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| Topic | Board 8 Ranks 2010s Horror Movies - *THE RANKINGS* |
| Snake5555555555 05/16/22 1:21:07 PM #188: | Inviso - This is a slasher film in the Rob Zombie style of torture porn slasher, and that sort of thing is very hit or miss for me. It CAN work, but it just doesnt in this movie. The clown is definitely a terrifying bad guy (though it feels like an annoying copout that hes some kind of magical, mystical clown), but the film itself just feel like it got the genre wrong. Heres the thing: the first half of this movie was fine. If the first half of the movie was the whole movie? I wouldve ranked it much higher. In that first half, the flaws dont hurt the film as much as they do overall. But the movie feels like it takes a complete turn in the second half, which makes it seem like its spinning its wheels to fill time. Horror movie tropes might be cliched, but theyre so prevalent because they WORK. And in the first half of the movie, you introduce the ditzy blonde and the sullen brunette, and right away, the brunette is painted as our main character. Shes the one who gets harassed by the clown, and shes the one just trying to be calm and rational at the start of the film. Under normal circumstances, she would be our final girl. She would be stalked and attacked by the clown, shed get away, and shed wind up outlasting a bunch of victims before facing the bad guy once and for all at the end. That almost happens, too. She breaks free of her bindings when the clown saws he friend in half, and she beats him down. She even stabs him at one pointand then runs away without finishing the job. Still, she gets that empowering you lose! scene, just beating him with a wooden plank. Its great. Then the movie really goes off the rails and becomes disappointing. The subversion is fine, because its hilarious for a psycho killer to forgo his bladed weapons and just shoot the girl who thinks she has the upper hand on him. The only problem is that the whole movie becomes this big anticlimax after that. Dawn gets shot, but shes still alive. Theres a whole sequence where shes still alive, even after being shot in the face, so you THINK shes gonna survive. No. The blown just goes and reloads his gun, then shoots her in the face multiple times. Thats it. And then theres still half the movie left, where the clown stalks Dawns sister (who she called for a ride), a random homeless woman, an exterminator, and a secondary exterminator who comes to check on the first guy. Ultimately, the sister is the sole survivor, after the clown kills himself. She doesnt win victoriously, and in fact shes extremely disfigured after the fact. Its just a massive letdown of an ending that doesnt feel like anyone truly won. It wouldve been better following the tropes more. BetrayedTangy - Fuck this movie. The dialogue and acting are complete ass, theres practically no story and overall, its just a really nihilistic film that frankly I find painful to watch. Ive been able to stomach some really dark movies, but they always either have a sense of humanity or some kind of message they want to convey. Thats not the case here, Art is such a disgusting wretch of a character and as much as I hate to admit it, hes the only positive thing I have to say about this movie. Its a genuinely good performance and the facial expressions he makes are top notch. Well, okay I guess the special effects are pretty solid too. Those two things are whats keeping this movie out of last place. Thesmark - One of only two movies here I hadnt heard of before this. It has a cheap digital look to it, although the practical effects (with lots and lots of blood) are very solid and where almost all the effort went into. Besides that, theres not a lot to say? A scary serial killer clown murders people (mostly women) in extremely brutal wayss and thats it. Its scuzzy with deeply uncreative scares. I guess this is representative of a certain type of very low budget gory slasher film of this era (the kind that can be crowdfunded), but otherwise Im not sure why this was on the list. At least its short. Fortybelowsummer - Well, something had to come in dead last and for me it was a pretty easy choice. Terrifier has very few redeeming qualities and Art the Clown just doesnt do it for me. He doesnt have any kind of nuance that makes him interesting and his quasi-supernatural sadism, as someone once described, is just kind of boring. It feels like they try way too hard to make him some kind of horror icon, but he just isnt fun to watch. I will say that I think the girl sawed in half is one of the great moments in horror. Always gotta give points for memorable brutality that you remember long after the movie is over, but still, this movie is just bad. Jcgamer107 - Ok I dont have a problem with violence in film on principle, but when youre being gratuitously violent, repeatedly, just for the sake of being shocking, it becomes a bit much. I could hang with it up until the girl got Bone Tomahawkd with a rusty saw. I tapped out there but have now come back to finish this 2 years later, and I can safely say that I can not recommend this movie to anyone in my life who I care about. One positive: the bald New Yorker guy was kinda funny. Lightning Strikes - I require total isolation. *Proceeds to go on national television* To paraphrase the great Austin Walker, this was so bad it almost made me feel like an idiot for even doing this list. Maybe I was wrong, maybe horror has learned nothing and its all the same terrible schlock as the worst from previous years. I will not be ungenerous, there are things that are done somewhat well here. It does manage to get the pulpy aesthetic of 70s horror right, there are some black comedy moments that nearly land, it does build a little bit of tension in the diner scene and the villains performance is good. However even that performance highlights one of this films many flaws, that all the acting other than that is frankly dreadful. Not that even the best acting could save the awful dialogue. Nor could it save the absolute failure to conjure any kind of scares that aren;t just resorting to exaggerated gore and violence. I feel if youre a real gorehound who values gore over all else there may be fun here, but honestly as someone who is not necessarily averse to gore the way it is presented here was not effective at all. It just made me feel kind of grotty for watching it with its lurid, excessive violence against women - not just that the violence is happening to women, bbut that the violence itself is gendered in a way to be deeply uncomfortable to watch. It stops it from being a fun slasher but also the film is too inept at horror and devoid of emotion to be a dark horror film showing you disturbing, grim topics in an unfiltered way. Even aside from that, the film is just dull when its not being excessively gory. There are numerous long, repetitive cat and mouse scenes that are unbelievable boring and mean that I cant even say that the film has the kindness to be short as it makes the 80 minute running time feel like a full three hours, which is just unbearable. The one thing that this film tries to do that is any way unique is the twist at the end, which reveals that the prologue was really set after the end of the film all along. Unfortunately for the film, this scene is so lacking context that it just means that film sequel baits at the start rather than at the end. This is a terrible film, and I have never been more glad that by and large horror films have moved on from this kind of picture as when I was watching this one. Biggest scare: The diner scene is the only time this film works in horror terms at all. --- I've decided to put my fears behind me. I'm not going back. https://www.instagram.com/horror_obscurities/ ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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