Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

The Loved One is a wonderfully deranged film. I hope someday that my canine casket might be launched into outer space, too. Why not? The film's peak moment is Mrs. Joyboy's dangerous encounter with the refrigerator. Recommended!

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

I just watched Hour of the Wolf and didn't see it mentioned here.
For shame:o

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

No one else mentioned Barton Fink? Barton, a successful New York playwright, goes to Hollywood with dreams of crafting a story that will resonate with the common man. But all he finds is disillusionment, both with his idols and his art, and becomes trapped in a decaying hotel, confronting an entity that may be the devil, a supernaturally-endowed psychopath, or perhaps even a creature that sprang from his damaged subconscious, considering that this is both a recurring theme in the Coen Bros. work (i.e. bumbling ex-convict Hi's daydreams birthing the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse in Raising Arizona) and Barton's deepest yearning is to discover "the life of the mind." "I'll show you the life of the mind!" roars the thing, and indeed it does - Barton's conception of the human mind as inherently rational and cultured is torn away to reveal the murderous, twitching lizard-brain impulses that the hunk of gray tissue in our skulls is constructed from.

Other Ligottian aspects are the aforementioned setting most of the story plays out in - a once-grand hotel gone the way of dust and cobwebs - and the plot's gradual progression from the petty annoyances of reality (i.e. Barton's writers' block) to inexplicable, dreamlike terror that may in fact be derived from those petty annoyances. Is it coincidence Barton's writers' block, which is portrayed as almost an infectious disease, appears around the same time as the being who will provide him ultimate revelations about the nature of his perceptions of reality? Nobody knows but the Coen Bros., and they aren't talking.

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

for me there are only really two films that are ligottian:
1. Kairo (aka Pulse). This film has a deep deep sense of despair and of being haunted by beings that remind you of your own mortality. The movie deals a lot with suicide and hopelessness. Very much like Ligotti.

2. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. This is a very black comedy where the horrors just seem to serve to mock the characters. It makes the victims into petty jokes and is savage with its mockery of human relations. Grim humor just like Ligotti.

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

Brian Yuzna's Society is quite Ligottian, if only because it's a film that updates the aesthetic of Lovecraft without namedropping any Elder Gods or Arkham locales. However, the grotesque reveal at the end is somewhat similar to the nightmarish amalgamations in "The Mystics of Muelenburg".

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

The most ligottian movie I can think of is Rubber, in which a tire rolls around using telekinetic powers to destroy stuff. The opening monologue from one of the apparent police who are pretending to try to stop the tire is what does it for me: the second most ligottian movie I can think of is Bruiser. it is in the same vein as My Work is Not Yet Done and Falling Down, with the added interesting twist that our human-doormat-turned-antihero begins his rampage after waking up one day to find that his face has become a blank white mask, and only by violently standing up for/avenging himself can he regain some semblance of an identity.

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

I have some out of the box suggestions. The thing is they don't classify as horror in almost any sense but vaguely existential horror in one case and a zero sum game resolution with the other.

I Heart Huckabees: In particular there's a scene where Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin break down Jude Law to a set of routines. He tries to not do them but everyone in his life is so enamored with the stories wrapped in the routines that they don't let up until he reluctantly resumes it only to psychically collapse. The movie in general succeeds in this regard for a majority of its playtime but the ending undercuts it. David O. Russell thought his head was up his ass when he made this movie but I think it's more honest than Silver Linings Playbook.

Falling Down: Michael Douglas plays a dude who's just fed up. Maybe I'm applying Ligottian too broadly. I am not sure how to explain my position without just synopsizing it in full.

Even in TCATHR, it references a movie that isn't horror but details a worldview that highlights a truth or lack of it with a blithe nihilism, "Hero." So I have a small precedent in offering these two up.

Huckabees is probably more defensible though. I have a lot now to check out thanks to this thread. Thanks all :)

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

I suggest "Take Shelter" :


There's a heavy dose of family drama, but the film maintains a constant anxiety throughout. And, most uniquely, the film features a "bright darkness"; the protagonist is haunted by dreams and hallucinations of a stormy day, where he's harassed by shapeless stalkers who are only ever seen through rain-soaked glass or heavy down pour...

...the film is set in Elyria, Ohio - which in so many ways is typical of the rundown towns that dot Ligotti's geography. Furthermore, the bleached skies and rainy weather that feature so prominently in the film are a mainstay along the Lake Eerie coast, right up to Detroit...

Re: Ligottian Horror Flicks
 

When I saw this I thought it was The Time of the Wolf by Michael Haneke. The film Hour of the Wolf by Bergman is a classic; one of Von Sydow's best.