#in my drafts somewhere i had some more cohesive thoughts from directly after watching the movie but it’s pretty buried

[devilsskettle]

i forget whose tags these were but i’m borrowing them because i’ve been thinking about this exact thing basically since i first watched the movie lol and yeah i feel the same way, i am so like. compelled by the main group of characters, especially maxine, and the overall vibe or whatever, i think it has great atmosphere/setting and a lot of gore and like slasher shit that i enjoyed, but i don’t like basically the premise of the movie. like half of the plot. because i hate the antagonists, i’m just never gonna be onboard with the “creepy old people” thing, i think they went way over the top with trying to make them look “gross” which i actually think made it less effective and it would’ve been a better movie if they’d gone with older-but-not-quite-elderly normal looking people tbh, the script would have minimal to no changes with that decision anyway, though i have some editing ideas for more thematic clarity and cohesiveness lol, but yeah i think that trope is super ineffective in general and also i think there’s a lot of implications with how they handled like aging etc that i don’t like and somehow it was also super aimless, like “yeah. uh, scary old people. don’t think about it too much” even though it’s actively raising a lot of questions about filmmaking and exploitation and sex appeal and the fleeting nature of youth/“the x factor” as they say. i am so conflicted about whether or not it’s actually successful in making any point in particular and i don’t think it is lol, it just leaves a lot of questions floating around, even if they’re pretty good questions. i a don’t need everything wrapped up neatly, sometimes it’s good for a movie to make you question things instead of like preaching at you, but i also think the movie acts like it was trying to make a specific point? and the first half of the movie does have that specificity but then. yeah. it got aimless. and then it tries to shoehorn in some religious shit in at the last minute? it’s sort of peppered in once or twice but not effectively and it’s like, pick one or two things to focus on and do them well. but the overall experience of watching the movie for me kind of outweighs the bad, there are so many scenes i do like, basically all the scenes that are character-focused wrt the main group, and a lot of the horror scenes are really fun and well done imo and gory, and re: horror: it’s very clearly in conversation around 70s slasher movies especially tcm in a way that i found very thought provoking, it’s possible that i’m reading too much into it but it’s both a celebration and a criticism of the genre without meta about the genre (though it’s self reflexive about itself) which i think is unique in a post-slasher, post-scream landscape of cinema, and it’s like this is the closest thing i’ve seen in modern horror to be a genuine slasher. and like you get the sense that that’s what they set out to do and when the camera guy says it’s possible to make a good dirty movie, we know what they mean is we’re gonna make a good slasher movie and here it is, which is pretentious lol and i have some problems with what that implies about all those other trashy thoughtless bad slasher movies, like they’re different. ha. but it’s also clever and the audience is in on the joke and i don’t think it shies away from any slasher shit like they let it be gory and sometimes absurd and that’s a risk horror movies tend not to take nowadays because they don’t want it to be seen as trashy mindless stupid etc. anyway, also it has a great ending for the most part so when it leaves you with that, that’s the energy and experience you walk away with and idk it worked on me lol. it makes no damn sense, compels me though or whatever. oh damn i just thought of a bunch of other new things but this is already getting to be a sizable tangent so i’ll stop here. in conclusion: mia goth