Good Low Budget and Independent Flicks
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 1, 2026 02:34
VIEWED: 28778
PAGE 9 of 30
I finally got around to watching the one other movie that made the top lists for last year that I wanted to see.
Everything Everywhere All At Once.
I had a LOT of fun watching that one. Very pleasantly surprised here, and I'm glad I went into it knowing nothing.
I think it possibly went a little too "silly" for my tastes and I think the third act suffered from that, somewhat to the same degree that I feel the third act faltered in Free Guy, but we don't always need things to be serious.
I was left wondering what that movie would have been like had they gone totally somber and straight with it. The first act had me thinking it was going to be a much different movie than it turned out being.
In any event, I give it at least an 8 out of 10. Maybe a 9 if I'm being generous. I can't imagine somebody watching it and not liking it.
ETA: I was very glad they did it in English. I also didn't know that was the case going into it and I'm glad that after the first few minutes they dropped the subtitles and you weren't forced to read them the entire movie.
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Not that I give a single shit about the Oscars... In fact, if I didn't hear about it on the radio while working the other day I wouldn't have even known they were happening... But I wanted to post this because I thought it was very strange that a good movie that I actually thoroughly enjoyed won so many awards.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oscars-2023-everything-everywhere-all-at-
once-most-awards/
They inject a bit of woke in the article itself, but didn't go too overboard with it.
Here's hoping that everybody involved with the movie is as good in real life as they were acting in that movie, because even though I don't watch much new stuff these days I feel they probably all deserved the wins.
I don't give two shits that Michelle Yeoh was the first Asian woman to win best actress or the first non-white women to win it in 20 years. I'm just glad that she won it. And seeing Ke Huy Quan on screen again after all these years and topping it off with a Best Supporting Actor at 51 years old is awesome too. I'm even glad that Jamie Lee Curtis finally won an Oscar after all these years even if she's proven to be kind of a virtue signalling jerkoff in real life on Twitter.
If you haven't seen this movie yet, you should.
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Low Budget
They now make film with AI
'Last Stand' is a sci-fi short film
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1642138321454243840
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Inside (2023): Starring Willem Dafoe
I'm just shy of saying that I loved this movie. I think it was maybe 20 minutes longer than it should have been and dragged a little at times.
This fits in well with one of my favorite genres of movies which I've never actually heard a name for so I'll call them "Diorama Movies". Movies where a large part or the entire thing is filmed in one location. Not necessarily a claustrophobic location, but they usually are. Phone Booth is an example of one that is not claustrophobic since even though the protagonist is held hostage in the booth it's in the middle of New York City (while ironically filmed in LA, but whatever). Locke is another movie that isn't claustrophobic since he's in a car the whole movie but he's not trapped inside of it and could have gotten out any time he wanted to. But others like Devil (trapped in an elevator with... something) and Circle (trapped in what ultimately ended up being a space ship manned by hostile alien life) are.
Not many actors could have pulled a movie like this off. Willem Dafoe certainly isn't the only one who could have, but he was excellent in this and it's one of my favorite roles he's ever played. Tom Hanks could have done it, and really... he already has done it in Cast Away.
This one isn't going to be making my top 10 list of all time or anything, but it might have if they did a better job editing and trimming it down. I think there were just too many scenes that showed the same thing over and over that could have been cut out without sacrificing letting you know how futile the situation was, and there were other weird things going on in his brain that just didn't really need to be there because unless I missed something on my first watch they just really didn't add anything to the story.
I'll watch it again some time.
I can't recommend it to everybody. I don't think it would play well at all with a mainstream audience.
But if you love indie flicks, especially the ones that artsy-fartsy people would talk about at some expensive dinner party, give this one a watch.
7.5/10
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Martin Scorsese calls for “really independent films” to be shown in cinemas
https://www.nme.com/news/film/martin-scorsese-calls-for-really-indepen
dent-films-to-be-shown-in-cinemas-3437306
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I saw Color Out of Space with my dad the other day. We're both huge Nicholas Cage fans.
We're also both huge sci-fi fans. I forgot that it was H.P. Lovecraft though, and my dad's only exposure to Lovecraft was his writing, which I fully agree was an awful read. Once I remembered that it was Lovecraft after somebody was wearing a Miskatonic University t-shirt very early on, I kind of regretted the decision to make that the movie we were watching for the day.
I wasn't wrong in worrying.
It was OK. Almost all of the movies made from Lovecraft stories are OK. None of them are actually GOOD. I was really hoping that this one would be the exception, but it wasn't. Nic Cage did not disappoint, and did his crazy Nic Cage stuff in the back half of the movie, but it's still a Lovecraft movie. This one is better than almost all other Lovecraft movies, but it's still just OK.
I don't understand what it is about Lovecraft that Hollywood can NEVER get right. Even some Steven King adaptations were pretty excellent even though some of them were downright terrible and most of them were OK.
I love Lovecraft's Lore, and I love stories that OTHER writers have made that were influenced by him. Video game adaptations of his stories have been surprisingly good compared to the movies. And interestingly enough, I think that's because actually LIVING in a Lovecraft story makes for a MUCH BETTER Lovecraft experience than watching somebody else living in it.
The movie In The Mouth of Madness, which was heavily inspired by Lovecraft is in my top 10 of all time. Event Horizon was better than OK, although it gets far too gory and dark for my tastes in the 3rd act (and legend has it that it was SERIOUSLY toned down before it went to theaters and some of the scenes left on the cutting room floor would have had you vomiting in your seat at the theater).
Color Out of Space is a BEAUTIFULLY filmed movie. Cinematographer Steve Annis was worth every penny they spent on him. Special Effects on a movie that only had a budget of $6 to $12 million were surprisingly acceptable too.
Some of the events that happened were so absurd, particularly because of the reactions of the characters to the insanity unfolding around them. We got some great laughs out of the last 30 minutes of the flick, which made up for how otherwise OK the whole thing ended up being. Once we stopped taking the movie seriously at all it felt like we were the guys on Red Letter Media (YouTube) just cracking jokes at all the dumb shit we were seeing happen on screen.
The end of the movie just totally sucked. My old man said "Where's the payoff"?
Well... There wasn't any.
It was a 2 hour movie without any point or purpose.
I never read the short story "The Colour Out of Space" it was based off of because, as I said before, anything written by Lovecraft is a freakin' terrible and unenjoyable read, but I can't imagine at all that this was how he ended his own story. It certainly was not his style.
Would I recommend it to anyone? Only to people who like Lovecraft and/or Nicolas Cage being Nicolas Cage and/or people who get together regularly to enjoy Bad Movie Night.
Critics and Audiences seem to have enjoyed it though, which is truly a rare occurrence in the 2020's. Although that may be attributable to there only being around 50 audience reviews compared to 210 critic reviews. Critics gave it 86% while the Audience gave it an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't think it got the reviews that it deserved from anyone.
6.0/10
EXTERNAL REVIEW UPDATE: Yeah. I just checked on IMDB and with a much more substantial voting pool of 51,305 people, it gets a 6.2 out of 10.
That review aggregate is much more based in reality.
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I like some Lovecraft stuff but I was young when I first looked at Lovecraft and the English felt too difficult or old when I was a kid. Speaking of Lovecraftian, yup the movie In Mouth of Madness entertains, which was heavily inspired by Lovecraft...It's hard to enjoy some adult books when you are very youngt, I tried reading Lovecraft long long ago, I remember they crash the boat into a tentacle monster...but I found the book very difficult, like trying to read Dickens, Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, or Shakespeare for school, I would probably enjoy it a lot more today.
Maybe themes of Lovecraft are also in Beyond the Black Rainbow, The Endless 2017
Spring 2014? Masking Threshold, Venus 2022, Mandy 2018, also there is The Cabin in the Woods and Underwater Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, ....although I think this is a big Hollywood budget
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
hinking that to have a loose criteria for low budget, we should cap it at $15 Million. That just happens to be exactly what the budget was for Ace Ventura.
I'm not sure about adjusted for inflation but
The Thing an 1982 American science fiction horror remake film directed by John Carpenter had a Budget of $15 million
I am now watching 'Warhammer' toons, audio, computer animation and fan made film
Even though it is indie and fan made
the company is probably worth Billions so I might be reluctant to call it all 'Low Budget' but it does have an indie element to its product.
However their fandom has made some entertaining stuff very cheap and do far better than Hollywood.
Worse than Fallout mankind did not just Nuke Itself on Earth, they nuked and Laid Waste to the Whole Galaxy and while Traveling Trhough these Holes or Tears in Space and these Scifi Demons got Released?
I guess you could call some of these Warhammer fan clips 'Film shorts' the Grim Dark Scifi, Lovecraftian horror, used interchangeably with "cosmic horror" is selling once again.
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Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
I like some Lovecraft stuff but I was young when I first looked at Lovecraft and the English felt too difficult or old when I was a kid.
You could try it again now man, but it's bad reading at any age. I wasn't introduced to Lovecraft until I was in my early 20's when I was an avid reader and it was miserable. It's worse than reading Tolkien and almost as bad as trying to read the Bible.
Quote:
Speaking of Lovecraftian, yup the movie In Mouth of Madness entertains, which was heavily inspired by Lovecraft...
Great flick in my book. Makes you wonder why they can do "Lovecraft Inspired" right in the movies, but nobody can seem to get Lovecraft himself done.
Quote:
It's hard to enjoy some adult books when you are very youngt, I tried reading Lovecraft long long ago, I remember they crash the boat into a tentacle monster...but I found the book very difficult, like trying to read Dickens, Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, or Shakespeare for school, I would probably enjoy it a lot more today.
I liked To Kill a Mockingbird in school. I even liked Great Expectations. Shakespeare sucks, IMO. I can't imagine I'd really get into it today either.
Quote:
Maybe themes of Lovecraft are also in Beyond the Black Rainbow, The Endless 2017
Spring 2014? Masking Threshold, Venus 2022, Mandy 2018, also there is The Cabin in the Woods and Underwater Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, ....although I think this is a big Hollywood budget
I've never seen any of those, except for Cabin in the Woods. That one was certainly Lovecraftian. I loved that movie because they ended it right. If there was a "Hollywood" ending for the two who made it to the end (or the entire world for that matter) I wouldn't have rated it so high on my personal list... something that the makers of Color out of Space either didn't get, or maybe Lovecraft himself actually made a happy ending in one of his stories... which I seriously doubt since he hated humanity.
Quote:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
hinking that to have a loose criteria for low budget, we should cap it at $15 Million. That just happens to be exactly what the budget was for Ace Ventura.
I'm not sure about adjusted for inflation but
The Thing an 1982 American science fiction horror remake film directed by John Carpenter had a Budget of $15 million
Another movie in my top 5. Saw it with my old man when I was like 6 years old. Didn't see it again until they made The Thing video game for the XBox and Sci-Fi ran the entire movie without any commercials because Microsoft paid for the advertising of the game. I couldn't believe how well those special effects held up after all those years. Practical Effects done right are amazing. I mean, go back and look at The Matrix now and those at-the-time mind-blowing special effects seem almost laughable today, don't they?
Quote:
I am now watching 'Warhammer' toons, audio, computer animation and fan made film
Even though it is indie and fan made
the company is probably worth Billions so I might be reluctant to call it all 'Low Budget' but it does have an indie element to its product.
However their fandom has made some entertaining stuff very cheap and do far better than Hollywood.
Worse than Fallout mankind did not just Nuke Itself on Earth, they nuked and Laid Waste to the Whole Galaxy and while Traveling Trhough these Holes or Tears in Space and these Scifi Demons got Released?
I guess you could call some of these Warhammer fan clips 'Film shorts' the Grim Dark Scifi, Lovecraftian horror, used interchangeably with "cosmic horror" is selling once again.
I'm not familiar at all with the Warhammer universe. You enjoying it?
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If they allow film makers and writers to make Good Low Budget films maybe it all wont stink and suck
When people made a movie Screamers 1995 film with no forced weird messages
Budget $14 million
Thriller?
An article from 2020
10 Low Budget Thrillers That Are Better Than Blockbusters
https://screenrant.com/low-budget-thrillers-better-than-blockbusters/#
Quote:
Searching
Pooka!
Evil Dead
The Invitation
Calibre
The Witch
Creep
Following
Blair Witch
Night of the Living Dead
However I disagree with Blair Witch
I thought it was a very boring movie
and then Suddenly the sexuality of Hollyweird got even more weird
Why Sex Scenes are Now Cringe
https://thecarousel.substack.com/p/why-sex-scenes-are-now-cringe
Hollywood's Cult of Safetyism
Quote:
Behold the Hollywood Development Executive.
Blonde bob, stringy like a mop. Cat-like, curled up in the corner of the coffee shop draped in a broad grey scarf. The $300 Screen Safe™ coating on her horn-rimmed glasses bounces an indigo sheen off her brand new Macbook Pro. She looks weathered, but she always has. Even in college she looked this way. Popular. In control. But always aloof. Never totally there—like an adult playing at youth. Now, two decades later, her features relax in a perma-pout. She blinks vacantly at a screen full of faces. She clicks off mute.
“That sounds disturbing,” she says, pointedly. “We need more research.”
This woman is now in charge of what we used to call Hollywood. And it is through her eyes that we view on-screen sex.
I’ve heard that Jacob Elordi is unhappy with the underwhelming size of this penile prosthetic on the set of Euphoria. He reportedly throws fits about it.
Now that Hollywood has placed itself in charge of ensuring that the universal scales tip towards justice, every on-screen boob must be balanced with an on-screen dick. So penile prostheses have become another closed set standby alongside intimacy coordinators (who make sure no one feels “unsafe”) and modesty pouches (AKA cock socks).
Most of the fake dicks are made by one guy in the Valley, although their size and shape is determined by the makeup designer. On Euphoria, the same woman, Donni Davi, determines the length of both the eyelashes and the schlongs.
Usually you need to go to psychological drama or horror for Low Budget
or maybe Comedy can keep it Low Budget?
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/good-burger-2-kenan-kel-works-offi
cial-paramount
You could spend days watching genres like Mel Brooks or Blaxploitation or Asian Action
Hong Kong was famous for its Low Budget entertainment Action and KungFu flicks
'John Wick'?
Box Office, Wins Over Fans with Outstanding 95% RT Score
https://www.westernjournal.com/john-wick-crushes-woke-competitor-box-o
ffice-wins-fans-outstanding-95-rt-score/
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm not familiar at all with the Warhammer universe. You enjoying it?
I don't know if I am enjoying it, some of it might be too miserable, bleak, dystopia, grim, dark and warlike to enjoy
yet it often says something
but I feel certain things in Warhammer might be Low Budget, especially fan made clips
What I respect is the huge work load of material, art and writing and There is A LOT of material in War Hammer
I knew it had stories, I knew about models, was video games, I heard maybe of a movie or cartoon and knew it had more than a single board game but I did not realize how big the Universe of Warhammer 40,000 was and A lot of Game Monster Fantasy Space stories seem to have ripped off Warhanmmer, many have been 'inspired'...you have games and products like Halo, Starcraft, Warcraft the game that South Park mocked, Prodeus, Sins of a Solar Empire, Resistance 3, Red Faction, Splitgate, Titanfall 2, StarFront, Destiny 2, Crysis Trilogy even Gears Of War Series and even Fallout ...they have borrowed or been inspired by Warhammer elements.
While that said
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Artificial Bots making movies, Awarded Oscars, International Hits, Profits vs Budget and The Horror Genre
ChatGPT WRITES & DIRECTS THE FIRST AI FILM IN 7 DAYS
Microbudget Horror Movies You Have To See
https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2023/05/microbudget-horror-movies-you-h
ave-to-see/
Could AI pen 'Casablanca'? Screenwriters take aim at ChatGPT
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/05/05/writers-strike-ai
20 Most Profitable Movies Of All Time Compared To Budget
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/20-most-profitable-movies-time-13261
5833.html
In this article, we will be taking a look at the 20 most profitable movies of all time
Quote:
8. Facing The Giants (2006)
Profit: $38,551,255 Budget: $100,000
7. Open Water (2003)
Profit: $55,500,000 Budget: $120,000
6. Mad Max (1979)
Profit: 99,750,000 Budget: $200,000
5. Eraser head (1977)
Profit: $7,000,000
Budget: $10,000
In 1977, David Lynch’s surreal horror movie, Eraser Head, budgeted at $10,000, was released. In a desolate, industrialized metropolis, the movie follows Henry Spencer as he tries to raise his disfigured child. The picture, which was shot in black and white, has become a cult favorite in the horror genre, earning a profit of $7,000,000, due to its eerie visuals and sound effects. Eraser head has influenced generations of filmmakers with its distinctive vision and style. It is a strong investigation of issues like identity, motherhood, and the human condition.
4. Deep Throat (1972)
Profit: $22,528,467
Budget: $25,000
Deep Throat is a 1972 pornographic film, directed by Gerard Damiano and starring Linda Lovelace. Due to its explicit sexual material, the movie caused controversy. It later became a cultural phenomenon and generated a discussion about censorship and obscenity laws across the country. The film also had a significant impact on the feminist movement, since Lovelace started speaking out against her involvement in the movie and became an outspoken critic of the pornographic industry. Deep Throat is still an important movie in the history of pornography and popular culture, despite its contentious past.
3. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Profit: $248,600,000
Budget: $60,000
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 horror film, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. The film follows a group of documentary filmmakers who become lost in the woods while investigating a local legend about a witch. The movie’s found footage style, improvised acting, and marketing campaign which presented it as a true story, contributed to its massive commercial success and critical acclaim, leading it to earn a profit of $248,600,000. The Blair Witch Project has since become a landmark of the found footage genre, and a classic of horror cinema.
2. Tarnation (2003)
Profit: $1,200,000
Budget: $218.32
With a focus on the filmmaker’s own experiences growing up with a mentally ill mother, Tarnation is a highly personal documentary, made on a budget of $218.32. The movie, which was directed by Jonathan Caouette, takes a frank and uncompromising look at the difficulties associated with family, mental health, and identity.
Aside from home movies and other archival material, the whole movie is made up of footage that Caouette himself recorded over 19 years. The film continues to be a milestone of American independent cinema, with a grossing of $1,200,00, and has received widespread praise for its creative approach to documentary storytelling.
1. Paranormal Activity (2007)
Profit: $193,400,000
Budget: $15,000
The horror movie Paranormal Activity was produced and helmed by Oren Peli in 2007. The movie centers on Katie and Micah, a young couple who live in a house that is cursed by an evil spirit. A terrifying atmosphere was produced by the movie’s found video format, usage of night vision cNOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME