Apartment 143 (netflix watch instantly available)

I absolutely love horror movies and this type of movie just needs to stop being made. I don't need to be tricked into being engrossed in a story, if it's a good story, by the fact that the director is trying to play things off as this is found footage or a documentary. Just use the medium to tell me a good story and forego all of the gimmicks. This movie was fairly interesting but it was a well-worn story with a really tired gimmick tying into why it was even a film. You can find a gem with an Insidious or Grave Encounters but it's the 10,000 monkeys on typewriters theory, someone's going to touch a nerve eventually with enough hacks trying to do so.

I would say that anyone who hasn't seen them, watch the movies from Rime's list of recommendations. I haven't seen Heartless or Outcast but with the exception of V/H/S (which has nauseating camera work, very labored vignette plots and is probably better substituted for the good episodes from S1 of Masters of Horror if you are looking for good short stories) this is a good list of quality modern horror. Probably have to add The Possession of David O'Reily to the list (echoing my own horror movie suggestion from the horror movie thread, douchy thing to do and I apologize) but it does an interesting meta take on the found footage shtick and has amazing creature design.

I always fall back on Darkness for a good horror movie that can take a weak story and turn it into something that is visually terrifying. It's just sullen, pale skinned things with emaciated features and sunken/no eyes. It's imagery that we're pre-wired to be scared by because it looks like us when we're dead and not supposed to be walking around anymore. Those things in welding goggles were haunting.

Rime_sl said:

I will admit that V/H/S is not up to par with the rest of the movies I listed, but I did rather enjoy the premise of it, though I wish that the back story had been explained more. The Masters of Horror series is very good, with Cigarette Burns being my favorite of the bunch.

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Cigarette Burns is an amazing piece of work. It kind of feels like a prequel, or precursor, to A Serbian Film now in hindsight. Carpenter packs a lot of story into a short amount of time with this one and it never really feels like a short at all. I, for some reason, can still not bring myself to watch the Miike entry into Masters of Horror. Ichi The Killer and Audition were enough for me until I saw 13 Assassins.

Enob_sl said:

The Miike bit wasn't very good but it definitely wasn't that shocking or disturbing. It was only banned in the U.S. because it showed several dead fetuses which was considered too touchy a subject.

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I'll have to check it out finally then. I was thinking that it was going to be some horribly twisted, gruesome Miike mindfuck of an episode. Especially since, I think, it has the John Bly guy from Brisco County Jr. in it who is just a creepy dude by himself.