The Road To Halloween - Eliminating The Horror 'Classics'

I do take my Letterboxd reviewing pretty seriously. When I say that, I am aware that there may be a perception among some that I should presume that others do the same, but that really isn't the case!

I follow people on Letterboxd who do all manner of reviews and I admire the different styles and techniques of many people on here. But I never believed everyone should approach this the same way. Do it your way! That said, I do approach it all quite seriously even though the content of a lot of my reviews does tend towards the sarcastic and (notionally) comedic a lot of the time.

The reason…

You think that, being stalked and senselessly bitten at - slowly eaten - is the worse thing, so intolerable, so horrible, you have to dash the boy thing's head against the rock and drown it. And it's befitting, you know it's a just arrival, and you won't run because it's your punishment, and she's a simple country girl, she doesn't understand!

Every thoughtless useless decadent self indulgent word or taunt or flippant platitude about your suffering is a small rend by a crow or worse than a crow, what he described: a man or a something which either has a beak or is wearing a mask with a beak. Even when, as your flesh is plucked away (I'd say soul…

It's tempting always to assume that any film focusing on an artist, photographer, or other worker of a visual medium is in fact a metaphor for the filmmaker, and generally, this interpretation probably isn't wrong. But I feel like limiting the scope of the work to the personal life of the filmmaker--which is often but not always what happens when we take this interpretation--is unfair to the film. The fact that the filmmaker chooses to put up this veil suggests an attempt at something more universal. Johan's madness might be interpreted as Bergman's angst, but I think it fair to say that his obsessive insanities are an illustration of dark muses and troubled artists everywhere.

There's a moment in this…

This is the second film by Bergman I've seen that is awfully morbid. Did Bergman's fear (or admiration?) of death and its inevitability somehow seeped into his works? It is also important to note that in both this and The Seventh Seal, death is represented or foreshadowed by a pale, white face that reminds one of illness. (Max Von Sydow's face was powdered before he met his demise.) I wonder if there's a similar theme in Persona or any other of his works during that period, it would certainly be interesting if they do, because in the film's wikipedia page it says:

Due to a severe case of pneumonia, Bergman had to interrupt his work on the project. After regaining…

Criterion Collection
Ingmar Bergman's Cinema
(Foreign language film)

A typical Bergman film, with the horror element people hype this one up for tacked on at the end.

"The old ones called it 'the hour of the wolf'. It is the hour when most people die, when most children are born. Now is when nightmares come to us. And if we are awake ... We're afraid ... We're afraid."

After seeing 8 movies from Director Ingmar Bergman, I feel like I pretty much know what to expect from his films, and Hour of the Wolf was the first one I felt underwhelmed by. The film stars Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann and is a real slow burn about an insomniac…

If The Touch was the closest Bergman came to making a soap opera, Hour of the Wolf perhaps represents his one real foray into horror.

There are undeniably many elements of the genre at play here, but it would be reductive to simply reel off tropes. I'd been expecting maximum darkness, knowing it was about a man's mental breakdown and journey into insanity, but I wasn't prepared for just how weird this film was! From the moment a mysterious old woman appears to Alma Borg outside their island hut to tell her about her husband's diary, in a satchel under their bed, you know something very strange is beginning to happen. It's not just what she says, but the way…

i’m always intrigued and equally frustrated by films like this because it feels as though the only ones that are spared from the usual outsider hostility are the surrealist ones. which always has felt very ironic to me because they’re typically presenting the most concentrated version of what people tend to hate about art movies. is it because they’re more earnest and upfront about what they lack in linear logic/plot/otherwise? i just never really understood why something like Mulholland Drive or The Holy Mountain tends to be considered invulnerable or beyond critique in that way when other smaller films will just constantly be chewed to bits for the same qualities... idk. anyway

i have been told that this is actually…