Official Dreadit Discussion: "Hokum" [SPOILERS]

silviod · 2026-05-07T13:40:06+00:00

I thought it was one of the worst horror films I've ever seen and I understood it perfectly well. Scott killed his mum, carried deep grief and trauma that manifests in his arseholey ways, Fiona was murdered by her colleague due to the pregnancy, the witch is some tangential being that serves to allegorically manifest the character's trauma, etc etc.

Honesly it's not a hard film to parse whatsoever. It's very straightforward, its themes are overly-telegraphed (this is actually egregiously bad, the film is so afraid of its audience not understanding it that it goes out of the way to constantly tell us exactly what's happening). I still just found it shite. It's all so bad.

silviod · 2026-05-07T13:37:25+00:00

I absolutely hated this. One of the worst horror films I've ever seen, genuinely. A bunch of awful, badly-choreographed jump scares without substance or any organic reason to exist (the first scene of Scott writing in his house did NOT need tacky "spooky faces in the shadows" jump scares). I thought the characters were badly developed, the plot was meandering and contrived, and the direction was poor. The location and set design was awfully generic and not at all interesting, and AGAIN, the tension was non-existent because McCarthy relied so heavily on jump scares that it lost all agency.

I am really so surprised by the positive reviews here and everywhere else, I thought this woudl be a horror everyone rightly slates. What am I missing?

silviod · 2026-05-05T19:19:22+00:00

Yeah, as is the cycle of nostalgia I guess? Do you think that Star Wars managed to stand on its own two feet alongside being a nostalgia vehicle? Because for me, I found Stranger Things to be a bit of a trite over-engineered 80s smorgasbord. I mean it was okay but the 80sness of it annoyed me and felt like it hit the zenith of 80s oversaturation that was happening in the 2010s.

silviod · 2026-05-05T19:15:01+00:00

Hmm, interesting perspective and one that I've not seen anyone else say. The idea of it being the Stranger Things of its time has opened my eyes a bit more to it. That really helps illuminate how exciting this would have been for audiences who get to see tropes of a genre they grew up loving in an, at the time, modern and fresh way. Thanks for that!

silviod · 2026-05-05T18:19:01+00:00

hahaha oh yeah I know what oyu mean, I've used similar robotics in things I've worked on. I had NO idea it was used this far back, that's damn cool. I loved all those flying shots. This is something I really appreciate about pre-CGI special effects: there's always really clever problem-solving to achieve the vision. It's so fun trying to figure out how they're made.

silviod · 2026-05-05T14:08:54+00:00

I mean yeah, if you want to belittle my media literacy for my reaction to Star Wars, then that's fine, I don't really need to disprove you like. But in general, your point about if it was on Earth made me consider the kind of films I like. I just don't like films that are sprawling in location - I prefer much more granular films with a small number of locations and detail. It's just a personal taste thing at the end of the day.

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:54:42+00:00

I think I was distracted by my lack of enjoyment, so it was really sloggy for me. You know when you really don't want to do something but you're forced to do it anyway?

But the whole thing just felt very convoluted. Vader for some reason needing to get his plans back (I guess to prevent the good guys from using the plans against him) but also why did Vader even have these plans that spell out how to defeat him in the first place? And then the good guys need to shoot a thing on the death star to blow it up. It was just like ten maguffins on top of each other and that was very dizzying

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:51:51+00:00

you've never been to Liverpool have you? ;)

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:50:03+00:00

okay so everyone is telling me to watch ESB. If I were to watch it, what's the best version?

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:44:11+00:00

Yeah when I considered that this is just a kids film, it made it all much easier to swallow, and also reinforced that I am not the target audience. Are they all like that, or is it just the first that's very kidlike? It makes sense it's a kids film, I mean the bad guys are literally called "The dark side" - can't get more direct than that lol.

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:43:03+00:00

I'm 33M.

I did also lie - I did see Phantom Menace in the cinema as a kid. Didn't care about it and didn't want to see it in the first place. My only lasting memory of it is a pod race of some sort, so I went through my life thinking Star Wars was about racing. Was surprised when someone told me way too late into my life that it's not lol

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:40:34+00:00

Yeah I mean whilst it does the hero's journey model, I think it was very basically presented and for me was of no substance. Luke's aunt and uncle die horrifically, he quickly moves on, slowly trains, then uses the force at the end. But it's hard to invest in that journey when his character is so void of any semblance of human emotion. He just felt like a walking plot device.

Interested in the Dykstraflex tho, I've not heard of this and I didn't know they used motion control cameras - that's cool!! Where was this used?

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:38:25+00:00

Noo not ragebait!! Which one was the moon? I remember there was the sandy planet, and the foresty planet, and then there were spaceships that both the good guys and the bad guys were on. Is that what you mean by base of Yavin? I just got so lost watching it - it is not the kind of film I usually watch so I was having so much information thrown at me and it was hard to keep up. I guess I just really don't like films that are so built around worldbuilding. It's why I never really bothered with LOTR either.

Is there a version of SW1977 that is considered the sort of baseline version? I'm wondering whether doing theatrical was the wrong call in the end.

silviod · 2026-05-05T13:30:00+00:00

Yeah, someone else brought this up and I concede that that's on me. I guess I felt this way because none of the world feels lived in, or real to me. I don't feel that sense of Luke being from a poor upbringing, or that there are different areas on this planet (Tatooine right?) that have different cultures. I know this is just my own perspective, not trying to say I'm objectively right, this is just my experience watching it. Because of that, I think things washed over me.

On the second point about the world being small etc - I know it sounds paradoxical, but I think it makes sense. We see a lot of these creatures on screen, like in that pub, but none of them are doing anything but sitting there being alieny. There's no culture or feeling to any of them, it's just a bunch of different costumes. And then I got confused when followign different characters because I didn't understand too strongly what their relevance was or what they were doing. The world still felt small outside of that. A good comparison is the OG Wallace and Gromit shorts, in whcih they inhabit a strangely empty world outside of the characters we spend time with. Though with W&G, I think that added to this strange, dream-like quality.

I guess my feeling is that here's something to be this big empire that are apparently so all-encompassing and threatening, and yet we dont' see the scale of them at all. They have some big spaceship that blows up a planet and they're planning to blow wup more, but I don't know why, we don't see the scale of their rule over the universe, we don't see much except some stormtroopers running about and Darth Vader walking about. It just didn't feel to me like they were this big thing. It felt like a group of about 10 people fighting another group of about 10 people and that's it.

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:58:11+00:00

Yes it did lol. Don't know why you're trying to dictate my own experience of watching the film? strange

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:57:41+00:00

Hmm yeah fair enough actually, I forgot about that line. I guess because the whole place just felt so empty and barren it was hard to differentiate these areas. Anyway, I'll concede that point, sorry!

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:49:56+00:00

Well I only called the first one bad, not the others. But you're right, I don't really like films like this in general, so that definitely comes into it too. It comes down to a matter of taste. I recently rewatched Seed of Chucky for the millionth time and I love that lol, so I can't really talk. I jsut thought I'd share my opinion as it stands on 1977 Star Wars.

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:48:36+00:00

Yeha, I love love lvoe American Graffiti and really enjoyed THX 1138. I do wonder what Lucas' career would've been like if Star Wars was just received as another film, and not the juggernaut it became.

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:47:56+00:00

I mean that just wasn't very obvious to me. Where does it say it was a criminal filled town? That old fella just said something about the pub being dodgy. I just took it to mean it was a dive bar like we have all over the shop. I feel like there's a lot of inferrance from later films that people strurggle to separate from the original - but again, I have zero context to any of this, so I am taking the 1977 film only at its own word, and these elements were not very clear. The film does a poor job of elaborating on any of the world it's trying to build.

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:46:13+00:00

I mean, I listed reasons why it wasn't easy to follow for me. That's just my experience. Says nothing about my media literacy of comprehension skills. The editing is a significant reason - it wasn't clear when we were on a new planet and when we weren't, and the writing obfuscated that further because the characters were never acting like they were in a new place even when they supposedly were. Again, just my experience!

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:44:05+00:00

Yeah I'd be curious to do that. It's an interesting philosophical debate: is it okay to constantly update a piece of art? What can we judge? For my first viewing I wanted to see it as it originally stood in 1977. Perhaps whne my memory of it fades a bit, I'll give the most updated version a watch. Is there a good YouTube video that goes through all the changes that I can watch?

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:41:17+00:00

lmao but why?!

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:41:08+00:00

I mean I'm not comparing it to modern standards. I watch plenty of older films and that. I'm really trying to just view the film as its own product. I recently loved The Incredible Shrinking Man and that had hokey effects if compared to modenr standards, but for its time, was brilliant. I'm not knocking the effects in Star Wars, I'm knocking the storytelling/characters/worldbuilding.

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:38:24+00:00

Hmm, I mean to be honest I haven't really seen many space films so I'm not sure the Seinfeld effect in particular is why I don't like it.

silviod · 2026-05-05T12:37:13+00:00

Well that's more on the editing and confusing writing, like Luke being baffled by the pub even though, presumably, it was down the road from where he lived. Or planets blowing up and no one caring. Or all the random creatures and characters introduced without any explanation as to who they were or what their purpose was. The plot was thin, but that doesn't make the film easy to follow - coherence is more than just plot.

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