this Saturday I have an online movie marathon with a group I formed during peak Covid for this purpose, gonna do four horror or horror-adjacent movies and maybe a short film afterwards. So might take this week off from horror in anticipation.
The evening went well, though for my money the selection of films wasn't so hot.
Started with the Taiwanese folk-ish horror
Incantation, which wasn't hugely new or different among Southeast Asian horror but worked well enough. Had one amusing gimmicky moment but it was well done enough that it didn't detract.
Then we did recent movie
Cobweb which really felt the weight of its derivativeness a lot more than Incantation. A bit of Coraline, a lot of recent 'elevated' horror, not much really to give it much of its own identity.
Next up was
Scare Package which was a lot more conscious of its own attempt to be funny than it was successfully so. I thought the idea was fine and the different story setups were amusing but every single part of it outstayed its welcome and could have done with snappier pacing - a lot of the time they didn't have much that was funny beyond each individual premise, and so should've wrapped it up quicker.
The fourth film was maybe less horror than merely gory and horror-adjacent,
Repo: The Genetic Opera. Probably worked better for gothy or emo teens in the 00s, but it was ok. Really my main complaint was that the majority of it felt sung through rather than having songs, even when it was trying its best to have songs. They all sounded very samey and with similar deliveries, and as such only a line or two were really memorable. A shame, with a better soundtrack it could've rocked.
Then finally I managed to be the only one to stay awake to watch the old BBC short film
Whistle and I'll Come to You. The short story was scarier, and the vast majority of its already short run time was kind of just time killing and anticipation of even the start of anything horror-ey. The two main scenes of scary stuff were ok, but really for me the sound design during these were the best, very unnerving even as the visuals were vague and bordering on silly.