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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2423 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 24, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Continuing on the movies I'm watching for Spooky Season.

Last night I tried showing herself The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but halfway through she asked me to turn it off because it was stressing her out too much. She's more of a psychological horror gal — slashers aren't really her bag.

Tonight is We Need to Talk About Kevin, which I haven't seen since it came out.

Last night we rewatched Sinister. It pains me to see horror films using jump scares as a crutch, especially when the film has already demonstrated that the crutch isn't called for. There were several points in the film in which something scary appears onscreen accompanied by a sudden loud noise, and I found myself thinking it would actually be more scary without the loud noise. I'd actually love to do a fan edit with all the silly jump scares removed, especially the one immediately before the closing credits. (The one such scare that I found worked exactly as intended was the "Lawn Work" one.)

But for all that, it's an intelligent, well-acted, well-paced movie that makes the most of its limited budget, displays admirable restraint in its use of violence and gore, and knows just when to deploy a comic relief character to defuse the tension. For my money I can't think of a better Hollywood horror film from the 2010s: in terms of scares and atmosphere, it's obviously superior to such critical darlings as It Follows and The Lighthouse. There's even a bit of wry social commentary in its characterisation of true crime writers as muckraking, narcissistic glory hounds who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. My girlfriend says she's hit her quota for horror films for the rest of the year, and was so scared that when she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, she asked me to stand guard outside with a baseball bat.

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