Skurtchasor goes to the movies!
When the impatient_cat's away, I spend a lot of my work time with my laptop in front of the TV and scraping the bottom of the Netflix's barrel of horror and post-apocalypse. Sadly there aren't too many of the latter that I haven't seen, unless you count the innumerable number of "ZOMG, the world is infected with a virus/drug/experiment/alien containment gone wrong and now everyone is a zombie/vampire/lunatic and IS THIS THE PRICE OF MANKIND'S HUBRIS?" Of course, you shouldn't count these, because a real post-apocalyptic movie requires at least one leather-clad biker with an overdone Australian/New Zealand accent. But I digress.
So my working hypothesis is that modern horror is utter schlock (and not in any awesome sense of the word)....UNLESS it happens to star a member of the Firefly cast, with the exception of Boobs McGhee Morena Baccarin (this exception is needed to rule out Sands of Oblivion, but I have a strong dislike of Morena Baccarin anyway). So I point you in the direction of....
Slither: Nathan Fillion as a redneck sheriff vs. a hive-mind of super-intelligent space slugs. YES!
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: Alan Tudyk and his fishing buddy are mistaken for crazed killers by a bunch of nubile college kids, hilarity ensues. Remember what Shaun of the Dead did for the staleness of the zombie genre? Same thing here, but with slasher flicks. I'd go so far as to say that the sheer awesomeness of this film makes up for all of the hyper-sadistic crap in this genre since at least the turn of the millennium.
And although it doesn't fit the above pattern, this fan of old-school vampire movies (i.e., before they became a caricature of whiny teenage angst) was relieved to find that at least the Japanese still know how to do it right, without any sparkling, hipCool weaponry, or explanatory modern science. Fair warning for the faint of heart, there's a lot of blood and a lot of naked people, and sometimes a lot of both.
So my working hypothesis is that modern horror is utter schlock (and not in any awesome sense of the word)....UNLESS it happens to star a member of the Firefly cast, with the exception of Boobs McGhee Morena Baccarin (this exception is needed to rule out Sands of Oblivion, but I have a strong dislike of Morena Baccarin anyway). So I point you in the direction of....
Slither: Nathan Fillion as a redneck sheriff vs. a hive-mind of super-intelligent space slugs. YES!
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: Alan Tudyk and his fishing buddy are mistaken for crazed killers by a bunch of nubile college kids, hilarity ensues. Remember what Shaun of the Dead did for the staleness of the zombie genre? Same thing here, but with slasher flicks. I'd go so far as to say that the sheer awesomeness of this film makes up for all of the hyper-sadistic crap in this genre since at least the turn of the millennium.
And although it doesn't fit the above pattern, this fan of old-school vampire movies (i.e., before they became a caricature of whiny teenage angst) was relieved to find that at least the Japanese still know how to do it right, without any sparkling, hipCool weaponry, or explanatory modern science. Fair warning for the faint of heart, there's a lot of blood and a lot of naked people, and sometimes a lot of both.