Actual kino

actual kino

I feel the ending is a bit rushed. Some effects are kinda shitty too, which took me out of the movie. Still enjoyed it though.

I liked it well enough, but there are a bunch of nitpicks and compromises with the movie that annoyed me too.
It wasn't confident enough in a single way to tell the story and I think that hurt it.
It starts with a fake documentary to deliver exposition and back story, then it does the lost broadcast thing, but the movie doesn't trust itself to commit to that, and you get those really weird "documentary crew on set" but they're back stage recording private incriminating conversations no one would be having with a rolling film crew 6 inches away.
And then the girl's head splitting and lightning going every breaks the found footage aesthetic again, and it might have worked if it was amazing randy hypnotizing the audience again, but then you zoom into the guys mind as he's freaking out, so I guess its all real?
I think it would have been better in the end if it had either decided to be more of a traditional movie about this lost broadcast. Or if it had just gone all found footage.
As it is it just feels a little too indecisive about what it wants to be.
But still, I thought it was a good movie, and I'm glad I watched it.
If you haven't seen them before, (wait for october) and get your hands on the WNUF Halloween special and Ghostwatch.
If you liked Late Night they might be right up your alley. Especially if you have any nostalgia for local broadcast news in the 90's.

If you're a David Dastmalchian fan does he carry it enough?

The opening sequence had producer notes/test audience written all over it
It was so bad

The worst part is that every single plot point it reveals is told later in the movie, more subtly and organically
Dark City/Blade Runner vibes

Man this is the biggest leading role he's ever had, the whole movie is about his character

AIslop

Yeah, he is perfect for the part, and he's front and center the whole movie.
I thought he did a good job of playing a sad hackey perpetual silver medalist in late night tv and forever overshadowed by Carson.

Loved this

That was really so unnecessary too
How much would it cost to hire an artist to do a couple retro style interstitial cards?

A three digit amount of money?

It was fine. I was expecting a film like Re-possessed, but taken seriously. I did enjoy it for what it was, and moreso, my normie non-horror friends tend to love it a lot, so there's that.

Counterpoint: I'll never be upset that Michael Ironside gets to cash a paycheck.
And honestly this, its just such a weird fucking decision when you could just drive by a community college graphic design class and say "Give me some title cards that look like they're from a 70's late night talk show and I'll give you 20 bucks."
It just seemed like a way to drum up controversy and headlines rather than any creative decision or actual time/budget constraint.

How much would it cost to not hire an artist to do art that makes up maybe 15 seconds total of a 90 minute film? A zero dollar amount of money? Also, it can be done in a few minutes?
Who fucking cares? It doesn't matter.

I mean I could make that with some clip art in MS paint in 10 minutes.

I didn’t pay enough attention to them to notice.

That’s the least of this films problems. If you think demonic possession of a girl is gonna be innovative horror because it’s on a Johnny Carson parody, you’re wrong.

I get the nagging feeling they did a shitty AI job on purpose. I remember coming home after seeing the movie and going to an image generator site and having it do similar images from the movie, and it spit out perfectly serviceable images. They had to go out of their way to get something that bad. Even if the movie was in production before Dall-E 3, there were still competent AI tools back then. And they could have gone back before release and edited better ones in.
It feels like they did it to garner attention or something, because the rest of the movie was made with better attention to detail than that slop.

Actual movie plot spoilers don't open

I kept expecting the other shoe to drop with Jack being in the cult but it never happened, even at the end he seemed like a perfectly reasonable nice dude who had little to no idea what the fuck was going on. When they had that woman with the missing son I thought they were gonna say Jack sacrificed him in the woods but nope. I take it he just went to a weird rich people orgy to start his TV career and didn't even realize he had made a pact with actual hellspawn until his wife died? Maybe even then just thought it was a tragic coincidence?

Yes yes, good goy.

I play around with AI a lot and it stood out like too many sore thumbs.
I mean even among the most basic aisloppa that's low effort and makes me wonder if they just took the first set of 4 generations it spit out and ran with it.
Its bad for AI slop. And like I said before, I have to assume its there just to drum up controversy so the movie could get some free marketing.

Agreed. It should have stuck with just the broadcast and left it open to interpretation what happened between ad breaks

What is gained by grabbing some nobody to do the art? Does the film suddenly become more important and a greater piece of cinema? The only thing that would be gained by bothering to get a shitty artist to do a few things for dirt cheap would be so you could farm some Reddit gold. There's no other benefit compared to just churning out some AI shit quick because you could look away for 5 seconds to grab a snack, and you would not even see the art.

You're retarded. You missed the whole point.
[Spoiler] He did join the cult. The price he paid was his wife's health. He caused her death. [/spoiler]

Uh did someone's bot break

its not spoilers its spoiler use control + S
But I think I'm a little in between you and that other anon. I don't think it was the wife dying that was the sacrifice, I think he felt guilty about that, but his rating never beat carsons even when he peaked with bringing her on the show all cancer-girl'd up.

What changes if they paid some retard 100 bucks to produce clip art of the same quality that is only on screen for less than 1% of the entire runtime? I don't understand how that would make the movie better.

He just seems genuinely surprised demonic shit even exists
Like that final night was the first time he even realized his wife died because of the mumbo jumbo in the woods, how innocuous he is makes me construct a headcanon theory that he just went to a creepy party full of rich people in the woods to promote his career, and it was news to him that Satanism was real

It wouldn’t but it would improve discussion by getting these retards out of the thread.

I was writing a whole post complaining about the worm trick

while typing it I realized the demon made the worm trick work incredibly well, like how he made the fake psychic have an actual seance

I think I like this movie more now

I liked that the documentary plays out that the bohemian grove thing is much more like a rich people summer camp with pageantry than raising the devil (or at least not a red guy with a goatee and horns).

There is nothing stopping artists from doing authentic art. Only “artists” that only do it for the money care about ai.

The only thing that would be gained by bothering to get a shitty artist to do a few things for dirt cheap would be so you could farm some Reddit gold

This is a massive overcorrection. Taking such a cheap out shortcut shows a lack of care and can take an observant person who doesn’t look at their phone every 5 seconds out of a film. It’s supposed to be a broadcast from well before the time of gen AI, but all the commercial bumpers are not subtly AI at all. It’s sloppy. I feel like in people’s hurry to argue against people they don’t like, they end up arguing for completely baffling shit they wouldn’t otherwise.

so you are saying that even if someone created authentic art with no intention to monetize it, anyone else with a graphics card and a prompt should be able to monetize it? your argument is retarded and you know it

'massive overcorrection','observant person', 'commercial bumpers', 'people...baffling'

Yes, this was definitely typed by a human being.

Only “artists” that only do it for the money care about ai.

But anon, these are people making a commercial film, by definition they are artists doing it for the money. You're negating your own premise.

Anon those are perfectly normal phrases. Not everyone communicates like an illiterate broccoli headed zoomer with a stunted vocabulary.
Guy seems like he's trying to have a conversation with you, and you're just compelled to be an argumentative little defensive bitch because someone said "aislop."
You're jeet index is getting uncomfortably high.

Are you just a schizo? Nothing I said was that out of the ordinary unless you’re at a third grade reading level. What the hell is wrong with “observant person?”

This was the biggest problem with the film. They were worried people like wouldn't get it so they massively overdid the exposition not once, with the documentary cut aways, but TWICE, with the dream like ending montage. I bet some people didn't even realize Jack fucked Lilly. Despite this I enjoyed it up until the last 10 minutes which actually made me mad. I usually don't care that much when a movie shits the bed that hard but the scene where his wife's ghost shows up in the footage and they immediately cut to her hand on his shoulder was genuinely one of the scariest horror scenes I've seen in years and then they INSTANTLY ruin it with that generic screaming demon ending. If the movie had just ended right after the hand on his shoulder with just everyone in complete silence and after an uncomfortable pause we get a "technical difficulties" card on screen for 30 seconds, roll credits, it would have been an 8/10. The ending honestly ruined the whole experience for me. Not only do you have that screaming demon bullshit but then they felt the need to bang your head into the wall and rehash the fucking plot of you movie you just watched just in case you're allergic to subtlety.

Yeah

When they got to the dream sequence, I thought “oh okay so he gave up his wife at bohemian grove.” But like you said, this shouldn’t need to be spoon fed to me. If it had ended as you described, I would’ve thought about what it meant until I reached that conclusion organically, which is a much more satisfying situation. I fear a lot of shit is dumbed down like crazy in movies because of test audiences. I went to see Sinners and anytime a character vaguely references a prior event they feel the need to show the shot from earlier as a giant unsubtle reminder of what they’re referring to. I used to just think this was a new movie problem, but I rewatched Oceans Eleven and they did the same shit.

Sorry for calling you out anon, that was mean spirited of me. Shit goes over my head too sometimes and that's okay.
I think that's the bothersome trend in modern movies in general. They're shooting for the widest possible appeal. Every movie doesn't need to be made for everyone. Especially movies like this. I get it, producers are trying to make money. But they shouldn't compromise a movie's integrity to this extent in the hopes of attracting an extra 10% of viewers.

Felt too much like an episode out of some anthology horror series. The idea/concept wasn't really developed fully and past the premise it really doesn't go anywhere interesting.

No but good job missing the point and trying to twist my words around. Just get a real job like everyone else.

dogshit cg devil

ai generated images

What did director mean by this???

The reason for that is known and it is due to "netflix writing" of movies/shows but it has also spread to movies since the same writers and execs produce everything these days. The idea is that people mostly view show and movies through streaming services these days and often while they're browsing something on their phones, so in order for them not to be confused and lose the plot everyone in the show/movie needs to constantly be saying what they're doing and things needs to be constantly revisited/shown again so even a person that is barely watching can keep track of the general story.
No viewer left behind policy.

Thanks. Not a big horror fan but it sounds at least halfway creative will check out.

I think anon was saying they expected it to be revealed that he was a knowing collaborator the whole time rather than a schmuck who got duped. Like the whole broadcast summoning was his idea.

No it’s not creative they used ai for these bits that don’t even matter. It makes the rest of the movie UNWATCHABLE!

best thing he's ever done
fun fact : I know the producers of this film and they told me their pitch to him was as simple as "we have a horror film, we want you to finally play the lead and we promise we won't kill you" apparently he was immediately in

I really liked it but like everyone already said the ending was a letdown.

too nice to newfags cut it out they need to lurk

take your fucking pills retard

It was a 6/10 film that I really enjoyed, loved it

The ending was shit, but I liked the rest.