To think horror films are horrible

I like a jump scare movies like the Woman in Black but gratuitous gore is too much. I once started watching the Human Centipede, and have had nightmares ever since (stopped after tan early graphic scene)

Exactly- the first film scared the hell out of me! I like lots of things that aren’t high art (RHONY!) I loved Cocaine Bear as well - it was ridiculous fun - like what you like x

That's a relief, because Poe wasn't a novelist.

Screen handle duly noted. 😂

I liked the Psycho prequel series too a few years back!

Get Out is 95 in the BFIs top 225 films of all time - The Shining is 88 , Psycho 31 …

Oh I agree. There is an air of pomposity with some of the posts on this thread. Nightmare on Elm Street is awesome. My sister used to have a poster of Freddie Kruger on her bedroom door 🤣. On sleep overs with mates we would sing ‘one two Freddie’s coming for you’ in the middle of the night.

This is interesting for me, I've suffered a lot of trauma, a lot of which is showed in horror films. I find it almost comforting in a way that even if it's a fictional character, I'm not alone? Because someone has thought these things and recognised they do happen in real life to people. I guess it helps me see that it's not my fault sometimes too as like the character maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've often thought "i should have done this or that" and then a character tries that only for it not to work and it soothes me that I wasn't stupid for trying to escape at that point etc.

Not sure if that makes sense without describing the trauma but I don't feel up to that tonight.

True. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of genre - whether cinematic or literary - knows that it's not a thing you can pigeonhole with any degree of accuracy. Many/most films demonstrate at least an element of hybridity; a lot often encompass many genres at once.

Someone hasn't been reading their Steve Neale 🤓

On this thread other posters have mentioned lots of King adaptations!

On Kubrick - I used to teach a crashingly boring course on all his films (poor me - it wasn’t my course); and Barry Lyndon and 2001 are honestly the only remotely bearable ones. Even then, Kubrick’s unbearably pompous, portentous, horribly uneven. He’s a man’s auteur, with a terrible sense for women.

Folk horror is often quite deliberately not horror at all, but something different. Again, it’s fun to teach; but students also often find they don’t find much to say about it because it’s quite limited.

Same here, saw one when I was a teenager and that was it for me. Can't bear to even see trailers for them. Not my idea of entertainment.

It’s hilarious that every time someone mentions a horror film that’s interesting, original and well-made, you just say it’s not really horror. Get Out absolutely is a horror film. You just can’t bear to admit it to yourself because then you’d have to re-examine your prejudices.

Just because a film is satirical, or beautiful, or profound, or groundbreaking, or moving that doesn’t mean it cannot also be horror. Saw and Child’s Play are horror films. Get Out and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night are also horror films. They are not only horror, but they are still horror.

So? It's fun. And there's a lot in there. I wasn't claiming Wes Craven was the next Orson Welles.

80s slasher movies are pure nostalgia for me. Some of them were really silly, campy and fun - like Return of the Living Dead which was the source of the band name 'Send More Paramedics'. The Amityville Horror claimed to be true as it was based on a very peculiar real-life tragedy - of course everything else was a hoax but a compelling one nonetheless.

One of the first horror movies I ever watched - when I was still quite young - was City of the Living Dead - the first of the gates of hell trilogy. From my very vague memory that one was pretty gratuitous in terms of the violence and gore. Its plot gave me such nightmares that I wouldn't even go upstairs on my own for weeks!

My mum wasn't very pleased with my friend's mum for allowing us to watch that (not that she had any idea of course. Friend had sneaked it in from the video store and we used to dare each other to watch the scariest things we could).

She won with this one😀

If I stuck it in my 2000 years of Western art course my students would be rioting and demanding their money back

is anyone suggesting you do? Which films DO you include?

Oh, come on. We all know that Nightmare on Elm Street is a terrible, terrible film. Popular it may have been, but it’s more cinematic turd than great art!

If I stuck it in my 2000 years of Western art course my students would be rioting and demanding their money back!

It is absolutely incorrect to say that ‘almost all the films people say are great examples of horror’ are Stephen King adaptations. In fact, I’d say that The Shining is really the only one that regularly gets trotted out by critics as an example of great filmmaking.

Do I think Bride Of Chucky, Saw or Nightmare On Elm Street are especially important or worthy of academic study? Not particularly, no. But neither are they representative of the entire genre of horror cinema. Dismissing horror on the grounds that some horror is like that is a bit like dismissing all comedy because Dumb & Dumber exists.

It’s really odd that you seem to have decided big budget commercial Hollywood popular horror is the only thing that counts as ‘horror’ whereas anything you think is apparently worthy (you mentioned folk horror, for example) is somehow not horror. It’s almost like you’re desperately back-pedalling.

It Follows was bloody brilliant.

There have been some really good horror films the last few years again and I'm hoping that it starts getting more respect as a genre. Pearl with Mia Goth was great.

I class Alien as Scifi Horror.

My heart will always belong to the Evil Dead. That's what I watch instead of Christmas Story around that time of year.

Get Out is a horror- but it’s also a really powerful film about race and class in America. One of the things I love about horror is its ability to slide in views and ideas that pass notice as it’s ’just Horror’ .

what’s not horrific about finding yourself paralysed by white racists trying to give you a brain transplant!

Have you never heard of Gothic horror? Don't you rate Kubrick either? I've never known someone qualified in film who doesn't rate David Lean and you don't think Dracula is any good.

You've certainly entertained me.

Now that is a good entertaining film.

That’s my point - it isn’t really horror at all. Gothic isn’t horror either. OP started the thread about horror as a genre, not thrillers or crime, but the Nightmare on Elm
Street / Hostel / Saw type films.

@ItGhoul i already answered your questions, eg about King - didn’t you read my post?

I think anyone with such a narrow, blinkered version of what art is should not be teaching it.

I think the first Nightmare on Elm Street was actually very good. It not only blended together several contemporary media reports at the time, relating to a sudden outbreak of SADS amongst a particular demographic, but also a series of local murders which forced Wes Craven to water down the paedophilic element - although this remains strongly hinted at.

The demographic concerned was south east Asian, which explains the presence of the Balinese 'dream skills' story - they get their art and literature from their dreams and disempower any 'monster' they meet by turning their back on it so it disappears.

The whole idea is that the dream bogeyman is real enough to ensure you won't wake up if he catches you, but nebulous enough for the viewer to know he could not have gained a foothold in any teenager who wasn't from a seriously messed up family background to begin with. That's the only way 'Freddy' gains a purchase, which of course begs the question of the psychological element - he's only 'real' and has powers in particular circumstances and these are psychological.

The first, shadowy Freddy in #1 was really sinister - because he remains shadowy and really menacing. After that they camp him up so he becomes a parody of himself - a bit like the trajectory from the still, snake-like, terrifying Dr Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs and his very campy counterpart in Hannibal.

There is, strangely enough, a lot of serious scholarly criticism on the Hannibal Lecter franchise.

@SerafinasGoose exactly - I am surprised a teacher of film doesn’t explore or understand the context and meaning around horror films - which tend to reflect cultural concerns and experiences such as the impact of nuclear weapons testing, global warming, the spread of communism is 1950s America, rampant consumption, DNA splicing, cosmetic surgery, AI , racism etc - I mean if you can read a film you can see beyond the ‘horror’.