and me, don't usually mix well. Well, not strictly true, but I'm not a fan of gratuitous, mindless violence just for the sake of violence. Dismembered body parts are not my thing. I'm not into the gross out that is often mistaken for scary. On the other end of the spectrum, evil scares the shit out of me, so I don't really like to watch movies about evil being, well, evil. Yes, I've sat through The Exorcist several times. That should be taken to mean I've watched every frame. I know when its time to close my eyes, and I do it. Now, the other movies in the series, not as well done, not as scary.
Then there are movies like Ju-on, or - in English - The Grudge. I watched the Japanese version AND the Americanised version. Really rather enjoyed them both. The suspense was what really made the movie. Yeah, the cinematography was nice, surprising touches here and there, but the suspense made the movie watchable for me. Then there is The Grudge 2. Ron played it the other evening, and I sat through it, and mostly crocheted. This movie was about what happened to people who were making a documentary type film about the house in the first movie. What happened to them? Well, they all got killed by the ghost, who had to do the climbing out of the stain on the floor thing - with a couple of variations, the stop action down the stairs, the creepy throat-voice and the hair thing over and over and over again. It was like they took the bits from the first movie that people thought were good, and they used them and used them and used them. There was nothing new. There were parts I didn't want to watch, and parts that startled me, but nothing that was really scary or remarkable. In fact, it was pretty predictable.
So, if you are like me, with friends or relations who really enjoy the occasional horror movie which you watch to be sociable and friendly - and sometimes they will do the same for the movies you choose - I would recommend watching The Grudge (in either version, although they are not exactly the same), I would not recommend The Grudge 2.
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2 comments:
I'm reminded of what Alfred Hitchcock said about suspense - you have two people sitting at a cafe' with a bomb under the table. It explodes, you get 15 seconds of fright.
But if you show the audience the bomb, then cut away to the people chatting and laughing, and then show the time ticking down, you can have five to ten minutes of terrible suspense.
The man was brilliant.
I don't like slasher movies that use gore as plot. But there are some good scary movies out there. "The Omen" scared the snot out of me (although the sequels didn't do so much), I'm a big fan of the first "Halloween", but I still the the book "The Shining" was scarier than the movie.
OHhhh yeah, it sure was.
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