This Thriller Has The Best Practical Gore Effects According To Redditors
There are generally two kinds of genre film lovers in the world: those who get their genre kicks via moody atmospherics and eerie imagery, and those who simply cannot abide a genre flick lest it come rife with waves of arterial spray.
And while logic might tell you that, in the age of CGI, movies have gotten gorier and grittier than ever before, genre purists in the latter group would no doubt argue with that notion: for them, they'd take the practical gore effects of films like Alien (1979), The Fly (1986), or even The Passion of the Christ (2004) over any CGI confection ever conjured.
Of course, outliers like Passion aside, hardcore practical gore effects are generally reserved for (and better suited to) the horror genre. However, according a recent Reddit thread, there are gore lovers in the world who firmly believe the film boasting the best practical gore effects isn't a horror movie at all. Rather, they've crowned a gritty, decidedly under-the-radar grindhouse homage — featuring one of cinema's more prominent funnymen — as the king of the practical gore beasts.
According to fans, Brawl in Cell Block 99 took practical effects gore to new levels
The funny man is Mr. Vince Vaughn. The film is S. Craig Zahler's brutalist 2017 prison thriller, Brawl in Cell Block 99, wherein Vaughn plays Bradley Thomas, a former boxer turned prison inmate. And while it isn't strictly a horror movie, the grisly action within is as horrific as anything committed to film, in any genre. In the opinion of the Reddit thread's originator Johnny_MC2, the film's gruesome practical gore effects are second to none, noting "Brawl in Cell Block 99 has some of the best practical gore I've seen," and posting that comment with backup in the guise of a clip featuring the film's infamous "face destruction" scene.
The ensuing thread is as lively as you'd expect, with Zahler fans like RealNotFake offering full support of the claim, "This movie was B-R-U-T-A-L. I loved it," and user maestobat adding their own seal of approval, "This movie is fantastic. Best gore I've seen in years." Likewise, pool_of_blues noted that the only movie that might outdo Brawl is Zahler's own debut, "I was just talking about this movie. How it was the second most horrific ultra violence I've seen, after Bone Tomahawk."
There were some Brawl in Cell Block 99 haters offering opinions, too, with SugarBearSID claiming they were unimpressed with the film's effects, "It doesn't look even vaguely real and it looks laughably cheap." But deadlyrivers rose up in defense, noting the "cheap" effects were merely part of the film's throwback aesthetic, "I agree that the effects are bad and unrealistic – but I also love that about it. I feel like this film is a pure tribute to 70's hard man exploitation/grindhouse stuff"
Perhaps the post of the thread goes to polloloco81, however, who noted Brawl in Cell Block 99 bests Zahler's equally infamous follow-up in one very specific way: "This movie has more dragging across concrete than Dragged Across Concrete did." Well played, polloloco81.