#the uncaniness of it is what makes it scary

[kaizokuseb]

nosleep commenters on literally every post: it’s a skinwalker

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Lamb

It’s so cool just how weird foreign films can get. I mean, can you imagine anyone in Hollywood being able to come up with the idea of a story about a man and a woman who raise a weird little goat child? Of course not, everyone in Hollywood is too concerned with making the next bit nostalgia bait sequel to some long-dormant 80s franchise. Our brothers and sisters are pulling heavy duty overseas apparently, because they managed to give us this strange little fairy tale that America could never be fucked to make. Lamb is a movie about grief, loss, denial, and cute sheep monsters. It has a strange premise but there is some logic to it, and no matter how weird you think it sounds I can guarantee you that this is not exactly a hard film to follow.

This movie actually starts out with long stretches of silence, barely any talking, and exactly what’s going on takes a while to be revealed. I think it’s a half hour or maybe a bit more before there’s any indication that the sheep in their house is actually a half-sheep, half-human hybrid. I actually really like this; it’s a very artistic ‘show don’t tell’ approach to the story, and it really helps build up the dark fairy tale atmosphere, something greatly helped by just how otherworldly and mysterious the Icelandic wilderness feels. The time spent building up our main couple with little dialogue and only their interactions works very well too, endearing us to them and giving us hints as to the true, depressing nature to the devotion towards this sheep creature.

On the subject of Ada, I have to say it: She is one of the most adorable freaks of nature you will ever see. Not since the baby from Eraserhead has a weird, fucked up abomination baby been so gosh darn cute! It’s clear she has some human levels of intelligence, but all of this is placed into a body with a cute little sheep head, leaving her to be a little less expressive than a human would but also a lot more cute. There is a certain uncaniness with how her adoptive parents treat her as if there’s nothing different about her despite, you know, the fact she’s a sheep creature, but I don’t think it’s too big of a deal. She may not entirely belong in the human world, but she doesn’t exactly belong in the sheep world either. Which reminds me...

So, spoilers ahead, I’m gonna be talking extensively about the ending and why it kinda pisses me off. I just can’t really review this without talking about why it frustrates me, so this your warning.

The finale of this movie leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Ada’s real dad, a big scary goat man, comes back to claim her and avenge his dead sheep mate. To this end, he shoots Ingvar and takes Ada away, leaving Maria to wander the hills alone. Like I get it, it’s trying to teach the moral “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” and you can’t live in denial, and blah blah blah, it’s a dark fairy tale, I get it. I know why it’s like that. But this movie is expecting me to see a fucking sheep on the same emotional level as a human. Was it excessive for Maria to kill Ada’s birth mother? Sure, yeah, that was kind of fucked up. But it’s a fucking sheep. I cannot stress enough that I do not care about the fucking sheep’s feelings. Ada is clearly as intelligent as a human, so why would I want her to go live in the barn and be raised by fucking sheep? Maybe her real dad is a decent goat man, who knows, he’s not onscreen long enough and he’s pretty scary when he is which doesn’t inspire much hope, but my man was clearly in a bad mood since the sheep he shagged was lying in a ditch somewhere, but he was kind of a deadbeat and only showed up to deliver a cruel, miserable ending to this fairy tale. The movie spent all this time building up this couple and showing how they’ve suffered and then you’re just gonna pull the rug out from under them in the worst way all to try and get me to believe a goddamn motherfucking hairy, stinky, noisy, shit-covered sheep’s life and feelings are in any way remotely comparable to a human’s and I should see it as some sort of karma what happened? It’s an animal. I don’t care about its feelings compared to the feelings of the human. It’s a regular-ass sheep, they are a human couple. Sorry, humans matter more than a damn farm animal.

Aside from that, though, there’s not really much I dislike here. It’s a dark, bittersweet, and simple modern fairy tale and it manages to be both incredibly cute and deeply unnerving all at once. It’s definitely something to check out if you’re looking for some weirder fare to add to your dark fairy tale collection. It’s a pretty enjoyable film, albeit one I don’t think rises much higher than that. It’s a fun, weird little curiosity, and hey, that’s not a bad thing! It just never quite reaches truly lofty heights to become a bonafide classic.

Anyway stan Ada.

[illusionlockarchive]

romeos huge rant on comedy, horror, and how they interlap

ok, so. full disclosure, what got me to make this post was this joke post right here.

so the initial premise is funny, haha okay. yeah. oh youre a kid and your punishment at school is that you have to stay at a room full of wasps. its funny because its absurd. it couldnt happen irl. youd think it wouldnt happen irl. youd hope so.

the thing about comedy and horror though? is that they actually operate on very similar concepts.

and that is, the absurd. the uncanny valley. what youre expecting the least. what youre not seeing and not registering. jumpscares are effective if at least to get you to jump, even if they are cheap. meanwhile, jokes where they completely twist your expectations to get you to laugh do the same thing.

it may be hard for you to believe me, but in the end, the bad ending of tattletail is the other side of the same coin as a joke that goes “i swallowed a tablet with some water. everyone on the apple store was terrified of me.”

i have not read the wasp story, but i can guaranteee you, i CAN imagine it being scary, if the right tones are used and suspense is built up nicely. with the right twists and turns, knowing when to keep things quiet and when to blow things out of proportion.

OR it can end up being unintentionally hilarious, if the characters in it are way too cliche to be real and feel more like caricatures of teachers and students, if things are rushed and details lose their meaning and value, if we are just to focus on being an audience watching a kid get chased around by a swarm of wasps, instead of putting ourselves in their place.

im neglecting to mention something though. horror is not the TRUE other side of the coin to comedy. no, thats tragedy. and im sure many more people have heard of that. the two masks used in theater, one happy, the other sad.

and now we come to two very interesting modifiers. im sure youve heard of the term ‘horror comedy’ to refer to a subgenre of horror that does have jokes and silly things still happening, and may not take itself all that seriously. but why is it a specified subgenre? because MOST horror is tragedy.

this is why, despite liking many horror games or even stories, in the end i still dont consider myself someone who actually likes horror as a general genre. most horror focuses on the seriousness of the faults of humans, on our fragility, on all we can lose or are even bound to lose, on the fear that what we feel so confident about having close to us can be snatched away in a second, that our sense of reality can crumble. most horror? doesnt end well.

comedies in general tend to focus on the absurdity of life, on how many silly, strange, or even uncanny situations can happen that can challenge us, but not in a harsh way, but in a way that, despite so many bad things happening, we still get to point and laugh it off and be okay at the end of the day.

literally, all it takes for a tragedy to become a comedy, and vice versa, is a tonal shift. when i told of my idea to create this post to my boyfriend, he backed me up, and told me “the difference between horror and comedy is in the soundtrack and silly sound effects”. hes right.

of course, there are things that you should have the decency to not laugh at, still. to keep your mouth shut and know when to reject. but good comedy knows how to stray away from that, and good tragedy knows how to handle it respectfully without making it torture porn.

so, as horror hinges on tragedy, on the fear that we all know we must face in our lives, because a scream is as natural as laughter, so horror comedies are born as an interesting paradox.

a year or so ago, i got the opportunity to watch the banana splits syfy movie. i was a huge fan of the banana splits as a kid, and would often watch their reruns. those silly furries meant a lot to me. but im not stupid, i know thats a horror movie, i went in kinda knowing what to expect.

it was a gore fest, and for about two or three nights i had trouble getting to sleep. i wasnt actually scared of my childhood friends in animal costumes, as i knew how absurd and irrational my fear was, but just the images of the massacre being fresh in my mind were enough to send me into a panic if i lingered for too long, which can happen, you know, when youre about to sleep.

(TW FOR DESCRIPTION OF A MANS DEATH AND GORE, IF YOURE SQUEAMISH JUMP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH)

i think a scene that perfectly blurs the lines between comedy and tragedy, as well as just plain horror in it, is the scene where a man gets killed by being put in a magicians box and sliced in half as a ‘magic trick’ by fleegle, the dog. as he pleads for his life, and his soon to be wife watches in horror and pleads for the robot dog to stop (yeah theyre robots in this, weird), fleegle continues to slice him in half and blood spurts out, until he is dead, and fleegle just happily and proudly showcases what he has done, as if he just did a real magic trick.

(END TW FOR DEATH AND GORE DESCRIPTION)

watching that was horrifying, of course it was. but at the same time, it was what i wanted and expected when i thought about “banana splits horror movie”. fleegle just did something completely absurd and entirely uncalled for. and what doubles the uncaniness of it is that it was supposed to be something harmless, a magic trick. think about this if it was in an adult swim cartoon. the same thing could still happen, but be treated as just a weird, gross joke. fleegle could even swear, say ‘heres your fucking magic trick damnit! oh you dont like it, well i quit!’ n then throw his hat on the ground and step on it.

they are essentially the same scene, but the cartoon version of it is presented in a way that shows full on just how absurd and unexpected it is, without any seriousness to it, probably without any moody music to accompany it. meanwhile the movie one focuses on the fear, grief, and horror of putting us in the shoes of a woman who just watched the man she loved be killed, with the shots being extra impactful.

in the end, the banana splits syfy movie is a horror comedy though, because most of the movie is spent finding the most creative, absurd, borderline funny ways for people to be killed off. as you watch it along, you dont know whether to laugh at the weirdness and absurdity of the events or to genuinely feel grief and fear over the bodies piling up.

i could also just go over a million other examples available to me right now. in fact, as of the time im writing this, i have the latest vinesauce corruption stream pulled on youtube. during corruptions, the most bizarre and absurd things happen, and often times, things get scary. we see the video game characters we love be deformed and twisted in ways that you can only imagine hurt, but they still act as if thats normal! so you cant help but laugh.

earlier today, i watched a gameplay video of bonbon. its a short horror game, with a very... different antagonist. i wont spoil much, because, i dont want to deter people from buying it. but i will say, there is a reveal at the end, which slaps you in the face with the realization that you have been played for a fool all along, and the developers would probably laughing at you if they saw you after youve beat the game. its a joke, and the fear that they cultivated so lovingly, is the punchline. your fear becomes a punchline. to me thats one of the highest forms of blurring horror and comedy, and one i prefer to some more gory and harsh attempts.

and i mean, i have to mention fnaf here, dont i? its a great example too, particularly because, if you look at the games by themselves, they generally take themselves pretty seriously as horror stories, minus a few odd cases or references. but they just have enough wiggle room that, if you look at them from afar, as an audience, you can take these characters youre supposed to be afraid of, and have fun with them, because it is pretty damn absurd, and even funny at the end of the day, that youre expected to be afraid of essentially big, robotic childrens toys. and thats when many fun, fan renditions that focus on lighthearted situations pop up. vanny herself is pretty funny even! the idea of a person who dresses up in a full fursuit to do crimes is pretty hilarious.

all in all, i think i just really appreciate how horror and comedy can converse with each other and how that says something about how we, as humans, are easily made impressed, made to be surprised and shocked, to jump or to laugh. and we are always looking for that thrill, it just depends on if youre looking for laughs or screams.

so yeah, maybe ‘wasp room’ can be a pretty good story. is it a horror story or a comedy? we wont know until we read it. (also if you made it to the end reading this holy shit i love you , i fully recognize i talked way too much)