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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that people who 'enjoy' horror films are just a little bit fucked up?

237 replies

LastMinuteLouise · 29/12/2011 00:07

Maybe I am just an oversensitive person but I find watching my fellow man being terrified, screaming and then horribly killed, with blood and guts spewing, just a bit offensive! I am aware it is not real (plenty of real stuff in the news which is just as bad) but just having these images in my head upsets me. DH says he just forgets it when it's finished - he's currently watching 'Devil', some fucked up film about a devil in a lift Hmm. Most of the dramas and films these days are about people getting murdered, getting killed or being dead. It is so mainstream.

I mean where do these film makers get these ideas? Surely they should be committed? Are we all supposed to have this 'dark' side that they make into 'art'? Where is the entertainment in having horrifying images in your head?

I remember watching 'Changeling' a few years back thinking it was about a woman who's son disappears and who is then given a 'ringer' back by the police. I was totally unprepared for the scene in which young boys (my DSs age) were shown being axed to death. Fucked me up for months weeks and I was watching it alone. I remember shouting at the screen, please tell me that did'nt happen but apparently it did.

I don't know. Am I abnormal?

OP posts:
SlinkingOutsideInSocks · 29/12/2011 00:52

I hate horror films, can't bear them, but I think YABU.

I mean, are you saying that your DH is a little bit fucked up?

tigerlillyd02 · 29/12/2011 00:53

I hate watching anything like this and avoid at all costs. I wouldn't say all those who do are messed up though so YABU.

OoPaHoOpAh · 29/12/2011 00:54

I think everyone is a leetle bit fucked up in some way or other

so

yabu

Moominsarescary · 29/12/2011 01:21

I love horror films although I don't like saw/hostel

I do like wrong turn though and those other ones that are similar, can't remember what they are called. There pretty fucked up

ageperfect · 29/12/2011 02:09

YBVU

CheerfulYank · 29/12/2011 02:15

I hate them, but I think YABU in that people can watch them and not be fucked up.

But no, I can't stand them. I hate scary stuff. Love Stephen King books though!

thefroggy · 29/12/2011 02:25

I dont like gore. I dont like "horrors" that involve blood, guts, more blood and guts, and a bit more blood and guts. They make me feel ill and play on my mind.

I dont have a problem with films like What Lies Beneath, Sixth Sense, (just a bit creepy) or the oldies like Amityville, Childsplay or Nightmare On Elm Street.

I can take a few jump off my seat moments, I quite like it, but not the mutilation stuff {vom}.

ScarfOfSexualPreference · 29/12/2011 02:26

YABU. Horror is such a wide genre to condemn all who watch it. And I see gorier things in other genres, sci-fi films with aliens killing people or adventure films where the baddy get killed in a horrible way. Gore can add to a film, if done in the right way. Getting a fright, having that 'oh no don't go in there' moment. Plenty of terrifying horror films show no gore at all.

On the other hand, YANBU if refering to torture porn. Hostel, Saw, Final Destination type films. Death for the sake of death, not to add to the film but the entire film. I watched the first Saw film and felt ill. It's an entire world away from say Demolition Man, with an eye taken out for a good reason. I agree also that having horrible things happen to kids isn't entertaining, we don't need to see kids getting hacked up. But saying that, I don't like torture films so I don't watch them, so they don't affect me.

TroublesomeEx · 29/12/2011 08:01

I generally don't like horror films made after 1995 or thereabouts and if a film is on the tv then I will still watch a more recent one but will also adjust my expectation of it depending on it's year.

I like the horror films of the 70s/80s where it's all about the anticipation/suspense. With a few zombies/vampires thrown in for good measure.

Not into horror of the splatterpunk variety. And the only people I've known who were, were a little... odd.

ledkr · 29/12/2011 08:07

How ridiculous!!
I love horror films particularly vampires and Zombies. I don like or watch films like saw or hostel cos i dont like them cos too real whereas Zombies and vampires are fantasy.
Arent they??
yabu for sure.

cidrenomore · 29/12/2011 08:15

Used to love horror and scarier (not gorier) the better. Splatterpunk not my fave.
However since having DD's just not into it all any more, have no interest in watching/reading anything like that.
Don't think people who watch it have issues tho'.
Now the people who think it up...hmmm

Megatron · 29/12/2011 08:15

I don't watch them, then I don't get any lasting images in my head. You pretty much know what kind of films they are if you read the synopsis on the back so just don't watch them. Takes all sorts though so if other people enjoy them then so be it. (freaks Grin)

Chundle · 29/12/2011 08:19

I used to love horror films! However I then watched one called I Saw The Devil and found it so bloody awful I vowed never to watch another again. Yanbu

SilentBoob · 29/12/2011 08:30

Funnily enough I was thinking very much long these lines last night when DH put on Contagion. It's about a Pandemic sweeping the world and follows both the story of how it started, and the stories of various people dealing with it in their own way (the over protective dad / the bent journalist / the noble scientist etc). I got to the end and thought
(a) How completely un-fun it has been to imagine so realistically a terrifying prospect that may well happen in my lifetime. Why spend two hours of my evening living that nightmare?
(b) FFS was it really necessary to show them peeling the head off someone for an autopsy? Why? I wasn't expecting that and now it is seared on my brain and I can't un-see it. Films are supposed to be entertaining - how did it enhance that story to show something so bloody upsetting and gory?

I conclude that I just don't get it.

SuePurblybilt · 29/12/2011 08:38

I don't get any of them. But I concede that watching horror in the sense of the old-fashioned 'suspense' movies - Halloween and the like - is a very different thing to the torture porn of Saw and Hostel and similar.

I genuinely think there is something fucked up about watching those films.

NeedlesCuties · 29/12/2011 08:48

Watching good looking teenagers like in Jeepers Creepers and Final Destination getting hacked and tortured to death gives me the shivers as there is a glamourous edge to it, like it is a bit of a porn thing. I think that is f*cked up.

A good ghost story or vampire epic can be scary, but isn't gore for gore's sake.

YABU.... but on the other hand YANBU.

topknob · 29/12/2011 08:53

Google Human Centipede for ultimate make you vom in your mouth just from watching the trailer !

EdwardorEricCantDecide · 29/12/2011 08:53

I like saw not because of the gore but the psychological aspect of it. I dont like slasher movies like scream etc. Surely horror movies are the couch potatoes version of bungee jumping it's the adrenaline rush u get when scared.

YABVU if u dont like them don't watch them but don't judge others that do

SuePurblybilt · 29/12/2011 08:58

But it's the 'psychological aspect' that is fucked up, surely? More disturbing than gore. You get gore on Casualty, when the sucker of the week falls off the ladder, onto the lorry of that chap who's one day off retirement. The lorry carrying spikes.
I think you're kidding yourself if you think those films offer some fascinating psychological insight and that's why you watch them.

TroublesomeEx · 29/12/2011 09:03

I quite liked the original Saw film.

It reminded me of Blind Alleys (Tales from the Crypt #46, February-March 1955), Major William Rogers (Nigel Patrick), the new director of a home for the blind, makes drastic financial cuts, reducing heat and rationing food for the residents, while he lives in luxury with Shane, his Belgian Malinois. When he ignores complaints and a man dies due to the cold, the blind residents exact revenge by constructing in the basement a maze of narrow corridors lined with razor blades. They starve the Major's dog, place the Major in the maze's center, release the dog and turn off the basement lights.

Chilling stuff!

But the others were just boring and ridiculous.

TroublesomeEx · 29/12/2011 09:06

People watch horror films because they appeal to a part of our human nature.

kickingking · 29/12/2011 09:09

Personally, I hate stuff like that and never, ever watch it.

However, people used to go along to public hangings and burnings - and take a picnic and their kids, it was considered a good day out Shock.

I assume the likes of Saw, etc. are fulfilling some kind of need that many people have to watch gore and pain.

I really, really don't get it though. I have had many rows discussions with DH about his refusal to fast forward through torture type scenes in films we watch. Apparently I am the strange one for not wanting to watch them Confused

EdwardorEricCantDecide · 29/12/2011 09:13

Human psyche is fascinating wether it's the light bubbly side of it or te darker side of it. So yes I do watch these movies for this reason I would however agree with someone further up (sorry on phone can't check who) that it was only the first saw film that offered this.

With the changeling example the violence was the smallest part of the film the main storyline was the main characters mistreatment by the authorities meant to be helping her.

MinnieBar · 29/12/2011 09:14

Disclaimer: since having DCs I can barely watch the news, let alone anything horror-related (except stuff like Buffy).

It's not personally my cup of tea but I do think these films fulfill a psychological need, to an extent. I think there can be something almost cathartic about being scared in the comfort of your own living room. Like I say, I can't watch it any more, but I do still rather enjoy a bit of violence (e.g. Die Hard, 24, Sopranos, Dexter) even though I absolute abhor violence in real life (I once started crying on witnessing a mild punch-up in a pub that all the other drinkers didn't even bat an eyelid at).

Having said all that, there are other issues to consider:

  • watching scary films with your mates is a teenage rite of passage
  • there does (IMHO) seem to be a trend among film-makers to 'out-do' each other in the gore/disgust stakes. And thus a feeling of having to be 'hard' enough to watch the next most horrible thing among some people.

Oh, and Final Destination is funny. It's clearly very, very tongue-in-cheek. Same for 2 although I haven't seen any past that.

EdwardorEricCantDecide · 29/12/2011 09:14

In any case wasn't changeling based on a true story? (I could be wrong there can't really remember)