obnoxious of all: he is so sexist, authoritarian, cold-blooded, vicious, and contemptuous of others that the audience celebrates when the zombies finally disembowel and devour him. These white males’ fear of the zombies seems indistinguishable from the dread and hatred they display toward women. The self-congratulatory attitudes that they continually project are shown to be ineffective at best, and radically counterproductive at worst, in dealing with the actual perils that the zombies represent.

The macho, paternalistic traits of typical Hollywood action heroes are repeatedly exposed as stupid and dysfunctional. Romero dismantles dominant behavior patterns; he gives a subversive, left-wing twist to the usually reactionary ideology and genre of survivalism. To the extent that the films maintain traditional forms of narrative identification, they divert these forms by providing them with a new, politically more progressive content. Carol J. Clover argues that slasher and rape–revenge films of the 1970s and 1980s enact a shift in the gender identification of traditional attributes of heroism and struggle, whereby women take on these attributes instead of men.

Dawn and Day present us with a more self-conscious, radical, and thoroughgoing version of the same shift in cultural sensibilities. But the scope of Clover’s argument is limited by the fact that it too easily valorizes heroic triumph. In Romero’s trilogy, to the contrary, the success of the sympathetic characters’ survival strategy is limited; it does not, and cannot be expected to, resolve all the tensions raised in the course of the three films. Unlike in the slasher and revenge films described by Clover, here the protagonists’ survival is not the same as their triumph.

The zombies are never defeated; the best that the sympathetic living characters of Dawn and Day can hope for is the reprieve of a precarious, provisional escape. And this tenuousness leads us back to the zombies. The Living Dead trilogy does not simply or unequivocally valorize survival; perhaps for that reason, it ultimately does not rely for its effectiveness on mechanisms or spectatorial identification. The zombies exercise too strong a pull, too strange a fascination. The three films progress in the direction of ever-greater contiguities and similarities between the living and the nonliving, between seduction and horror, and between desire and dread.

In consequence, identities and identifications are increasingly dissolved, even within the framework of conventional, ostensibly sutured narrative. The first film in the series, Night of the Living Dead, is the one most susceptible to conventional psychoanalytic interpretation, for it is focused on the nuclear family. It begins with a neurotic brother and sister quarreling as they pay a visit to their father’s grave and moves on to the triangle of blustering father, cringing mother, and (implicitly) abused child hiding from the zombies in a farmhouse basement.

Familial relations are shown throughout to be suffused with an anxious negativity, a menacing aura of tension and repressed violence. In this context, the zombies seem a logical outgrowth of, or response to, patriarchal norms. They are the disavowed residues of the ego-producing mechanisms of internalization and identification. They figure the infinite emptiness of desire, insofar as it is shaped by, and made conterminous with, Oedipal repression. The film’s high point of shock comes, appropriately, when the little girl, turned into a zombie, cannibalistically consumes her parents.

But at the same time, the film’s casual ironies undercut this allegory of the return of the repressed. The protagonists not only experience the zombie menace firsthand, they also watch it on TV. Disaster is consumed as a cheesy spectacle, complete with incompetent reporting, useless information bulletins, and inane attempts at commentary. The grotesque, carnivalesque slapstick of these sequences mocks survivalist oppositions. Even as dread pulses to a climax, as plans of action and escape fail, and as characters we expect to survive are eliminated, we are denied the opportunity of imposing redemptive or compensatory meanings.

There is no mythology of doomed, heroic resistance, no exalted sense of pure, apocalyptic negativity. The zombies’ lack of charisma seems to drain all the surrounding circumstances of their nobility. And for its part, the family is subsumed within a larger network of social control, one as noteworthy for its stupidity as for its exploitativeness. Romero turns the constraints of his low budget—crudeness of presentation, minimal acting, and tacky special effects—into a powerful means of expression: he foregrounds and hyperbolizes these aspects of his production in order to depsychologize the drama and emphasize the artificiality and gruesome arbitrariness of spectacle.

Such a strategy doesn’t “alienate” us from the film so much as it insidiously displaces our attention. Our anxieties are focused upon events rather than characters, upon the violent fragmentation of cinematic process (with a deliberate clumsiness that mimes the shuffling movement of the zombies themselves) rather than the supposed integrity of any single protagonist’s subjectivity. The zombies come to exemplify, not a hidden structure of individual anxiety and guilt, but an unabashedly overt social process in which the disintegration of all communal bonds goes hand in hand with the callous manipulation of individual response.

It is entirely to the point that Night ends on a note of utter cynicism: the zombies are apparently defeated, but the one human survivor with whom we have identified throughout the film—a black man—is mistaken for a zombie and shot by an (implicitly racist) sheriff’s posse. The other films in the cycle are made with higher budgets and have a much slicker look to them, but they are even more powerfully disruptive. The second film, Dawn of the Dead, deals with consumerism rather than familial tensions. The zombies are irresistibly attracted to a suburban shopping mall, because they dimly remember that “this was an important place in their lives.”

Indeed, they seem most fully human when they are wandering the aisles and escalators of the mall like dazed but ecstatic shoppers. But the same can be said for the film’s living characters. The four protagonists hole up in the mall and try to re-create a sense of “home” there. Much of the film is taken up by what is in effect their delirious shopping spree: after turning on the background music and letting the fountains run, they race through the corridors, ransacking goods that remain sitting in perfect order on store shelves.

Once they have eliminated the zombies from the mall, they play games of makeup, acting out the roles of elegance and wealth (and the attendant stereotypes of gender, class, and race) that they dreamed of, but weren’t able actually to afford, in their previous middle-class lives. This consumers’ utopia comes to an end only when the mall is invaded by a vicious motorcycle gang: a bunch of toughs motivated by a kind of class resentment, a desire to “share the wealth” by grabbing as much of it as possible.

They enter by force and then pillage and destroy, enacting yet another mode of commodity consumption run wild. One befuddled gang member can’t quite decide whether to run off with an expensive TV set or smash it to bits in frustration over the fact that no programs are being broadcast anymore. The still alive and the already dead are alike animated by a mimetic urge that causes them to resemble Dawn’s third category of humanoid figures: department store mannequins.

The zombies are overtly presented as simulacral doubles (equivalents rather than opposites) of living humans; their destructive consumption of flesh—gleefully displayed to the audience by means of lurid special effects—immediately parallels the consumption of useless commodities by the American middle class. Commodity fetishism is a mode of desire that is not grounded in repression; rather, it is directly incited, multiplied, and affirmed by artificial means.

As Meaghan Morris remarks, “a Deleuzian account of productive desire . . . is more apt for analyzing the forms of modern greed . . . than the lack-based model assumed by psychoanalytic theories.” Want is a function of excess and extravagance, and not of deficiency: the more I consume, the more I demand to consume. In the words of the artist Barbara Kruger, “I shop, therefore I am.” The appearance of the living dead in the shopping mall thus can no longer be interpreted as a return of the repressed. The zombies are not an exception to, but a positive expression of, consumerist desire.

They emerge not from the dark, disavowed underside of suburban life but from its tacky, glittering surfaces. They embody and mimetically reproduce those very aspects of contemporary American life that are openly celebrated by the media. The one crucial difference is that the living dead—in contrast to the actually alive—are ultimately not susceptible to advertising suggestions. Their random wandering might seem to belie, but actually serves, a frightening singleness of purpose: their unquenchable craving to consume living flesh.

They cannot be controlled, for they are already animated far too directly and unconditionally by the very forces that modern advertising seeks to appropriate, channel, and exploit for its own ends. The infinite, insatiable hunger of the living dead is the complement of their openness to sympathetic participation, their compulsive, unregulated mimetic drive, and their limitless capacity for reiterated shock. The zombies mark the dead end or zero degree of capitalism’s logic of endless consumption and ever-expanding accumulation, precisely because they embody this logic so literally and to such excess.

In the third and most complex film of the series, Day of the Dead, Romero goes still further. A shot near the beginning shows dollar bills being blown about randomly in the wind: a sign that even commodity fetishism has collapsed as an animating structure of desire. The locale shifts to an isolated underground bunker, where research scientists endeavor to study the zombies under the protection of a platoon of soldiers.

All human activity is now as vacant and meaningless as is the zombies’ endless shuffling about; the soldiers’ abusive, macho posturings and empty assertions of authority clash with the scientists’ futile, misguided efforts to discover the cause of the zombie plague and to devise remedies for it. All that remains of postmodern society is the military–scientific complex, its chief mechanism for producing power and knowledge. But the technological infrastructure is now reduced to its most basic expression, locked into a subterranean compound of sterile cubicles, winding corridors, and featureless caverns.

Everything in this hellish, underground realm of the living is embattled, restricted, claustrophobically closed off. This microcosm of our culture’s dominant rationality tears itself apart as we watch: it teeters on the brink of implosion, destroying itself from within even as it is literally under siege from without. The bunker is like an emotional pressure cooker: fear, fatigue, and anxiety all mount relentlessly, for they cannot find any means of relief or discharge. As the film progresses, tensions grow between the soldiers and the scientists, between the men and the one woman, and ultimately among the irreconcilable imperatives of power, comprehension, survival, and escape.

The entire film is a maze of false exits and dead ends, with the zombies themselves providing the only prospect of an outlet. Day of the Dead is primarily concerned with the politics of insides and outsides: the social production of boundaries, limits, and compartmentalizations, and their subsequent affirmative disruption. The zombies, on the outside, paradoxically manifest a “vitality” that is lacking within the bunker. Their inarticulate moans and cries, heard in the background throughout the film, give voice to a force of desire that is at once nourished and denied, solicited and repulsed, by the military–scientific machine.

Inside the bunker, in a sequence that works as a hilarious send-up of both behaviorist disciplinary procedures and 1950s “mad scientist” movies, a researcher tries to “tame” one of the zombies. The dead, he explains, can be “tricked” into obedience, just as we were tricked as children. He eventually turns his pet zombie, Bub, into a pretty good parody of a soldier, miming actions such as reading, shaving, and answering the telephone, and actually capable of saluting and of firing a gun.

This success suggests that discipline and training, whether in child rearing or in the military, is itself only a restrictive appropriation of the zombies’ mimetic energy. Meanwhile, the zombies mill about outside in increasing numbers, waiting with menacing passivity to break in. From both inside and outside, mimetic resemblances proliferate and threaten to overturn the hierarchy of living and dead. The more rigidly boundaries are drawn between reason and desire, order and anarchy, purpose and randomness, the more irrelevant these distinctions seem, and the more they are prone to violent explosion.

The climax occurs when one of the soldiers—badly wounded (literally dismembered, metaphorically castrated), and motivated by an ambiguous combination of heroic desperation and vicious masculine resentment—opens the gates and lets the zombies into the bunker, offering his own body as the first sacrifice to their voracity. The controlling boundary is ruptured, and the outside ecstatically consumes the inside. Allegory entirely gives way before a wave of contagious expenditure and destruction.

The zombies take their revenge; but, as Kim Newman notes, “American society is cast in the role usually given to an individually hatable character.” If the zombies are a repressed byproduct of dominant American culture in Night, and that culture’s simulacral double in Dawn, then in Day, they finally emerge—ironically enough—as its animating source, its revolutionary avenger, and its sole hope of renewal. They are the long-accumulated stock of energy and desire upon which our militarized and technocratic culture vampiristically feeds, which it compulsively manipulates and exploits but cannot forever hope to control.”

- Steven Shaviro, “Contagious Allegories: George Romero.” in Zombie Theory: A Reader

#horror #zombies #george romero #steven shaviro #zombie theory

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k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9 · 9 months

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) directed by Chuck Russell

#A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors #A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)#1987 #80's #80s #American fantasy slasher film #fantasy slasher film #robert englund #freddy krueger #nancy thompson #heather langenkamp

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natalie-wilhelm · 1 month

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Pop Culture (n.) - A set of practices, beliefs, artistic output and that are dominant and prevalent in a society at a given point in time.

How does MoPop define pop culture?

Pop culture shapes how we see the world, driving the ways we express and define ourselves and forging new communities through the power of shared enthusiasm. So why don’t more institutions take it seriously?

Massive: The Power of Pop Culture will explore the impact of global pop culture on our daily lives across 2,400 sq. ft. of exhibition space, offering visitors the tools to ask their own questions as they deep-dive into their role as creators and consumers of modern pop culture. (Taken from mopop.org)

…

As of lately pop culture, fandom, and science fiction have been occupying a lot of space in my brain. It seems as though Sci-Fi has been making a bit of a comeback. I sometimes perceive Sci-Fi movies and shows as being a bit undermined compared to the horror genre when it comes to film genre popularity. Americans are more likely to line up for the next slasher film right before Halloween, but when are you supposed to get hyped for sci-fi and fantasy? It would be nice if our culture had designated times of the year that were more centered around these genres, it would help with organizing events and such.

What does pop culture mean to you? What does science fiction mean to you?

#massivemopop #massiveopeningparty #massive2024 #mopop #museumofpopculture #mopopseattle #seattlecenter #seattletourism #seattlewa #seattlewashington #popculture #scifi #sciencefiction

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excusethequality · 4 months

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My 2023 in Film

Part 4:

151-200

With this I am finally past the halfway point! Huzzah!

Link to Part I Link to Part II Link to Part III

* = rewatched

[++] = I loved it [+] = I liked it [=] = I am indifferent about it [-] = Not my thing [--] = I hate it

Click on the list number to get a trailer for it.

151.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) * ---Comedy Horror

[Not putting a link to the trailer, because the trailer spoils the shit out of a ton of the movie. Consider yourself warned.]

The typical slasher story is turned on its head when two best friends head to the woods to fix up their new vacation shack. But a misunderstanding with a bunch of college students is about to show that you can't judge a book by its cover. [+]

152.

The Invisible Man (1933) * ---Sci-Fi Horror

After discovering the secret to invisibility a brilliant scientist desperately tries to discover the secret to undoing it before he goes insane. [+]

153.

Barbie (2023) ---Comedy Fantasy Adventure

A Barbie from the magical world of Barbieland has an existential crisis. Now unable to get rid of her thoughts of death and cellulite, she journeys to the real world in search of a cure. [+]

154.

Princess Mononoke (1997) * ---Animated Fantasy Adventure

A cursed prince must leave his home on a journey to find the source of his affliction and to see what he can learn with eyes unclouded by hate. [++]

155.

Twins (1988) * ---Comedy Crime Adventure

Jeez, this movie has no right being this hard to describe. Ummm...two long lost twins (and products of a genetic test) are reunited after 35 years and go on a mission to find their mother. They're also trying to sell a stolen prototype fuel injector, and get away from a vindictive loan shark, and fall in love, and avoid being murdered by the man who rightfully wants to sell the stolen prototype fuel injector. [=]

156.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) ---Animated Action Comedy

A family of mutants living in the sewers of NYC dream of being able to join the humans up above. But when they meet a group of mutant criminals they're forced to choose a side. [++]

157.

Mortal Kombat (2021) ---Fantasy Action

I honestly don't remember the specifics and I refuse to look it up. Basically a boring dude and others get weird powers and fight each other because of reasons. [-]

158.

Predators (2010) ---Sci-Fi Action

A motley crew of killers from around the world awaken on an alien game reserve where they are being hunted for sport. [=]

159.

The Invisible Man (2020) ---Sci-Fi Thriller

A woman flees from an abusive relationship with a tech genius. Although she is finally free, a series of incidents leave her grappling with her sanity and wondering if she's being haunted by her trauma or something more sinister. [+]

160.

Encino Man (1992) * ---Comedy

A pair of teenagers discover a caveman frozen in an ancient block of ice. When unthaws and awakens they decide that he might just be their ticket to popularity and enroll him in high school. [=]

161.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) * ---Coming-of-Age Fantasy Action Comedy

A teenage girl learns that she is the next incarnation of an ancient line of vampire slayers. The only hiccup is that she has no interest in slaying vampires and just wants to be a normal teen. [+]

162.

Joy Ride (2023) ---Comedy Adventure

What started as a business trip turns into a search for family when four Chinese-American friends travel to China. [+]

163.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) ---Sci-Fi Action

I could try to break down what this movie was about, but it would take more time than I want to invest. Imagine if someone remade the first one, but got weirdly meta about it and generally did everything worse. [--]

164.

Waking Ned Devine (1998) * ---Comedy

In a rural Irish village an old man named Ned Devine has just won the lottery. The only issue is that Ned Devine has also just died. Now the village is on a mission to bring him back (in a way) so they can claim the winnings. [++]

165.

Medusa Deluxe (2022) ---Mystery

When someone is murdered at a hair styling competition it's hard to know if anyone has seen anything out of the ordinary. [=]

166.

Paprika (2006) * ---Animated Sci-Fi Adventure

A psychotherapy researcher secretly working under the alias "Paprika" utilizes a brand new technology that allows her to enter her patients' dreams. But when the technology falls into the hands of a terrorist she may be the only person with the skills needed to stop them. [++]

167.

Game Night (2018) * ---Comedy Adventure

A group of friends meet for their regular game night only to learn that this night might not be so ordinary. [+]

168.

The Hangover (2009) * ---Comedy Adventure

Three friends wake up after a wild bachelor party they can't remember only to find that they can't find the groom. [=]

169.

Lakota Nation vs. United States (2022) ---Documentary

A chronicle of the United States' interactions with the Lakota nation. [+]

170.

Event Horizon (1997) * ---Sci-Fi Horror

A rescue team is sent to investigate the mysterious return of a prototype spacecraft called the Event Horizon. [+]

171.

3 Ninjas (1992) * ---Action Comedy

Three young brothers have been trained in the ways of the ninja by their grandfather. But when a ruthless criminal has set his sights on their family he quickly learns that they won't go down without a fight. [+]

172.

One for the Money (2012) * ---Comedy Crime

A desperate former lingerie saleswoman tries to take up bounty hunting in order to make some quick cash. [=]

173.

Talk to Me (2022) ---Horror

A pack of teenagers discover a mysterious statue that allows whoever touches it become a conduit for the dead. [=]

174.

Barbie (2023) *

See #153

175.

Shiva Baby (2020) ---Drama Comedy

A struggling college student attends the shiva from hell with her parents. [++]

176.

Bottoms (2023) ---Comedy

Two teenage lesbians start a women's fight club at their high school in order to get laid. [=]

177.

What About Bob? (1991) * ---Comedy

A therapist starts to lose his grip on reality when an obsessed patient won't leave him alone and no one else seems to find it odd. [+]

178.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) * ---Action Comedy

A family of mutant turtles is all that stands in the way of a gang of ninja from taking over NYC. [++]

179.

Hardcore Henry (2015) ---Action

I wish the plot actually mattered, but it doesn't. All you need to know is that it's an action movie shot entirely in first person perspective and that there's a very good reason why movies so rarely do that. [-]

180.

Office Space (1999) * ---Comedy

A depressed office worker gets a new lease on life when his hypnotist dies in the middle of their session. [++]

181.

Wayne's World (1992) * ---Comedy

Two best friends find themselves in battle against a corporate bigwig when a network tries to buy their public-access program. [+]

182.

Tell Me I Love You (2020) ---Queer Rom-Com

3 best friends wind up in a polyamory-ish marriage predicament because of reasons. [=]

183.

The Smoke Shack (2013) ---Comedy Short Film

A day in the life of a worker at a smoke shack. [+]

184.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) * ---Comedy Adventure

Two best friends are about to flunk out of school when they're given a most excellent opportunity: a time machine! Now they must gather the greatest collection of historical figures they can in order to ace their history test. [+]

185.

Plus One (2019) * ---Rom-Com

During a rough wedding season two best friends agree to be each other's plus ones in order to make it through, but wind up questioning the nature of their relationship in the process. [=]

186.

Reel Injun (2009) ---Documentary

A look at the history of Native American representation in film. [+]

187.

The Quiet Earth (1985) ---Sci-Fi

A science experiment goes terribly wrong and now 3 people are seemingly the only ones in the world left alive. [-]

188.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) ---Action Comedy

The Shredder decides to fight fire with fire and endeavors to create his own mutant army to defeat the turtles and conquer NYC. [+]

189.

First Cow (2019) ---Period Drama

Two unlikely friends start their own business in order to carve out a life for themselves in 1820s Oregon, USA. [+]

190.

Short Term 12 (2013) ---Drama

A staff member of a group care facility for troubled teenagers tries to fight her impulses towards self destruction when an old trauma comes back to haunt her. [+]

191.

Zoom (2015) ---Fantasy Drama Comedy

Three people discover that their worlds are all products of each other's various creative pursuits. [-]

192.

Dead Man's Curve (1998) ---Crime Thriller

Two roommates concoct a plan to kill their other roommate in order to exploit a college loophole and get an automatic 4.0 GPA. [=]

193.

Tendrils (2023) ---Short Film Drama

Two friends are preparing to part ways and decide to make a time capsule in honor of their relationship. [=]

194.

Watching the Detectives (2007) ---Rom-Com

A film nerd falls in love with a manic pixie dream girl, but begins to blur reality with movies. [-]

195.

Scrapper (2023) ---Comedy Drama

A 12-year-old tries to make it on her own after the death of her mother. But when her estranged dad comes back to take care of her she's going to have to face reality. [++]

196.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) * ---Action Fantasy Comedy

A chance encounter with a strange artifact transports the turtles to early 17th century Japan. [+]

197.

Theater Camp (2023) ---Mockumentary Comedy

When the director of a theater camp falls into a coma it's up to her wannabe-influencer son to keep the place together. [=]

198.

Four Kids and It (2020) ---Kids Fantasy

While on vacation a group of kids come across a magical being that can grant wishes. There's only two catches: it can only grant one wish a day and each wish only lasts for 24 hours. [=]

199.

Cassandro (2023) ---Queer Sports Biopic

The story of the rise of Saúl Armendáriz aka the Mexican luchador Cassandro. [=]

200.

Fat City (1972) ---Sports Drama

Two men at opposite points in their boxing careers see a glimpse of their past/future in one another, but not necessarily liking what they see. [+]

#xcusethequality

0 notes

artistnahas · 2 years

Text

Freddy vs jason movie tagline

#FREDDY VS JASON MOVIE TAGLINE MOVIE#

A drunken Gibb believes she sees Trey and follows him to a silo that turns out to be a dream trap set by Freddy. That night, Lori and the others attend a rave at a cornfield. Mark later learns of the city's plan to erase Freddy by making the population forget about him and realizes he may have ruined their plan. He and WIll return to Springwood, where Mark informs Lori and the others about Freddy. A news report of the murders prompts Mark to devise a successful escape plan. Lori's ex-boyfriend Will Rollins and his friend Mark Davis, the last people to have had contact with Freddy, are patients at Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, forced to take Hypnocil to suppress their dreams. The next day, the police say Blake committed the murders then committed suicide. Later, following a nightmare, Blake awakens to discover his beheaded father beside him before Jason appears and kills Blake. The murder's gruesomeness and the fact it happened in bed cause police to speculate Freddy was responsible. Jason kills Trey by stabbing him and folding him in half. Her friends Kia, Gibb, Trey, and Blake are spending the night there. Lori Campbell now lives with her widowed father at 1428 Elm Street. Under the guise of Jason Voorhees' mother, Freddy manipulates Jason into killing Springwood teenagers, hoping to inspire fear and restore his powers. The film served as Grammy-winning R&B singer Kelly Rowland's debut as an actress.įreddy Krueger is trapped in Hell, because the teenage residents of Springwood have forgotten about him, rendering him powerless.

#FREDDY VS JASON MOVIE TAGLINE MOVIE#

This film marked Robert Englund's final appearance to date as Freddy Krueger, having portrayed him in all seven previous Nightmare films and the 1980s TV series, as well as the first movie since Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood not to feature Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees, having been replaced by stuntman Ken Kirzinger who previously served as a double for Hodder in the film Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. This ultimately sends the two undying monsters into a violent conflict. However, while Jason succeeds in causing enough fear for Freddy to haunt the town again, Jason angers Freddy by depriving Krueger of his potential victims. In order to regain his power, Freddy manipulates Jason ( Ken Kirzinger), into resurrecting himself and traveling to Springwood to cause panic and fear, leading to rumors that Freddy has returned. In the film, Freddy ( Robert Englund) has grown incapable of haunting people's dreams as the citizens of Springwood, Ohio have mostly forgotten about Freddy with the passage of time, as well as the fact that the current generation of teenagers are kept ignorant of his existence. The film is also the last film in both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises before they were both rebooted. It is the eleventh and eighth entries in their respective series, pitting Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees against each other. The film is a crossover between the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises. Jason is a 2003 American slasher action fantasy film directed by Ronny Yu.

#Freddy vs jason movie tagline

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morrigand · 3 years

Text

grey day movies

pov: you're watching movies and drinking hot coffee while it's raining outside

10's

knives out (2019) | rian johnson // mystery, comedy

the lighthouse (2019) | robert eggers // horror, suspense

el hoyo (2019) | galder gaztelu-urrutia // horror, suspense

la influencia (2019) | denis rovira // horror, suspense

suspiria (2018) | luca guadagnino // horror, suspense

hereditary (2018) | ari aster // horror

halloween (2018) | david gordon green // horror, slasher

shape of water (2017) | guillermo del toro // drama, suspense

the witch (2015) | robert eggers // horror, suspense

the hateful eight (2015) | quentin tarantino // western, drama

crimson peak (2015) | guillermo del toro // drama, suspense

what we do in the shadows (2014) | taika waititi, jemaine clement // comedy, found footage

the lords of salem (2012) | rob zombie // horror

skyfall (2012) | sam mendes // action, adventure

the girl with the dragon tattoo (2011) | david fincher // mystery, suspense

shutter island (2010) | martin scorsese // suspense, mystery

00's

orphan (2009) | jaume collet-serra // mystery, suspense

antichrist (2009) | lars von trier // horror, drama

coraline (2009) | henry selick // horror, fantasy

inglourious basterds (2009) | quentin tarantino // war film, action

ratatouille (2007) | brad bird // drama, comedy

à l'intérieur (2007) | alexandre bustillo, julien maury // horror, gore

dead silence (2007) | james wan // horror, mystery

zodiac (2007) | david fincher // suspense, mystery

sweeney todd, the demon barber of fleet street (2007) | tim burton // musical, horror

pan's labyrinth (2006) | guillermo del toro // suspense, fantasy

pirates of the caribbean 2, dead man's chest (2006) | gore verbinski // action, adventure

the devil wears prada (2006) | david frankel // comedy, drama

casino royale (2006) | martin campbell // action, adventure

pride and prejudice (2005) | joe wright // drama

corpse bride (2005) | tim burton, mike johnson // fantasy, musical

the call of cthulhu (2005) | andrew leman // horror, mystery

harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban (2004) | alfonso cuarón // fantasy

underworld (2003) | len wiseman // action, horror

house of 1000 corpses (2003) | rob zombie // horror

dagón, la secta del mar (2001) | stuart gordon // mystery, horror

amélie (2001) | jean-pierre jeunet // drama, romance

snatch (2000) | guy ritchie // crime, comedy

90's

audition (1999) | takashi miike // horror, mystery

eyes wide shut (1999) | stanley kubrick // mystery, drama

the matrix (1999) | lana wachowski // science fiction, action

the craft (1996) | andrew fleming // horror, fantasy

seven (1995) | david fincher // horror, suspense

the crow (1994) | alex proyas // fantasy, action

the mask (1994) | chuck russell // action, comedy, crime

the nightmare before christmas (1993) | henry selick // fantasy, musical

body bags (1993) | john carpenter // horror, comedy

jurassic park (1993) | steven spielberg // action, science fiction

bram stoker's dracula (1992) | francis ford coppola // horror, romance

batman returns (1992) | tim burton // action

the silence of the lambs (1991) | jonathan demme // suspense, horror

the addam's family (1991) | barry sonnenfeld // comedy, fantasy

misery (1990) | rob reiner // horror, suspense

it (1990) | tommy lee wallace // horror, suspense

80's

child's play (1988) | tom holland // horror, slasher

hellraiser (1987) | clive barker // horror, slasher

the fly (1986) | david cronenberg // horror, science fiction

the name of the rose (1986) | jean-jacques annaud // crime, mystery

amadeus (1984) | milos forman // drama, comedy

the thing (1982) | john carpenter // horror, science fiction

blade runner (1982) | ridley scott // science fiction, neo-noir

an american werewolf in london (1981) | john landis // horror, comedy

the shining (1980) | stanley kubrick // horror

70's

alien (1979) | ridley scott // horror, science fiction

nosferatu: phantom der nacht (1979) | werner herzog // horror, drama

halloween (1978) | john carpenter // horror, slasher

suspiria (1977) | dario argento // horror, giallo

the omen (1976) | richard donner // horror, suspense

taxi driver (1976) | martin scorsese // drama, suspense

monty python and the holy grail (1975) | terry gilliam, terry jones // comedy

young frankenstein (1974) | mel brooks // comedy, parody

willy wonka and the chocolate factory (1971) | mel stuart // musical, fantasy

60's

rosemary's baby (1968) | roman polanski // suspense

dr. terror's house of horrors (1965) | freddie francis // horror, fantasy

mary poppins (1964) | robert stevenson // musical, fantasy

the birds (1963) | alfred hitchcock // suspense

tales of terror (1962) | roger corman // horror, mystery

dr. no (1962) | terence young // action, adventure

breakfast at tiffany's (1961) | blake edwards // romance, comedy

101 dalmatians (1961) | wolfgang reitherman, clyde geronimi, hamilton luske // adventure, comedy

village of the damned (1960) | wolf rilla // horror, science fiction

psycho (1960) | alfred hitchcock // suspense

black sunday (1960) | mario bava // horror, drama

50's

house on haunted hill (1959) | william castle // horror

north by northwest (1959) | alfred hitchcock // suspense, noir

the fly (1958) | kurt neumann // horror, science fiction

the crawling eye (1958) | quentin lawrence // horror, science fiction

12 angry men (1957) | sidney lumet // crime, drama

creature from the black lagoon (1954) | jack arnold // horror

rear window (1954) | alfred hitchcock // suspense, mystery

singin' in the rain (1952) | gene kelley, stanley donen // musical, romance

strangers on a train (1951) | alfred hitchcock // suspense, noir

in a lonely place (1950) | nicholas ray // noir, drama

all about eve (1950) | joseph l. mankiewicz // drama

sunset boulevard (1950) | billy wilder // noir, drama

40's

the third man (1949) | carol reed // noir, mystery

ladri di biciclette (1948) | vittorio de sica // drama

the big sleep (1946) | howard hawks // noir, mystery

double indemnity (1944) | billy wilder // noir, mystery

casablanca (1942) | michael curtiz // romance, drama

citizen kane (1941) | orson welles // drama, mystery

the maltese falcon (1941) | john huston // noir, mystery

fantasia (1940) | wilfred jackson, hamilton luske, ben sharpsteen // musical, fantasy

rebecca (1940) | alfred hitchcock // suspense, romance

30's

gone with the wind (1939) | victor fleming // drama

modern times (1936) | charles chaplin // comedy, romance

bride of frankenstein (1935) | james whale // horror, fantasy

it happened one night (1934) | frank capra // romance, comedy

duck soup (1933) | leo mccarey // comedy, musical

the mummy (1932) | karl freund // horror

frankenstein (1931) | james whale // horror

m (1931) | fritz lang // suspense, crime

dracula (1931) | tod browning, karl freund // horror

20's

the man who laughs (1928) | paul leni // drama, mystery

nosferatu, eine symphonie des grauens (1922) | friedrich wilhelm murnau // horror

das cabinet des dr. caligari (1920) | robert weine // horror, mystery

10's

der student von prag (1913) | stellan rye, paul wegener // horror, mystery

00's

le voyage dans la lune (1902) | georges méliès // science fiction, fantasy

90's

le manoir du diable (1896) | georges méliès // horror

feel free to recommend more movies in the comments :D

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