MetaFilter posts tagged with Horror

Growing Up Strange

Charlemagne In Sweatpants — Wed, 08 May 2013 22:46:27 -0800

Cosas Feas (Nasty Stuff) is a short, gooey Lovecraftian coming-of-age comedy by Mexican director Isaac Ezban. Its recomended for fans of Stuart Gordon and anyone who had an awkward childhood.

Click

orange swan — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:44:31 -0800

William Prince's short Click is very simple little horror film about a bunch of kids, an abandoned building, and a light switch that you'd better watch before it gets dark. The short was a finalist in Popcorn Horror's Blood Games short film competition. You can view the other five finalists here.

An experience beyond limits... pain and pleasure, indivisible...

Artw — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:48:56 -0800

We Have Such Films To Show You - Damned souls cortex and griphus have been condemned to the infernal torment of watching all 10 Hellraiser movies, and wish to share their explorations of the further realms of experience with you in their new podcast. [via mefi projects]

He is interested in confusion

misteraitch — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:28:34 -0800

‘I am a phantasmagoric maximalist. I like things to be overwhelmingly strange and capacitous. I want what I write to live; it isn’t about something, it is something’— Michael Cisco. Michael Cisco is a professor, novelist, critic and translator. An aficionado and idiosyncratic exponent of weird fiction, his published works include The Divinity Student, The Golem, Secret Hours, The Tyrant, The Traitor, The Narrator, The Great Lover, and Celebrant. Some shorter texts published on-line are The Thing in the Jar and The Vile Game of Gunter and Landau. Also see his series of short essays Jungle Mind, and his commentary on Kafka’s ‘Zurau Aphorisms.’

Slender: The Arrival

Joakim Ziegler — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 01:53:46 -0800

Last year, a free indie horror game called Slender, previously, based on the Slender Man meme (previously), became moderately famous for being terrifying despite its simplicity. Now, its creator has teamed up with the writers behind Marble Hornets video series (previously, previouslier) to create the sequel. Slender: The Arrival is available for PC and Mac for $10, and promises a much bigger and more varied environment with better and scarier graphics, and an actual storyline that will take an average player "a few hours" to complete. There's a teaser trailer showing off the moody new environments.

The Thames is a Filthy Beast

Artw — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 14:17:27 -0800

Down to a Sunless Sea - a new short story by Neil Gaiman published by The Guardian as part of their series of Water stories.

Just In Time For The Equinox

The Whelk — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:47:07 -0800

About a week ago a series of tweets began to appear promoting a new TEDx conference taking place with all the normal social media bluster and back-patting - but was it? The event's isolated location should've set off warning bells (previously) when the tweets from "TedxSummerisle" because increasingly worrisome as the conference tumblr began posting videos with titles like "Our Friends the Bees, and Nanotech" and "The Secret Science of the Ancients". (via)

Energyne/Barco/Draino hot shot/Whack attack/Helium/N2O/Formaldehyde

item — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:32:15 -0800

The Cramps ripped it up, madly channeling the sordid specters of rock 'n roll's past while staying true to its psychedelic future, even when voxman Lux Interior was a lean 59 years old. The first show from their last-ever tour does nothing but prove it. Rot in Peace, Lux.

I do believe in ghosts: life after death is too important to trivialise.

fearfulsymmetry — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:43:31 -0800

RIP British horror writer James Herbert, author of the modern classic of the genre The Rats among many others. His latest book, Ash was a thriller about Princess Diana's secret son James Herbert on his experiences with ghosts (previously)

Today would be an important day.

cthuljew — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:25:33 -0800

Harold and the Dark, Dark Forest

Inventions of the Monsters

Iridic — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:20:44 -0800

"It was John Polidori's misfortune to be comic without having a sense of humor, to wish to be a great writer but to be a terrible one, to be unusually bright but surrounded for one summer by people who were titanically brighter, and to have just enough of an awareness of all of this to make him perpetually uneasy. Also, he couldn't jump."

Michael Deforge

Merzbau — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:24:19 -0800

Canadian cartoonist and animator Michael Deforge has been furiously productive over the past few years, producing a seemingly endless series of minicomics, four issues of his increasingly influential one-man anthology series Lose, short pieces for magazines, concert posters, and dozens of one-off illustrations, blog posts and anthology contributions. His comics are a queasy mix of body horror (reminiscent of his countryman David Cronenberg), creeping anxiety, and surprisingly sharp humor. In "The Burden of Promise," the Comics Journal's Rob Clough considers Deforge's style (and its startlingly rapid evolution) in the context of so-called "fusion comics," visually inventive and formally playful takes on genre material (such as Brandon Graham, Josh Simmons, Dash Shaw or recent Johnny Ryan). Comic artist and journalist Matt Seneca interviews him here about his recent mini-comic "Incinerator." And did I mention he works on Adventure Time? Because he totally does that. While his design work has been featured on multiple episodes, the recently broadcast "Little Dude" is the first episode Deforge has storyboarded. Check out Deforge's title card here, and watch a short clip here. In May Koyama Press will release Very Casual, a compilation of some of his best comics work (including "Cody," "SM," "Cop Comic," "Incinerator," "Queen" and others), followed by the fourth issue of Lose in June. Some (but by no means all) of Deforge's work available online: Queen (for Arthur magazine, reprinted in The Best American Comics 2011) Kid Mafia #1 Cody First Year Healthy a selection of comics at What Things Do, including the new-ish Splitsville and Leather Space Men Michael Deforge previously on Metafilter: Spotting Deer Rescue Pet Ant Comic

Out of ammo, nearly dead, monsters outside. But! I have a can of meat.

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:47:07 -0800

If Doom and Nethack lived in Estonia and had a baby, it'd be named Teleglitch, a recently released pixelated action roguelike that will completely murder you if you're not very careful about how you explore its procedurally-generated corridors, fighting off former coworkers, crafting spare parts into new stuff and hunting for ammo and food and clues as to what the hell went so terribly wrong at the Militech R&D facility on Medusa 1-C. The game has a 4-level demo (Windows and Linux, Mac too apparently) which will probably kick your ass plenty all by itself. The visuals are intentionally graphically crude at a glance; big blocky pixels and a fixed overhead camera make for screenshots that look like they are from a modified copy of Doom, running on a box not quite up to the job. But in motion, it all works; the figurative looks to the baddies and the items and the world manages, as with much good horror, to put your brain to work filling in the details. The eerie glitchy voids, the claustrophobic line-of-sight visual masking, the live-or-die attention to sound details, and the terse diegetic scraps of story combine to make a legitimately compelling and tense world. Death is permanent, and really easy to stumble into; ammo is scarce, so aiming (or finding other ways to kill bad guys or escape them) is important; crafting found items can turn trash into treasure at vital moments; randomly generated levels have similar key sections but wholly random layouts and item/enemy/secret distributions. It's brutal and brilliant. Rock Paper Shotgun talks a bit more about what makes it so compelling. Games Are Evil talk to developers Test3 Projects. TotalBiscuit offers a charming and somewhat bumbling tour of the gameplay.

Campers? Stupid. Counselors? Heroes. Slasher killers? Slashing, killing.

cortex — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 10:49:14 -0800

The 80s horror film genre called, and then you got a beep and turn-based squad tactics video games were on the other line, and it was a pretty confusing phone call basically but in the end you got the message that someone wanted Camp Keepalive back. Because it is awesome. And it runs on Windows and OSX and you should download the demo right now. The tutorial in the demo does a good job of running down the basic mechanics of the game, and there's not much more to it than those basic mechanics, but that's a good thing because they combine into a really fantastic emergent set of tactical dilemmas and hard decisions and dead campers. A few things it may be handy to know: - You can mouse over a given monster to get more information about what exactly that monster's priorities are. Some are inclined to kill campers; some are focused on killing counselors. This is useful information for predicting their actions and deciding how to arrange your counselors. - You get to move one counselor per move, and once you've clicked on a counselor's character (not their portrait in the bottom left, which will just helpfully zoom the screen to where in the camp they are) you can't change your mind. So think first, select second. It's like chess, with axe-wielding psychos. - If you drop a trap and stand on it, that will kill a monster moving into that space without you (or any campers with you) getting hurt, so as a temporary insurance policy that can be a good way to deal with being out in the woods for a while. Each trap is one-use, though, so if multiple monsters wander into the same tile you're toast. (Likewise, Ashley can only kill one monster per tile she enters, so if there's two on a spot and you want to kill 'em both she'll have to wander in, wander out, and wander back in.) - Campers are stupid.

Not so nurturing

gottabefunky — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:34:39 -0800

Mamá. The sphincter-tightening short film by Andres Muschietti that inspired the movie of the same name, with an introduction by producer Guillermo del Toro.

Animal Carcasses

Greg Nog — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:21:03 -0800

Animal Carcass sculptures made out of old clothes, by Tamara Kostianovsky.

...chewed-off face (seems to be a lot of it going around)

laconic skeuomorph — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:11:42 -0800

UndeadTeds [NSFW?] is a tumblr featuring one-of-a-kind zombie teddy-bears of a graphic bent. Not for the faint of heart.

Two short films by Matthew Holness

dng — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:43:51 -0800

The Snipist - a post-apocalyptic nightmare set in a post-rabies Britain (warning: absolutely bleak). A Gun For George - a short film about crime-writer Terry Finch, author of the 70s Kentish fiction masterpieces The Reprisalizer. Matthew Holness previously on Metafilter - The Reprisalizer, Darkplace.

The Mi-Go are greater beings than we, but then again, who ain’t?

brundlefly — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:37:56 -0800

Brattleboro Days, Yuggoth Nights: an interview with H. P. Lovecraft on a single postcard.

Mastaba Snoopy

JHarris — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 12:43:28 -0800

An Unknown Alien Being acquires a child's forgotten book and mistakenly believes that it depicts proper protocol for interaction with the human world.
The book is a collection of Peanuts comics.

Woodsnoopy 45 stares into your open heart. Her yellow head squirms and pukes up feathers.
It makes you uncomfortable when she looks at you. She makes a demand.
Her demands come often and always create uncomfortably simultaneous feelings of resentment and obedience.
ACQUIRE NICKELS
That is the territory of the Lucy faction. They are the ones who gather nickels. Woodsnoopy 45 is overstepping her boundaries.
Being a mere Woodsnoopy 799, however, you can do naught but obey."

MASTABA SNOOPY

You wanna hear a story?

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:23:19 -0800

A Conversation With Stephen King (NSFW language, MLYT) Highlights Of King's Visit To UMass Lowell The conversation "Afterlife" premier Q&A - On A Possible Theme Park, The Boston Red Sox & More Stephen King On Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, Lovecraft & More Phone interviews On How 'Carrie' Might Be Different If He Wrote It Today On Writing A Musical & Working With John Mellencamp On How Fear Is Used In The Media & More On Why He Is Coming To UMass Lowell On His Career, The Walking Dead & More Thoughts On The Horror Genre 1 on 1 Interview

Kindness killed, just as surely as the huntsman's knife

The Whelk — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:37:39 -0800

Seven For A Secret - an anonymous fanfic author creates seven unhappy ( or at least, unconventional ) endings for Disney Princesses by placing them in proper historical, mythological, or thematic context.

His stomach jiggled like a bowl full of...is that really jelly?

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:37:22 -0800

A chilly little Christmas story

"I have thrown a terrarium of land crabs on the floor at a party in a drunken rage, I have known regret. "

The Whelk — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:57:41 -0800

Actor and writer James Urbaniak (Venture Brothers, American Splendor) has a wry, occasionally upsetting "fictional podcast" with every episode written by a new author. Getting On With James Urbaniak.

Peter Jackson's "Braindead"

Egg Shen — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:52:42 -0800

Between Peter Jackson’s penchant for cartoonish unserious gore and Bob McCarron’s off-screen makeup effects manipulations, Braindead achieves something that approaches inspired genius in the heretofore unknown artform of human carnage. The film is filled with moments of joyous slapstick tableaux... And then there is that moment where Braindead finally breaks through to achieve a transcendentally surreal glory of excess where Tim Balme wades into battle against the zombies armed with a lawnmower, drenching an entire room in showers of blood. (Braindead holds the record for the greatest amount of artificial blood ever used in a film). The film is a work of perverse genius. - Richard Scheib