#Horror

source: #Horror

I'm curious as to why so many people were so fiercely critical of this film, but I liked it quite a bit. The title hints at how broadly the term 'horror' might be applied throughout a single movie. Some might consider it a parody, or a grim look at the dangers of bullying, but I feel like it is a more comprehensive critique of modern, 21st century self-obsessions and distractions. The style and pacing kept me engaged, and the acting is very self-aware, I'm left wondering how much of the scenes were improvised. It brought to mind Ryan Trecartin's I-BE Area, which is another, more insanely fever-pitched film... The story focuses on a group of 12 year old girls, sometimes viewed through the predatory lens of a hand-held camera or cell phone, as they hang out together in a big empty mansion. It seems like almost every single line in the film is a sneer, a taunt, an insult, or some other form of abuse. Most of the expository elements are merely suggested, but the vicious behavior of these girls escalates into a few gruesome scenes. I must admit I had a sense of gleeful anticipation in imagining just how these brats might bite the dust. Nearly every character is unlikable, so this movie is a treat for a true horror fan, and could be a frustrating 100 minutes for someone who expects to sympathize with a strong lead. Millennials might also cringe at the use of cell phones, snapchats, and text bubbles, but maybe that's because the obnoxiousness of these characters is so eerily familiar...taking selfies and pretending to have a good time. If you were raised by a smartphone, how would you function without it? Then the better question: How do you function with it? Maybe you're already asking that question, so this film provides a poignant interpretation of a world in which technology and other privileges motivate people to seek control through pettiness while they feel forced to change their own values constantly. I thought this movie has a lot of content to re-investigate, its manic effect haunted me for a few days. I would definitely watch it again. Not for the weak, a high tolerance for awful little girls is required. It's an absurd social commentary with slasher elements and a strange, gorgeous setting. Give this film a chance...there's a wonderful, jaw-dropping music video nestled in the middle of the madness ... Kudos to the director and cast of #Horror

A group of spoilt pre-teen girls (SUBMIT) gather at one of their homes for a sleepover, where they spend (SUBMIT) their whole time cyber-bullying each other and generally being nasty little beotches. Then someone (SUBMIT) does us all a favour by killing them. I'm going to keep this review as brief as possible (SUBMIT) because I have already wasted far too much of my time on this wretched movie. Lousy direction, horrible editing, gimmicky game graphics every few minutes (SUBMIT), and utterly atrocious performances, both from the young girls and from the (SUBMIT) more experienced cast members (Timothy Hutton shouts his way through the film and Chloë Sevigny sucks more than she did in The Brown Bunny). Tara Subkoff (writer and director of this mess), I've got a few (SUBMIT) hashtags for you: #whatapileofcrud, #bloodyawful, #totalwasteoftime, #thepits #itstinks (I think you get the picture…).

Having read the five reviews before watching this my expectation was high and as I love this genre (thought Unfriended was awesome) I was tingling... The subject matter was odd with young girls running wild around a house full of the freakiest art I have ever seen. Many attempts were made by the director and author to connect to or feel something toward the characters but I am afraid I couldn't, it felt like a paedo entrapment film and the characters were 12 year old bitches. This was a big disappointment and I really tried to enjoy it. I guessed what was going on really quickly and the film did not surprise me. I have voted this a four as the filming was OK (given the location it shouldn't have been hard) but everything else was just dire.. End of line.

I only joined IMDb to write this review. I Googled the title and read a bit about the movie, it sounded OK with actresses i've heard of i thought couldn't be too bad....boy was i wrong, Over rated on IMDb... Awful from the start, just self absorbed spoilt brats, who constantly have their phones in their hands taking pictures to post on a social media site, i thought it may have been somewhat similar to unfriended, I would rather have watched paint dry. the best part of the movie was the end credits, i have seen some underrated horror movies with a cast i've never even heard of and they have been by far a whole lot better than this. I wouldn't bother wasting time to watch this.

I came across this disaster on Netflix and watched it because 1. I've been hearing many, many er... "things" people say about this movie and 2. Because ralphthemoviemaker (a great YouTube movie critic) talked about it in his most recent video. I've recently become fascinated with terrible movies and why they're so broken (Catwoman, North, Foodfight, Battlefield Earth, Master of Disguise), so my daft curiosities hasn't stopped me from watching #Horror, aka one of the dumbest titles in cinema history. But what makes #Horror so bad? It's not bad because of its intentions in calling out cyber-bullying (a still serious issue), but from how amateurish the filmmaking was. Outside of some decent cinematography and 1 or 2 moments that were mildly effective, #Horror fails in terms of acting, writing, directing, editing, effects, and storytelling. The worst category to me has to be the editing. In almost every scene (including the opening credits) there are transitions of # symbols that look like sped-up versions of Suicide Squad, Enter The Void and bowling animations on acid. It's that bad. The last 30 minutes had quick cuts that were used to signify tension -- but they accidentally come across as uneven and clumsy. The acting is a jarring mix of stiff and laughably over-the-top from both minor and big-name actors. Not one performance felt authentic or professional. The directing has no punch and very little style, and it especially shows in the "scary" parts. On a technical scale, #Horror is a misguided mess... but that would've been somewhat forgivable if the script was smart, well- crafted and has lots to say. But it sadly does not. The main characters are nothing but shallow, b**chy stereotypes that do nothing but shame on each other. You could say that's part of the satires' point, but you need some form of sympathy if you're going to make a movie about bullying. Instead, the attempts at character development here feels forced and laughable instead of genuine. The story isn't much better. It takes about 1 hour in order for the plot to move forward ('cause showing slumber parties is very important), and by then the narrative jumps around for no discernible reason. It gets more confusing as it goes on. The dialogue tries to appeal to the younger demographic without actually knowing how most teens talk like, so it all sounds ridiculous ("If he's so rich, why does he dress like that? He looks like Hitler."). The message is admirable, but not anything new or provoking. It's not even well-executed. In conclusion, #Horror is #Horrible. Very little makes any sense, the editing is wacky, the story and script is incoherent and unintentionally funny, the "hip" characters are obnoxious, the acting is atrocious, the production values are weak, and its attempts at social- commentary are blatant and unoriginal. As I've said before, there are some decent shots and kernels of a good idea, but they're all buried down by heaps of incompetence. Awful. Don't watch. 2/10.

Literally everything in #Horror is larger than life, from the over-stylized Candy Crush social media mock-up app that regularly splatters the screen with likes and corpses, to the impossible-to-read hyper-cut opening credits, to the manic overwrought performances from the entire cast. You can read the film as blunted, over-the-top satire, which it only rarely achieves. Alternately, you can view it as a throwback to the old-fashioned not-so-good anonymous slasher films of the early '80s where the only one you really could cheer for was the killer. Only in this case, you'd be rooting for a child mass-murderer, which lends a discomfiting air to the entire outing, making satire the only tolerable path to choose. Unlike other teen torture * (like Megan is Missing, for example) the deaths aren't drawn out. They're quick and for the most part forgettable. In the case of #Horror, that's probably a good thing. #Horror takes place in a chic glass cage in snowy Connecticut (Tim Hutton's house, actually, who plays an outraged parent who may or may not be taking his career as a plastic surgeon in slightly more creative directions). Blonde, vapid Sophia (Bridget McGarry) and her five besties are having a sleepover in said mansion. All the usual slasher-movie archetypes are there --- good girl Sam (Sadie Seelert), glamorous Ava (Blue Lindeberg), Bulemia girl Georgie (Emma Adler), Anorexia girl Francesca (Mina Sundwall) --- and well-known cyber-bully champion Cat (Haley Murphy), whose clueless but well-meaning dad is played by Hutton. Only thing is, ALL these girls are really bullies, and one of the few things #Horror doesn't hyperbolize is the way preteen girls mercilessly torment each other, at least a quintet this disturbed and on doses of psychoactive drugs that would render an elephant comatose. The performances aren't very riveting (note the Acting Coach in the end credits) but their cruelty often is. It's often more disturbing than the actual bloodshed. #Horror does have some virtuoso pictorial moments --- the outlandish modern art that decks the house (quite good, actually, but nothing you'd want to actually LIVE with) lends a sinister atmosphere and the bevy of grotesque masks lying around add a nice level of depravity. Watching the girls stage a mock floor show with them provides one of the few indelible moments. But the real moments of tenseness come when what's on screen approaches reality. Timothy Hutton looks like he's having a blast when he confronts the callous quintet while brandishing a butcher knife, and the warped priorities of the adults aren't so far away from reality that you don't wince a little. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch for Sophie's mom Alex (a scene-shredding Chloe Sevigny) to let the girls loose on millions of dollars of jewelry but her own self-indulgent, lethargic attitudes aren't far from the authentic mark. You sense that the parents are the real psychotics in Subkoff's absurdity play. Contrary to a lot of the reviews that completely trash #Horror, the film is eerily subversive in its own way, when it's not bludgeoning you to death with its supposed "seriousness." If you're a horror fan, frankly I'd skip it. It's not scary in any traditional, expected way. But it's strangely satisfying when it does on occasion reach its lofty ambitions. I saw this at a double feature with the reserved, though equally absurdist Carol Morley film "The Falling," and it was an interesting juxtaposition. Both films tackle young girls, angst, and peer-pressure in offhand, often genre-busting ways, especially when you compare 1969 to 2015 in terms of the tools of self-destruction that are available.

#HORROR (2015) * Chloe Sevigny, Timothy Hutton, Sadie Seelert, Haley Murphy, Blue Lindeberg, Mina Sundwall, Emma Adler, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Lydia Hearst, Jessica Blank, Balthazar Getty, Natasha lyonne, Taryn Manning, Stella Schanbel. #IWantMyMoneyBack - terrible slasher flick from actress turned filmmaker Tara Subkoff (keep your day job) about a bunch of obnoxious tween rich bitches who spend the night being stalked unknowingly with a killer with a predilection for social media bullying. Why anyone cares about these horrible wastes of space is beyond me nor even a killer to root for to hurry up with the body count already! A waste of time, talent (Tim Hutton fire your agent …now!) and pretty much everything else for a supposed horror film.

No idea why there are so many bad reviews here? I loved it; I thought it was a very advanced thoughtful film. The graphic were #killer. The comparison of video game culture and young girl culture was spot on. This film makes connections that I've never seen on the big screen but, do see in every day life. The casting was spot on, Hello 12 year-old girls are supposed to be a little annoying. I do wish that more directors would take color into more consideration the way this film does. T The highly stylized sets make the murder scenes more believable because everything is so unbelievable. How can you live in 2016 and not "get"a film about social media and accelerationism. #duh Someone explain this to me.

I cannot give this movie more than a score of 5/10, as none of the characters were likable, not a one. It's rare I'll watch this kind of movie and not find at least one person in it I like, therefore root for. The 12 year old girls were shallow, pretentious and just generally awful people. I don't understand why any of them were even friends, they're horrible to each other. It was not a case of a group bullying just one of them, they all bullied one and other...and portrayed such spiteful behavior towards each other, that I have honestly never seen before! Positives are that for the most part, there was some good acting, the filming location and scene setting was awesome, very well done. Negatives are the girls themselves, I found them highly irritating and hard to watch, due to their behavior portrayal, in fact for this very reason, I almost turned it off....as it was just pure bitchiness. The Mother, while well acted...was a selfish human being and not likable in the slightest. The Father went from one extreme to another, first comes across as cold and distant, then goes psycho and actually seems to care about his Daughter being missing, but he is just as messed up as his child. What kind of a parent goes into a home and waves around and threatens a knife to a bunch of kids?? And says it's good advice that his Daughter told one of the chubby girls she should kill her herself...great parenting!! Then says a similar thing to the Mother of the house. There are basically a lot of screwed up characters portrayed in this movie...which I can usually tolerate (providing it's well acted) but not when they are irritating people. And, the Father is correct about one thing....why leave a bunch of (clearly messed up) 12 year olds home alone without any supervision at all. Spoiler alert: Something else, throughout the movie, it's insinuated that something happened among the girls 12 months ago, yet it's never explained...so even at the end, you're still left wondering.