PINNLAND EMPIRE: horror

Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts

Monday, May 12, 2025

SINNERS UPDATED

I’ve come to the harsh realization that while Get Out is a movie I still enjoy – it has become more of a curse than anything else. I don’t know what it is but almost any prominent movie or television show to feature Black people dealing with issues concerning race and/or racism has to be analyzed through the lens of Get Out. It’s like a default setting. And the plots to a lot of these movies don’t do anything to shake this perception. Almost everything is some variation of “watch out for those white women” or “beware of the white boogeyman” or “watch out for those outsiders”. There are obviously a few exceptions but when you list everything off you’ll see that I’m right. Lovecraft Country, Them, Ma, Queen & Slim, Run Sweetheart Run, Opus, The Front Room, Tyrell, Master, Alice, Tales From The Hood Part 2, etc. They all have strands of Get Out’s DNA. Recently they put all nuance aside and made a psychological thriller called Karen about a racist white woman that terrorizes a Black couple. There are more cases but I think the 12 examples I just gave from the last five years alone proves my point. If not – perhaps you’re just a contrarian that wants to mindlessly disagree with everything. I’m well aware that movies like Dutchman, Murder In Harlem and Story Of A Three Day Pass existed decades prior. But filmmakers haven't taken from those movies like they've taken from Get Out.

I say all this because even though Sinners falls somewhere between Good/fine/entertaining (I personally found everything non-vampire related to be the most interesting), it still has the stench of "Get Out-sploitation". On one hand, it isn’t Ryan Coogler’s fault that everyone’s critique of this film is some insufferable super personalized think piece about race or the role of Black people in society or the so-called dangers of interracial relationships between Black men & White women (it's always only Black men and white women and never a critique on any other type of interracial relationship). It’s par for the course. Folks put a lot of weight on movies & television shows. For some reason a large sector of Black folks would rather seek validation about their Blackness from a movie or a TV show instead of real life. But at the same time – Coogler has to know that a movie with a predominately Black cast set in 1930’s Mississippi where a group of white vampires terrorize a Black establishment is going to bring on this type of dialogue. Outside of the basic premise which lies somewhere between Night Of The Living Dead and The Thing from Another World, Sinners has all the standard elements & themes I brought up earlier like; “beware of the white boogeyman” and “watch out for those white women”.

Outside of the basic story about a group of characters trying to survive a vampire coup, Coogler made a genuine effort to touch on everything from the great migration to the history of Black Americans and their African roots. I don’t think everything was a success but I’m still glad I watched it on the big screen. Streaming Sinners at home won’t give you the same experience. I found some of the character’s decisions in the second half of the movie to be very stupid but I’ll give Ryan Coogler the benefit of the doubt on that. Perhaps he wanted to bring back that old school feeling of shouting at the screen when someone makes a stupid decision in a horror movie. I certainly found myself talking to the screen when someone does something dumb. This is clearly a movie that’s more than just a simple vampire movie so there is room for a deeper analysis. But reading through a lot of people’s tweets, tiktoks, letterboxd reviews and social media rants exposed that some folks needs to touch grass, go to therapy or do a combination of both. Good lord. You could argue that I'm giving too much attention to the opinions of people online. But if you think these aren't real life opinions then you're being naive....

*SPOILER* Mary & Stack proceed to stay together for 60+ years and counting but please tell me more about how they weren't together for a long time...

Notice the critique is just about Black men bringing white women into our spaces and nothing about Black women bringing white men into our spaces when the main villain in the film is in fact a white male vampire. God forbid...

And if you don’t want to go to therapy – watch more movies.

I’m happy that a filmmaker like Ryan Coogler remains successful but if there’s one thing that Sinners exposed it's that people need to watch more movies. You would have thought this was the first vampire movie ever. And if not Sinners, you would have thought that From Dusk Till Dawn was the first vampire movie to do what it did (…it wasn’t). For those that don't know, many people are saying that Sinners “stole” from From Dusk Till Dawn.

@thestorytimeguy I love the movie Sinners but... its From Dusk Till Dawn #Sinners #fromdusktilldawn #vampires ♬ original sound - Matthew Torres

To that claim I will reemphasize that people need to watch more movies. From Dusk Till Dawn is a collage movie much like Pulp Fiction. It’s an homage to a handful of pre-existing genres. Last time I checked, the basic premise of Sinners is very similar to Ernest Dickerson’s Demon Knight (a movie released a year before From Dusk Till Dawn), which got it’s basic premise from George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead (Dickerson worked under and learned from Romero before he became a director himself). Again – watch more movies before you decide to step out there and be loud & wrong.

Night Of The Living Dead / Sinners

Night Of The Living Dead /
Sinners

Demon Knight /
Sinners

Outside of Night Of The Living Dead by way of Demon Knight, Sinners also borrows from typical sources like The Shining

The Shining /
Sinners

And John Carpenter...

it's actually quite close to THE FACULTY, which is a remake of THE THING, which is one of my favorite movies. Definitely my favorite horror movie. So there's a lot of Carpenter in the film as well - Ryan Coogler

The Thing / Sinners

During Coogler's recent visit to the criterion closet he also namedropped Michael Mann's Thief as a another source of inspiration. Without spoiling too much - the endings to both films are pretty similar...

Thief / Sinners

Whatever criticisms I may have about Sinners really doesn’t matter. It’s a major success. My words won't sway any box office numbers (to be clear – I think this movie should be seen by as many people as possible). I just thought it would be nice to present a slightly more sane perspective on the movie.

Monday, December 16, 2024

MILK & SERIAL

Found footage horror movies can be insufferable and often times dumb, but every few years or so a new film comes along and manages to do something slightly new within the genre that I like. Nothing groundbreaking or “genre reinventing”. Just fun and entertaining. At this point, a big part of making a watchable/somewhat believable found footage movie is finding a new-yet-logical explanation as to why someone keeps the camera rolling during the chaos. Today, everyone is always filming & posting themselves on all forms of social media so that part of the story is kind of easy to pull off. Someone is streaming and/or going live at any given moment. There’s also an even bigger uptick in youtube/Instagram/tik-tok prank videos which, staged or not, are usually mean-spirited & cruel. And they only get more & more cruel because each prankster wants to outdo and one-up the last person. Everyone wants to go viral. I’m kind of surprised more modern horror films haven’t capitalized on this subject matter instead of all the easter egg/symbol-heavy grief-porn horror films that currently plague the genre.

I know this sounds preachy on my part but folks are incredibly desensitized and have a warped sense of reality now more than ever. Likes, followers, and going viral are equal currency to some folks. Curry Barker’s Milk & Serial touches on all the mean-spirited online pranks and the desensitization of young people without being too preachy and finger wagging...

A Clockwork Orange / Milk & Serial

This is bound to be compared to the cinema of Quentin Tarantino due to it’s non-linear format, but this reminded me of a really good hour-long Mr Show sketch where the twist has an additional twist (the film centers around a prank inside of a prank that goes too far between a group of friends). Curry Barker is a young cinephile so the usual unavoidable suspects like; Tarantino and a base-level understanding of the violent side of Kubrick are all within the DNA of this movie but it would be unfair to stop there (it also shouldn't even need to be said but Quentin Tarantino didn't invent non-linear storytelling). There’s more to this movie than non-linear storytelling and visual homages to classic cinema. Young creatives aren’t always given the credit they deserve. Older folks like to sometimes underestimate the creativity of younger people because there’s this unwritten rule that anyone younger than you doesn’t know anything. But in my opinion, Milk & Serial is way more mature than you’d expect (especially considering it was made by someone in their early 20s). The music, the tone, the ambiance, everything. This is the kind of film that could be a gateway to stuff like early Haneke. Milk & Serial certainly has the same mean-spiritedness of something like Benny’s Video or Funny Games…

Benny's Video / Milk & Serial

After a recent re-watch I'm really starting to suspect Barker might be a fan of Haneke's late period stuff as well...

Benny's Video / Milk & Serial

A coincidental callback to possibly the most popular found-footage movie ever...

The Blair Witch Project / Milk & Serial

The final moments are also similar to the final moments of the pre-found footage classic; Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog / Milk & Serial

This is an hour-long youtube movie so I completely understand why it didn’t get the same hype as something like Cuckoo, Late Night With The Devil, Longlegs or even In A Violent Nature, but if you’re looking for an alternative to all the disappointing horror films from this year (sorry but almost everything that’s been hyped up this year was a letdown for me personally), Milk & Serial is easy to access.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

THE SUBSTANCE: SUPPLIMENTAL MATERIAL UPDATED

Carrie / The Substance

Here are a few more comparisons that didn't make it in to my original post about The Substance. Click here to read my initial thoughts and to see the original comparisons I made. Also make sure to click here to see Coralie Fargeatt's Letterboxd interview where she breaks down some of her visual influences from The Thing to The Hunchback Of Notre Dame...