Friday, December 08, 2006

A few of the scariest (fictional) images ever filmed:

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9 comments:

Rasmus said...

Yeah, that was a supremely creepy movie. Doesn't get much nicer later on, what with all the zombies.

2:52 AM
Anonymous said...

The sound was skipping so there wasn't much mood to it, except for the stuttery scraping of the sound.

I played the part where he reads a card over and over until I had time to read as much of it as they showed, and it still didn't make any sense. The scary thing about it to me is that people spend a lot of time and effort making movies and other art and think that they're expressing themselves and communicating deeply on many levels and that it makes their lives meaningful, when actually they're just producing something that apart from its cliche value (e.g. man alone in city) and impressive special effects (e.g. how'd they make it look so deserted?) communicates nothing.

4:48 AM
Mac said...

I disagree. I think this is a powerful bit of visual storytelling, made all the more menacing when seen in context.

6:42 PM
Anonymous said...

No,Mac, I think they're right. I mean, who can learn anything from a fictional amplification of horror, isolation, and loss? Life would surely be better if everything people made was as recognizable and utilitarian as a toaster. More toasters, less art, don't you think? I could get behind that war cry:

Make toasters, not art.


It's not like your tax dollars pay for films, folks. Get over it. This is the real world, not an autistic's utopian dream.

It's a horror film, at best a slightly pretentious zombie film with a No Logo angle. If that bothers you, then oh well. Regardless, it still chilled me to the bone, an experience I can't get out of a toaster. Unless I'm forced to watch a toaster being dropped into a bathtub full of kittens. Which I think would make for a great film, by the way.

The final sequence in the mansion kind of reminded me of Frank Herbert's The White Plague. Specifically, there's a mansion filled with armed men who are desperate for some women-folk. Very unsettling book about what makes this life worth living, via the nature-all-askew tack. Not relevant to the modern world, or this blog, at all!

9:42 PM
Blue Sky Hunter said...

Ditto at Justin. It creeped me out. It reminds me of movie "Night of the Comet". A cheesey horror flick I saw as a kid where a few people wake up one morning to find everyone has vanished. If you go further back there's Vincent Price as "The Last Man on Earth" which is pretty much the same thing. Still creepy. Creepy is good. Toasters suck.

10:16 PM
Anonymous said...

I feel like I should apologize for getting a little catty towards sonny and w.m. bear. But you diss some art here, poo-poo a film there, and then before you know it, you're living in a fascist toaster society.

That being said, I shouldn't have dragged toasters into this. Toasters have inspired some very meaningful, intelligent and multi-layered art. Check it out!

http://www.illwillpress.com/toast.html

NSFW due to a couple four letter words, otherwise it's as safe as blueberry muffins.

11:27 PM
Mac said...

Unless I'm forced to watch a toaster being dropped into a bathtub full of kittens. Which I think would make for a great film, by the way.

I bet PETA would find that *fascinating*! ;-)

12:17 AM
Anonymous said...

I'm sorry. I was in a bad mood. If I'm ever the last man on Earth, a chance of about one in a trillion, I'll be glad I saw it, to feel some connection to humanity still, considering that various people have anticipated such situations. So it might be worth the time if it makes us stretch our minds to consider possibilities like that.

I just wrote about the clip I saw, as it played when I saw it. The way it left me in a mood could be a sign that it was raising questions in my mind as intended, that would have worked out in the context of seeing the whole movie, instead of leaving me frustrated. What was the evacuation really about? etc. The whole movie sounds like something I may have already seen, monkey viruses, plagues, zombies, so it's important for it to raise interest for it to work.

Thanks for the toaster bit. I was laughing, and it's scary in a completely different way.

6:07 AM
Anonymous said...

mac - Good point. I must remember, humans prefer socially acceptable forms of entertainment. I keep forgetting that. I'm going to blow my cover pretty soon.

sonny - No worries. I should have realized you might not have remembered the rest of the film, or seen it at all, not to mention it wasn't playing smoothly for you. I don't know how strictly didactic it is, but it's certainly a trip, and not a film to cure a bad mood either. The band who did the song for that sequence, God Speed You Black Emperor! have been known to be pretty pretentious themselves, but they're often forgiven because they can really rock it out.

Cheers

6:31 PM

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