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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 18h

I'm so tired of people that should be working together spending more energy against each other than against the people fucking them over.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 3d

In 5 to 10 years, is every other horror movie going to be a torture porn movie set in the 2000s?

Reposted by Jared Rascher (He/Him)

Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 4d

You will soon stalk, hunt, and take down Prey in theaters:

reactormag.com/prey-predato...

Prey Is Finally Getting the Theatrical Release Director Dan Trachtenberg Says It Was Made For - Reactor

The 2022 film is showing as part of a Predator double feature.

reactormag.com

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

It made a relevant point that acknowledges we live in 2025, but still rolled around in the gore rather than trying to be more "elevated" than the simple message required. Nothing wrong with elevated horror, just sometimes people really think they're making a much more profound point then they are.

Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

I'm not going to spoil anything because this is a relatively new movie and if you like slashers, I think you should see this, especially if you, like me, thought it was just a cringeworthy movie that at best was going to be so bad its good.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

I'm not going say it was high art, but it was good at hitting all the right beats for a slasher movie, gave me a bunch of characters I actually liked so I cared when the blood letting started. It acknowledged that the modern world isn't like the 70s, 80s, or 90s when the slasher was evolving.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Continuing on with my #31DaysOfHalloween movie watching, the next movie that I watched was Clown in a Cornfield. How did I not hear that this wasn't a terrible movie before I watched it? I was braced for something stupid, and it was actually what I wanted from Fear Street: Prom Queen.

#HorrorMovies

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Honest, I'm not usually this hard on just an inoffensive bloody slasher movie. This just felt like it was promising something with this title that it wasn't planning on delivering on. But . . . I didn't get so bored or angry at it that I quit watching, and I've done that to horror movies before.

Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Other than being based on a story from Stine's Fear Street books I'm not sure why this has the same branding. It barely touched on the setting, and when it did, it was so perfunctory it was almost insulting. And the killer reveal(s) wouldn't stop, and I had a hard time caring as they kept happening.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

On top of that, the Fear Street trilogy had a queer relationship at its heart, and the meta story made a meaningful swipe at feminist commentary by subverting the tropes associated with witches and curses in horror movies. Not to mention just weaving between eras was fun.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

I don't need a horror movie to justify itself if it's fun. This felt like it was trying too hard to be fun. They felt like they were really proud of how well they recreated the formula that they weren't really doing anything but maintaining the exact baseline they were shooting for.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

The one was a huge disappointment. They did a really god job of emulating an early 90s slasher flick. The aesthetic was on point. But I'm not sure what the point of just doing a relatively thin recreation of a 90s slasher, beat for beat really was. It wasn't even really a joyful recreation.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

After my Phantasm marathon to kick off #31DaysOfHalloween, the next movie I watched was Fear Street: Prom Queen. I really apreciated the Fear Street trilogy that Netflix did. I thought it was great that they could both reproduce and subvert horror tropes almost at the same time.

#HorrorMovies

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Ravager was too ambitious for what they could pull off. The transition to the "endgame" felt really rushed and undercut some of the deeper stuff they were playing with in the first half, but I still appreciate it for being its own weird thing and trying to accomplish what it set out to do after IV.

Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

But having him stand there making menacing faces while they played dialogue over his appearance really underscored that they were working hard to keep him as an element in the movie. I have the upmost respect for what he pulled off as the Tall Man, so I understand the desire to give him a send off.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Angus Scrimm was really looking rough in this movie. I wasn't a fan of learning that the Tall Man wasn't as alien as he seemed, but the early interactions with him in the alternate reality as a fellow patient in the hospital was compelling.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

The post-apocalypse should have been terrifying. The same kind of red skies and vague barren landscape worked really well when we glimpsed them in the earlier movies. But "living" in that dark red apocalypse made it look really thin and rushed.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Then they rushed into the post-apocalyptic storyline and established that as the "real" reality, and not only did it kind of break the theme that seemed to be what they were building in the first half, this is an instance where not having the budget to pull something off hurt the movie bad.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

It was a really strange movie. The conceit of jumping through multiple realities and different lives was really working for me until halfway through. It felt like it was playing with themes of aging and realizing that no matter how long you fight death, eventually you have to come to terms with it.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

It didn't feel like the other movies, but in places, it felt like it was fighting to be light the other movies. And then we get to Phantasm V or Phantasm RaVager, or Phantasm Ravager, depending on where you see it listed. From what I read about IV, this is what they wanted to do with that movie.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

The absolute answers and lack of trippy reality questioning moments, and the direction the lore was pushing, made it feel less like a trippy horror movie with sci-fi elements, and more like a sci-fi action movie that goes really gory in the fight scenes.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

With the movie picking up straight after Phantasm III, and less of the trippy moments of protagonists trying to figure out what they really know and what they really remember, it felt like this was as close as they came to mimicking a more traditional horror structure. Sort of.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Phantasm IV really felt like a mess. I read what they wanted to do with it, and what they didn't have the budget or the studio support to do, but it really feels like they ran off in two directions, neither of which worked for them. The lore got weirder, but provided solid answers.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Up through Phantasm III, it feels like they were maintaining a three steps forward, two steps back progression, which was still some progression. Honestly, I wasn't against it. Extradimentional mortician transforming corpses and shipping them through planar gates? I'm going to watch it.

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Jared Rascher (He/Him) @whatdoiknowjr.bsky.social · 4d

Its more than just "the ending where the heroes got murdered didn't count," its that people may not remember that they've every encounter the Tall Man or remember what was going on for significant portions of the movie.

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