#james swanton

[fanofspooky]

Scream King - James Swanton

Requested by Anonymous

[guy60660]

James Swanton | Alice Zoo | The New York Times

[unreesonable]

James Swanton and Reece Shearsmith BTS from The Curse of the Ninth. Reece is in costume as the older Jonah Quigley from the epilogue which was filmed but cut for time. The shooting script for the epilogue can be read in the S7-S9 script book

[sloshed-cinema]

The Severed Sun (2024)

We are approaching both a heyday and a singularity regarding contemporary folk horror. Indie filmmakers are utilizing that potent subgenre with increasing frequency, finding mystery and strange, compelling beauty in cults and devilry in the old ways and forgotten practices, in devilry and witchcraft. But it can also start to blur together. Elements of The Severed Sun can be found in Apostle and Starve Acre and Fréwaka and even The Blackcoat’s Daughter, among others. Of course films such as Blood on Satan’s Claw or The Wicker Man feel like reference points, but those are so totemic to the form that allusion is forgivable. What most of these efforts neglect is some of the subtlety found in small gems of the subgenre. Penda’s Fen, for instance, is an incredible entry in this canon, but it melds the vocabulary of this form with teenage queer anxieties commingled with nuclear angst and a sense of a timeless, pagan Britain that can never be reclaimed, an antiquity lost to the vicious onslaught of modernity. All this to say, I’d rather think about all those other films. There is a mixed metaphor at the core of this which has an inkling—men in power fucking suck, and leverage their influence to exploit the vulnerable—but the supernatural cannot decide whether it’s subversive or vengeful, and therein lies the issue. Dirty people screaming “heretic” and behaving hypocritically is one thing, but without a heightening of form it’s just The Crucible all over again. There was the potential for a strange sort of catharsis in the initial vague impressions of the role of the Beast from early in The Severed Sun, but it doesn’t live up to it. This has a hell of an opening five minutes in terms of sheer, enthralling psychotronic psychosis that can never deliver on the promise in the end.

Contemporary folk horror can be roughly divided from a score perspective into “hardy gurdy/recorder ladenFleet Foxes cover band” and “spaced out Tangerine Dream anachronistic synth” categories. This is emphatically of the latter. Both styles have their place at the table, but it kind of comes up to them to prove why they’ve picked their lane. I don’t really know what the chilly waves of synth percussion adds to dudes in suspenders brandishing machetes in this case. But go off queen. In a sense, I suppose the discordance of image and sound underlines that this is all taking place in the present, and that this misbehavior will not go unpunished even if the cultists in power think they won’t be.

THE RULES

SIP

Voiceover narration begins.

Someone says 'sin'.

Flash of the Beast in a scene.

A type of relative is named.

BIG DRINK

Lunar imagery.

Someone does says swears!

[moviemosaics]

The Severed Sun

directed by Dean Puckett, 2024

[mariocki]

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No. 249 (BBC, 2023)

"Well, I've given you my opinion. I stand flat-footed upon the ground and there I must remain. The world is big enough for us; no ghosts need apply."

[hannahwatcheshorror]

TAROT (2024)

A Cabin in the Woods style story about some college kids in the wrong place who find the wrong cards (and do readings with said cards). The production value makes it worth watching because it is scary, the story is just a little ridiculous, borderline silly at times. Very creepy creeps and spooky spooks await these ill-fated friends!

⭐⭐⭐

Never have I ever seen a person wear their loved ones old hospital bracelet as remembrance of them. The memory of that person in the hospital is the hardest part and or not even really how you remember the person so why use it as a sort of horcrux for them? It just seemed over the top for me, like, yeah, we get your mom was someone who was in the hospital a lot, but that shouldn’t have been her only character trait.

Also never have I heard before that Tarot readings are so set in stone (like when she would ask about her mom surviving the sickness). I thought it was more open for interpretation and a little less solidly YES/NO and a lot more MAYBE. I still think that it is supposed to be more open, just this movie and the main girl's interpretation of how the readings go is too strict. Anyway, the story is that a group of friends go to a cabin, break into a room and find the Tarot cards and after about 50 different warnings from the girl who is gonna do the readings, she does readings for literally everyone in the room (including herself). Then the bodies start to drop. (Whoops)

Elise was first and she “had a rough slip” or whatever but then got absolutely hammered over and over with the ladder by the high priestess and I feel like that was entirely unfair but, okay. The second kid was a rule breaker by his star sign so the hermit's light led him to a restricted section of the subway and he got hit by a train. Brutal. Madeline was told explicitly by Heather NOT to run but when the demon told her to run she ran and got hung on the bridge by whatever the heck her card was (it looked like a vampire). Now Paxton says, “I’m gonna go off by myself because the comic relief characters always do well alone.” and goes off to die by the fool who is very scary and he gets stuck in an elevator with the creep.

The last three go back to the house where they found the accursed cards to begin with and try to burn them but they are fireproof! It should be mentioned they try to get a woman who has survived The Astrologer before to help but she ends up not helping and dying so, anyway. Around now is when Paige goes through awful torment of being trapped in a box and having the magician threaten her with a saw and then actually and painfully saw her in half. I felt so awful for her and the final two heard her screams through the vents. They escape their demons by doing a Tarot reading for The Astrologer who bound herself to the cards in the first place and that stopped the madness.

On their way walking home, a car pulls up, they are frightened at first but then realize it is Paxton! He survived the elevator (someone walked in)! I know they let Paxton live for comedic effect but I just cannot let it slide that they allowed Paige to get sawed in half in that coffin when the timing could have worked out that she was saved too. They just glazed over the fact that she was screaming for her life as she saw (ha) the blade moving back and forth before it so viciously and undeservingly sawed her in half. She and Elise got unusually drawn out, painful, and cruel deaths. Ugh.

----------------------HANNAH WATCHES HORROR---------------------

[helmstone]

Lot No 249 — introducing a Christmas ghost story

Lot No 249 — introducing a Christmas ghost story

The BBC has interviews with the cast / creators of Christmas ghost story Lot No 249. It’s another Mark Gatiss adaptation, this time an Arthur Conan Doyle tale. 1881. Old College, Oxford plays host to three very different young academics: Abercrombie Smith, a model of Victorian manhood, clean of limb and sound of mind; Monkhouse Lee, a delicate and unworldly student from Siam; and the strange and…

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