Watched 2 movies for horror movie bingo that both satisfied the Time Loops / Time Travel square… Last Night in Soho and Happy Death Day.
I have now watched so many horror movies in a row that these felt like normal mystery/romance films even though one has ghosts and a serial killer and the other is a campus slasher.
Might need to take a T break 😂
So I watched David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds twice in a row because my guy is back to making weird Canadian indie movies instead of Normal Hollywood Features.
Eastern Promises, Dangerous Method, History of Violence, etc… all fine I guess but when The Shrouds opened with a dentist telling the protagonist that grief was rotting his teeth I cheer-screamed out loud. Crimes of the Future was not a fluke? Weird Cronenberg is back, babyyy.
The Shrouds has such intense Cronenberg-y themes about technological intrusions on bodies, exaggerated surveillance, discomfort with non-mediated perception, paranoia and conspiracies, and unreliable information that I would count it as a cyberpunk movie even though it is set in Toronto’s over-50 dating scene and no one wears mirrored sunglasses.
Minor spoiler alert:
In the realm of David Cronenberg’s contributions to sex, The Shrouds’ woman who is sexually aroused by conspiracies is right up there with Dead Ringers’ gynecological instruments for operating on mutant women.
Today’s horror movie bingo viewing was Seeds, for the Indigenous Cinema square on my card. I had fun!
I always love to hear language, and this had a lot of Mohawk/Kanien’kéha, some by actual Mohawk speakers, in a modern-day setting.
Great idea to explore Mohawk war and revenge traditions in a horror film, yikes / badass.
Seeds reminded me a bit of Get Out in the way that the worst stuff is kept off-screen to get a PG-13/14a rating, and the ending is reasonably happy. I wonder if Kaniehtiio Horn had similar goals as Jordan Peele around making the film accessible for teens and not re-traumatizing people.
It’s so interesting to feel cared for by a horror movie.
Watched The Ugly Stepsister to get my Fairy Tale square for horror movie bingo … Body horror Cinderella from the POV of a stepsister is a very good idea and the body horror was real gross (👍️) but I found it surprisingly dull overall.
Beautifully and intentionally made, fantastic lead performance, but very slow paced and suffers from the same problem as most Feminist Horror: its ideas don’t go beyond Feminism 101.
I did enjoy the inversion of some gothic tropes, with the concerns about inheritance and family legacy all from the women’s perspectives, and a father’s corpse secretly rotting in the cellar instead of a mad wife in the attic.
I would pair The Ugly Stepsister with Sexykiller, which is another alternate-POV horror, this time a slasher where the killer is one of the naked college girls from the opening locker room scene. It is more silly on the surface, but explores much stranger and more interesting feminist themes.
I bet you could guess today’s movie matinee by our horror movie bingo squares.
I got:
And Simon also got:
Love Lies Bleeding did not get me much for horror movie bingo but it did daub the squares in my heart?
As a bonus, now I have Giant Woman in my head.
Finally watched Maxxxine for horror movie bingo.
Unsurprisingly I loved it even if it isn’t as tight as the rest of the series… And wow, self-aware horror that plays with tropes could get you billions of bingo squares.
These ones were on my card, but I found like 20 others on the big list of options that we add to every year.
Alright, Last Voyage of the Demeter was very boring and bad but I did get some squares on my horror movie bingo card.
Speculative accessibility is my favourite. I always pick that square to put on my horror movie bingo cards.
This terrible movie had a great example– giving frequent blood transfusions to a vampire victim to prevent her from turning
Watched Backrooms last night, to kick off a summerween horror movie bingo festival with Simon. Fun!
I would call it more creepy than scary. There should be more movies about the horror of badly designed built environments and furniture, but I think we have enough movies about <spooky voice>your subconscious</>
Scored some bingo squares: