Random thoughts

[brigdh]

I adore horror movies. However, I loathe the gory aren't-snuff-films-illegal? Saw/Hostel/The Hitcher (also? 'The Hitcher' is the most idiotic title of a movie I've ever heard. Who the fuck says 'hitcher'? The word is 'hitchhiker', seriously, it's not that long) genre that seems to be the only type of horror movie coming out lately. I've been watching previews of the upcoming Primeval with interest, in the hope that maybe here would finally be a movie I could stand. I didn't have a lot of hope, but hey, there's always a chance.

The commercials keep claiming that it's "based on the true story of the deadliest serial killer ever". I'd been idly wondering who they were talking about, but wasn't terribly concerned about it. And then last night I saw a commercial where they named him: Gustave. Was that the crazy French medieval werewolf guy?, I wondered, not being able to think of any other serial killers named Gustave. So I googled it.

It is a crocodile. People, what the hell. That is not an appropriate villain for a horror movie. I think I almost prefer the snuff films to yet another movie in the grand tradition of Lake Placid and Anaconda. I share this news with you in case anyone else was under the mistaken impression that Primeval might be worth seeing.

By the way, the crazy French medieval werewolf guy was probably one of these, though none of those stories seem to quite match the one I was thinking of. They'd still make a better movie than freaking crocodiles, though.

Comments

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

What the hell? Can a crocodile be a serial killer? I mean obviously killers, but a serial killer, with ya know, ritualistic behavior and the like? Does the FBI know about this....

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a serial killer in the sense of having killed multiple people. It has "over 300 victims"! (Though I totally call bullshit on that, because how do they know it was this crocdile and not multiple crocdiles in the same river, or people drowning, or people just leaving the bloody village.)

But yeah. I find it annoying that they play all the advertising up to be "serial killer, whoooo, scary!" and then it's an animal.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Clever bastards for taking the words "serial killer" literally. Although, honestly as a suburban Ohioan I feel soooooooooooooo very threatened by a renegade man-eating crocodile. Death by saurian reptile, real high up there as a likely cause of my demise, along with death rays and evil ninjas, of course.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Lake Placid is all about killer crocodiles in rural New York, though! You could be threatened by that. Especially since it's actually GIANT crocodiles!

Disclaimer: I swear to god, the only reason I watched the movie is because it was on HBO and I didn't have anything else to do. I bear no responsibility.

in case you don't want to read this whole comment, a basic summary: I AGREE!

[drmoonpants.livejournal.com]

OH MAN THAT IS SO SECONDED.

...e-excuse me. Just... I have, as I have asserted on several occasions to friends, a disease, where I have trouble focusing on fiction if it could actually happen. There are of course exceptions to this rule, sometimes just for things that are really good, but more often they're caused by there being something interesting or surrealistic about the narrative style. I even get bored with hard science fiction. Sooo, while I am like a lifelong giant, slightly obsessed horror fan (first Stephen King novel at nine! WE HAVE A HISTORY), it's always been about the potential fantasy element of horror, and as I get older, I come to really, really not like movie violence. So, yeah, basically, this was all a really long way of saying that I ALSO DISAPPROVE OF THIS TREND.

Of course, I've been pretty frustrated with Stephen King, too, but he at least has the excuse that he got hit by a van and now thinks he's Kurt Vonnegut.

Also we saw that preview too, and crocodile wtfffffff

Re: in case you don't want to read this whole comment, a basic summary: I AGREE!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

For me, it's just the fact that this trend is TOTALLY NOT SCARY, at least in the sense of having suspense and building up and being creepy and all. I don't get my jollies from slow-motion close-ups of men burning to death! It's hard to watch, yeah, but that does not equal scary.

I get you on the fiction thing too, though. I can do realistic fiction and I can do fantasy fiction, but people who are all "GOOD stories are based on actual events!" drive me crazy.

And Stephen King is looooove, though I haven't read anything more recent than, uh, I think the last book of short stories, the one with a goldfish bowl on the cover.

Re: in case you don't want to read this whole comment, a basic summary: I AGREE!

[drmoonpants.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm with you on that too! Making me sick is not effective horror, it's just... making me sick. That was also why the end of the Silent Hill movie made me so mad, too. If three days later thinking of it is not still making me jumpy but is making the pit of my stomach feel bad, yeah, no, you fail.

And, uh, GOOD, DON'T!! ...I mean. ...no, that is what I mean. I've bitched this bitch a lot lately, (http://mrmoonpants.livejournal.com/261069.html) but the basic gist is that it feels like since the accident he's forgotten how to write a novel that goes anywhere, which is sort of horrible and tragic and annoying all at once. Cell was going along much better and then freaking welshed on me, and now I'm nearing the end of Lisey's Story and just terrified that it's going to do the same thing. ...The latter, though, may end up being really good; it feels a lot less unpleasantly smirky and self-conscious (or labouredly ham-handed with desperate 'I MUST BE RELEVANT!!' pop culture bullshit) than he's been lately. I'll keep you informed! ...as clearly I am kind of obsessive.

Re: in case you don't want to read this whole comment, a basic summary: I AGREE!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

God, yes! That was so annoying. And they'd been doing such a good job up to the ending; it wasn't Best Movie Ever, but it was hella good for a video game adaption. (Did you hear they're making a sequel? I'm not sure if I'm excited or horrified. And then I heard Neil Gaiman was supposed to help with the script, but that was only a wacky internet rumor, dammit.)

Man, what is up with all the good authors going crazy? I hereby decree that the more famous you get, the more editors you are REQUIRED to have. I expect to see my demands carried out immediately, world.

Re: in case you don't want to read this whole comment, a basic summary: I AGREE!

[lucifrix.livejournal.com]

See, I stopped reading King years ago because his books bored the crap out of me. I never got why people said he was such a great scary author, and that was back when he was writing stuff that wasn't considered wanky. I have always assumed part of the "problem" is that I am so "reality-based" that supernatural villains of any sort have no impact on me--zombie dogs, possessed cars, ghosts of dead relatives, that all bores the fuck out of me. What scares me are things that clearly could actually happen, especially those I could imagine happening to me (like "Funny Games"). Have you ever read Bentley Little? He's done a zillion books by now, but one of his earliest was _The Store_, about a WalMartish megastore that pretty much overtakes a town. There were some suggestions of supernatural elements, but mainly it was just that the people in charge were evil and creepy (worse than actual WalMart :)), and because they had such economic power people couldn't get away from it. That book still gives me the shivers because it takes what such stores already do and just pushes it a little farther--the leeway granted by economic power is already so great, so how much greater could it get?

Anyway...in a way I appreciate the "Hostel"-type movies because I think they're gradually forcing more people to differentiate between slasher/gore and thriller/horror, as people who are really into such films have already been doing for years. The people I know who say they are horror fans specifically (as opposed to people who just see "scary movies" now and again) always have the gory movies they like and the scary movies they like, and there's little overlap--the gory ones are things like "Hostel," the scary ones always seem to be obscure foreign ghost stories that are all about atmosphere.

Re: in case you don't want to read this whole comment, a basic summary: I AGREE!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't think King's that scary- he's never written anything that would make me want to leave the lights on- but I think he's a great page-turner sort of author. I always rip right through his books; they're easy to get involved in.

Bentley Little's new to me. It sounds good, though! I'll have to try him out.

Ah, that's a neat way of thinking of it! I suppose I'll have to give the "Hostel" movies a bit of credit, then.

I THIRD THIS.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Or more. I lost count.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

WHAT.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia backs me up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_(crocodile))!

[gamera.livejournal.com]

See, when I heard the "over 300 victims" I thought it had to be about either the Ciudad Juárez homicides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_homicides_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez) or Pedro López (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Lopez). I wasn't expecting a crocodile.

...dear filmmakers: an animal killing to eat is not a serial killer.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of Pedro Lopez before. Creepy guy.

A movie about Ciudad Juarez would have been a great way of getting attention to the case, but no. The filmakers went with the evil crocodile. Animals aren't even scay in the way human killers are! They don't have the same sort of intelligence and delibrate violence.

[gamera.livejournal.com]

I'm a criminology major, so I know about all kinds of obscure creepy guys. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

My brain immediately jumped to Ciudad Juárez just because I'm writing a paper on it this term. I'm kind of divided on the concept of a movie at this point-- on one hand, it would bring a lot of world attention to the case, which would be a very, very good thing. On the other, though, in the event that anything new was ever discovered, a movie at this point could actually be detrimental (look at the Andrea Yates trial and that Law & Order episode that turned out to not even exist but still caused a lot of headache) to future investigation or prosecution.

Crocodile. I'm still boggling about this. I mean, animals can be scary in film (see: The Birds), but most modern directors don't seem to have the right way of going about it. ...of course, it just might be that Alfred Hitchcock could make anything really creepy.

[ravenbell.livejournal.com]

From the trailer, I just dismissed it as a monster movie with a really dumb tagline.

But a crocodile?!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I know! Who came up with this movie concept? How did it get made? It's just- argh.

[eag.livejournal.com]

You know, the Hitcher is a remake. The original had Rutger Hauer and was more than mildly homoerotic.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Really? Awesome. Is it any good?

[eag.livejournal.com]

I liked it, and I don't like horror movies.

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

I can't remember the last, recent movie I watched. (Due to a combo of manga eating my brain, and the jacked up prices of movie tickets.) Hearing this, I'm sort of glad that I've lost track of movies.

I also don't get why horror movies are almost hyper-focused on gore. I don't mind a spot of violence, but I also want build up and a good story.

Hm, if Hollywood isn't doing it for you, you might want to try looking into foreign films, and see if your local video store or library has anything.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen any movies all fall (New York ticket prices are insane!), but then I went home for the holidays and from a combination of boredom, escaping other relatives, and having more disposable income than I do, my family saw 6 or 7 movies in the space of three weeks. So now I am very well-informed with previews.

True! I've seen several very good Japanese horror films, though they keep getting turned into Hollywood movies anyway. (I did think the American version of 'The Ring' was scarier, but the original made much, much more sense.)

[lucifrix.livejournal.com]

They were going on about this at IMDB, talking about how people are going to riot if they think they're getting a human and end up with a crocodile. The whole point of serial-killer movies is not the killing but the fact that it's a human doing it--a non-human predator has a whole different motivation, one that isn't scary at all.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I agree! I think there's been a few good animal horror movies (Jaws, for instance), but this thing of trying to trick the audience? There's no way that will go over well. Even if, by some miracle, the movie turns out to be worth seeing, it's going to turn off people by having played this game. I'd be very disappointed to see a crocodile when I was expecting a serial killer.