I want to participate in this in my own way.

I never finish the standard set up so I don't have any stats to compare, contrast or worry about, so I might just fill out the bracket as best I can with what I watched (and will watch until deadline) for the first time this year. Ones that stood out to me, good or bad and fit the sub-genres. And see how much I naturally fill out without handpicking movies to fill the genres.

Okay looking at Letterboxd and only using movies I watched for the first time this year this is what my backwards list looks like so far.

Quote

- [Gore - Torture] - [Gore - Splatter] - [Gore - Cannibal] - [Gore - Extreme] Mother's Day [Psychological - Home Invasion] Midsommar [Psychological - Fanaticism] Saint Maude [Psychological - Phobia & Isolation] A Field in England- [Psychological - Madness & Paranoia] Wrong Turn (2021) [Killer - Backwoods & Redneck] - [Killer - Slasher] Angel Heart [Killer - Crime & Giallo] Wolf of Snow Hollow [Monster - Werewolf] Cronos [Monster - Vampire] Army of the Dead [Monster - Undead] - [Monster - Animals & Nature] Crazies (1973) [Monster - Virus] - [Monster - Small Creatures] - [Monster - Classic] - [Monster - Giant Monsters] - [Monster - Neo Monster] The Fourth Kind [Monster - Aliens] The Wailing [Paranormal - Possession] - [Paranormal - Witches & Occult] The Empty Man [Paranormal - Supernatural] The Changeling [Paranormal - Haunted House] - [Paranormal - Devil/Demon/Hell] House (1971) [Paranormal - Ghost & Spirits] - [Misc - Meta] - [Misc - Horror Romance] - [Misc - Creepy Kid] Old [Misc. - Body Horror] I Saw the Devil [Misc - Revenge] Southbound [Misc - Anthology] Inside [Misc - French Extremity] Deerskin [Misc - Comedy Horror] Banshee Chapter [Misc - Found Footage] - [Misc - Gothic Horror] Annihilation [Misc - SciFi Horror] Demonic - [Misc - Technology]

I think you were the one who originally kept promoting I Saw the Devil to me. It was SO good. As I fill out the list I'll also add little reviews to the ones I've seen.

Shouting out two of your reviews - Child's Play does in fact slap, and little creature movies ARE the worst so quit fucking around and watch Ghoulies next year.

Woops, was trying to rank the movies I watched.

First half of my list reviewed and ranked

+

Well... BARELY reviewed. 01. I Saw the Devil - Goddamn this started with brutality and just kept doubling down as each scene went by. 02. Midsommar - Everything that needs to be said about this one has been said, I was really late to the party here. Just fantastic. 03. Annihilation - This just worked for me. The soundtrack, the bear, the story in general, the hopelessness. Could have used a little more horror and the mirror man thing was weird but w/e I vibed with it overall. 04. The Crazies - I wound up liking this one just as much as the remake, which I would always talk up given the chance. You can just feel Romero dripping from everything about this movie. Which could easily be a huge turnoff for some. 05. The Wailing - I still don't think I have everything straight with this one, even though I did a lot of reading and discussing with Ecto after I watched it. But I greatly enjoyed the ride. Asian horror (specifically Japanese and Korean) gets to me in a way that American horror doesn't. Or can't. 06. Wolf of Snow Hollow - Watched this the same night as the Werewolves Within movie and laughed at how similar they were. Definitely preferred this one even though well you know, no werewolf. 07. Angel Heart - Mickey Rourke was great in this. A sleazy detective story that feels like it's taking place in a nightmare. 08. The Changeling - Really solid older haunted house movie that I'd avoided for some reason. I love when a haunted house feels like a character in and of itself in a movie instead of just a place where a couple of ghosts are hanging out. 09. House - Japanese movie, was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. The only way I can describe it is a folk tale shot as an extended Japanese commercial. It's that weird. The best quote I read about it was "the greatest thing about this movie is that the director saw Jaws, said 'I want to do that', and then made this." 10. Inside - This is just one of those movies that while it was good, I just don't think I'll ever want to watch it again. Exhausting. 11. Wrong Turn - I liked this. Or at least found it suitable for a "Wrong Turn" flim. I know a lot of people tore it apart for not having the "franchise favorite" mutant cannibals in it but... I don't think I even knew it was the same ones in every movie anyway. 12. Deerskin - The second weirdest thing on this list - a guy gets obsessed with a deerskin jacket and he hears it talking to him. They craft a plan to gather jackets from people and make them pledge to never wear jackets again. Yes this was the second weirdest movie. It's horror comedy so it escalates, but that's the starting point lol. 13. Mother's Day - Sort of a reverse home invasion movie, where the victims stumble into the killer's home. Something about it just feels dirty to me (before anything even happens) and it follows the roadmap of Last House on the Left almost to a T. 14. The Empty Man - It's like twelve hours long and sounds like a sequel to the Bye Bye Man but was better than I expected it to be. And that seems to be the general consensus on it. It moonwalks through like four different horror subgenres. The opening introduction might be the strongest, so it was deflating to move on from that so quickly. 15. Cronos - This felt like a longer Tales from the Crypt episode. Guillermo del Toro's first feature, and it definitely feels like it. 16. Saint Maude - It was fine, but it really didn't stick with me at all. Maybe deserves a rewatch? Or a never again watch. Only time will tell. 17. Old - I was down for the body horror stuff but that was only very loosely flirted with. I didn't like that there really wasn't much beyond "island make us old" to the mystery - like they figure that out pretty quickly and then the next step (why island make us old) isn't explored at all (AFAIR). Still I can just turn on 80% of M. Night's movies and watch them again, and this is no different. 18. Banshee Chapter - Found footage movie about a journalist looking into project MKUltra and her missing friend. Ted Lavine does an amazing Hunter S. Thompson impression that was worth watching alone. 19. Southbound - An unremarkable anthology horror movie I saw a ton of great things about before I ever got around to watching it. I enjoyed two of the stories (the middle two) vastly more than those that came before and after them. 20. The Fourth Kind - Liked this less and less as it went on. I remember being intrigued by the "this is real footage" wink wink stuff at the beginning but that wore off as they kept beating me over the head with it. Still as far as found footage movies go, and alien abduction ones particularly, the quality was great. 21. Army of the Dead - Man I am a huge fan of the Dawn remake so I was ready to enjoy this but it just bored me to death outside of a character and one or two scenes. The zombies are just Ghosts of Mars now.

A Field in England - Madness & Paranoia - "Review"

+

Placing the story aside for a minute, I really enjoyed the other facets of this film. Very briefly I want to say the soundtrack reminded me of Ravenous in that it would go back and forth between zany weirdness and dreamy, blooming tracks - so that immediately put me in a certain headspace. It was shot at times like a chaotic psilocybin trip (purposefully as mushrooms are a huge part of the movie) with flashing images and merging scenes. Other times things would move so slowly that the shot would sometimes just linger on a specific frame of the characters posed, frozen in action as if they were a period accurate painting. Black and white, as the movie is shot. There was probably a less autistic way to describe that but I'm stoned. There's one specific scene where the alchemist takes a stubborn character into a tent and then after some horrific screams said character reemerges grinning and obediently prancing on a lead for the alchemist that was shot in slow motion that was creepier than a shot of a smiling guy exiting a tent had any right to be. And it went on for so long I got a little uncomfortable. There are no monsters or anything here. I'm not sure if the devil is even present or the alchemical stuff presented is real in the film, as 90% of the movie seems like it could just be a magic mushroom trip as the eponymous field is full of them and they're constantly eating them. The synopsis for the film is literally the entire story, but I thought the way it was presented was really neat. Not pertinent to the film, but as I was watching the flashing imagery was reminding of another movie I watched earlier in the year called Into the Earth. Turns out they're by the same guy, Ben Wheatley, so I guess that is his thing. I didn't really like that movie, but he also did Kill List of which I was a fan. MADNESS feels like the most appropriate tag for this movie.

Rankings - 17 to Go	+
01. I Saw the Devil 02. Midsommar 03. Annihilation 04. The Crazies 05. The Wailing 06. Wolf of Snow Hollow 07. Angel Heart 08. The Changeling 09. A Field in England 10. House 11. Inside 12. Wrong Turn 13. Deerskin 14. Mother's Day 15. The Empty Man 16. Cronos 17. Saint Maude 18. Old 19. Banshee Chapter 20. Southbound 21. The Fourth Kind 22. Army of the Dead

Demonic - Misc. - Technology - "Review"

+

Headline on the NY Daily News two days ago: "‘District 9′ director Neill Blomkamp says new film ‘Demonic’ ‘only exists’ because of COVID!" I recalled this headline during the closing credits and came to the conclusion that he was actually trying to pass the buck with that statement, and it wasn't one of bittersweet celebration. This movie was dog shit. I was absolutely in love with the idea going in, too. Loved the concept when it was (sorta) similarly explored in The Cell a hundred years ago. And somehow the movie with Jennifer Lopez winds up being the vastly better film between the two. A traumatized woman is contacted by scientists to try to make contact with her comatose mother inside of a simulation, who is imprisoned for murdering a bunch of people. She agrees only to tell her mom off in the sim and this all unleashes a plague doctor bird demon thing, and the scientists are actually black ops ghostbuster hitmen with magical demon killing Castlevania weaponry and it all just spirals out of control so fucking quickly. The idea of a demon being trapped in a comatose person and becoming obsessed with their memories is really neat at the core. If it had tried to tell a more personal story like... I don't know, Eternal Sunshine or something, I feel like this could have really worked. Or hell if he went all in with the hitmen priests it could have at least been mindless fun I guess. But in the end it's the worst of both worlds, and that's what always hurts the most; when you really like an idea but have to watch it get dragged out and mangled for an hour and forty five minutes. I guess there's a reason no studio will let him go through with touching any of their sci-fi properties like Alien, Halo or Robocop. Maybe he can do Ghoulies V and send them to space.

Rankings - 16 to Go	+
01. I Saw the Devil 02. Midsommar 03. Annihilation 04. The Crazies 05. The Wailing 06. Wolf of Snow Hollow 07. Angel Heart 08. The Changeling 09. A Field in England 10. House 11. Inside 12. Wrong Turn 13. Deerskin 14. Mother's Day 15. The Empty Man 16. Cronos 17. Saint Maude 18. Old 19. Banshee Chapter 20. Southbound 21. The Fourth Kind 22. Army of the Dead 23. Demonic

I have a couple of updates to write for this.

In the meantime, have you seen the movie Possession from 1981, and if so, what did you think of it? This isn't one of the movies I'm going to be writing about since I've filled its category, but I watched it the other night and need to hear the thoughts of someone I know on it.

On Letterboxd it has more fives than threes (or fours), and it fell so far off of that mark for me that I feel like I need to watch it again. Or begrudgingly accept that just because something is acclaimed arthouse horror, it doesn't mean I'm going to love it.

I gave it a 2.5 and could see myself upgrading it to a 3 after some time just because of how much it has stuck in my head despite me saying I didn't like it. The main actress was strikingly beautiful but I just could not stand her performance (the scene in the tunnel aside, sheesh). Why was Margit always acting so goddamn weird, at least the other people had turmoil, tentacle sex and drugs to blame.

For the record I mostly finished out my list and discovered that I am a huge fan of the New French Extremity films, or whatever the genre is specifically called. I went on to watch several of them after Inside (Frontiers, Them, Sheitan, Man Bites Dog off the top of my head).

I also couldn't find a small creatures movie to watch because honestly fuck that sub genre it needs to be replaced.