The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[therewillbeblus]

I also recall you posting a pretty sweet 1-minute music video with Samantha Morton when I reviewed this thread at the start of this project, swo - I don't know what page it's on, but well worth checking out, I remember thinking it was cool. Plus it's only one-two minutes!

At least four of the above will make my final list, they're all short enough for everyone to make time for!

[swo17]

a pretty sweet 1-minute music video with Samantha Morton

Yes, it's very touching

[Mr Sausage]

Sous Le Soleil De Satan (Maurice Pialat, 1987)
I know you asked me to see this for the project, therewillbeblus, but it’s really me who’d like to hear your thoughts on it, specifically why you classify it as horror. There is a slight atmosphere of the folktale about it, but not enough for me to think it a horror. Anyway, there’s something about these French films in which people monologue at each other about emotional and metaphysical quandaries of the most intense and serious sort, but they do it in this quiet, hushed way that puts me off. Plenty of discursive language where emotional would do, said in the tones of a fireside discussion over tea. I dunno. The film reminded me of Diary of a Country Priest, a movie I know you’re terribly fond of, therewillbeblues, but not one that’s ever done much for me. They’re both from Bernanos novels, which accounts for the similarity. I know this is a rather pitiful capsule, and I’m sorry, but I’m at a loss on what to say about this one. How much of my reaction is the movie or my mood or both, who knows, but I was at most semi-invested in the movie, and it only ever had my complete attention for one scene, the one on the long walk in the country between the priest and, well, you know.

Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002)
Again, I more want to hear from you why you consider it a horror. It reminded me of Delillo’s Running Dog, in which people are willing to lie, cheat, torture, and kill for objects that are ultimately ridiculous. I guess there’s meant to be a congruence between the casual violence and sex all over the screens and the business world full of casual violence and sex, but I wonder what the implied relationship is really composed of. The characters in this world are passive, even indifferent consumers of media sex and violence; it surrounds them, they reenact it, yet they regard the porn and action films impassively, without pleasure or otherwise. No one seems titillated or repulsed. Perhaps it is all commerce: trading in sex and violence as a commodity and using sex and violence as a business method. It’s easy to claim a causal relationship and therefore a critique, but the movie never implies causation. Just congruence. Parallel worlds; sex and death as commodities in an impersonal capitalist system. The film might even believe this. It hardly matters. This doesn’t strike me as a movie of ideas; these heftier themes seem there to create an emotional texture and an atmosphere, something glazed, robotic, anhedonic, Ballardian even. A world of people whose ostensible desire is money and power and who seem mostly unmoved by both, chasing plans and goals they don’t articulate or don’t know. No one really knows one another nor cares; no one pursues desire except as a means towards some other, undefined thing. A revolving world of action without goals; a hamster wheel. You could probably turn this into a philosophical point about the modern condition, yet the world of the film bears little resemblance to our shared reality. It seems a fantasy world, a grotesque imagining or extension of certain features of modern life. What does despair matter in a movie of people incapable of feeling it, for whom hope as a category doesn’t exist, and if it did would be neither wanted nor comprehended? Perhaps the best analogy isn’t Delillo, but Cronenberg. This movie seems to share its flesh with Crash and Naked Lunch. Portraits of inhuman emotional worlds.

[therewillbeblus]

I’m sorry you didn’t get a lot out of them, Sausage, and although I know others here champion demonlover in this genre, I know I’m alone in Under the Sun of Satan for probably similar reasons I will be alone for MO’s Benilde, when the spiritual is tweaked to expose psychological responses that are uncomfortable if brought into consciousness. I haven’t seen the film since my one and only viewing and who knows if I’d have the same reaction now (I certainly wouldn’t make the same comparison to The Young Pope) but here’s my acute reaction on the film and why it’s horror to me:

I watched this on the advice of barryconvex, as a response to his viewing of The Flowers of St. Francis, and was shaken by how intense this film is compared to other spiritual films from which it was born. The conversation with the high priest at the start where he basically tells Depardieu to accept his holiness/status as a Saint, and bring his will to face the discomfort that comes with self-respect and participating in life only highlights how humility can be the opposite, an ego-induced fear trap of cowardice in remaining in comfortable self-pity and stagnation; and vice versa, where taking risks and accepting one’s worth, becoming uncomfortable through perceived non-humble acts is actually humble in the eyes of god.

This is basically the answer to those who seek to question the priest’s psychological profile in Diary of a Country Priest, but while that is an existential film that wants to remain on the outskirts of the priest’s psychology to highlight his humanness and demonstrate that actions themselves beget spirituality - whether real or imagined, believed or not - and are his savior, this film pierces the psychological vulnerabilities and contradictions that the former releases to god as an act of grace. This film meditates on them in the dense mud of their humanity (to flex Bonnaire’s analogy early on), unwilling or unable to release the pains of fear, doubt, insecurity, worthiness, and the acts of self-flagellation are as metaphorical as they are real. Sandrinne Bonnaire seeks the opposite as him, actively working towards a place of fearlessness - even declaring that she is rarely scared, though not something I believe - but the point is that she is actively pursuing a goal that is uncomfortable in order to work through the pain to get to comfort with that discomfort. However, she is relying solely on her will, draining herself of all sanity and strength in the process, taking an overdrive of action out of fear to let god in, while Depardieu takes a lack of action for the same reasons. The film depicts both main characters as equally lost because they refuse to let god in to their psychologies, and thus are castrated spiritually. Fear and pride, humility and ego, all drive them but these qualities are intangible to them in as a hazy whirlwind of internal dysregulation as they don’t possess the tools or lenses to make them tangible and work towards self-actualization and reprieve. Death says as much to Depardieu, telling him that he is unable to access the entire scope of vision that will provide him with serenity, only focusing on one thought at a time and thus fearful, blind, and doomed. Because he doesn’t have a blueprint or even willingness to give any of this fear up to god, Depardieu becomes the devil’s prophecy as a self-fulfilling one of his own, at least until he encounters Bonnaire...

How this fits with St Francis I think is in breaking down those moments like the leper scene where we are left wondering the meaning behind Francis’ actions, but it’s the inverse of that ambiguity, honing in on each complicated feeling and thought to unbearable degrees of rawness rather than bypassing such analyses for spiritual growth. There is no growth until the two leads encounter each other, where there is a ferocious explosion of participation that is unprecedented. Depardieu can hypocritically tell Bonnaire the truth about her facade, her unoriginality, stripping her of any false pride and allowing her to be freed of such anchors to misery, by using his holy ‘power,’ embracing it for the first time - but towards someone whose morals should but don’t reduce her worth at receiving his attention and thus muddle the judgment of the eyes of the church, but keep with a Franciscan humanist perspective and actions.

Depardieu mimics the priest in Bresson’s film now, attempting to do for another what he cannot do for himself. His disabled psyche is momentarily reprieved through the act of helping others, the core principle of the spiritual way of life- whether through religion, 12-step self-help groups, or any other alternative program of growth. Bonnaire is not helped in the traditional sense though, and Depardieu is tested just as he finally embraces his calling, reverting back to his self-destructive self-concept as he interprets his actions of confrontation as harmful rather than helpful, but were they? Did they not propel Bonnaire into a state of facing life head on and if so, is he responsible for the result? Would it not have been in line with Satan’s view to continue to do or say nothing and stay hiding from his power? And if so, did Depardieu act in accordance with God?

Depardieu‘s grapple with faith and journey in this film is reminiscent of The Young Pope and yet it’s far more esoteric than that already obscure film. Both films deal with a similar idea but this one offers little opportunity for audience reprieve from the entanglements of psychology and philosophy regarding an unknowable force both in the mind and of the spirit, borderlining on horror in its relentless pull, like that of Satan, the only mystical presence made corporeal here. While the ending is somewhat ambiguous as to the Big Questions at play, I’m ready to call this one of the most unsettling movie experiences ever, and will likely be a contender for my horror list. Not even because I see the film as cynical, as it’s very possibly not in its totality, but because the process is so assaultive and forces analysis while barring spiritual release that it exhausted me to my limits, and is probably the closest I can imagine to a nightmare of what hell would be like if it were a psychological prison.

As for demonlover I’ve already posted about it enough on this site in various places so I’ll just paste my writeup from the beginning of this thread:

demonlover

I wrote up an initial reaction to this in its dedicated thread, but what makes this melting pot of genres land in the horror camp for me is the way Assayas uses genre and narrative expectations, coupled with technical comprehension skills of how to operate the camera and sound, and consistently and unpredictably mixes them to create unease, disruption between the viewer and subject on screen, and internal tension. The film’s plot and the experience of watching serve as a reflexive, involving process of the fear born from relinquishing control, and the realization that perhaps we never had any real sense of control to begin with, which results in and from choices to initiate uninvolving separation on a metaphysical level (even the different film stocks create a subconscious disorientation and disintegration of the self!)

This is not to say that the film is full of weak characters, quite the opposite, and that’s intentional. The story relies on strong-willed people seeking and attaining power, taking control over their and others’ lives continuously as if control were air or food. The problem is that after these instances, a variable will present itself that serves to block or undo such acts, and render one - often our heroine- powerless, more confused and disoriented than before; but she keeps getting up and trying, as is the drive of human nature, to futile and devastating measures. On a larger scale, the film’s plot is about globalization, where people are reduced to meaningless objects, and the collective masses have been desensitized to the horrors people commit (an idea rooted in truth, itself quite horrific) while rapidly diluting individualism, or any sense of authenticity in identity. Self-actualization appears to be reached and even maintained by confident characters throughout the film, but this slowly becomes apparent as a facade, for we never get the sense that this attitude is possible to sustain in the world of the film. All personality is artificially constructed and contingent on capitalist ideologies, and any catharsis from selfhood is smashed by the unstoppable force that crushes the need within the human being to be visible beyond their status as commodity.

I’ll stress that this is the least “safe” I can remember feeling while watching a movie: unsafe from where the narrative is taking me (Ruiz is the master of this, but his films are predictably unpredictable in spirit), and unsafe from myself; my own psychology and existential pain with isolative separateness set off and muddied in a blend of chaotic ‘fullness’ of everything a film can include (in eclectic blend of genres, themes, film form, film materials, hell- even the globalization elements allows us to experience places and cultures throughout the world) and yet complete 'emptiness' within, as cultures and (consequently) individuals assimilate, broken of their separatist, unique natures into a melting pot of absolute value- or the absence of value. By reducing distinguished cultures, morals, and political systems to one blurry construct, the subjects become even more separate and disillusioned, as they have no belief systems, unique traits, or special tools to to hold on to, navigate, or comprehend the complexity of the world; a juxtaposition so intense that it alone creates depersonalization by obstructing identity contingent on meaning.

If cinema is often designed as a safe space for audiences to achieve catharsis through mastery over the image, with some slight alterations to provoke emotional, cognitive, and physiological (especially in horror films) responses, this movie takes that purpose and twists it until it’s completely inverted, like the inside-out dog in The Thing. Assayas’ maintenance of a consistent narrative is key to allowing the sheer dread to unfold, as we remain bound to the film in some aspect of reality while gradually losing our own identity right with our surrogate. It’s a cinematic ride unlike any other, and redefines the horror film as it pierces the senses we’re accustomed to, in ways we are not, to relentless degrees that reach the vulnerability of the mind and soul, unequipped to handle the charge of abrasive philosophical violence they’re forced to combat, hence unsafe passage through the meaningless, yet scarily familiar, aspects of the social milieu in which we live. We end the film so far removed from the reality of the film, or from understanding our heroine, that it feels like a dream. But then, in the final images, we’re snapped back into the reality of our world, and we remember that this is not escapism we are experiencing, but a confrontation with ourselves. The one we never expected or ever wanted to have.

Sorry if those are lazy ways of explaining myself, but I think that where I draw the strongest sense of horror from is a place of philosophical and psychological vulnerability veering on the edge of existential collapse, often involving the diffusion of identity and the overwhelming enigmatic threat of uncontrollable forces. While some works (The Young Pope, for example, or Maniac on Netflix) find comfort in acceptance of this, other works focus on the discomfort (Vox Lux) and others transcend into horror for me. There are sometimes common denominators in tonal dread escalating as securities in cinematic expression (narrative expectations, character alignment, visual signifiers, etc) deteriorate into an abyss, though what really makes some of these films successful at hitting this place while others don’t there probably aren’t words for, just feelings, but I tried my best to explain in those and other posts, and that’s unfortunately the best I can do for now.

DeLillo’s Underworld is my favorite novel and I’ve liked the few others of his I’ve read, but I’ll probably prioritize Running Dog now that you mention it in connection to this.

[Mr Sausage]

I didn’t mean to imply I got nothing out of Demonlover. It was...something. I don’t know if that something was good or bad, but I was always interested. I suppose it made me feel numb rather than horrified, but I don’t count that as a negative. It is something for characters to see behind the veil and then embrace their own helplessness. It’s like that one website isn’t so much a vision of hell, but a vision outside the world. Hence the non-sexual fascination it seems to hold for the high powered women. A view outside their chrome cages, a reminder of the hollowness of their endless scheming.

[therewillbeblus]

Exactly, and I suppose that awareness of complacency and numbness (whether in surrogate characters or my own reactions to a film or both) when exploited also exploits the fragility of systems, ideology, and identity in ways that I find horrifying in theory though gratifying in how it fits with my framework for comprehending life. It’s like the pleasure of listening to great sad music when sad, though applied to the roots of fear in how social psychology fits with existentialism, through the medium of film.

[therewillbeblus]

Belphegor, or Phantom of the Louvre: I wanted to finally see the Claude Barma’s miniseries before a rewatch of Riget as a stated source of inspiration, and thought it was an engaging precursor to a lot of today’s expansive multicharacter tv mysteries. This miniseries has that 60s French feel, not quite nouvelle vague but whimsical technique and playful narrative, with themes hitting the 60s spell of youthful preoccupations with stripping away the illusions of society, ideology and actuality to discover new truths with open minds. In examining the obsession with making mystery tangible, curiosity leads to trouble. There is repetitive talk of the illusion as an arbitrary allure by the eccentric cast of characters, and this sparks a supernatural noirish plot with hints of pre-giallo and a light touch that prioritizes entertainment.

This plays like a combination of typical noir, classic horror, youthful agency predating Brick and Blue Velvet, and a healthy dose of Rivette’s enigmatic paranoia in looming secret societies that permeate the dark corners of the streets of Paris. The miniseries also understands and reflexively acknowledges the thrills of getting caught up in a mystery, with our protagonist flatly celebrating how much fun he’s having throughout this departure from studies into fantasy.

The plot fizzles out by a certain point and while there is still fun to be had it’s not as cryptic or involving. The fun extends to deep camp, even going so far as to have our hero spell out how he’s not going to fall into the predicament of a ‘movie’ error in logic only to be consciously manipulated seconds later. It’s dumb but it knows it, and is having fun, embracing camp and devolving it to a strength like Twin Peaks and Riget. There are a few direct homages in Twin Peaks that were lifted from this too, for fans of the series who want to see a clear inspiration. I don’t know if this is horror ‘enough’ for me to vote for it, considering all the films I’m leaving off because of this genre bending strays too far from the source of horror, but it probably qualifies, and gets a hearty recommendation regardless.

[swo17]

Island of the Hungry Ghosts (Gabrielle Brady, 2018)
zedz called this "a horror movie under its surface, the twist being that the monster lurking in the forests of Christmas Island isn't the horde of primitive creatures with nasty claws advancing inexorably across the land, but the Australian government." It's probably too much of a stretch for this list, but I assume that won't stop therewillbeblus from considering it. Did I mention it's also a documentary about a trauma therapist? I'll expect a full review from you TWBB by the time I wake up tomorrow morning

[Noiradelic]

Watching Pulse in NYC under a stay-at-home order added an unsettling dimension to the experience.

[domino harvey]

Speaking of short possibilities for consideration, I highly recommend giving An Unlocked Window, an infamous episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a watch. Some incredible tension and the ending is unforgettable. Here it is on YouTube, but DO NOT read the comments before watching (or, as with any YT comment, ever), as of course someone feels the need to spoil it

[DarkImbecile]

I'll expect a full review from you TWBB by the time I wake up tomorrow morning

Get in line, pal

[therewillbeblus]

Speaking of short possibilities for consideration, I highly recommend giving An Unlocked Window, an infamous episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a watch. Some incredible tension and the ending is unforgettable. Here it is on YouTube, but DO NOT read the comments before watching (or, as with any YT comment, ever), as of course someone feels the need to spoil it

Ha! That was a treat,

SpoilerShow

the ripping of the shirt to reveal chest hair was a perfect cherry on top to the ridiculous twist, taking it both seriously and as a joke of manipulative insanity simultaneously!

And I didn’t think it was possible, but I’ve lost even more respect for De Palma’s poorly played reveal in Dressed to Kill now that I have to wonder if that too was inspired by a Hitchcock vehicle that did it so much better.

Island of the Hungry Ghosts (Gabrielle Brady, 2018)
zedz called this "a horror movie under its surface, the twist being that the monster lurking in the forests of Christmas Island isn't the horde of primitive creatures with nasty claws advancing inexorably across the land, but the Australian government." It's probably too much of a stretch for this list, but I assume that won't stop therewillbeblus from considering it. Did I mention it's also a documentary about a trauma therapist? I'll expect a full review from you TWBB by the time I wake up tomorrow morning

I hope you are a late-riser. Aside from the initial shots of ominous woods, Island of the Hungry Ghosts didn’t strike me as any kind of horror film, unless I want to count my day to day professional life as a horror movie, or anyone's procedural case management that navigates corrupt systems in attempts for justice, and then copes with compromise. Systemic oppression sucks, and the life of the trauma therapist was cool to see, especially looking at the sand intervention as a creative form of ‘sort-of’ narrative therapy (although Australia is where narrative therapy was invented, surprisingly not used here in its pure form), but while the combination of documentary and narrative concoction was mixed well at times, I was put off by the artifice in the therapist’s assertion at home about the situation. This is not to say that it’s not a challenging process to bring work home but the way she expressed herself felt inauthentic and didactic for the camera, designed to give audiences the expected channel of drama rather than capture how she would cope and actually express those feelings of ethical injustice. This opened up other manipulations into plain view that don’t always bother me about documentary filmmaking but are barriers often impossible to bypass completely when making them. This one just initiated an unraveling of yarn that took me out of the film and exploited the exploitations in a louder way, but that's a very subjective reading.

If we want to talk about docs as horror, look no further than Citizenfour, where the feeling of truth is unveiled through simply describing it. The information Snowden monotonously explains is horrifying and we’re trapped with it as a fly on the wall awestruck and pierced with paranoia, but it’s too real and tonally this terror is evoked too much by ourselves for me to make the leap and classify this as a genre film. Having said that, when I saw Citizenfour in theatres I vividly recall my friend and I sinking into our seats with sweatshirt hoods over our heads, and I was personally more uncomfortable than I’ve ever been in a horror movie screening (or probably any movie to be honest), so there is definitely a part of me that wants to categorize it as such, but I cannot bring myself to do it. These horrors of structuralist tangible reality just don't cut the parameters of my definition, even if this points to exploring uncontrollable oppressive forces that remain mysterious to some degree.


A few other last-minute watches:

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse: Wild surreal madness - Marins has a lot of fun projecting the uncomfortable concept for religious folks that the aims of the evil dark side of skewed self-interest are synonymous with their own devoted dogma in behavioral practice. By sending us down this windy chaotic road of lunacy, we are privy to enjoyment and recognizing the innate intensity in actions of blind faith and narrow-minded obsession, including the lengths the corporeal will go to access desires masquerading as spiritual, the preoccupation in prioritization of one’s own solipsistic ideals divorced further and further of human compassion for fellow man. There’s so much wonderful irony in these films where an atheist is the most dogmatic and nihilism clashes with a need to preserve the self through self-copies in historical lineage. Of course he embraces spirits through a paradoxical satanic worship in apparent nothingness but that contradictory behavior without self-awareness (though pointed out by all around him) only makes the character scarier in his antisocial confidence. There is real brutality though, to degrees I wasn’t suspecting, including a

SpoilerShow

violent physical assault with Coffin Joe bashing a women’s face in and subsequently raping her in the first film

and ultimately Satan functions as an interventionist god to punish evil which I find to be hysterically ironic, intelligent, and original all at once; religious imagery becoming the hallucinatory signifiers of terror.

The second film practically reincarnates our antagonist who functions as surrogate subject with more devilish self-assurance and becomes a more alien presence as a result of this apparent blending with the devil, which transforms this from a parable to pure unwavering exposition of demented mania. His values in children are more paradoxically explored here, and provide an outlet for viewing the film along the lines of existentialist noir, with only one goal and value dictating meaning. Though the first film already did this to a degree, the second breaks it down just as it does the character - who is built up stronger and impenetrable at the start only to be stripped by clashes in the differences between his psyche and reality rather than a supernatural presence throughout this one, which I preferred. The descent into hysteria is so psychologically destructive for this character whose psyche can no longer handle the hypocrisy of his own internal logic that all becomes color. Again, there is something very funny about how we can even half-align with this monster who is undergoing a flood of awareness into cognitive dissonance and reality testing that bursts his solipsistic bubble - even if that realization is something that is itself a false, absurdist ideology! The color sequence almost feels like a challenge to Ivan the Terrible Part II's sequence, one-upping the deranged demonstration with 60s psychedelia. These films are so much fun, especially the second installment doubling down on the pandemonium and terror of the possibilities of crossing paths with a determined evil zealot, who isn't even safe from crossing paths with himself, (though I won’t have time to get to the third before the deadline, I'll probably seek it out someday).


Bedlam: Another strong early Robson showcasing his interest in systems, this time exploiting the fragmentation through a very specific and tangible milieu, which keeps the fun in the family without the ambitions of the impenetrable occult in The 7th Victim that extends beyond the laughable troupe of ‘villains’ we get as a foil. This lack of philosophical horror doesn’t lessen the atmospheric scope that lavishly populates this small film with pulsing mise en scene and loud performances. The dynamics are all engaging even between minor characters, and the entire film seems to be breathing with expressive energy that disguises the horrific anxieties as socially normative interactions and spaces, something that Robson had already done his best at in the horror genre, and would continue to exhibit in diverse ways throughout his career. The plot also follows the paradigm of Unsane though that film’s interest is on exploring the horror in powerlessness as much as captive threat while this is more objective in its portrayal of horror through exploiting the possibilities of institutional oppression via systems theory.


Also going back, some hilarious lines from one of Belphegor’s prime villains that I can’t shake:

“I love violence, it agrees with me completely”

“Believe me, annihilating the will of others is like a drug!”

[swo17]

I hope you are a late-riser.

I actually just woke up from a late nap! Sorry you didn't much like the film but thank you for letting me cut in line ahead of DarkImbecile!

[domino harvey]

The previous iteration of this list featured the most voters for a non decade list (though I believe this was surpassed or closely matched by the Hitchcock list). The deadline is Monday and right now I have two lists. Two.

[Rayon Vert]

Wow.

I'll send mine in Sunday night after that evening's viewing.

[Noiradelic]

I will too.

[therewillbeblus]

Same, need to cut ten titles and re-organize, plus finish a rewatch of Riget

[DarkImbecile]

I’m only just now on Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, so I’m not sure I’ll get through the whole series in time to submit a valid list.

[knives]

Glad to see the love for my little baby TWBB. The first two films are in a class by themselves that unfortunately Marins was capable of reaching again though he still has some impressive stuff scattered in with all of the porn he would do. If you got the big boxset the other really great film in it is End of Man which actually doesn't feature the Coffin Joe character but is a fascinating excuse to hone into Marins' philosophical side. What really hits me with the films as well is growing up as a foreigner in a latin catholic community not too distant from the one Marins was fighting with which I feel helps to give me a little insight into this play between understanding and villainy that Marins loves to paint his characters with and also helps lift the films above a lot of the other exploitation crap that was going on at the time.

[domino harvey]

Due Monday really means “Tuesday morning when I wake up,” so feel free to take the extra day if you need it— it doesn’t look like I’ll have 40+ ballots to count, so it’s doubtful I’ll try to get a head start til they’re due

[therewillbeblus]

Glad to see the love for my little baby TWBB. The first two films are in a class by themselves that unfortunately Marins was capable of reaching again though he still has some impressive stuff scattered in with all of the porn he would do. If you got the big boxset the other really great film in it is End of Man which actually doesn't feature the Coffin Joe character but is a fascinating excuse to hone into Marins' philosophical side. What really hits me with the films as well is growing up as a foreigner in a latin catholic community not too distant from the one Marins was fighting with which I feel helps to give me a little insight into this play between understanding and villainy that Marins loves to paint his characters with and also helps lift the films above a lot of the other exploitation crap that was going on at the time.

I'll check it out for sure, especially considering there's clearly a depth of personal philosophy ingrained in these films hidden in the exuberant mischievousness so I'm interested in what a 'more' philosophical film from him would look like. In these it's very much rooted in that sociopolitcal context and extends in a playful way to fracture the psychology of basically every character we see, so although there is a clear villain and victims, there is a permeating unrest that seems to indicate a disturbance inherent in the context of the way the milieu is constructed, which would suppose that the atmosphere is an oppressive state to affect all people in the system. I like how full of contradictions Joe is, especially his own philosophical hypocrisy that half-humanizes him as a fragile, scared person who isolates himself as a form of making sense of his life through oversimplification of existential aim and rigid atheism, but obviously he is not allotted actual mercy. Those moments that strip him of his unknowable alien threat in 'confident nihilism' disempowers his superhumanness and allows us to laugh at that facade of strengths in superiority intimidation, while still taking his horrific actions seriously, in a similar way as how I read Phoenix's Joker deconstructed in the talk show scene thereby dissolving the Joker mythology (though nobody else seemed to).

[swo17]

I assume I can vote for Richard Ayoade's Garth Marenghi's Darkplace? I wish I'd realized this earlier to properly recommend it to everyone. It's basically a much more farcical take on the premise of Riget, which rather fittingly came out the same year as Stephen King's remake

[Finch]

Thank you for that Hitchcock Hour link domino. That was fun and I guessed the twist without looking at the spoilers on here and in the BTL on youtube. Great talent in front and behind the camera, Cortiz as DoP and Herrmann doing the score!

[therewillbeblus]

I think I was the only one to vote for Lost Highway last time

If I considered it a horror film I would vote for it. Possibly my favorite American film ever.

I'm a month late to asking this, but I'd really like to know more about why this is your favorite American film and also how it doesn't fit into horror for you? Not that either of those baffle me, but spark enormous curiosity. For the record, I do think Lost Highway is much more than a horror movie and in many ways unclassifiable, but a lot of what works for me is how Lynch takes horrifying imagery and terrifying philosophical concepts and twists them to provide pleasure, even if it's the kind of pleasure that one needs to work at embracing (or at least I did, since it's gone from one of my least favorites to favorites over a series of watches in 15 years).

[swo17]

Speaking of Lynch, don't forget his minute-long contribution to the 100 Years of Lumière project, Premonitions Following an Evil Deed