The Apparatus

Aaah, The Shining... forgot to mention that..

That's definately one of my favourite films ever made. But as for silent hill, hmm, well visually, it tries to retain allusions to the game and nearly succeeds. If it weren't trying to accomplish that, I'd appreciate it's stylistic approach and aesthetic far more, because it is quite tenebrously dismal and ethereal at times. The credit for the design quality of the various creatures can again only really go to the game, but they're represented quite accurately in the film and Pyramid Head I feel instils the same level of ominous fear.
The acting is quite often brutal, and the dialogue is super disjointed. Sean Bean evidently wasn't given a particularily challenging character and it seems he just plays himself, and the same applies to Radha Mitchell, but she handles the dialogue considerably better and is given more opportunities to seen as she's a major character.
The Music is fucking awesome. Sonorous, pulsing ambience which compliments the aesthetic gratuitously, and ameliorates the sense of other worldly, pervading sentience.

So it's hit n' miss....

hey Mr_Lizzad , im watching the old wicker man right now.

its almost 8:00, and im home alone
ohhhhhhh boy

Neros_Intention wrote:

The Music is fucking awesome. Sonorous, pulsing ambience which compliments the aesthetic gratuitously, and ameliorates the sense of other worldly, pervading sentience.

So it's hit n' miss....


Yes I forgot to mention the music was very well done.


man you know a lot of words...

Yeah sorry about that. There's some aspects of that movie that really excite me....

You can't mention Miike films without mentioning Audition!

That aside, I'm not sure how much a lot of the stuff already mentioned fits into 'horror', so I'll just follow::
- Kairo, Ju-on, even Uzumaki, and a few more of those (now horribly remade) quasi-classics of Japanese horror
- Three... Extremes!
- Cronenberg, as in: Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Videodrome, Scanners
- Takashi Miike's bizarre awesomeness; the aformentioned Audition, Gozu, Box (on Three... Extremes) etc.
- Shinya Tsukamoto's cyberpunk awesomeness; Tetsuo 1 and 2, and I guess we could also include Tokyo Fist and Bullet Ballet (horror though? not really, but I thought I'd mention him anyways since other people did too)
- and yeah, re-mentioning The Thing and American Psycho

I do like Lynch (gets creepy as hell at times), but in the end I'd consider him a bit overrated. Just my opinion.
Also, gotta agree with Alex about Irreversible being very frightening.
And generally, I'm not much into slasher-type stuff.

I think films like El Topo, Holy Mountain, Stalker, and Begotten quite deserve to be mentioned, but again, can it be considered horror?

EDIT: Since I totally disregarded the topic title: can't really decide on a top five, but in terms of films I'd really consider horror - Miike's stuff is on the very top!

I'm in agreement with almost every point of the post above. How'd I forget Cronenberg?

the wickerman wasn't really all that scary, i wouldnt even classify it as horror, but damn it was fucking creepy.

the scene with that naked chick singing and smacking shit.

that scene with all those people fornicating in the middle of the yard and its filmed with a slow fps.

that scene where that naked chick is crying on top of that grave.

the part where he's in the wickerman and yelling at all the pagans about christ.

....damn.

the original wickerman is the shit. i would consider it horror, but i consider pretty much anything that deals with the macabre to be horror.

everyone has named a bunch of good horror stuff. I like most of what has been mentioned, especially cronenberg and miike.

my top five would probably be:

night of the living dead
evil dead
return of the living dead
audition
dead alive

Ugh, I really enjoyed Cronenberg's latest more mainstream offerings, but Existenz I felt was super flawed...
I've seen the Brood, and that was fantastic. And I have Videodrome on my portable hd, but haven't watched it... Still, I'd like to build up a repetoire of his older films if just for the experience alone...

Neros_Intention wrote:
Ugh, I really enjoyed Cronenberg's latest more mainstream offerings, but Existenz I felt was super flawed...
I've seen the Brood, and that was fantastic. And I have Videodrome on my portable hd, but haven't watched it... Still, I'd like to build up a repetoire of his older films if just for the experience alone...

Eastern Promises and A History of Violence were phenomenal. I'm have no problem at all with the direction Cronenberg is going.



Videodrome was oddly arousing.