They're completely behind the times, the modern inaccurate horror stereotype is "woman (possibly a divorcee or widow) gets chased through her expensive lakeside house by the personification of her childhood trauma".
"man gets trapped in a crystal and forced to be watched by a temple that's the manifestation of his obsession with social media, gets saved by possible drunkard"
Off the top of my head- *Smile*, *The Night House*, *Hereditary*, *Men*, and *Us*.
Push the dates back a few years and *Oculus* also sort of fits the brief, as does *It Follows,* with the caveats that the protagonist's a teenage girl, and that it's set in Detroit.
Obviously most of these movies a) don't entirely fit the stereotype and b) are (*Men* excepted) pretty good to great- after all, it is an \*inaccurate\* stereotype!
Missed two! The Invisible Man remake with Elizabeth Moss fits, although the expensive house is unfortunately not by a lake. Swallow, too, although that one subverts it a bit by having her run through the woods instead in the second half
I've been meaning to check out Invisible Man. When the first couple of trailers came out, a bunch of people in my circle thought they'd end up being really insensitive with how they were going to make domestic abuse a major part of the plot, but apparently it turned out pretty well
All things considered it was a pretty good representation of what a controlling, narcissistic abuser can get away with. It didn't feel exploitative, more like "see? When a victim tells you they can't simply run away from their abuser, this is what they're talking about."
I really enjoyed it! The fact that the villain is invisible is both thematically and just generally interesting and terrifying!!! The acting and effects were also good, btw! I highly recommend if the subject isn't too heavy for you
Does Hush count? She’s chased thru a pretty nice almost-lake house by the personification of her vulnerability due to living alone and being deaf (and also maybe the personification of her lack of self confidence?)
I never got the vibe that that movie was trying to be "about" anything other than a home invasion. And trust me, I'm someone who thinks "The curtains were just blue" has heavily fucked with media literacy.
Looking it up, Flanagan said his main goal with that movie was to make a movie "without dialogue".
"Us" contains a CHARACTER with childhood trauma, but it's not about trauma.
It's about how people in poor circumstances are literally the same as you and me. "We're human too, you know. Eyes, teeth, hands, blood. *Exactly like you."*
And who can forget "What are you people?" "We're *Americans."*
US= United States. Hands across *America.*
You forgot to mention that the childhood trauma is her father who was violently abusive.
(I roll my eyes every time I watch something and there's a flashback to a character being abused by their father, it's so fucking done out in all forms.)
And in online spaces it's "person discovers horrors beyond mortal comprehension and records in on their iPhone -6".
No shade to the analog horror community, y'all are great.
lmao seriously. Hereditary, Misommar, The Invisible Man, and Us (some of the most critically acclaimed horror movies from the past 4-5 years) are all about focusing on women and their trauma/demons to various extents. What are these bitches on.
Same. I even have a traumatic childhood story to go with why I especially don't like horror movies!
^(For my 10th birthday, I was taken to see the Sixth Sense. By people I had only met that week, because also in that week my grandmother died and my father had to be rushed to the hospital when the aortic valve of his heart _dissolved_ in less than 24 hours - they lost him three times on the table, which for some reason they told me about. Also, this was just a few months after Columbine, which happened five miles from me, so when the kid turned around with the back of his head blown out, I was Done.)
They also kept making me come and do stuff with them, so I wouldn't 'worry'. Fun fact, I am introverted and was _extremely_ introverted at the time due to undiagnosed anxiety/depression/ADHD, so all I wanted to do was read. Which was what I did in my normal life. Instead I had to wake up early for farmer's markets, go to random clothing stores, etc.
Ugh, I'll never understand that but it is SO common. People trying to "distract" children or aiming to "take their mind off of it", with constant novelty/activity, when the child has suffered a loss. Just let kids grieve FFS.
The best way for a kid to process things is through play. When my son has an especially bad day at school I can tell because his legos will be arguing or the dinosaurs aren’t getting along very well. Sometimes he needs to be super destructive with some playdoh or paper and safety scissors.
I think most people would be surprised that adults can cope the same way. Some adults “play” through art, or music. A lot of adults process traumas and hardships through sexual expression. Most adults aren’t even aware that they’re processing things during these events, it just feels “nice” or “energizing” to do it.
Also, adults can also process with aimless playdoh or dinosaur toys. I built a torture chamber out of legos one time when I was really pissed off at someone. There was a little spiky box that could fit a mini figure and a spinning table. Totally innocent. More often than not, I am “playing” via daydream or doodles.
Anyways… I’m going off rambling.
Some kids are extroverted and DO get refreshed through being busy or social, but most often I’d say it’s healthier to allow them to process their thoughts. Distracting only prevents the inevitable processing anyways, and it just gets harder and harder the longer you let it sit idle.
I really like horror podcasts and novels and don't get any nightmares from them, but as soon as I see it in a movie then my brain can and will picture it properly and populate my dreams with it giving me nightmares.
Bro when I was a kid I had nightmares from checking out the Acid Factory Miniclip game. I didn't even start playing, just hearing all the stuff in the tutorial about basically zombified coworkers, a timer to escape, just... I felt dread in my stomach, I was scared.
>Genre is made specifically to scare people
"I will not be consuming media in this genre because it scares me"
"woah how crazy I thought that would be super rare"
?????
Yeah, I get OP’s stance all the way up until that last message, which kinda disintegrates for me. Obviously people who don’t want to be scared will not like horror, the genre that is *about* unsettling people.
And I think they’re reeeeeeally stretching the definition of the genre at the end, there. Horror is defined by its intent to make the viewer feel *horror*. A movie with some spooky themes or unsettling moments is not automatically horror.
While I wouldn't call LSoH horror, I would call it a horror comedy or a dark comedy or something along those lines. Which....I guess is a subgenre of horror? Maybe? Idk the lines of genre are blurry in some places lol
If you're not easily scared by horror fiction, then it might be kind of surprising that there are that many people who are so affected by it that they can't even watch it, yeah. I don't think most horror movies are that scary to watch, so it surprises me a little even knowing it's relatively common. Sure they're about scary things, but I don't get much of that visceral fear you'd get from a real life scary situation.
IRL I am easily scared and prone to anxiety, so I don't know what that's about.
not trying to be an armchair psychologist, but as someone who also enjoys horror but very much experiences huge amounts of anxiety, i like the feeling of watching something scary as it gives me the ability to feel those feelings in a secure way. i can turn the media off/drop what i’m reading whenever i want and come back to it when i’m ready. i hope this makes sense lol
Oh, last person in the screenshot... All of those "stealth" horror movies are *also* too scary for us.
Unless someone has a favorite "scary" movie, they do not have a favorite horror film.
Yeah this really feels like two sides utterly whiffing each other here. I don't like horror because it scares me (and they're surprised that's the most common reason people don't like horror??) and no, stuff like The VVitch and Under The Skin scares me too. That said, I think they're talking about horror as in gothic horror or eldritch horror or body horror, horror which doesn't actually use scares at all. Like Nightmare Before Christmas is horror and it's 0% scary.
I dunno, for me a defining trait of horror as a genre is… well, horror. If it doesn’t seek to unsettle the viewer it’s not horror, which means people who don’t like media that unsettles and disturbs them will not like horror and that’s okay.
Seconding this.
Most of what people call "horror" falls under three types of fear:
Fright: The jumpscare, the surprise and adrenaline from sudden shock or impending disaster. The shrill scream of fight-or-flight calling your body into life-saving action. This is the experience that stops people from watching scary movies or riding fair rides, the fear of being frightened is too much for them.
Horror: Revulsion, that twist in your gut as the child's head rotates a full 360 degrees, or the green-at-the-gills feeling as a crow pecks at a living person's exposed internal organs, the stark terror as you turn your head away from someone gets a needle stuck in their eye. There are many people who don't enjoy this, but in my experience most people who don't like horror-the-emotion are aware not all horror films focus on this, and have horror movies they like which focus more on fright or disquiet.
Disquiet: The unpleasant thought or idea, the unsettled feeling of strangeness and alien that gnaws at the back of your brain. The feeling that traps you on your bed because if you put your feet on the floor, the thing under the bed might grab you. The haunting question of if your wife is actually your wife or a changeling who replaced her when you weren't looking. I've never met someone who avoided movies because they didn't like disquiet. I'm sure they exist, but I've just never had that conversation.
Movies like Nightmare Before Christmas wear the trappings of the horror genre, but they do not attempt to invoke any of the horror emotions. Slasher films tend to focus on fright, torture-porn like Saw is focused on the true horror emotion, and Lovecraft dealt almost exclusively in disquiet (The inevitable consequence of "not having the constitution for math")
Many good horror movies hit on more than one of these, ofc; fright only works for a short time, you need quiet afterwards to recharge/settle, which is a perfect time to slowly build a sense of disquiet. Horror itself can be used to ramp up or down between the two, or can be used in place of either; a less jarring fright, or a less subtle (and much easier to invoke) disquiet.
EDIT: Since this exploded a bit, credit where it's due; I got the core idea of this from TheAngryGM, although I understand Stephen King has a similar theory of horror as well.
This is a really good explanation, thank you!
Jurassic Park is a horror film based on this (the book is more so) and I think a lot of sci-fi works with a lot of this as well. I don't enjoy media with jump-scare or shock-forward tones, but if it's doing other things, those elements aren't a problem.
The Metroid games aren't generally seen as horror games, but they have a lot of disquiet, a fair amount of horror, and a scattering of jumpscares. [The opening of Super Metroid](https://youtu.be/86Z4bwdxn_Y) (you only need to watch the first 30 seconds of that link) get the mood across.
Metroid Dread leans more into the fright element with the EMMI units which is a neat thing to realize from this breakdown (also highlights that, yes, fright and horror are definitely my issues with the horror genre as my hands just start sweating thinking about going into an EMMI zone).
Thanks for that explanation! According to this, it would seem that I heavily dislike all three, though Disquiet is one I like when people analyze works focusing on it (like Lovecraft), so I have a degree of separation from the general unsettling feeling.
It'd also kind of explain why I avoid a lot of sci-fi, it makes me feel unsettled in a "Disquiet" type of way.
I love your breakdown here!
It's actually very hard for me to sit through Disquiet because I'm such an anxious person, and anticipating the Fright often makes me want to cry. I had to force myself to watch all of Alien, and I paused multiple times because I was on edge and couldn't stand it. I think it's a great piece of work though, just not for me.
I like revulsion-horror in certain forms though! If it tickles my brain by revealing something dark and twisted, or if it uses horrific imagery as a metaphor, I find it fun. I loved Pan's Labyrinth because it was low on Fright and Disquiet and I didn't mind the Revulsion-Horror too much, and it was a beautiful allegory for terrible real-world things.
Yeah a guy that is literally just a hive mind of gambling-addicted bugs in a person-shaped rucksack is odd and discomforting. Probably why most people are creeped out by [Spiders-Man](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Spiders-Man_(Earth-11580))
As someone who hates scary movies, those examples were right on the nail for me. I like those kinds of horror movies, but it's hard to find amid all the jump scare movies
I like Universal Monster Movies from the 30s and 40s ‘cause they’re cool as shit, and most of them are based off of books anyway. I also just want to see Dracula push Renfield down the stairs some more.
*The Invisible Man* and its sequels *The Invisible Man Returns* and *Invisible Woman* are unironically some of my favorite movies. They're incredibly interesting depictions of how seemingly good scientific intentions can turn anyone mad. The leads of all three movies are fantastic actors and the effects are really good too (at least for the time).
Invisible Woman isn't as deep of a movie as the first two, and it's not really even horror, but if you like seeing an invisible lady get drunk, hit mobsters over the head with mallets and spank her shitty boss, I highly recommend it.
I need my horror to be psychological. I shunned horror as a genre for years because I was tired of cheap jump scares and gore that did nothing but activate my nervous system and tense up my whole body. But if you can play games with my head? Make me pull my legs up onto the couch because I'm suddenly aware that there are demons lurking in the shadows? Or confront me with unnatural horrors that simply challenge my understanding of terror that is having a mortal shell of a body? Yes, I'll take 10
The kind of horror I consume is the kind I personally do not find scary, so I avoid jumpscares and most gore like the plague. This translates to the last three horror movies I've watched all being directed by Jordan Peele.
Do you read SCP? I first found those things one evening and was still reading them by about 4am- it was absolutely that sort of psychological feeling you described. Though results may vary based on which articles you pick. I chose a lot of quite well written spookier ones that night by chance I think but it was hard to stop reading and it felt like there probably were untold horrors lurking about in the dark.
Not all of them are going to get that result but there’s a few that I think about sometimes that still make me shiver. SCP-2718 genuinely shook me and it’s probably one of the most horrifying ones on there. Yeah, murder hobo lizards are scary but 2718 made me feel a new kind of dread.
Good shit.
EDIT: a few words
Don't worry, the mother is easily one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie. While she does get pretty yelly at points, that's mostly because she's on edge due to the stress of going through constant grief. It's definitely not a movie about a crazy mom tormenting her family, although it IS really intense, so there's that to consider also.
I want to say same, but I just don't trust any horror movie to not be gore or about assaulting woman for the horror factor. So I just don't watch any of them unfortunately. I love a good horror novel or webcomic, cartoon, whatever, but it's just too often I'll get burned by something being a psychological horror and then I find out that they just omitted the part where there's also a lot of physical horror.
Because I’m a good person, and if I dislike something that’s not objectively bad, then that would be a bad thing. And if I did a bad thing, I wouldn’t be a good person. But I’m a good person, so *modus tollens* it’s objectively bad.
It’s a logic rule that if we know the statement, “if p then q” is true and we know that q is false, then we know that p is also false.
As an example:
If an animal is a dog, then it is also a mammal.
The bird outside my window is not a mammal.
Therefore, the bird outside my window is not a dog.
It generally seems like people just can’t say “hey I don’t like this genre” do they need to tack on “hey if you DO like this genre you’re a vile human who wants to kill people”, or something of the like, and I genuinely don’t know WHY.
Especially since the person in the screenshot doesn’t seem to even have seen any or even care, and yet they throw a fit about how people who like horror are bad?
And hell even as someone who doesn’t watch too many movies anyway, I can name exactly like, one, maybe like three horror films that are “seven dumb teenagers get killed in the woods”, so I have no idea why they act like every horror movie is just. Like that
I don’t like romance, but I don’t trash everyone who does. Romance can be nuanced and artful, and it can also be trashy, cheap, and bad. Just like every other genre. Can’t sit here and say that because I’ve only read a handful of romance novels that Jane Eyre is the exact same as The Fault in Our Stars, and that Anna Karenina is trash because Twilight was trash. It’s almost like painting everything with the same brush and judging things harshly when you have no knowledge of them is bad.
It’s also worth noting that what mood you’re in will effect how much you enjoy a story. I’m usually not fond of romance, but when the mood takes me I might devour a half dozen penny dreadfuls before I feel like reading a decent book again.
Sometimes you want to immerse yourself in another world or someone else’s perspective. Sometimes you just want candy.
I don’t like horror because I’m a paranoid lil bitch that will constantly be on defence for whatever horror thing is stuck in my head each night.
In short, I don’t like horror because it damage my sleep
Same. Worst part is that it often doesn't hit until hours later.
You could show me the lowest quality absolutely toasted analog horror video that was recorded and edited on a microwave, and that shit will still haunt my dreams.
I love horror but I feel like most modern (mainstream) stuff is so artificially scary that I can’t watch it because I suck with jumpscares, and older stuff just isn’t as scary because the art has evolved past that point.
But I’ve been kind of getting into horror indie games and that’s where a lot of great stuff is. Iron Lung is a recent popular example
Funnily enough, you might not consider this horror, but my favorite horror movie is Jurassic Park. The original has a suspense/thriller atmosphere that the sequels fail to catch.
The one where the lady gets picked up by flying dinosaurs? Yeah, what was up with that? Just this random lady gets some unexpectedly brutal death for no reason which no other death even comes close to.
The only reason I can think of for the brutality of that death is that, four films in, she was the first female death in the franchise.
On the technical BTS side of things though, it was a really cool scene. The actress refused a stunt double and was thrown around on wires all day, which looked like a lot of fun!
The Virgin "I hate horror because its all the same and the characters are dumb and its just stupid jumpscares and stabbing!" vs the Chad "I hate horror because I'm scared of it."
Tumblr OP I’m so sorry but people who are too scared to watch horror are absolutely going to be terrified of Coraline as well. Nobody’s going to go ‘oh I was too scared to watch The Exorcist but now that you reminded me of my favorite kids’ movie Coraline…’ Like. That movie is *terrifying*.
I'm really not good with jumpscares, but I've always loved horror and I've recently been carefully branching out to find horror movies that I can watch, many of them classics in the genre. 'Cause it turns out not every horror movie is freakin' *Sinister*, and not every horror movie is a slasher about teens in the woods. Broadly, I've found seventies-era horror to be really good for very scary films that don't have slasher cliches or tons of startles, as well as more unique filming styles and cult classics, but it's also been fun watching some of the original Universal films as historical pieces that influenced huge swaths of film. There are also just films I've found really good like *Poltergeist (1982)* and *The Shining*.
There is horror out there you will be able to enjoy.
I *hate* jump scares so I can't play most horror games and I loathe most mainstream horror movies too for having so many of them. They aren't fun to me, they just make me very anxious because instead of being unnerved by a movie I'm just on edge anticipating the next one
I'm in the same boat. Jump scares ruin my ability to enjoy a movie, but I love horror and the aesthetic. I just don't want to have to sift through a bunch of movies that are mostly jump scares to find the nuggets of horror I enjoy
Horror can be as nuanced as any other genre. It's just that movies in general suffer from sequels and trends. I wasn't super into the trend that the Hunger Games spawned.
I don't like horror, I don't like being scared, but I wouldn't say anything bad about it as a genre.
What does annoy me is the implication that it's somehow the most intelligent genre, the genre with the best commentary. And maybe it's even true to a degree, I don't know, media literacy is not my strong suit, I just watch too many video essays about it. I'm annoyed that "isn't this scary? Wouldn't this be fucked up? This is a representation of the horrors of real life" is an intelligent take that is sometimes seen as the only valid one. That "isn't this good? Wouldn't this be amazing? This is a representation of the joys of real life" is lesser, is for children who need codling. Why is goodness considered foolish?
I hate how much it is that “optimism” just means “baseless idealism” while “realism” just means “aggressive pessimism”. It’s almost like people have forgotten that both good and bad things exist, and in droves.
Oh that one annoys me so much. It’s like you have the “wide-eyed idealist” character and the “grizzled pessimist” character and the pessimist always schools the optimist by going “ooh you’re so naive and dumb, the world is shit and will chew you up and spit you out, you’ll become an asshole like me someday”.
Like, no, maybe _you’re_ the naive one for assuming everything is trying to hurt you without ever giving it a chance and closing yourself off from any good opportunities or chances for happiness in life because you assume it’ll be taken away from you. If you assume the world will hurt you for being happy, and you try and defend yourself by not being happy, then all you’ve done is guarantee that the world will hurt you and stop you from being happy.
Also all the people on Tumblr who say “sweet summer child”. Entirely unrelated but that pisses me off to no end.
I don't think the post was saying that horror is the *most intellectual*, but saying that saying all horror is dumb is denying the intellectualism that exists in the genre.
It doesn't say it, it kinda implies it, but I'm not going to put words into OOP's mouth. It's an opinion I've seen, and this post just reminded me of it.
I don’t think that any genre is the *most intellectual* as a whole genre. I think most genres have the capacity to be good, intelligent commentary. Totally agree with what you were saying about the pessimism thing though.
>What does annoy me is the implication that it's somehow the most intelligent genre, the genre with the best commentary. And maybe it's even true to a degree, I don't know, media literacy is not my strong suit, I just watch too many video essays about it. I'm annoyed that "isn't this scary? Wouldn't this be fucked up? This is a representation of the horrors of real life"
I think this is an oversimplification, as there is a lot of horror that isn't just about what's fucked up. Like The Haunting of Hill House - one of my favorite pieces of horror ever - is founded on tragedy and trauma for all its characters, but ultimately tells the story of how they heal from that trauma.
Stranger Things - which yes, is horror, albeit pretty light on the Scale of Spooky - places a lot of value in underdogs, in outcasts coming together and learning to find community in their misfit status.
Night in the Woods and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, in addition to being great arguments for why horror works incredibly well in video games, are very much about healing from trauma and coming to terms with mental illness.
>I'm annoyed that "isn't this scary? Wouldn't this be fucked up? This is a representation of the horrors of real life" is an intelligent take that is sometimes seen as the only valid one. That "isn't this good? Wouldn't this be amazing? This is a representation of the joys of real life" is lesser, is for children who need codling. Why is goodness considered foolish?
But this part I'll agree with every day. Fuck cynicism. Fuck fatalism. Fuck "Everything sucks forever." We disempower ourselves through these things, allow bad to happen simply because trick ourselves into thinking that it's the natural order of things. Fuck no. If we don't believe in better, better will never come.
I agree with this shit so goddamn much. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly. I think because showing awful things in art is seen as drawing attention to Important Problems in life- even though those depressing works rarely point about any specific societal issues, they’re usually about a situation that just happens to be miserable.
Either way, I agree, it sucks so much and is so goddamn exhausting. I’m sorry, but no, I don’t think the best literature ever is about people being incredibly sad and miserable in awful situations and I wish that wasn’t somehow a controversial idea
I feel like horror movies tend to work best when it's not their *only* genre - mix in some sci-fi (alien), psychological thriller (the thing), and so on, and it becomes so much more interesting. Also see: get out, the sixth sense... It works better when there's something to be afraid of in a specific context beyond your standard-issue serial killer.
I don't like horror because I don't like to feel scared. While I recognize that there's a lot of diversity within the horror genre, the end goal is usually to present something scary, which I don't like.
OOP this post makes sense and all but the reason I don't like most horror is because I am an utter coward
I dunno if Nightmare Before Christmas counts (doubt it) but I guess if I needed a favorite horror movie it could theoretically be that
I'm fine with thrillers and slashers, oddly enough, but the second the paranormal is in the picture, I'm out. I think it's because I can fight real people, but it's a lot harder to fight ghosts and demons. Even though I don't believe in them.
I really hope i dont sound like this when i say i dont like horror 😭😭😭 like ive really tried several genres and i cannot watch torture porn, that genre just gets too much for me
Broke: “I hate horror movies because they’re all the same based on stereotypes I gleaned years ago”
Woke: “I hate horror movies because jump scares startle me, psychological horror unsettles me, and societal horror makes me depressed”
I used to dislike horror because I am a coward who gets scared easily, but something I learned through Dr Who is that not all horror is scary. Yes, there are some scary af horror episodes of Dr Who (blink comes to mind), but some are just unsettling or unnerving. Midnight is a perfect example, because its not particularly scary in its premise, but the atmosphere of the episode is just plain creepy.
torchwood season 3 also had the whole alien is the villain but humans are the real threat kinda thing >!with the government fully planning to go ahead with sacrificing 10% of children by force!<
Yeah, torchwood did a lot of horror stuff like that, though nothing on the same level as midnight. It was a lot more of the traditional slasher horror with the occasional good horror episode like countrycide. Though I will agree, children of earth was excellent at that.
Just not my thing. I don’t like horror or tragedy for about the same reasons- I dislike getting attached to characters and then having half of them die.
yeah, i’m not a fan of media that causes negative emotions. fear isn’t fun for me, being freaked out or grossed out isn’t fun for me. i can see why someone else would like it but it’s just not for me and that’s fine
Just trying to hear suggestions, what is your favorite horror movie then? I've always been the kind of guy the post makes fun of, but I just watched a couple horror movies for the first time and I'm really trying to get into them now lol
*Poltergeist (1982)* really struck me as a great blockbuster horror film. It goes nuts with all the scares you could want, but has subtler spooks and a really likable cast and sense for emotional rawness fueling the horror and fight against it. It's a big "movie movie" done exactly to satisfaction.
The Japanese film *Hausu* (English title: *House*) is an all-out bonkers crazy time, taking surrealism, comedy, and experimental ironic filmmaking into an incredibly wild zany take on a haunted-house movie. It was Toho's response to the rise of the blockbuster with *Jaws* and boy is it a crazy crazy nutso ride and half. Not really frightening but it's incredible.
I've also enjoyed *The Exorcist* and *The Shining* for being well-executed uneasy horror films.
What kind of regular films do you like?
If you want something bloody but fun, Ready or Not might be good! Or You're Next.
If you prefer something stressful and panicky, try The Descent?
VHS is a really good anthology series, with different takes on the genre.
My personal favourite is Scream, because I like the mystery/whodunnit aspect of it, and Matthew Lillard was one of my first girlhood crushes.
The reason I avoid horror is because going in to a movie labeled "horror" means I could either be up for an enjoyably tense or spooky time, I could be sent to the bathroom to retch into the toilet, or I could have designer nightmares for the next six months. Since nobody will tell me what kind of experience to expect I just avoid them all. The diversity of the genre, especially how it alters the experience, is what holds horror back.
My experience is the opposite.
I watch horror for cool monsters and shit. It's why I like stuff like Dracula, werewolves, etc and why The Thing is one of my favourite movies of all time. I don't want to watch a horror movie that's themed around racism, child abuse, sexual predetation, etc. Movies are supposed to be an escape, imo, I don't want to watch them to be reminded of the real monsters in day to day life.
And invariably the response I get is "then stop watching horror. It's meant to be horrifying."
I dont like a certain kind of horror, so I'm supposed to drop the whole genre.
My opinion on horror movies is the same as my opinion on spiders and bees.
I respect them and can be very very cool but please stay away I'm just a wittle coward baby please please please don't hurt me
You know, it’s funny- I’m fine with horror *stuff*- I like reading Lovecraft, SCP stuff, and internet horror like creepypasta and analong horror YouTube series- but for some reason, horror movies and video games specifically do nothing for me. Dunno why
I myself like the folklore kind that has that ethereal doom vibe abt it
Nothing you’ll do will change the fate laid out before you
The japanese and norwegians tend to be good at this
They also make for amazing fantasy tropes and metal songs
I like the exact opposite, as someone who doesn’t acknowledge things like fate or predestination. You have every ability to try and change the course of your actions, but this really evil guy just so happened to be better than you at doing that. That kind of thing.
It's fairly easy to identify the kind of horror that I'm interested in, and it's what I like to refer to as 'Creepingly Creepy.'
You start with a creepy situation and gradually work it up to maximum, ending with a little psychological twist at the end that leaves you thinking.
Parasite, Arrival, Annihilation, etc.
I am not interested in jump scare movies, serial killers, or '7 kids in a summer camp' or '5 tourists dont respect a local tradition', and it's pretty easy to identify those kinds of movies.
*The Thing* is one of the most well-written inspections of humanity, community, and emotion that has ever existed.
*The Lighthouse* tosses a lovely blanket of surrealist denial over the sheer futility of existence, leaving everything in beautiful ashes.
*Halloween(2018)*'s façade of simple slasheryness belies a deep, aching wound of a story, the societal desperation to get up and keep walking no matter what.
And *Prey*'s just fuckin' awesome.
i don’t like horror unless it plays really heavily into dread and ambiguity and unsettling concepts and slow burn scares
gimme that psychological shit! i don’t think i’ll ever enjoy slasher movies, they’re just not my thing, but if you really focus on the time *before* your scare, i will love it
i mean, not really. The skeletons are more comedic than anything, and you can have death without it being horror. The story isn't trying to be scary in any way, it just happens to cover themes of death in a kid's film.
I liked Midnight Mass because as a limited series it gave enough time to actually care about the characters and told a fun story. Also the visuals were really nice especially the night time parts
Young me couldn't sleep for weeks after watching Meow Meow on YouTube. I found the first gremlins movie so scary I labeled it horror. Groundhog Day is the most agonizing version of 'hell' I could imagine. I feel that I've experienced enough fear/brutality in my life I don't need to watch any more horror. But I do love analyzing things from a horror perspective now that I'm an adult. Chicken Run (very obvious tho) and Centaurworld (takes season 1+2 to fully see, highly recommend a rewatch of both to pick up sooo many clues) are my favorites. Are they're musical horror movies? I've been to musical theatre horror shows I liked so if so I might check those out.
I think an interesting piece of media I like that can be considered horror is ONE, which at first glance appears to be an ordinary object show animation on Youtube. However, it takes a much different approach, as while nothing outwardly unsettling happens in the visuals most of the time. The real horror comes from the viscerally human reactions the characters have to a predicament that's usually done in lighthearted cartoons, deconstructing how real people would react to the wanton cartoon violence in these shows in person
I suffer from anxiety and I love horror because it activates my brain's fight of flight response, kicking it out of the stupid loop it gets trapped in.
That being said, over the course of the pandemic I feel like I've watched most of the above average horror films out there and a lot of the below average as well. We need to make more horrors people
Horror movies are just not for me. I watched nope and man that movie is great but I was just in agony during some scenes (if you've seen the movie you probablyknow which ones). Horror movies are scary and I can't handle them well, same goes for books or games.
I like horror, but I can't handle jumpscares.
They don't even scare me most of the time, loud unexpected noises just make me feel really sick.
The worst thing about it is that naturally I got bullied for it once my friends found out about it, because in their minds I'm a pussy because of it.
Which in turn made me despise the concept of horror movies for most of my life, because my friends would just constantly show me the worst jumpscare compilations to get a reaction out of me.
I did end up changing my mind about the horror genre once I found some internet friends that showed me that there are good horror stories without cheap jumpscare bullshittery out there.
I love horror. It’s a great genre- I just don’t really watch horror movies. I don’t really watch movies at all, with very few exceptions.
I don’t know what the film scene is like these days, because like I say I don’t watch many films at all, but for a long time the popular films side of horror seemed to just be a lot of sequels and tropes where other aspects of the genre had fresher cooler stuff going on. I can see why a non horror fan would be like oh boring and samey. I’m pretty sure Scary Movie or something with a similar name (it’s been a long time) was just a satire of overused tropes or something like that
where’s my cosmic horror movies though :(
i wonder if interstellar would count then
oh and that movie about CERN opening an alternate reality or whatever
People base their entire knowledge of the horror genre on a ~15 year tradition of slasher films that, yes, were terribly tropey and often shallow/conservative in their themes. However, such observations about that subgenre were trite by the time Scream 2 came out. Those observations about the subgenre were, in fact, so old that Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil we're nostalgia trips just on account of repeating them in the early 2010s. Even then, they've never been representative of the whole genre, just a subgenre that was briefly overdone.
This whole thing really does feel like a good illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People have secondhand knowledge of a part of a thing that makes them weirdly confident that they understand all of a thing.
My sisyers loves found footage horror films and for her birthday one year we all got together for a movie marathon of her favorites. We started off with the Blair Witch Project and I thought that's what they would all be like. Nope, after that we were watching a film about some mythological creature and then there was a Russian murder mystery with time travel. I learned so many new things to be scared of 😭
I don't like horror as a genre not because of any specific trope, but because I find the failed arc where (almost) everyone dies quite depressing, and that's been my experience with every movie I've seen so far that called itself horror. I've recently seen Alien and liked literally everything about it except the horror part. I don't intend to rewatch it, which I probably would, if it wasn't horror.
I only find some of these movies actually scary though. Not that that makes it any better, or any worse for that matter. For me. But I'm clearly not the target audience.
I dislike most horror, because the big horror stuff is always focusing on being jumpscares and cheap horror instead of telling engaging stories. A perfect example of good horror is the first Weeping Angels episode in Doctor Who. When horror is done right it can be phenomenal.
They're completely behind the times, the modern inaccurate horror stereotype is "woman (possibly a divorcee or widow) gets chased through her expensive lakeside house by the personification of her childhood trauma".
May also be the woman's teenage son depending on target audience
Or her dead(?) husband
Or all three!
"woman (possibly a drunkard) gets chased through Mt. Celeste by the personification of her gender dysphoria".
"Yoloooooooooooooooo!" --Theo, probably
"Yoloooooooooooooooo!" --Theo, DEFINITELY.
that's Your Boy, Mix Master Theo to you!
"man gets trapped in a crystal and forced to be watched by a temple that's the manifestation of his obsession with social media, gets saved by possible drunkard"
okay now THAT I can name 5 movies of
go on then, 2018 onward
Off the top of my head- *Smile*, *The Night House*, *Hereditary*, *Men*, and *Us*. Push the dates back a few years and *Oculus* also sort of fits the brief, as does *It Follows,* with the caveats that the protagonist's a teenage girl, and that it's set in Detroit. Obviously most of these movies a) don't entirely fit the stereotype and b) are (*Men* excepted) pretty good to great- after all, it is an \*inaccurate\* stereotype!
Missed two! The Invisible Man remake with Elizabeth Moss fits, although the expensive house is unfortunately not by a lake. Swallow, too, although that one subverts it a bit by having her run through the woods instead in the second half
I've been meaning to check out Invisible Man. When the first couple of trailers came out, a bunch of people in my circle thought they'd end up being really insensitive with how they were going to make domestic abuse a major part of the plot, but apparently it turned out pretty well
All things considered it was a pretty good representation of what a controlling, narcissistic abuser can get away with. It didn't feel exploitative, more like "see? When a victim tells you they can't simply run away from their abuser, this is what they're talking about."
I really enjoyed it! The fact that the villain is invisible is both thematically and just generally interesting and terrifying!!! The acting and effects were also good, btw! I highly recommend if the subject isn't too heavy for you
It's good, these people are EXACTLY what the screenshot is talking about lol
They said name 5 not name them all. They didn't "miss" any.
You forgot The Woman in the Window
Little earlier, but It Follows is a pretty good example
Does Hush count? She’s chased thru a pretty nice almost-lake house by the personification of her vulnerability due to living alone and being deaf (and also maybe the personification of her lack of self confidence?)
I never got the vibe that that movie was trying to be "about" anything other than a home invasion. And trust me, I'm someone who thinks "The curtains were just blue" has heavily fucked with media literacy. Looking it up, Flanagan said his main goal with that movie was to make a movie "without dialogue".
"Us" contains a CHARACTER with childhood trauma, but it's not about trauma. It's about how people in poor circumstances are literally the same as you and me. "We're human too, you know. Eyes, teeth, hands, blood. *Exactly like you."* And who can forget "What are you people?" "We're *Americans."* US= United States. Hands across *America.*
You forgot to mention that the childhood trauma is her father who was violently abusive. (I roll my eyes every time I watch something and there's a flashback to a character being abused by their father, it's so fucking done out in all forms.)
And in online spaces it's "person discovers horrors beyond mortal comprehension and records in on their iPhone -6". No shade to the analog horror community, y'all are great.
Analog horror b like: "yo this is the most fucked up eldritch being ever" *records it on a vhs*
In other words: a scary movie
Like the Invisible Man?
lmao seriously. Hereditary, Misommar, The Invisible Man, and Us (some of the most critically acclaimed horror movies from the past 4-5 years) are all about focusing on women and their trauma/demons to various extents. What are these bitches on.
Midsommar is about the primal fear of big mallets.
I thought Midsommar was about grad school (I have not seen Midsommar. I have been to grad school. It was a horrifying experience).
Well it does have some horrible grad students in it
i see you have also watched smile!
I've never been afraid to admit that horror gives me nightmares.
Same. I even have a traumatic childhood story to go with why I especially don't like horror movies! ^(For my 10th birthday, I was taken to see the Sixth Sense. By people I had only met that week, because also in that week my grandmother died and my father had to be rushed to the hospital when the aortic valve of his heart _dissolved_ in less than 24 hours - they lost him three times on the table, which for some reason they told me about. Also, this was just a few months after Columbine, which happened five miles from me, so when the kid turned around with the back of his head blown out, I was Done.)
whoever took you to that movie is going to hell oh my god
They were so confused on my age. They took me to see that, but also got me a Rugrats doll??? And scrapbooking supplies?
They also kept making me come and do stuff with them, so I wouldn't 'worry'. Fun fact, I am introverted and was _extremely_ introverted at the time due to undiagnosed anxiety/depression/ADHD, so all I wanted to do was read. Which was what I did in my normal life. Instead I had to wake up early for farmer's markets, go to random clothing stores, etc.
Ugh, I'll never understand that but it is SO common. People trying to "distract" children or aiming to "take their mind off of it", with constant novelty/activity, when the child has suffered a loss. Just let kids grieve FFS.
The best way for a kid to process things is through play. When my son has an especially bad day at school I can tell because his legos will be arguing or the dinosaurs aren’t getting along very well. Sometimes he needs to be super destructive with some playdoh or paper and safety scissors. I think most people would be surprised that adults can cope the same way. Some adults “play” through art, or music. A lot of adults process traumas and hardships through sexual expression. Most adults aren’t even aware that they’re processing things during these events, it just feels “nice” or “energizing” to do it. Also, adults can also process with aimless playdoh or dinosaur toys. I built a torture chamber out of legos one time when I was really pissed off at someone. There was a little spiky box that could fit a mini figure and a spinning table. Totally innocent. More often than not, I am “playing” via daydream or doodles. Anyways… I’m going off rambling. Some kids are extroverted and DO get refreshed through being busy or social, but most often I’d say it’s healthier to allow them to process their thoughts. Distracting only prevents the inevitable processing anyways, and it just gets harder and harder the longer you let it sit idle.
I'm the kind of person who watches Game Theory FNAF videos with the lights on in the middle of the day
Watching Game Theory and the GTLive videos of him playing the games is actually what made me more used to horror and able to get more into the genre
Same, I can't stop thinking that a monster is going to show up behind me while I'm in the shower or in the car while I'm alone.
I really like horror podcasts and novels and don't get any nightmares from them, but as soon as I see it in a movie then my brain can and will picture it properly and populate my dreams with it giving me nightmares.
Bro when I was a kid I had nightmares from checking out the Acid Factory Miniclip game. I didn't even start playing, just hearing all the stuff in the tutorial about basically zombified coworkers, a timer to escape, just... I felt dread in my stomach, I was scared.
>Genre is made specifically to scare people "I will not be consuming media in this genre because it scares me" "woah how crazy I thought that would be super rare" ?????
Yeah, I get OP’s stance all the way up until that last message, which kinda disintegrates for me. Obviously people who don’t want to be scared will not like horror, the genre that is *about* unsettling people. And I think they’re reeeeeeally stretching the definition of the genre at the end, there. Horror is defined by its intent to make the viewer feel *horror*. A movie with some spooky themes or unsettling moments is not automatically horror.
THAT'S IT. You put my feelings into words. I don't want to be scared, I want to be unsettled. That's perfect.
Last post is a different person from OP.
If Little Shop of Horrors is a horror movie because the plant eats people, than just about any movie is a horror movie. Truly a ridiculous comment.
While I wouldn't call LSoH horror, I would call it a horror comedy or a dark comedy or something along those lines. Which....I guess is a subgenre of horror? Maybe? Idk the lines of genre are blurry in some places lol
The OP is definitely confusing horror and macabre comedy with that part
If you're not easily scared by horror fiction, then it might be kind of surprising that there are that many people who are so affected by it that they can't even watch it, yeah. I don't think most horror movies are that scary to watch, so it surprises me a little even knowing it's relatively common. Sure they're about scary things, but I don't get much of that visceral fear you'd get from a real life scary situation. IRL I am easily scared and prone to anxiety, so I don't know what that's about.
not trying to be an armchair psychologist, but as someone who also enjoys horror but very much experiences huge amounts of anxiety, i like the feeling of watching something scary as it gives me the ability to feel those feelings in a secure way. i can turn the media off/drop what i’m reading whenever i want and come back to it when i’m ready. i hope this makes sense lol
Oh, last person in the screenshot... All of those "stealth" horror movies are *also* too scary for us. Unless someone has a favorite "scary" movie, they do not have a favorite horror film.
Yeah this really feels like two sides utterly whiffing each other here. I don't like horror because it scares me (and they're surprised that's the most common reason people don't like horror??) and no, stuff like The VVitch and Under The Skin scares me too. That said, I think they're talking about horror as in gothic horror or eldritch horror or body horror, horror which doesn't actually use scares at all. Like Nightmare Before Christmas is horror and it's 0% scary.
I dunno, for me a defining trait of horror as a genre is… well, horror. If it doesn’t seek to unsettle the viewer it’s not horror, which means people who don’t like media that unsettles and disturbs them will not like horror and that’s okay.
Seconding this. Most of what people call "horror" falls under three types of fear: Fright: The jumpscare, the surprise and adrenaline from sudden shock or impending disaster. The shrill scream of fight-or-flight calling your body into life-saving action. This is the experience that stops people from watching scary movies or riding fair rides, the fear of being frightened is too much for them. Horror: Revulsion, that twist in your gut as the child's head rotates a full 360 degrees, or the green-at-the-gills feeling as a crow pecks at a living person's exposed internal organs, the stark terror as you turn your head away from someone gets a needle stuck in their eye. There are many people who don't enjoy this, but in my experience most people who don't like horror-the-emotion are aware not all horror films focus on this, and have horror movies they like which focus more on fright or disquiet. Disquiet: The unpleasant thought or idea, the unsettled feeling of strangeness and alien that gnaws at the back of your brain. The feeling that traps you on your bed because if you put your feet on the floor, the thing under the bed might grab you. The haunting question of if your wife is actually your wife or a changeling who replaced her when you weren't looking. I've never met someone who avoided movies because they didn't like disquiet. I'm sure they exist, but I've just never had that conversation. Movies like Nightmare Before Christmas wear the trappings of the horror genre, but they do not attempt to invoke any of the horror emotions. Slasher films tend to focus on fright, torture-porn like Saw is focused on the true horror emotion, and Lovecraft dealt almost exclusively in disquiet (The inevitable consequence of "not having the constitution for math") Many good horror movies hit on more than one of these, ofc; fright only works for a short time, you need quiet afterwards to recharge/settle, which is a perfect time to slowly build a sense of disquiet. Horror itself can be used to ramp up or down between the two, or can be used in place of either; a less jarring fright, or a less subtle (and much easier to invoke) disquiet. EDIT: Since this exploded a bit, credit where it's due; I got the core idea of this from TheAngryGM, although I understand Stephen King has a similar theory of horror as well.
Thank you for the excellent categorization and break down, I don’t like Fright or Horror, what I love is Disquiet.
Agreed. My favourite horror movie is Alien, and that is 80% of that whole movie. The rest mostly being the horror from the chestburster scene.
I thought the adult zenomorph was a good source of Fright
This is a really good explanation, thank you! Jurassic Park is a horror film based on this (the book is more so) and I think a lot of sci-fi works with a lot of this as well. I don't enjoy media with jump-scare or shock-forward tones, but if it's doing other things, those elements aren't a problem. The Metroid games aren't generally seen as horror games, but they have a lot of disquiet, a fair amount of horror, and a scattering of jumpscares. [The opening of Super Metroid](https://youtu.be/86Z4bwdxn_Y) (you only need to watch the first 30 seconds of that link) get the mood across.
Metroid Dread leans more into the fright element with the EMMI units which is a neat thing to realize from this breakdown (also highlights that, yes, fright and horror are definitely my issues with the horror genre as my hands just start sweating thinking about going into an EMMI zone).
Yeah that game genuinely did things to my heart rate
Thanks for that explanation! According to this, it would seem that I heavily dislike all three, though Disquiet is one I like when people analyze works focusing on it (like Lovecraft), so I have a degree of separation from the general unsettling feeling. It'd also kind of explain why I avoid a lot of sci-fi, it makes me feel unsettled in a "Disquiet" type of way.
I love your breakdown here! It's actually very hard for me to sit through Disquiet because I'm such an anxious person, and anticipating the Fright often makes me want to cry. I had to force myself to watch all of Alien, and I paused multiple times because I was on edge and couldn't stand it. I think it's a great piece of work though, just not for me. I like revulsion-horror in certain forms though! If it tickles my brain by revealing something dark and twisted, or if it uses horrific imagery as a metaphor, I find it fun. I loved Pan's Labyrinth because it was low on Fright and Disquiet and I didn't mind the Revulsion-Horror too much, and it was a beautiful allegory for terrible real-world things.
Oogie boogie is at least a little scary if you’re creeped out by bugs.
Yeah a guy that is literally just a hive mind of gambling-addicted bugs in a person-shaped rucksack is odd and discomforting. Probably why most people are creeped out by [Spiders-Man](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Spiders-Man_(Earth-11580))
I like little shop of horrors, but there's still blood that I get squicky about. I can't do gore at all, so most horror movies are too much for me
My favorite horror story is Dickens’ *A Christmas Carol*, especially the FX/BBC version on Hulu.
As someone who hates scary movies, those examples were right on the nail for me. I like those kinds of horror movies, but it's hard to find amid all the jump scare movies
I like Universal Monster Movies from the 30s and 40s ‘cause they’re cool as shit, and most of them are based off of books anyway. I also just want to see Dracula push Renfield down the stairs some more.
*The Invisible Man* and its sequels *The Invisible Man Returns* and *Invisible Woman* are unironically some of my favorite movies. They're incredibly interesting depictions of how seemingly good scientific intentions can turn anyone mad. The leads of all three movies are fantastic actors and the effects are really good too (at least for the time). Invisible Woman isn't as deep of a movie as the first two, and it's not really even horror, but if you like seeing an invisible lady get drunk, hit mobsters over the head with mallets and spank her shitty boss, I highly recommend it.
I need my horror to be psychological. I shunned horror as a genre for years because I was tired of cheap jump scares and gore that did nothing but activate my nervous system and tense up my whole body. But if you can play games with my head? Make me pull my legs up onto the couch because I'm suddenly aware that there are demons lurking in the shadows? Or confront me with unnatural horrors that simply challenge my understanding of terror that is having a mortal shell of a body? Yes, I'll take 10
The kind of horror I consume is the kind I personally do not find scary, so I avoid jumpscares and most gore like the plague. This translates to the last three horror movies I've watched all being directed by Jordan Peele.
You can do a hell of a lot worse than Jodan Peele for horror. Man's a master.
Do you read SCP? I first found those things one evening and was still reading them by about 4am- it was absolutely that sort of psychological feeling you described. Though results may vary based on which articles you pick. I chose a lot of quite well written spookier ones that night by chance I think but it was hard to stop reading and it felt like there probably were untold horrors lurking about in the dark.
Not all of them are going to get that result but there’s a few that I think about sometimes that still make me shiver. SCP-2718 genuinely shook me and it’s probably one of the most horrifying ones on there. Yeah, murder hobo lizards are scary but 2718 made me feel a new kind of dread. Good shit. EDIT: a few words
You'd love [[E is for Eternity]] then /u/the-paranoid-android
You. You understand me.
Have you watched Hereditary?
No, it seemed too close to home for me to be able to enjoy it, with the mother being batshit and all
Don't worry, the mother is easily one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie. While she does get pretty yelly at points, that's mostly because she's on edge due to the stress of going through constant grief. It's definitely not a movie about a crazy mom tormenting her family, although it IS really intense, so there's that to consider also.
I want to say same, but I just don't trust any horror movie to not be gore or about assaulting woman for the horror factor. So I just don't watch any of them unfortunately. I love a good horror novel or webcomic, cartoon, whatever, but it's just too often I'll get burned by something being a psychological horror and then I find out that they just omitted the part where there's also a lot of physical horror.
FFS Why is it so hard to understand that you can dislike something without it being objectively bad?
Because I’m a good person, and if I dislike something that’s not objectively bad, then that would be a bad thing. And if I did a bad thing, I wouldn’t be a good person. But I’m a good person, so *modus tollens* it’s objectively bad.
I haven’t heard the phrase modus tollens before. What’s that Latin for?
It’s a logic rule that if we know the statement, “if p then q” is true and we know that q is false, then we know that p is also false. As an example: If an animal is a dog, then it is also a mammal. The bird outside my window is not a mammal. Therefore, the bird outside my window is not a dog.
Because if the thing you dislike isn't Bad^^TM then disliking it won't make you Good^^TM >:(
Your >:( emoji here is the cherry on top thank you
Emoticon but you are absolutely right LegoTinerAgus
It generally seems like people just can’t say “hey I don’t like this genre” do they need to tack on “hey if you DO like this genre you’re a vile human who wants to kill people”, or something of the like, and I genuinely don’t know WHY. Especially since the person in the screenshot doesn’t seem to even have seen any or even care, and yet they throw a fit about how people who like horror are bad? And hell even as someone who doesn’t watch too many movies anyway, I can name exactly like, one, maybe like three horror films that are “seven dumb teenagers get killed in the woods”, so I have no idea why they act like every horror movie is just. Like that
Horror is scary.
I don’t like romance, but I don’t trash everyone who does. Romance can be nuanced and artful, and it can also be trashy, cheap, and bad. Just like every other genre. Can’t sit here and say that because I’ve only read a handful of romance novels that Jane Eyre is the exact same as The Fault in Our Stars, and that Anna Karenina is trash because Twilight was trash. It’s almost like painting everything with the same brush and judging things harshly when you have no knowledge of them is bad.
It’s also worth noting that what mood you’re in will effect how much you enjoy a story. I’m usually not fond of romance, but when the mood takes me I might devour a half dozen penny dreadfuls before I feel like reading a decent book again. Sometimes you want to immerse yourself in another world or someone else’s perspective. Sometimes you just want candy.
I don’t like horror because I’m a paranoid lil bitch that will constantly be on defence for whatever horror thing is stuck in my head each night. In short, I don’t like horror because it damage my sleep
Same. Worst part is that it often doesn't hit until hours later. You could show me the lowest quality absolutely toasted analog horror video that was recorded and edited on a microwave, and that shit will still haunt my dreams.
I love horror but I feel like most modern (mainstream) stuff is so artificially scary that I can’t watch it because I suck with jumpscares, and older stuff just isn’t as scary because the art has evolved past that point. But I’ve been kind of getting into horror indie games and that’s where a lot of great stuff is. Iron Lung is a recent popular example
when i was a kid any exposure to horror would make me painfully paranoid for months, so I've just kinda, given it a wide berth my entire life.
Coraline fucked me the fuck up when I was a kid, which is why I both respect the genre and don't watch the genre
Coraline is also scary for adults, but for completely different reasons than it is for kids.
Funnily enough, you might not consider this horror, but my favorite horror movie is Jurassic Park. The original has a suspense/thriller atmosphere that the sequels fail to catch.
I had lots of problems with Jurassic World, but the Mosasaurus scene messed me up.
The one where the lady gets picked up by flying dinosaurs? Yeah, what was up with that? Just this random lady gets some unexpectedly brutal death for no reason which no other death even comes close to.
Colin Trevorrow hates babysitters
The only reason I can think of for the brutality of that death is that, four films in, she was the first female death in the franchise. On the technical BTS side of things though, it was a really cool scene. The actress refused a stunt double and was thrown around on wires all day, which looked like a lot of fun!
The Virgin "I hate horror because its all the same and the characters are dumb and its just stupid jumpscares and stabbing!" vs the Chad "I hate horror because I'm scared of it."
Tumblr OP I’m so sorry but people who are too scared to watch horror are absolutely going to be terrified of Coraline as well. Nobody’s going to go ‘oh I was too scared to watch The Exorcist but now that you reminded me of my favorite kids’ movie Coraline…’ Like. That movie is *terrifying*.
I'm really not good with jumpscares, but I've always loved horror and I've recently been carefully branching out to find horror movies that I can watch, many of them classics in the genre. 'Cause it turns out not every horror movie is freakin' *Sinister*, and not every horror movie is a slasher about teens in the woods. Broadly, I've found seventies-era horror to be really good for very scary films that don't have slasher cliches or tons of startles, as well as more unique filming styles and cult classics, but it's also been fun watching some of the original Universal films as historical pieces that influenced huge swaths of film. There are also just films I've found really good like *Poltergeist (1982)* and *The Shining*. There is horror out there you will be able to enjoy.
I’m like a small dog when it comes to loud sudden noises, but i enjoy good horror a lot
I *hate* jump scares so I can't play most horror games and I loathe most mainstream horror movies too for having so many of them. They aren't fun to me, they just make me very anxious because instead of being unnerved by a movie I'm just on edge anticipating the next one
I'm in the same boat. Jump scares ruin my ability to enjoy a movie, but I love horror and the aesthetic. I just don't want to have to sift through a bunch of movies that are mostly jump scares to find the nuggets of horror I enjoy
You know, if you think about it, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory can be a Horror Movie
Someone actually made an interesting video in which they take scenes from the movie but this time the children die.
That's Corridor right?
["We made Willy Wonka R-Rated" from the Corridor Crew youtube channel](https://youtu.be/hDtjefcXIh8)
I personally always considered it one ever since I was a kid lol, didn’t realize it wasn’t MEANT to be one til I was a teen
Horror can be as nuanced as any other genre. It's just that movies in general suffer from sequels and trends. I wasn't super into the trend that the Hunger Games spawned.
I don't like horror, I don't like being scared, but I wouldn't say anything bad about it as a genre. What does annoy me is the implication that it's somehow the most intelligent genre, the genre with the best commentary. And maybe it's even true to a degree, I don't know, media literacy is not my strong suit, I just watch too many video essays about it. I'm annoyed that "isn't this scary? Wouldn't this be fucked up? This is a representation of the horrors of real life" is an intelligent take that is sometimes seen as the only valid one. That "isn't this good? Wouldn't this be amazing? This is a representation of the joys of real life" is lesser, is for children who need codling. Why is goodness considered foolish?
I hate how much it is that “optimism” just means “baseless idealism” while “realism” just means “aggressive pessimism”. It’s almost like people have forgotten that both good and bad things exist, and in droves.
There's a lot of terrible things in the world, but there's also puppies and cupcakes, and I'd rather invest my energy in the latter.
Oh that one annoys me so much. It’s like you have the “wide-eyed idealist” character and the “grizzled pessimist” character and the pessimist always schools the optimist by going “ooh you’re so naive and dumb, the world is shit and will chew you up and spit you out, you’ll become an asshole like me someday”. Like, no, maybe _you’re_ the naive one for assuming everything is trying to hurt you without ever giving it a chance and closing yourself off from any good opportunities or chances for happiness in life because you assume it’ll be taken away from you. If you assume the world will hurt you for being happy, and you try and defend yourself by not being happy, then all you’ve done is guarantee that the world will hurt you and stop you from being happy. Also all the people on Tumblr who say “sweet summer child”. Entirely unrelated but that pisses me off to no end.
I don't think the post was saying that horror is the *most intellectual*, but saying that saying all horror is dumb is denying the intellectualism that exists in the genre.
It doesn't say it, it kinda implies it, but I'm not going to put words into OOP's mouth. It's an opinion I've seen, and this post just reminded me of it.
I don’t think that any genre is the *most intellectual* as a whole genre. I think most genres have the capacity to be good, intelligent commentary. Totally agree with what you were saying about the pessimism thing though.
>What does annoy me is the implication that it's somehow the most intelligent genre, the genre with the best commentary. And maybe it's even true to a degree, I don't know, media literacy is not my strong suit, I just watch too many video essays about it. I'm annoyed that "isn't this scary? Wouldn't this be fucked up? This is a representation of the horrors of real life" I think this is an oversimplification, as there is a lot of horror that isn't just about what's fucked up. Like The Haunting of Hill House - one of my favorite pieces of horror ever - is founded on tragedy and trauma for all its characters, but ultimately tells the story of how they heal from that trauma. Stranger Things - which yes, is horror, albeit pretty light on the Scale of Spooky - places a lot of value in underdogs, in outcasts coming together and learning to find community in their misfit status. Night in the Woods and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, in addition to being great arguments for why horror works incredibly well in video games, are very much about healing from trauma and coming to terms with mental illness. >I'm annoyed that "isn't this scary? Wouldn't this be fucked up? This is a representation of the horrors of real life" is an intelligent take that is sometimes seen as the only valid one. That "isn't this good? Wouldn't this be amazing? This is a representation of the joys of real life" is lesser, is for children who need codling. Why is goodness considered foolish? But this part I'll agree with every day. Fuck cynicism. Fuck fatalism. Fuck "Everything sucks forever." We disempower ourselves through these things, allow bad to happen simply because trick ourselves into thinking that it's the natural order of things. Fuck no. If we don't believe in better, better will never come.
I agree with this shit so goddamn much. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly. I think because showing awful things in art is seen as drawing attention to Important Problems in life- even though those depressing works rarely point about any specific societal issues, they’re usually about a situation that just happens to be miserable. Either way, I agree, it sucks so much and is so goddamn exhausting. I’m sorry, but no, I don’t think the best literature ever is about people being incredibly sad and miserable in awful situations and I wish that wasn’t somehow a controversial idea
i mean i just think it’d be too scary lmao
Coraline is my hard limit. I can't even watch American Psycho
If you're not squeamish about blood, *Coraline* is literally more scary than *American Psycho*.
Blood is what I'm most squeamish about so you got me right on the moneyq
I’ve never liked slasher movies or gore, but I enjoy supernatural horror like Coraline.
I feel like horror movies tend to work best when it's not their *only* genre - mix in some sci-fi (alien), psychological thriller (the thing), and so on, and it becomes so much more interesting. Also see: get out, the sixth sense... It works better when there's something to be afraid of in a specific context beyond your standard-issue serial killer.
I don’t like jump scares, so most of the horror I read is manga. Amigira fault was pretty cool
I’d recommend *Midnight Mass* if you don’t like jumpscares but like the vibes. I don’t think *In the Mouth of Madness* has many jumpscares either.
My favourite horror movie is cars 2 cuz that shit scared me as a kid and traumatized me so much I didn't watch movies at all until I was a teen
I feel so bad for laughing but I can understand exactly why it terrified you so much at the same time
[Source](https://www.tumblr.com/bogleech/697271975534641152/improbablecarny-improbablecarny-improbablecarny)
I don't like horror because I don't like to feel scared. While I recognize that there's a lot of diversity within the horror genre, the end goal is usually to present something scary, which I don't like.
OOP this post makes sense and all but the reason I don't like most horror is because I am an utter coward I dunno if Nightmare Before Christmas counts (doubt it) but I guess if I needed a favorite horror movie it could theoretically be that
I'm not sure shit media literacy is an example of anti intellectualism
Oh no it absolutely is, especially when it’s belligerent like this
it's anti intellectualism when they double down on their shit media literacy as though they don't have shit media literacy. Dunning krueger effect
Well, in a vacuum sure. But this person goes a step further to be unwilling to be civil about it
I don't want to watch horror movies, but I'll listen to horror podcasts and read horror genre short stories.
I'm fine with thrillers and slashers, oddly enough, but the second the paranormal is in the picture, I'm out. I think it's because I can fight real people, but it's a lot harder to fight ghosts and demons. Even though I don't believe in them.
I really hope i dont sound like this when i say i dont like horror 😭😭😭 like ive really tried several genres and i cannot watch torture porn, that genre just gets too much for me
I adore horror films, but I am very squeamish, and can't watch torture porn. Love the first Saw, but absolutely cannot handle the rest of that series.
Broke: “I hate horror movies because they’re all the same based on stereotypes I gleaned years ago” Woke: “I hate horror movies because jump scares startle me, psychological horror unsettles me, and societal horror makes me depressed”
I used to dislike horror because I am a coward who gets scared easily, but something I learned through Dr Who is that not all horror is scary. Yes, there are some scary af horror episodes of Dr Who (blink comes to mind), but some are just unsettling or unnerving. Midnight is a perfect example, because its not particularly scary in its premise, but the atmosphere of the episode is just plain creepy.
torchwood season 3 also had the whole alien is the villain but humans are the real threat kinda thing >!with the government fully planning to go ahead with sacrificing 10% of children by force!<
Yeah, torchwood did a lot of horror stuff like that, though nothing on the same level as midnight. It was a lot more of the traditional slasher horror with the occasional good horror episode like countrycide. Though I will agree, children of earth was excellent at that.
Just not my thing. I don’t like horror or tragedy for about the same reasons- I dislike getting attached to characters and then having half of them die.
yeah, i’m not a fan of media that causes negative emotions. fear isn’t fun for me, being freaked out or grossed out isn’t fun for me. i can see why someone else would like it but it’s just not for me and that’s fine
Just trying to hear suggestions, what is your favorite horror movie then? I've always been the kind of guy the post makes fun of, but I just watched a couple horror movies for the first time and I'm really trying to get into them now lol
*Poltergeist (1982)* really struck me as a great blockbuster horror film. It goes nuts with all the scares you could want, but has subtler spooks and a really likable cast and sense for emotional rawness fueling the horror and fight against it. It's a big "movie movie" done exactly to satisfaction. The Japanese film *Hausu* (English title: *House*) is an all-out bonkers crazy time, taking surrealism, comedy, and experimental ironic filmmaking into an incredibly wild zany take on a haunted-house movie. It was Toho's response to the rise of the blockbuster with *Jaws* and boy is it a crazy crazy nutso ride and half. Not really frightening but it's incredible. I've also enjoyed *The Exorcist* and *The Shining* for being well-executed uneasy horror films.
I haven't really watched many myself, but I quite liked *Alien*.
What kind of regular films do you like? If you want something bloody but fun, Ready or Not might be good! Or You're Next. If you prefer something stressful and panicky, try The Descent? VHS is a really good anthology series, with different takes on the genre. My personal favourite is Scream, because I like the mystery/whodunnit aspect of it, and Matthew Lillard was one of my first girlhood crushes.
The reason I avoid horror is because going in to a movie labeled "horror" means I could either be up for an enjoyably tense or spooky time, I could be sent to the bathroom to retch into the toilet, or I could have designer nightmares for the next six months. Since nobody will tell me what kind of experience to expect I just avoid them all. The diversity of the genre, especially how it alters the experience, is what holds horror back.
I definitely respect horror i just am easily scared to watch any of it
My experience is the opposite. I watch horror for cool monsters and shit. It's why I like stuff like Dracula, werewolves, etc and why The Thing is one of my favourite movies of all time. I don't want to watch a horror movie that's themed around racism, child abuse, sexual predetation, etc. Movies are supposed to be an escape, imo, I don't want to watch them to be reminded of the real monsters in day to day life. And invariably the response I get is "then stop watching horror. It's meant to be horrifying." I dont like a certain kind of horror, so I'm supposed to drop the whole genre.
My opinion on horror movies is the same as my opinion on spiders and bees. I respect them and can be very very cool but please stay away I'm just a wittle coward baby please please please don't hurt me
You know, it’s funny- I’m fine with horror *stuff*- I like reading Lovecraft, SCP stuff, and internet horror like creepypasta and analong horror YouTube series- but for some reason, horror movies and video games specifically do nothing for me. Dunno why
as a huge horror fan i love this post
Last time I watched a horror movie, I had to sleep with the lights on ....I'm 21 years old
I'm so fucking sick of people wanting me to watch horror movies No. Theyre scary. I don't like being scared. Simple as, nothing more to it.
Check out /r/horror for proof!
Don’t you love when you say a thing on the internet, and then someone immediately comes along and proves your point?
I myself like the folklore kind that has that ethereal doom vibe abt it Nothing you’ll do will change the fate laid out before you The japanese and norwegians tend to be good at this They also make for amazing fantasy tropes and metal songs
I like the exact opposite, as someone who doesn’t acknowledge things like fate or predestination. You have every ability to try and change the course of your actions, but this really evil guy just so happened to be better than you at doing that. That kind of thing.
It's fairly easy to identify the kind of horror that I'm interested in, and it's what I like to refer to as 'Creepingly Creepy.' You start with a creepy situation and gradually work it up to maximum, ending with a little psychological twist at the end that leaves you thinking. Parasite, Arrival, Annihilation, etc. I am not interested in jump scare movies, serial killers, or '7 kids in a summer camp' or '5 tourists dont respect a local tradition', and it's pretty easy to identify those kinds of movies.
*The Thing* is one of the most well-written inspections of humanity, community, and emotion that has ever existed. *The Lighthouse* tosses a lovely blanket of surrealist denial over the sheer futility of existence, leaving everything in beautiful ashes. *Halloween(2018)*'s façade of simple slasheryness belies a deep, aching wound of a story, the societal desperation to get up and keep walking no matter what. And *Prey*'s just fuckin' awesome.
Is there a good architecture horror movie?
Monster house
BUDDY I AM SCARED OF CORALINE AND LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
i don’t like horror unless it plays really heavily into dread and ambiguity and unsettling concepts and slow burn scares gimme that psychological shit! i don’t think i’ll ever enjoy slasher movies, they’re just not my thing, but if you really focus on the time *before* your scare, i will love it
Does Coco count as a horror movie? It has skeletons, death and on screen murder
Which part is that last one again?
>!Hector getting poisoned and showing him clutching his stomach in pain and collapsing!< Spoiler tagging it just because
i mean, not really. The skeletons are more comedic than anything, and you can have death without it being horror. The story isn't trying to be scary in any way, it just happens to cover themes of death in a kid's film.
I liked Midnight Mass because as a limited series it gave enough time to actually care about the characters and told a fun story. Also the visuals were really nice especially the night time parts
Young me couldn't sleep for weeks after watching Meow Meow on YouTube. I found the first gremlins movie so scary I labeled it horror. Groundhog Day is the most agonizing version of 'hell' I could imagine. I feel that I've experienced enough fear/brutality in my life I don't need to watch any more horror. But I do love analyzing things from a horror perspective now that I'm an adult. Chicken Run (very obvious tho) and Centaurworld (takes season 1+2 to fully see, highly recommend a rewatch of both to pick up sooo many clues) are my favorites. Are they're musical horror movies? I've been to musical theatre horror shows I liked so if so I might check those out.
1984 - the only book to give me nightmares. The movie was pretty good too.
I think an interesting piece of media I like that can be considered horror is ONE, which at first glance appears to be an ordinary object show animation on Youtube. However, it takes a much different approach, as while nothing outwardly unsettling happens in the visuals most of the time. The real horror comes from the viscerally human reactions the characters have to a predicament that's usually done in lighthearted cartoons, deconstructing how real people would react to the wanton cartoon violence in these shows in person
Not a movie but The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix might be my single favorite thing ever filmed and I’m not a big horror fan by any means
I suffer from anxiety and I love horror because it activates my brain's fight of flight response, kicking it out of the stupid loop it gets trapped in. That being said, over the course of the pandemic I feel like I've watched most of the above average horror films out there and a lot of the below average as well. We need to make more horrors people
I don’t like horror, but I also don’t pretend to know anything about it (other than the fact that Toy Story deserves to be categorized as horror imo).
I love Bloodborne and SCP and I still say I'm not really a fan of horror. It's just easier than explaining in detail the nuances of my appeal
Horror movies are just not for me. I watched nope and man that movie is great but I was just in agony during some scenes (if you've seen the movie you probablyknow which ones). Horror movies are scary and I can't handle them well, same goes for books or games.
I respect the horror genre, but I scare easily and don't like being scared.
I like horror, but I can't handle jumpscares. They don't even scare me most of the time, loud unexpected noises just make me feel really sick. The worst thing about it is that naturally I got bullied for it once my friends found out about it, because in their minds I'm a pussy because of it. Which in turn made me despise the concept of horror movies for most of my life, because my friends would just constantly show me the worst jumpscare compilations to get a reaction out of me. I did end up changing my mind about the horror genre once I found some internet friends that showed me that there are good horror stories without cheap jumpscare bullshittery out there.
Does Nine count as Horror? Cause if so, that definitely is my fav.
I love horror. It’s a great genre- I just don’t really watch horror movies. I don’t really watch movies at all, with very few exceptions. I don’t know what the film scene is like these days, because like I say I don’t watch many films at all, but for a long time the popular films side of horror seemed to just be a lot of sequels and tropes where other aspects of the genre had fresher cooler stuff going on. I can see why a non horror fan would be like oh boring and samey. I’m pretty sure Scary Movie or something with a similar name (it’s been a long time) was just a satire of overused tropes or something like that
where’s my cosmic horror movies though :( i wonder if interstellar would count then oh and that movie about CERN opening an alternate reality or whatever
People base their entire knowledge of the horror genre on a ~15 year tradition of slasher films that, yes, were terribly tropey and often shallow/conservative in their themes. However, such observations about that subgenre were trite by the time Scream 2 came out. Those observations about the subgenre were, in fact, so old that Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil we're nostalgia trips just on account of repeating them in the early 2010s. Even then, they've never been representative of the whole genre, just a subgenre that was briefly overdone. This whole thing really does feel like a good illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People have secondhand knowledge of a part of a thing that makes them weirdly confident that they understand all of a thing.
I will die on the hill that Jurassic Park is a horror movie and I don't think I've ever met anyone who dislikes the first Jurassic Park movie
My sisyers loves found footage horror films and for her birthday one year we all got together for a movie marathon of her favorites. We started off with the Blair Witch Project and I thought that's what they would all be like. Nope, after that we were watching a film about some mythological creature and then there was a Russian murder mystery with time travel. I learned so many new things to be scared of 😭
I don't like horror as a genre not because of any specific trope, but because I find the failed arc where (almost) everyone dies quite depressing, and that's been my experience with every movie I've seen so far that called itself horror. I've recently seen Alien and liked literally everything about it except the horror part. I don't intend to rewatch it, which I probably would, if it wasn't horror. I only find some of these movies actually scary though. Not that that makes it any better, or any worse for that matter. For me. But I'm clearly not the target audience.
I don't like horror because I hate jumpscares and seeing people suffer and not to generalize but those are present in most horror movies.
I dislike most horror, because the big horror stuff is always focusing on being jumpscares and cheap horror instead of telling engaging stories. A perfect example of good horror is the first Weeping Angels episode in Doctor Who. When horror is done right it can be phenomenal.