Them

[Jer]

Not the 50's movie with the giant ants, the French "couple trapped in a rural house by multiple psychos" movie.

What a suck-fest. Not only do two frogs allow themselves to be terrorised by a group of completely unarmed intruders, but the intruders turn out to be children! Plus it's French! Hey, Pierre - why don't you just try beating the hell out of the little bastards instead of running like a complete pussy?

This is the second time I've been punked on French "horror". The first was the amazingly shitty High Tension. Anybody who wants this peice of shit - PM me and I'll send it to you for $3 paypal for shipping.

Two big thumbs down for this frog shit show. At least the girl had shaved legs. You guys have seen The Strangers - sucked, right? Well that's a freaking masterpiece compared to Them.

[advres]

you're not a very good saleman. It isn't customary to tell the intended shopper how much the product you are trying to hock, sucks.

[spindrift]

I really liked the giant ant movie.

[Jer]

I really liked the giant ant movie.

I did too. It was Citizen Cane compared to the French Them.

[dookey67]

dammit!

when will i learn NOT to read a thread until after i've watched the flick?

i have this sitting at home and will be watching it this weekend.

too bad i already read that it sucks like Haute Tension (that film looked beautiful, was great for the first 2/3's, and then sucked horribly with the cop-out ending...in fact most of the French horror films i've seen follow this model: they are well shot, the production values are incredible, but the story ends up falling apart. See: Into the Woods/Haute Tension/Crimson Rivers).

[Tye 1on]

wtf?????!?!?!??!?!!

You don't like Van Morrison's first band???????????????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them_(band)

[dookey67]

okay, so this thread got me a bit bummed about watching this flick.

i stumbled upon Ils (the original French title) about a year ago. the trailer was sick. looked like a good "innocent couple trapped in large house by invisible maruaders-meets-Straw Dogs and Texas Chainsaw Massacre"-styled film.

then i started seeing the trailers for The Strangers. Eerily similar (haven't seen the latter yet).

at any rate, watched Ils (Them) last night.

not nearly as bad as Jer made it out to be. the ending certainly isn't a douchebag cop-out like Haute Tension was.

really the only thing about this film was that it never really caught fire. there were a few moments of tension (but then the obligitory being chased by unseen assailants always creates a modicum of tension), but overall the film just didn't ignite. it wasn't boring or completely lackluster, it just wasn't energized nor all that original nor did it tweak the conventions that much.

basically it was ho-hum, not a complete waste of time, but not one of those films you get psyched about and tell all your friends to check out.

[Jer]

then i started seeing the trailers for The Strangers. Eerily similar (haven't seen the latter yet).

WARNING - SPOILERS!!!!

The Bad:
One of the most derivative films I've ever seen. Scenes/dialog lifted directly from classic horror films (Halloween, Tex Chain Mass). Victims predictably terrified and stupid. Killers show up completely unarmed and aquire an axe and butcher knife - good guy has 12ga shotgun and not only fails to blast bad guy at five feet but also mistakenly shoots best friend in the head. Kept expecting Arwen to start speaking in Elvish and Aragorn to come running out of the trees and lop off killer's heads with a broadsword. Super predictable scream at the very end. Two Bible thumper kids just walk into a bloodspattered house with dead bodies lying on the floor???

The good:
Old C&W soundtrack was creepy. The scene lifted from Halloween (where the lighting shifts slightly to reveal the killer standing right behind Jamie Lee-Curtiss/Arwen) was derivative, but still unsettling. The masks were creepy. The two girl killers lent a wierd Manson Family vibe. The randomness. Killers get away, good guys die.

All in all, slightly better than Them, but I'd still be pissed if I bought it on DVD.

Also, while both these films were disappointing, they are lightyears better than all the gay Hostel/Saw/Rob Zombie films of late. At least Them and The Strangers attempted tension/suspense/terror instead of ten million ways to dismember someone and 500 utterences of the word "fuck". Rob Zombie doesn't even possess enough talent to flip burgers. He should be shot for what he did to Halloween.

[dookey67]

Zombie should never have remade Halloween.

It's sad that they are currently remaking Friday the 13th and that there's a remake of The Wild Bunch in the works (why?!?!?!?).

That said, I loved The Devil's Rejects. That film was classic, nasty, and a wonderful ode to '70s exploitation horror films. That's the only flick I think Zombie has nailed, both in terms of directing style and engaging dialogue. The soundtrack is butter, too.

And I actually dug Hostel 2. Didn't cotton to Hostel (the original) much, but found 2 to be well paced and solid.

As for the Saw flix? They all have sucked. But they make $$$ and Saw V is currently in production.

A friend once remarked about Hollywood and their view on horror films. It's a viscious cycle. A horror film comes along like Halloween and blows away box office records and whatnot for its budget and how many theaters it was in. Hollywood starts seeing $$$, so they crank out a bunch of half-assed knockoffs. The crowds eventually stop going after a blitz of crappy horror films. Then Hollywood (mistakenly) assumes that nobody wants to see horror films any more. There's a period of gestation and then some cool kid comes along with a new, low-budget horror film that's well written and directed with panache. It shatters BO records for it's limited budget and limited release. Hollywood sees $$$ and similarly cranks out a bunch of clones. The process continues.

All Hollywood needs to do is produce well written horror films.

They's done the same crap with all the half-assed Japanese films (The Eye, Pulse, The Grudge) that found a devout cult following. While very few of the originals were any good, the Hollywood remakes have been horrendous. Yet they keep making them because they are cheap and they make money (the Sarah Michelle Gellar version of The Grudge made more than 150million and it only cost between 20 and 50 million to make...so naturally they keep cranking them out).

The only way to stop the horror is to stop going to the theater and stop paying to see the remake crap.

But Hollywood has horror fans in a vice. Most devote fans of genre films are so starved for material that they will flock to see anything and everything and as a result the films are mildly successful and thus warrant their continued existence.

Oh what a tangled web.

[Jer]

Yeah - the three best horror films I can think of: Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween were ultra-low budget. Instead of the budget being a hinderence, it actually made the films that much better. The ultra-creepy soundtracks for both Halloween and TCM were done by the director himself to cut costs. Same thing with the spray-painted Shattner mask. It's funny too that the Hostel/Saw movies contain over a half hour of graphic gore but completely fail to be scarey or even mildly disturbing while TCM and Halloween (and NotLD for that matter) not only have zero gore, but hardly even any blood and succeed in creeping the hell out of people 30+ years later.

[bagtagley]

The Halloween remake was at least fun to pick apart, since I watched the original thousands of times as a kid.

The only decent horror movie I've seen in the past 5 years is Descent. At the very least, it's the only movie that's given me a good startle in that long.

I've got Old Boy and Ichi the Killer sitting here waiting to be watched. I've got hopes for quality, but they read more like twisted flicks than horror.

[cdlv]

I dug the 28 days/28 months movies, other than that i can't think of any recent horror movies that have been good, and now they are so out of ideas they remaking horrible 2nd rate 80's slasher halloween ripoffs( prom night, ect.....)

[adam]

Rob Zombie is a talentless douche who should not be allowed anywhere near a recording studio of any kind.

[Jer]

I dug the 28 days/28 months movies, other than that i can't think of any recent horror movies that have been good, and now they are so out of ideas they remaking horrible 2nd rate 80's slasher halloween ripoffs( prom night, ect.....)

28 Day Later was pretty good. I especially like how they went from running from the infected to running from their non-infected saviors. Wolf Creek had a certain charm. The hype leading up to The Blair Witch Project was phenomenal. Too bad the actual movie was ridiculous.

Jap horror is more twisted/disturbing than it is suspensefull/frightening. Most Asian horror makes gay films like Saw/Hostel look like Sesame Street.

[dookey67]

The Halloween remake was at least fun to pick apart, since I watched the original thousands of times as a kid.

The only decent horror movie I've seen in the past 5 years is Descent. At the very least, it's the only movie that's given me a good startle in that long.

I've got Old Boy and Ichi the Killer sitting here waiting to be watched. I've got hopes for quality, but they read more like twisted flicks than horror.


I'm in a minority in that I hated the Descent. That film had so much hype surrounding it, but it failed to live up to any of it in my meager opinion.

Which brings to mind another fallout of the insane amount of crappy horror films out there.

because of the proliferation of craptastic horror films in the marketplace over the past decade the bar has been lowered so that even moderately crappy horror films become "classics"--see Ginger Snaps, The Descent, Dog Soldiers, Hatchet, etc as examples of films that are pretty mediocre, but they got a ton of press and online buzz because there was so many worse films out there.

As for Old Boy. Meh. I would suggest Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance as the better of the trilogy, followed by Sympathy For Mrs. Vengeance, with Old Boy coming in a distant 3rd (another film, IMHO, that was given much more hype than it was really worth).

As for Ichi? That film is amazingly twisted and easily one of Miike's best. Not really a horror film as just a bugged out exercise in craziness (but then most of Miike's films are).

In reference to what Jer said a few posts back, there is a BIG difference between scary and gross-out. Films like Saw and Hostel go for the gross-out over the scares. Granted the F13 films always went for gross-out, but the first two were actually pretty scary, as well.

In all honesty, one of the scariest films I have ever seen was The Haunting (the original 1959ish b/w one, not the craptacular remake with Owen Wilson). That film has absolutely no gore and relies on shadows and weird sound effects to create a terrifying sense of creepiness. Classic example of how to scare the bejeebus outta you.

As for Japanese horror films, in many ways I find that they are inspired by Argento. They have that twisted, creepy, surreal vibe about them and the stories are often convoluted. They're like arthouse horror films.

[cdlv]

As for Japanese horror films, in many ways I find that they are inspired by Argento. They have that twisted, creepy, surreal vibe about them and the stories are often convoluted. They're like arthouse horror films.

speaking of Dario's newest seems to be getting decent reviews and Asia is sort of sexy in a dark sleazy kind of way so I'll most likely see it.

[dookey67]

how can you not love a woman who has a giant angel tattooed on her V?

http://www.bellaonline.us/~bodyart/movie/triple_x/asia_angel.jpg

[bagtagley]

I'd never heard of Descent, so maybe that helped it not suck as bad. I'm also a sucker for a startle and some sexy ladies. Hell, I thought I Know What You Did Last Summer was tolerable due to the abundance of cleavage and predictable startles...yes, I just admitted that.

Having said that, I completely agree about the preponderance of total crap over the last decade. The trailers bring the hype, only to reveal every descent scene or scare in the entire movie. The Strangers is a great example. Looked to have potential, but I figured it would bring the suck.

The Haunting brought the creep, but completely fell apart in a bad way. I've been meaning to score the original because the story had potential.

I'm really surprised to read anything positive about Hostel 2. The first one was such a raging piece of shit, I had no hope for the sequel.

[dookey67]

I actually enjoyed Hostel II. It was creepier, even though you kind of already knew the premise.

The first Hostel was heavily influenced by Japanese horror (hence the ending with the Japanese girl and I believe the appearance of a few OG Japanese horror directors).

What I enjoyed about H2 was that it was more influenced by European horror (specifically Spanish, German, and Italian). For that reason it had more of a creepy, yet arty flair to it. I think the fact that the film takes place behind the old Iron Curtain and this time around was influenced by films from the close, neighboring burgs of Europe was a better fit, both stylistically and thematically.

http://movies.ign.com/articles/793/793521p1.html

But that's just me.