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All Things Horror Thread


TheSurgeon

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Re Ari Aster - I really enjoyed the first 75% of both Midsommar and Hereditary. He's a talented filmmaker, unfortunately both movies go for the most ridiculously obvious and boring endings they could possibly have had to the point that they essentially ruin the previous 75% of goodness. Someone needs to have a word with him to sort out those shitty predictable third acts. "Elevated horror" as a term really pisses me off generally. It's like in the 90s when good horror films all of a sudden started being called "thrillers" instead of horrors. Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie. Se7en is a horror movie. It's ok to like horror movies!

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I've found 2022 a year with a lot of decent horror, but not a lot of great horror. That said, there's a few decent-sounding ones on my to-watch list (Barbarian, Men). I tend to think of 2014 as being the year I hold as a benchmark. Even last year had Titane and Candyman, both of which I loved, and I've not loved much this year.

Smile kind of summed it up for me - I liked it, but I didn't love it. Some lovely imagery (and I found it all going a bit Junji Ito as it went, which is no bad thing), but a lot that just didn't work for me in terms of scripting. It was trying to do too much, so every single scene felt like the Cliff Notes version running to the next scene as fast as possible. And I didn't love the lead either.

5 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

 "Elevated horror" as a term really pisses me off generally. It's like in the 90s when good horror films all of a sudden started being called "thrillers" instead of horrors. Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie. Se7en is a horror movie. It's ok to like horror movies!

I don't think it's a term that's actually used that much outside of people complaining about it being used as a term. With the 'thrillers' point, I think it mostly depends whether there are supernatural or uncanny elements or not. I don't think of Zodiac as a horror movie, despite it being scary in places - with Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, there are no supernatural elements at all. There's a gothic vibe to Silence of the Lambs, but that's about it. I know categories are kind of a tedious argument, but I think my default there has changed.

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8 minutes ago, Chris B said:

With the 'thrillers' point, I think it mostly depends whether there are supernatural or uncanny elements or not. I don't think of Zodiac as a horror movie, despite it being scary in places - with Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, there are no supernatural elements at all

I'm not sure I'd agree. Psycho and Scream for example are definitely horror films and have no supernatural elements. To me, if it's dark, very violent, the primary focus of the movie is around people getting killed in brutal ways and it has jump scares it's definitely a horror. Silence of the Lambs has a bit where a guy cuts off another guys face and wears it - you can't get much more horror than that. Thrillers to me are films like The Fugitive and Ransom. 

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3 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Silence of the Lambs has a bit where a guy cuts off another guys face and wears it -

The key difference for me is that you don’t see it on camera. You also have a killer who skins his victims to make clothing but we don’t see it. But it’s all subjective. 

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1 minute ago, LaGoosh said:

I'm not sure I'd agree. Psycho and Scream for example are definitely horror films and have no supernatural elements. To me, if it's dark, very violent and has jump scares it's definitely a horror. Silence of the Lambs has a bit where a guy cuts off another guys face and wears it - you can't get much more horror than that. Thrillers to me are films like The Fugitive and Ransom. 

Fair point, especially with slashers. These things aren't hard and fast and there's plenty of overlap - but I do think of both Se7en and Silence of the Lambs as being closer to thrillers than horror. Can't remember who, but someone once suggested the difference is whether your lead is more the victim or the detective, and whether the story is about the killer chasing *them* or them chasing the killer. Both have horrific elements, but I can't really see any issue with either being seen as psychological thrillers - and I don't think it's an anti-horror thing either.

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Just finished bingeing on A Nightmare on Elm Street blu ray box set. I think I'd only seen 1 and 3 before, and things went downhill after 3 before improving somewhat with Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Possibly one of the scariest things was on the extras where Bruce Wagner was flaunting some outrageous ear hair. 


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I hate that they're going with some hokey pseudo-superhero shit. A film about Renfield exploring his mental state and devotion to Dracula, with Cage only occasionally appearing as a shadowy but domineering presence, could be genuinely very good. But a film set in the present day where Renfield can get fucking superpowers from eating insects, with the tired joke of "villain's henchman goes to emotional support counselling", sounds terrible. 

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Weirdly pissy riposte aside, not surprised to see The Wicker Man at the top. It probably is the best horror film ever made in this country. Night of the Demon is excellent, too. A shame to see Kill List in the top 10 but that was always to be expected even though it's absolutely awful.

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