I select a thematically appropriate horror movie for each day of the year and tell you about it.
Why?
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
How do you get to decide what qualifies as a horror movie and where each one goes on the calendar?
I am the Mayor of Horror Movies.
Are all these movies good?
Oh gosh no. But I recommend all of them to the adventurous viewer.
What’s with the CWs?
In horror movies, disturbing material is part of the entertainment package. But for some viewers, elements like sexual violence or bigotry ruin the fun. For those folks, I include content warnings. That said, the warnings are based on my personal reactions and should not be expected to cover all potential cinematic skeeviness, so proceed with caution.
Who are you, aside from the mayor?
I’m Shaenon K. Garrity. I’m mostly a cartoonist. I watch a lot of scary movies while I draw cartoons.
I still remember the absolute thrill I felt when they first encountered the brachiosaurs (still my favorite dinosaur), 25 years later. Oh, and the reason they made T-Rexes & raptors is the same reason that zoos have bears and tigers: for most people, predators are more interesting (and scarier) than herbivores.
The dinosaurs and scares are awesome, but this movie’s philosophizing is just grating.
“Life finds a way”. 95% of animal life died in the Permian extinction, so, mostly, it doesn’t. Or, if you mean life IN GENERAL finds a way, sure, but since that clearly doesn’t apply to a group of individual species (that already went extinct once) what does it have to do with making a dinosaur park?
Everything about this movie is set up to fall apart. The scientists use the ONE species of land-vertebrate, a frog, that changes sex, so they can introduce breeding dinosaurs, when it would make more sense to use dinosaur relatives like birds or crocodiles for the genetic fill-ins. Nope, they pick an obscure, hard-to-get, species of African frog, solely so that the dinosaurs can swap sex later. And while we’re at it, let’s make cages that aren’t strong enough to hold back the dinosaurs, and totally depend on electricity to keep them in, because power outages never, ever, ever happen!
This isn’t “life finds a way” or “they didn’t think if they should” or even a functional criticism of capitalism (which could stand a few criticisms, to be sure). If real-life zoos were run this way, lions would be eating everyone in the US.
But so pretty! My inner seven-year-old just about makes my head explode every time I watch it. EVERY TIME!
That’s Crichton for you, his books have a permanent hate on for scientists. In every Crichton book I’ve read and a few more I’ve heard of, the scientists are portrayed as irresponsible idiots who bring doom to everyone in the vicinity.
It’s a bit like the Death Star (except morally, since the ethics of a zoo to entertain the public are different from the ethics of a planet-killing device). Everyone complained so much about the port that it had to be intentional sabotage in the newer movies, but if you can generate enough energy to turn a planet to dust, and then vent that energy into VACUUM through a TWO-METRE hole, without baking the crew of said space station, you have made a fantastic device.
If you make a park full of extinct animals and the only way for it to fall apart is an unprecedented storm, internal sabotage, multiple failures of oversight on “safeguards” and “what DNA should we use to plug gaps”, and for the dinosaurs to actually be supernatural in intelligence and ninja-skills, then you’ve made an excellent park, and anyone saying that it means technology has gone too far probably would have said the same of the forge.
I wonder if that was why Crichton hated the idea of climate change. “No, that’s not dangerous, because life finds a way! Climate change can’t open doors.”
Loved everything about the dinosaurs. Everything that involved any human in the entire movie [except possibly Samuel L Jackson] was – at best – terrible
I still remember the absolute thrill I felt when they first encountered the brachiosaurs (still my favorite dinosaur), 25 years later. Oh, and the reason they made T-Rexes & raptors is the same reason that zoos have bears and tigers: for most people, predators are more interesting (and scarier) than herbivores.
The dinosaurs and scares are awesome, but this movie’s philosophizing is just grating.
“Life finds a way”. 95% of animal life died in the Permian extinction, so, mostly, it doesn’t. Or, if you mean life IN GENERAL finds a way, sure, but since that clearly doesn’t apply to a group of individual species (that already went extinct once) what does it have to do with making a dinosaur park?
Everything about this movie is set up to fall apart. The scientists use the ONE species of land-vertebrate, a frog, that changes sex, so they can introduce breeding dinosaurs, when it would make more sense to use dinosaur relatives like birds or crocodiles for the genetic fill-ins. Nope, they pick an obscure, hard-to-get, species of African frog, solely so that the dinosaurs can swap sex later. And while we’re at it, let’s make cages that aren’t strong enough to hold back the dinosaurs, and totally depend on electricity to keep them in, because power outages never, ever, ever happen!
This isn’t “life finds a way” or “they didn’t think if they should” or even a functional criticism of capitalism (which could stand a few criticisms, to be sure). If real-life zoos were run this way, lions would be eating everyone in the US.
But so pretty! My inner seven-year-old just about makes my head explode every time I watch it. EVERY TIME!
Now, if only it had ankylosaurs.
That’s Crichton for you, his books have a permanent hate on for scientists. In every Crichton book I’ve read and a few more I’ve heard of, the scientists are portrayed as irresponsible idiots who bring doom to everyone in the vicinity.
It’s a bit like the Death Star (except morally, since the ethics of a zoo to entertain the public are different from the ethics of a planet-killing device). Everyone complained so much about the port that it had to be intentional sabotage in the newer movies, but if you can generate enough energy to turn a planet to dust, and then vent that energy into VACUUM through a TWO-METRE hole, without baking the crew of said space station, you have made a fantastic device.
If you make a park full of extinct animals and the only way for it to fall apart is an unprecedented storm, internal sabotage, multiple failures of oversight on “safeguards” and “what DNA should we use to plug gaps”, and for the dinosaurs to actually be supernatural in intelligence and ninja-skills, then you’ve made an excellent park, and anyone saying that it means technology has gone too far probably would have said the same of the forge.
I wonder if that was why Crichton hated the idea of climate change. “No, that’s not dangerous, because life finds a way! Climate change can’t open doors.”
“Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear” is still my favorite shot from this movie.
Loved everything about the dinosaurs. Everything that involved any human in the entire movie [except possibly Samuel L Jackson] was – at best – terrible
Those ominous ripples…. HAPPINESS!