Chills, Thrills and Spills: A Horror Thread

If you're ever in the US - visit Ohio! There's lots of creepy abandoned buildings (including hospitals).

 

So, since folk in the tumblr thread wanted to hear about lgbt+ horror movies, here is a post about that! Tagging @Saro for being the impetus behind this. :D (Also, apologies if I'm slightly incoherent, I've been awake for like 26 hours.)

OKAY SO first of all, let me recommend Monsters In The Closet, which is a book all about gay themes/subtext in horror movies. It's been a while since I read it, but I recall it being pretty good. Now on to some specific movies (these are literally just the first few I thought of; this is by no means a thorough list):

• Rope (1948, dir. Alfred Hitchcock): Okay, this is technically a thriller rather than horror per se, but tomato, tomahto, I love Hitchcock so by God he will be on this list. Based on a play inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case, stars John Dall and Farley Granger (who were both queer IRL) as dashingly handsome gay murderers. Obviously they had to keep the gay stuff sub rosa because 1948, but it's still pretty obvious. (And speaking of Hitchcock: For more subtextual queer themes, watch Rebecca and marvel at Mrs. Danvers' obvious mad love for the titular Rebecca. Oh, and Strangers On A Train has more Farley-Granger-in-kinda-gay-murder-plot.)
• The Haunting (1963, dir. Robert Wise): Theodora is a lesbian. If Eleanor weren't slowly going crazy, they would probably end up together. Alas. Do not, under any circumstances, watch the remake (but do read the original novel).
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985, dir. Jack Sholder): No, really. Read the wiki page.
  It's not…I mean…it's not a good movie, strictly speaking, and arguably falls short of being a So Bad It's Good movie, but it's better if you watch it with that in mind. I think.
• The Lost Boys (1987, dir. Joel Schumacher): Whoo boy is there a lotta gay vampire subtext in this movie. I mean, damn. Those are some gay vampires, right there.
• Mulholland Drive (2001, dir. David Lynch): Again, this is technically not a horror movie, but it's a David Lynch movie, which is basically the same thing. Also there is no plausible explanation of the plot that is non-horrifying, so there. Anyway: lesbians! They're lesbians.

So yeah. There's more, of course, and I'll probably think of like fifty more movies I forgot right after I hit "post", but there's a starter pack for you.

 

this week in 'jesus christ why does Mute keep contributing to this thread when they can't stand/are scared shitless of even the most faintly horror genre stuff'

have a vidya game trailer that I can't watch five seconds of at a time :U

 

Courtesy of the cursed images thread, a lovely expedition into the uncanny valley.

 

I found this song on a spotify playlist called headphones required and it scares the everloving shit out of me. Its got a really unique blend of dissonance and constantly fluctuating uneven volume in each ear that really puts you on edge. No joke i kinda feel cursed now lol

 

Oh, if we're doing musical horror - enjoy my favorite song by clipping. and its equally unpleasant, upsetting (and nsfw) music video

 

for some reason the music over the 'footage' feels like one of the more eerie parts about it (which I'm coming to realize as I rewatch it even though it might give me nightmares)

(why, self)

 

Digging up this thread (heh) to ask if anyone has any recs on recent or closely upcoming movies?

Reminder/note that I don't much understand the appeal of gore-fests/gorn, and zombies, non-con of any kind*, and men being horrible to women all freak me out in the not-fun way.

I'm best interested by the psychological supernatural kind of threat, such as in the Grudge/Dark Water/The Ring genre of japanese horror (although I'll be the first to admit that the The Ring is the one example where the american remake is wayyyy better than the original, but I can't watch the sequels because they're just stupid.)

(*Lookin' at you, Don't Breathe. Not a rapist, my ass.)

So far I've been trawling through youtube looking at this year's crop and it's annoying how much of it falls into the usual catergories of 'psycho with a mask' 'psycho without a mask' 'Insidious #50 which I need to be high to actually find interesting' 'COULD BE SUPERNATURAL OOOOH wait it's just zombies/Infection again' (It Comes At Night, bluhhhh) The only one that's stuck up so far is The Ritual (group of british blokes go hiking somewhere in scandaweiga and get horribly murdered?) and that's just on account of I'm hoping it looks good for mood-whiplash, since the characters are all snarky and witty as heck even when they're panicking.

Basically I just need someone else to help me filter through the trash to find any gems. (Also, I'm gonna go see the IT reboot hopefully sometimes next week with my bestie. Not expecting much of it, but should be at least entertaining, since both me and the friend in question adore the book and if one of us has to suffer through a bad adaptation, we both need to so we can bitch about it afterwards. It's my turn to pay for tickets, too.)

 

IT has been getting pretty good reviews from what I've seen, I'm actually kind of hopeful.

Unfortunately I have no recommendations, but I would love to hear people's suggestions as well. Psych supernatural is right up my alley.

 

So Hell House came out last year. It's not super recent. I liked it more than I thought I would. It's not perfect, but I think it has good concepts that I ended up really interested in. It is shot found footage style, BUT:bad shaky-cam can trigger my migraines, and this movie actually didn't bother me at all BECAUSE MOST OF THE TIME THEY HELD THE DAMN THING STEADY HALLELUJAH

Have you guys seen The Void? If you have light triggered seizures I DO NOT recommend this movie. But it's a homage to lovecraftian horror that subverts a lot of the stupid tropes that wear me out. This movie is on Netflix.

Abatoir also came out last year. It was surprisingly good?? I've seen probably over 50 horror movies and I thought this was original and interesting. The imagery can be genuinely creepy, there's elements of the supernatural and human horror - honestly, I feel like someone actually thought about that script, and it makes me happy.

I will come back and add more - I can't write a long post right know. If anyone has any recs for me please leave them! I'm open to pretty much anything but gorn, although I'll watch that IF there's a compelling psychological element.

@PotteryWalrus are you open to older movies too, or exclusively newer ones? And how new is 'new' for you?

 

@ZeroEsper Older movies too, although I feel like I've seen almost everything I want to from the last half-century. I'm definitely open to recs, though! 'New' to me means came out this year or the one before, especially if it was one I missed XD

I REALLY WANT TO SEE THE VOID. I'll check if it's on UK netflix yet, and look up Abatoir's trailer to see if it looks any good :)

EDIT: Nope, not on my netflix yet :/ Urgh, if they could stop leaving all the good movies to their native subscribers, that would be fab ://// (No offence to anyone who is a native subber, ofc. I'm just annoyed at Netflix as usual XDD)

 

Me: *watches the last thirty minutes of the babadook on tv, aka the traps part or something*
Me: this is the scariest home alone sequel yet

 

has anyone seen the new it movie? i really liked it! i've only read part of the books and they modernized it a little, but i think they did a Really Good Job

it definitely freaked my bean, and it didn't fall into a lot of the cliches horror movies have, so i'm really excited for chapter two

 

Thats right babadook, eat your fucking worms

 

Yesss I saw it on Sunday and really liked it! I was pretty impressed, and while there were a few things I really disliked (Mike's family, why) i thought most of it was well-done and pretty effective (and some changes were for the better). I'm excited for the second part too. Really hope they get good people for the roles.

I wish they could have kept the format of the book, because i thought the gradual reveal of info through recollection of forgotten memories really heightened the tension and creepiness, but I totally get why they couldn't.

I think they got the kids' characters pretty much perfect, very happy with that part.

(minor semi-related gripe: SK, why do you like the name Eddie so much)

 

I saw It! Unfortunately I didn't care for it. I think I wanted it to scare me, and then when it didn't I was disappointed. But!!! I'm not the target audience. I'm actually not scared of clowns. So I'll bet you that was part of the problem too.

Also CALLING IT NOW: Patrick's character will reappear in the next movie. He will have aged. He'll now be played by Adam Driver.

Seeing the movie was a good experience for me: I went with a friend who's very tolerant of my atypical-ness, and when I saw the house the clown lived in I started laughing and couldn't stop because I thought it was funny. He didn't try and shush or scold me - he giggled along even though he didn't know why I was laughing. I'm always so relieved when people don't get mad at me for stuff like that.

 

Assistance, y'all.

I've never read a Stephen King novel, and I want to read one or two, but since I know he can get repetitive, I want to read just a few and stop. The best few. I was asking for recommendations and my fiancée says her favorite was a more traditional novel he wrote about vampires she insists was called Turn of the Century.

What the hell is she talking about?

I see nowhere that he wrote a novel by that name. From what I can tell she may have read Salem's Lot, which was recommended to me a few times anyway, because it is about vampires. Did he happen to write two things kind of like that? Is there a short story called 'Turn of the Century' that I can't find because it's lesser known? Is this actually a book by a lesser-known author she confused with Mr. King? What is she talking about? I'm not going to tell her she's wrong until I know what is going on.

...also, what's the best Stephen King book? I will make an eventual choice based on amount of hype and whether it's about something actually cool/scary to me. Sorry, clowns are neither -u-

 

The only steven king I've read was Rose Madder, which i did enjoy, and like half of a book about a kid in the woods hallucinating bears and baseball, which???????

 

Not sure about books by that name, but King did a miniseries called Storm of the Century, if that helps? Also, if you're looking for King books to read, also google Richard Bachmann, it's one of his pseuds.

Rose Madder involves escaping a extremely abusive marriage, up to and including a first-trimester miscarriage, though, so if you're easily triggered by such things, I would give it a miss. However, the fantasy parts of it are rich and strange as pomegrante wine (spoiler: titular character is a relatively minor horrorterror on the side of the protagonist) so I would definitely rec Rose Madder if you can get past the horrible real-world stuff.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is much as @emythos said, a young girl gets lost in the woods with only her radio to listen to and suffers badly enough to begin hallucinating all kinds of awfuls. (Notable in my recs that it only involves a 'was it all in her head' type horrorterror) (Also it's pretty short. Not as short as Carrie, but maybe a few days to a week depending on your reading time and speed.)

I'm... a bad person to ask when you want to know which King books are scariest, since written fiction doesn't ping me the way visual things do, but I HAVE read a lot of his stuff. Besides the above, I can rec -

Insomnia - Old people stop sleeping well and start seeing auras... and other things. Involves a certain well-known WW2 japanese word, reapers, violent pro-lifers, women's rights, and one or two not on-your-side horrorterrors. Also OAP romance, crazies of every type, and possibly vertigo if that kinda thing bothers you in books as well.

IT - I know you said clowns are boring, but IT is not really clowns. It's still one of my favourites, and connected to Insomnia by being set in the same fiction Maine town of Derry. Also, it's a doorstopper, so listening might be better if you have trouble staying on track like I do. Involves childhood fears, tough kids, two horrorterrors, Defying Destiny and Kicking Reason To The Curb, and also smaller nightmares.

Spoiler: TRIGGER no seriously

(As well as one scene of EXTREMELY underage sex)

Carrie's a classic, and I can read it in a day, if you want something quick and easy. Bonus points that it's actually told in the form of post-humous reports and files, which I always find a nice touch. I wish one of the adaptations would take up the same mockumentary style, it would be really cool.

Also Everything's Eventual and Nightmares And Dreamscapes are fun if you like short story anthologies.

 

imo carrie is very clearly a tragedy and not horror, but it's still definitely worth reading

eta: i mean the book (and even more so the musical, which is good and underrated). i havent seen the movies.