The Horror Thread

I am opening this thread with the hope to attract fans of horror fiction in general, in order to discuss books, movies, music or other media.

To start things off, I watched The Descent a couple of weeks ago at a local theater. I was excited because of the positive reviews I had seen online, and they were centainly right. The movie is really good, it's about a group of adrenaline-addict women that are planning to go explore a cave system. It starts off really slow (justifiably so, because we have to get to know the characters) but once it switches gears, it never looks back. At first, they have "typical" spelonging problems but things get progressively worse (in the good way) as the movie advances, and it avoids horror movie clichés. The ending was particularly satisfying too.

On the other hand, I just came back from the theater after watching Marebito. I really wanted to like this movie, but I just couldn't enjoy it. In traditional asian horror style, explanations are not handed to you on a silver plate, and I am normally not bothered by movies that compel the audience to think a little, but in this movie I was really not caring enough to do it.

The movie is about a cameraman who becomes obsessed with fear after watching a frightened man stab himself in the eye. He wonders what it was that scared this man so much, and decides that he just has to see what that man saw, no matter what. He goes on a little journey to the city's subway, and then to deeper and older underground constructions, until he finally arrives to the ruins of a city. In the ruins, he finds a young woman held to a wall by a chain on her ankle, and he decides to free her and take her home, thinking that he's saving her life. Yeah, mistake.

The atmosphere of the movie is adequate and the sound is eerie, but the plot doesn't seem to make much sense, and I found myself listening to creepy and ominous music when nothing was really happening. I just didn't get the movie at all.

Any of you guys have seen these movies? what did you think of them?

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Originally Posted by Casual_Otaku

Of the ones you mentioned I've only seen The Descent, which I wasn't too impressed with. More recently I've watched The Hills Have Eyes and Hostel, which were both OK. I'm quite happy that horror films are returning to their more gory roots, they sort of died off in the late eighties/early nineties. This was followed by over a decade of teen tripe like Scream and a million other carbon copy teen slashers. What is there to look forward to this year? Silent Hill is looking quite good, as is Slither. I guess there's the Omen remake as well, but I have a feeling it will end up being excrement.

Looking forward to those movies as well, Hostel will premiere soon here in my city and I plan to goo see it. Silent Hill is my most anticipated movie right now! It looks like it will not disappoint. They seem to have nailed the look and feel of the game.
Besides the mindless teen slashers we were also having unnecessary remakes (come on, remaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Please) and movies ruined by marketing and/or censorship in an attempt to attact a younger audience. At least you can expect an uncensored version on DVD.

Originally Posted by Scarletdeath

I've watched The Descent, and it was pretty decent. The ending was horrible though. For me, I prefer asian horrors. They're much more effective in the scare factor. American horrors are either A) Softcore porn horrors or B) Psychological horror.

I'm still a fan of the Ju-on Trilogy. Ju-on The Prequel was my fav. Stuff like The Ring, Dark Water, Shutter are all pretty cool. Not the American counterpart of course. I do like psychological thrillers though, looking forward to Silent Hill.

I heard they were going to cut the very last part in order to leave it with a more traditional ending. The ending I'm referring to is

Spoiler:

the one where no one escapes.

Is it the same that you watched?
Oh, and Shutter is the scariest shit I've seen in ages. Intense!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Scarletdeath

What do you mean? All the Ju-on ending

Spoiler:

leaves everyone in it dead. ALL Ju-on endings.

You should look for Ju-on the prequel. You'll recognize that's the one when you see the ending where

Spoiler:

everyone dies, as usual, but there's also a scene where there are tens of those Ju-on creatures standing at the basketball court.

Freaky as heck.

I was referring to The Descent's ending. Sorry about the misunderstading.
In the "regular" ending...

Spoiler:

the last woman alive sees an exit and runs towards it, thus escaping the cave, she continues running until she finds a vehicle; seconds later we realize the woman is still inside the cave and hallucinated her escape, she sees her little daughter by her side with a birthday cake (also a hallucination) and as she smiles lovingly, we can hear the sound of several 'crawlers' quickly coming to her location.

I read somewhere that in the US release...

Spoiler:

the movie would be edited to make it end in the part where she finds the vehicle and escapes, in order to give the movie a more traditional or ''happy'' ending.

That's why I wondered if you had seen the edited ending (which kinda sucks), because I just loved the normal one.

As for Del Toro, I read he was busy trying to get Hellboy 2 made, supposedly he turned down directing Halo because of this, but I don't know if that was just a rumor.
Can't wait to see Pan's Labyrinth, by the way

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I haven't seen the Masters of Horror series, but I just found out that Clive Barker would be doing an episode. I really love the Hellraiser mythology (which has been completely destroyed by the movies since III, the comicbook stories, I'd say, are better) and I've read some of the stories from the Books of Blood, which I found very entertaining, so it's really exciting to know that this man is trying to produce more stuff. There's also The Scarlet Gospels, which will include a story set in Hell featuring Pinhead.

Of course it will be awesome.

How ya doing, buddy?