Movies: Horror Movie Discussion

[PK Cronin]

Longlegs (2024) - 3/10

The most incompetent FBI agent ever tracks down the most bizarre serial killer ever. This felt very derivative of The Silence of the Lambs. I couldn't help but compare them and it did this film no favors whatsoever. Where Jodie Foster's character was likable, Maika Monroe's is boring. Where Anthony Hopkins was genuinely creepy, Nic Cage is just weird. Where 'Silence' was suspenseful and engaging, this is just tedious. It's only 100 minutes, but it felt like 3 hours. I think that even the director realized how boring it was during the editing process because he inserted little jump scares and unsettling imagery throughout seemingly just to keep the audience awake. It didn't work. I still turned it off to go to bed early twice. Nothing makes sense or is satisfying. For example, Monroe's character spends a lot of time cracking the killer's code and finding his pattern, but it's not made clear how she finally does it and it ends up making no difference, anyways. The hunt is resolved without it and the mystery is explained in a voiceover, without any indication of how that it was all figured out. It's just an unsatisfying exposition dump. Overall, the film felt like style over substance, with more attention paid to copying the look and feel of an A24 film than to the writing. It did have one thing going for it, though, and that was the marketing. It made it seem a lot more original than it was.

I haven't read your review but saw the score and am sad. I've been waiting to catch this one and had high expectations.

 

[Satans Hockey]

I haven't read your review but saw the score and am sad. I've been waiting to catch this one and had high expectations.

This movie was my biggest disappointment of the year horror wise. The marketing was so good for it and the movie fell completely flat for me. It's not even a horror movie, it's a crime mystery / thriller more than anything else.

 

[shadow1]

Black Friday (2021) - 4/10

Toy store employees come under siege from zombie Black Friday shoppers.

This ensemble cast includes Ivana Baquero, Ryan Lee, Stephen Peck, Devon Sawa, and Michael Jai White as retail workers at the struggling toy store We Love Toys. They're managed by snooty Jonathan (Bruce Campbell) and frantically prepare for the hordes of people waiting outside their doors for Black Friday sales. Unknown to the group, an alien parasite has spread, turning the store's deal shoppers into bloodthirsty zombies. The crew works to secure the store and find a way to escape...

Black Friday was directed by Casey Tebo and written by Andy Greskoviak. The movie was filmed in one month, shot inside an abandoned Babies 'R Us. How does it fare?

Not well. Black Friday is a horror comedy that's light in both genres. On the horror side of things, the creature design actually looks pretty decent, but the gore was a huge letdown. Almost every human death is off-season, showing the audience blood splatter or an organ falling to the ground rather than any carnage. The undead largely rely on shooting a web-like substance that looks like silly string, which adds insult to injury. Even as a person who doesn't love gore, the lack of it hurt the movie. The characters are so painfully generic that a disembowelment or two would've helped raise the stakes and make the audience feel something for them.

On the comedy side of things, there is obvious social commentary potential. It'll come as no surprise when I tell you this ain't Dawn of the Dead (1978). There's a low-hanging fruit joke here or there, but in general, this movie's setup is severely underutilized. And that's not just on the subtext side of things. You'd think our characters would be using the toys to defend themselves, Dead Rising (2006, Video Game) style. Not only does that not happen, but our heroes spend most of the movie hiding in the back warehouse. They may as well have set the events at a USPS store, especially considering how infrequently the group has to deal with more than one zombie at a time.

Black Friday tries to do a The Breakfast Club (1985) thing mid-way through the events, and it's probably the most interesting part of the movie. The problem is the revelations from the pow-wow just create manufactured interpersonal tension rather than promoting much character development. You learn a little more about them - particularly Bruce Campbell's character - but mostly learn what they think of each other. And rather than the goth and the prep coming together and understanding each other's perspective, we instead get characters that previously liked each other bickering. It feels forced and like missed potential.

Overall, Black Friday is a deal you'll want to miss. A concept that had the potential to be a social-commentary-laden Dead Rising homage, the film is instead a generic zombie siege movie...where the undead shoot silly string out of their mouths. Black Friday had a small theatrical run, earning $1,581 against its unknown budget.

 

[Osprey]

I haven't read your review but saw the score and am sad. I've been waiting to catch this one and had high expectations.

I wouldn't recommend against watching it, since it's all subjective and I have a tendency to dislike movies that others liked, but I would recommend lowering your expectations. Maybe you'll like it better if you aren't expecting it to be the best horror movie of the year (much less last 10 years), like the marketing made it sound.

Black Friday (2021) - 4/10

I don't understand why studios even bother making PG-13 "horror" movies. They severely limit the whole appeal of the genre just to make them accessible to 13-16 year-olds who would have no problem getting into R-rated movies and would rather see them, anyways.

Black Friday would've been better if they'd just made it R and more like Evil Dead, IMO. The whole reason that I was excited for it is that it looked and sounded kind of like a continuation of Army of Darkness, with Ash working at S-Mart for another 30 years and becoming manager, only for zombies to invade the store again. Instead, Bruce's character is an unlikable wimp, not the hero. I just read that he signed on after filming began, so his character probably wasn't even written for him. I suppose that it's similar to how the casting of Nic Cage became the marketing for Longlegs, even though his role is no bigger than Bruce Campbell's in this.