MeFi Horror Club: #18 - Ju-On; #19 - VHS Viral

October 10, 2014 3:08 PM

The next two picks in the MeFi horror club are Ju-On (The Grudge, the original 2002 version) and V/H/S Viral, which get a thread on the same day it is released via On Demand.

If you've never seen Ju-On, HOLY SHIT that is a scary one.

Plot description, via iMDb:

A mysterious and vengeful spirit marks and pursues anybody who dares enter the house in which it resides.

It was later remade in English, just like everything else, but we'll be watching the original. It has wide streaming availability, including Netflix, Hulu, and many other options.

V/H/S Viral is the third installment in the V/H/S anthology series. In each, a group of horror directors make (very) loosely connected short films. This one will branch out from the "lost video tape" conceit to look at viral videos. Here's the trailer.

And a plot description:

Follows fame-obsessed teens who unwittingly become stars of the next internet sensation.

To accommodate this film on its opening week, we've swapped the "recent" and "non-English" slots.

posted by DirtyOldTown (10 comments total)

Nice! I loved Ju-On but more than a few people here have told me they found it confusing. I will watch it again tonight.

Caught Annabelle yesterday too. Much better than I was expecting but yeah, pretty cliche.
posted by Hoopo at 3:45 PM on October 14, 2014

Did these ever get posted? I don't see them in the archives, but maybe I'm just not finding them.
posted by whir at 6:46 AM on October 30, 2014

Honestly, no. The club kind of petered out there. It felt like we were approaching a 1:1 post to comment ratio in the near future, so I just kind of let the thing die.

Maybe it was just me personally losing steam, so if someone else wants to take the helm for a while, please do.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:42 AM on November 3, 2014

I'd be willing to try to help re-start the horror club again, although not at this very moment, I'm a bit loaded with work, but some time towards the end of November/Early December, probably.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:36 AM on November 10, 2014

I could take on a post or two as well. I was following the discussions with some interest, but wound up being too busy for one movie a week.
posted by whir at 6:34 AM on November 10, 2014

(Also I don't want to have watched the benighted V/H/S: Viral in vain!)
posted by whir at 6:36 AM on November 10, 2014

I'd be willing to try to help re-start the horror club again

Surely you mean re-animate?

Yeah, my current home life doesn't always give me the opportunity to watch a movie by myself every week (my wife is a bit scared by horror movies) so I'm not always able to participate, and sometimes I'm going on my memory of a movie.

Anyways, if we do start up again I thought I would mention I just caught Oculus and it was pretty well done and actually surprised me a few times.
posted by Hoopo at 1:21 PM on November 10, 2014

Yeah, maybe we should think about starting it up as a committee thing instead of having a single benevolent dictator (no offense to DirtyOldTown, I think he's done a good job). It'd take some pressure off a single person, and there'd be more of us invested in it.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:01 PM on November 11, 2014

I'd love that. I also think it seems clear we could cover better movies with more interest if it was less than weekly. Biweekly, maybe. Or even monthly.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:36 PM on November 12, 2014

Yes, biweekly might be good. Also, longer periods between announcing the movie and discussing it, maybe.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:45 PM on November 14, 2014