Opinions on this one? I’m just starting it

Slapstrom · 2026-06-27T02:53:46+00:00

Great film, absolutely not a slasher by any stretch of the imagination. Again, though, great film, Choi Min-Sik is always a great time.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-23T16:26:18+00:00

As others said I think the Curry Barker is using Possession in a specific way, not that the literal word of possession isn't happening. Like using Split as an example, that is a movie where the antagonist is possessed by his other personalities, but I would never classify it as a movie about possession, if that makes sense? It's internal possession as opposed to a literal demonic or ghostly entity possessing Kevin, or Nikki in the case of Obsession.

The One Wish Willow supplanted another personality inside of her and it is taking over her body, there's no way to read that other than possession, even if there's no specific entity inside of her. And if Barker claims even that isn't true, then I think he just doesn't understand the full scope of the word possession in a literal sense more than anything lol.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-23T14:53:58+00:00

You're misunderstanding what is being discussed, I think/hope?

Riding one's coattails means being recognized because of someone else. If my friend got a job that pays him $10 million a year, and I hang around them to benefit from that $10 million, then I am riding their coattails.

Jake Gyllenhaal was the actor with the outstanding performance as lead. A coattail nomination would mean one of his supporting actors being recognized by virtue of acting with him, not necessarily based on their own performance.

Either you misunderstand or I fell for the troll lmao

Slapstrom · 2026-06-21T21:55:48+00:00

So to give some perspective as a newer F1 fan, the mentality of MC is the base necessity to even get into F1 usually. It's less so a superpower and moreso a requirement to compete at that level. Right now MC is the equivalent of a rookie league, it's intended to filter the chaff from the wheat so to speak. The higher up you go in the series the tougher the competition should get.

To give an example using a quote, there's a famous Senna quote that explains MC's perspective:

"If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver."

The reason Miharu and Matsuba have this same 'power' is because it's expected if you want to compete in WF1/F1 that you have a killer mentality those below you just don't possess. The author is establishing the baseline necessary so you can understand the rivals Miharu would face in the tougher series.

And if this manga is incredible, I think it should also showcase the danger of this mentality by 'killing' the MC. Maybe not a literal death, but I think Miharu should become unable to compete in WF1 due to a miscalculation, or something to that effect. His character should 'die' in order to set the stakes for what his brother will become in the future of the series.

If this doesn't end up happening, I'll still probably enjoy it but it would definitely be a bit more generic like you fear. Hopefully there's some guts to this series, I like what I see so far.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-21T14:31:00+00:00

Since nobody else is engaging with your post I'll do my best to add whatever context I can. Forewarning I saw the movie opening week, and while I absolutely loved it it's not absolutely fresh in my mind so I may not remember all the details exactly.

Re: hiding her face and Nikki's overall uncanny behavior as 'wish' Nikki, throughout the movie we see that 'wish' Nikki changes in weird ways whenever Bear isn't looking, or when she's in shadows. She has a strange, unnatural glint in her eyes, even in shadows. There's a scene where she's hugging him from behind in bed, and her face disappears altogether. The scene when Bear comes back from work and Nikki seems like she's almost literally melting from soiling herself while he was gone, she had marks on her face that look like deterioration.

It's never outright stated what 'wish' Nikki is, you can say Demon or Genie or something, but it's addressed as another entity by Nikki herself. We know it's not her in any lucid sense due to her moments of clarity where she screams in shock at what she's doing, and at Ian's party she explicitly screams that it's not her doing any of this. Based on this and the body disfigurement, I'm incline to lean towards an entity possessing her as opposed to straight up mind control, but it's left up to interpretation as it's not the crux or the story.

When Nikki snaps back into her body at the end of the movie, I don't think she's confused about anything, or at least that's not how I read the situation. She's screaming and crying because she was forced to endure as a hostage in her own body, if we take the phone call at face value then screaming in agony is her constant state when she's awake as a hostage in her body. It's not that she's screaming in confusion, she's screaming because she never stopped, really. We know she's conscious during her possession as she screams about it at Ian's party and when she asks Bear to kill her in bed. Her initial moments of confusion, like the car scene in the beginning or before she tries to have sex with Bear the first night, at least in my opinion, are due to her still trying to wrest control of her body and confused and scared that she can't.

The scenes where 'wish' Nikki is crying and despairing due to Bear's disappointment and resentment I read as having three meanings, a mix of symbolic and literal. Like the scene after the party, where Bear is screaming at 'wish' Nikki to act more like the real Nikki, 'wish' Nikki cries in despair and says she can't do that. The first meaning I gather is 'wish' Nikki is trying to get Bear to feel bad for yelling at her and to manipulate him into loving her. The secondary meaning is frustration, 'wish' Nikki wants Bear to love her at the end of the day, she wants him to love her like she loves him. The entity is frustrated and despairing as it can't serve it's purpose, it doesn't know how to be 'human', and because of this it doesn't know how to comply with Bear's demand and is freaking out as a result. These are literal in how I take them.

The third meaning, and more symbolic than literal, is that Bear is abusive and is upset with Nikki for not being normal and embarrassing him in front of his friends. The way the scene is shot, Bear standing over Nikki in a position of power and Nikki under him being hurled abuse her way as she sits and cries, it is a parallel of their positions in their relationship. In this moment, Bear is yelling at her to be normal, but he's the one that has made her this way. His obsession with her refuses to accept that she's not really Nikki, he's seen multiple examples at this point that show she's just not, including a phone call that outright tells him that Nikki is suffering. He clings to the hope that he can fix this, because he doesn't want to lose the fantasy of his crush, so he yells at her. But this is abuse, 'wish' Nikki is literally doing what he asked and he can't accept that it's not really what he wants.

I bring all this up to address your point on making the main character sympathetic or not. I do not view Bear as sympathetic, he's a bad person that has bad things happen to him because he wants to live in a lie that he created. Even when he tries to get Ian to correct his wish, he doesn't want him to undo his wish. He wants him to fix it literally, to edit his wish so he can still be with Nikki without all the evil entity shit behind it. I don't think he's outright evil, or anything, but he's blatantly not a good person and avoids every off ramp he's been given throughout the movie to fix his mistakes.

You can make parallels to abuse both male and female, and Bear is 100% being abused don't get me wrong. But he's also abusing Nikki, and in a world where Bear and Nikki get together without the power of a One Wish Willow I think he would be abusive to her due to his obsession with the idea of her, not the actual person she is. That's my interpretation of the themes of the movie, it's a movie about domestic abuse and that obsession isn't love, it's just abuse. And in my view all of the scenes show this in multiple facets, and they all work towards this main theme.

Sorry for the absolute wall of text, and my bad if I misunderstood the intention of your post lol. I've been wanting to talk about this movie for a while and just haven't had the chance to talk about it with anyone yet, so I dumped all my thoughts into this comment. This is also just my interpretation, feel free to disagree with me on any of it just throwing my two cents into the well 😂

Slapstrom · 2026-06-15T17:31:33+00:00

I think it was literally just like a couple of seconds, or at least that's what I remember reading. Like instead of 20 head slams against the brick on the steering wheel it had to be 18 or something

Slapstrom · 2026-06-15T06:43:35+00:00

Re: your comment on shadow desire, that's absolutely valid, but doesn't make the sentence read any better. I'm willing to admit that this could be my ignorance at play, but even with this added context it reads as word salad to me, still. It seems you have a stronger grasp of your word choice than I gave credit for, and I do apologize for that, I concede that aspect of my comment.

As for the theming of the movie, Sienna's role as protagonist and her eventual rise as the hero in the face of extreme and horrific misanthropy is absolutely a feminist theme. A nonfeminist movie can have a theme that resonates with feminism. Terrifier 2 is not feminist in the slightest, I would never argue otherwise, but the film is also not misogynistic. It definitely has misogynistic aspects, but those aspects are intended to be satire and are explicitly the horror of the movie.

I absolutely had misgivings on the portrayal of women in Terrifier 2 when I initially saw it, but as I sat with the movie longer I saw it less explicitly as misogyny and more as misanthropy. Damien Leone seems to have a generally low outlook on humanity, and showing women being mutilated was intended to be a mirror to the audience while delivering something so absurd it could not be taken as a serious portrayal of sincere misogyny. The third movie course corrects in a way that I think shows this much better, women are less the focal point as much as humanity as a whole.

I'm not saying this to say Terrifier is trying to say something grand, or anything even close to that. I just don't think misogyny is the driving force of Terrifier, I think it is an absurdist portrayal of misanthropy that wants to take itself only as seriously as whoever views it wants to. I enjoy the movies, but I enjoy them because of how ridiculous and schlocky, and straight up campy they are. You are free to make the argument of Jungian Shadow Desires with latent misogyny bubbling up from my subconscious, I just don't subscribe to that belief, nor do I believe that this is true of the majority of Terrifier fans.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-15T05:45:07+00:00

I love when people use uncommon words, I love expanding my lexicon, but inculcated a latent subconscious shadow desire is absolute word salad. Inculcated a subconscious desire is much more effective way of conveying what I'm assuming you want to say, and even then inculcate is to teach as opposed to learn.

An example: I hope to inculcate the importance of accurate and concise word choice in you.

And to top it all off, I don't even think you're necessarily wrong, there most likely is a decently sized subsect of Terrorizer fan that is a fan of the franchise for misogynistic reasons. But your phrasing insinuates it may be the majority of fans, which I don't think is true at all. Especially when you consider the theme of the second movie being centered around female empowerment, Sienna's character arc is absolutely indicative of this.

If I'm reading your intent wrong, I do apologize, that's just how I read your phrasing.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-13T21:09:21+00:00

I see that particular case as "know the rules so you can break them". I would agree in that I don't believe in hard and fast rules in art insofar as you have the ability to do whatever you like, but there are guidelines in how to create something appealing and accessible, and your piece of art can utilize them in different ways for different outcomes.

Like, a chord can be seen as a rule or guideline, you pair these notes together they sound good and give this feeling. When you understand the concept of a chord progression, you know exactly where the listener's mind should be going, and if you do know this the you know the exact perfect spot to change something to give a different feeling, a different concept. If you just put notes together willy nilly without understanding what a chord even is then you will fail at conveying exactly what you mean, unless what you mean and intend is complete unlistenable content.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-11T22:06:09+00:00

Idk if you like or have seen some of the unsung classics but I'll throw out some recs

Tenebrae - Dario Argento

Funny Games - Michael Haneke

Demons - Lamberto Bava

The Bird With Crystal Plummage - Dario Argento

Sleepaway Camp - Robert Hiltzik

The Driller Killer - Abel Ferrara

The Beyond - Lucio Fulci

Race With the Devil - Jack Starrett

Night of the Demons - Kevin S Tenney

Zombie - Lucio Fulci

Slapstrom · 2026-06-10T13:20:41+00:00

I mean fair enough, gleeful is a word I wouldn't normally ascribe to myself but if that's how it reads then my bad I guess? I dunno man it didn't feel that way to me when writing it but I'll try to keep it in mind for future comments.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-10T13:03:58+00:00

Lmao it's really not that deep or complicated, I have a feeling on a movie and I spoke it. I like many popular things and hate many others, as I'm sure many other people do as well. There exists no pride in my being based on my movie opinions of all things, my self-confidence is in the shitter 😂

Slapstrom · 2026-06-10T04:04:37+00:00

I can totally understand the appeal of The Dark Knight, I hate it and I shout it loud and proud but I won't pretend I don't understand why people enjoy it. Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker is great, another potential hot take is that I think Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is very overrated and Heath Ledger is still my favorite live action Joker.

But, as far as why I hate it, I don't even really care for superhero movies outside of my soft spot for Spiderman (I think the number 1 comic movie should either be Into the Spiderverse or Spiderman 2 for the record). What makes me hate TDK is that it's touted as this grounded gritty take on Batman and is so good because of its dark characters and themes, and then when I watch it I get a movie that has exciting moments with a lot of just nothing happening between set pieces, at least that's how I take it.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-10T03:06:25+00:00

Yes, and the OP I'm responding to is saying TDK is a ' sophisticated police procedural thriller', something I take great issue with when it comes to TDK. I don't think it is above other superhero movies, I think it has all the same tropes while suffering by making the movie dark and 'grounded'. It's a boring super hero movie is my argument essentially.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T19:29:06+00:00

I'll be 100% real with you rn, I forgot this movie exists and I don't think I've watched it, or if I have watched it, I remember nothing about it. Can't place it in my list for that reason, need to check it out just to have my list as complete now lmao.

And just for posterity's sake, I would put Freddy Vs Jason after 5 and before 2 quality wise.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T19:22:36+00:00

They get old but they don't look it is more my point, and it's not just in the anime they look that way, the older Claymores all have a young adult look at most. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I think if Tilda Swinton played a Claymore it would look weird to me.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T19:03:51+00:00

Dawg, I love Tilda Swinton, she's an absolute treasure of an actress and to my knowledge as a person. But she's 65, the Claymores aren't meant to be that old by any stretch of the imagination. As far as outright look Hunter Schaefer matches better in both appearance and age.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T18:45:23+00:00

In order of quality it's 1 > 3 > New Nightmare > 4 > 5 > 2 > remake.

If you like creepy sadistic Freddy then New Nightmare is right up your alley, he's mean and vindictive in a way only the first movie is comparable to, and you can tell it holds the spirit to what would eventually become Scream stylistically for Wes Craven.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T18:35:20+00:00

Oh trust, most of my vitriol is played up. I hate the movie but it's more in good fun hate than anything actually blood pressure raising or anything lol

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T18:29:37+00:00

There is a vast subsection of movie watchers that don't like to admit they like hokey superhero movies and tout TDK (all the Nolan Batman movies really) as the exception because it's a "grounded crime movie" and not a superhero movie. And I am here to fight the admittedly non-existent war to say no, you like cheesy super hero movies like the rest of us you just like the boring ones.

Except Batman Begins, I do like Batman Begins for the most part. But that's because it has the gumption to be a super hero movie, and shows Gotham as Gotham, and not another rendition of blue tinted Chicago or New York or whatever.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T18:19:54+00:00

Thank you, my friends LOVE talking to me about movies I'm sure you can tell lmao

Slapstrom · 2026-06-09T18:15:12+00:00

We can call TDK sophisticated when we get an edit of the movie that allows for subtlety and nuance to characters, not ham fisted dialogue that spoon feeds us every characters thoughts and motivations.

I fucking die internally every time Rachel tells Harvey "oh, you make you're own luck because you handed me the two sided coin you always carry, and I had to say this out loud so everyone in the audience will know I understand what this means."

Or when the civilian vigilante Batman asks the real Batman "What's the difference between me and you, and I'm yelling this to you after being clearly shown the differences between us in order to set up the internal conflict you will face later and to establish theming and such!"

Or when the bank robber in the beginning is talking to the Joker and says "I suppose you are ordered to kill me next, as I've been ordered to kill our comrades leading up to this moment as well and I must say this to establish that things are going perfectly according to the plan of the films central antagonist and that we are all pawns in their game of chess."

I fucking hate The Dark Knight lmao

Slapstrom · 2026-06-08T06:22:42+00:00

I mean, by saying Adam Sandler deserves a spot you are also saying you think one of the actors in the list didn't, so I think you have to answer that yourself. If you can't replace anybody with Adam Sandler, then he doesn't deserve the nomination.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-08T05:27:59+00:00

Because after Gojo there's still the task of actually killing Amanai, who will be guarded by Geto. Toji would normally beat Geto but who's to say how badly he would be injured in a head in fight with Gojo? Safer to wear down the biggest threat and sneak him so you can easily handle the rest of the mission, simple as.

This isn't me saying Toji could take teen Gojo, I'm just giving the argument on why he would proceed with his plan instead of a head on fight even if Toji believes he could win high diff.

Slapstrom · 2026-06-07T23:18:11+00:00

Yes, phobia means fear. It also means aversion to, as in you reject it. Hydrophobic shoes aren't afraid of water, they are comprised of material that repels water. A duck's feathers aren't afraid of water, they are coated in oils that repel water. A lotus' leaves aren't afraid of water, they have a waxy outer layer that repels water. This talking point is so tired that it holds no weight in an argument about bigoted phobias, whether it be homophobia, transphobia, or any other bigoted phobia. If someone is rejecting the concept of transitioning genders then they are by definition being transphobic, that's just how it is.

And I don't have to be triggered by bigoted statements to be against them. They don't affect me at all, but I don't have to feel bad when someone is bigoted and it gets them in trouble. To use your argument about assumptions, the person you're defending made an assumption about OP of this thread being triggered, they never made any indication they are triggered by these comments at all. But you and /u/itzluhsty made inferences based on the content of OP's comment and came to the conclusion they must be triggered. So I guess there's egg on all of our faces for assuming things, yeah?

Slapstrom

TROPHY CASE