There is much talk now of “elevated horror”, where it’s filled with metaphors, heavy character focus, and often an awful lot of trauma. There also can be a some missteps (usually minor) where the trauma overshadows the actual horror, or worst of all it becomes slow and boring, or pretentious.
1983’s The Entity shows how this “complex” and character-focused horror has existed for a while, but also doesn’t forget to be a chilling escalation of scares.
Barbara Hershey is enrapturing…
Steven Seagal’s Se7en. And without an ounce of sarcasm, I think this is more artistic than that grimy masterpiece. The editing during the action is damn near avant-garde.
#53/95 of Summer of Trash 2023
Watch a Steven Seagal movie (bonus)
People will be thrown into tables or out of windows and we will see it multiple times and even from different angles, like Seagal threw them so hard they broke the time-space continuum and were struck into a brief time-loop.…
While not offering anything new or even doing what’s expected all that well; this is still strangely alluring.
Whether its the plentiful but relaxed nudity, the goofy Evil-Penguin-looking “protagonist”, the ridiculously cheap and unconvincing razorblade slashings, the magnetic yet understated performance of Agata Lys’ Veronica, or the truly bizarre soundtrack – somehow this coalesces as a dish with no standout flavour but taken as a whole, its quite warming and has some notes you can’t quite pinpoint why they work.…
Paul Naschy snarling and running around, viciously nuzzling people to death as fake blood drips down their necks, and a preceding hour of Michelle Bauer pulling devilish looks and everyone auditions to be in a 2000s porno.
The "softcore" sex is here is so vigorous and flesh-slapping and overt moan core that only the camera and hand placement separates it from its harder counterparts. It would be bad in either regard as its terribly overacted, but in this sense that…
Part dialogue-free engaging journey, part "stuff just happens" because we have something cool we want to do, so we get there by.....getting there.
The latter part paradoxically being a fault and also the absolute pinnacle of reasoning of why this is so fun. We want Kong to have a mecha power-glove, his hand gets frostbite, Dan Stevens is going to fly to get the glove which is close by and its going to be ready and fix Kong’s arm...all in…
So drawn out. Fifteen minutes for the opening and it only seems to end because we finally show Gruner. But when we return to the villains, it never feels like we've left the first act.
Simandl is a whole new level of dangerously perverted. Numerous scenes of kidnapped women being undressed, a completely random lesbian scene, a rape of a major character a minute before she is rescued, a literal upskirt shot during an escape sequence: what are we doing…
