To think horror films are horrible

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

I have never understood why people enjoy horror films.
By that I mean the genuine films of that genre not crime/action whatever which have violence in them.
I watched part of a horror film at a freind's place when I was much younger (late teens) and was completely freaked out and left my friend’s house. The film was so shockingly nasty that it took me years to block out the images.
If you enjoy horror, why do you like them? Is it a thrill akin to a rollercoaster for you?
I honestly don’t understand why people like watching torture etc.
YABU = Horror films are great fun and I can’t get enough
YANBU = Horror films are horrible and I avoid them

SotL is known as the only horror to have ever won a best picture Oscar. It would fall within psychological horror but is definitely horror

YANBU. I have never understood why people watch them / can enjoy them. Who the hell finds someone having their eyes gouged out / meeting a horrific ending entertaining?
I never understood the people who write these films too, although I’ve always guessed they’re slightly demented themselves.

Are people not allowed to just enjoy something - why is only something you view (because you teach) as ‘great art’ worthy of consideration?

glad you didn’t teach me fun studies to be honest

I like horror 🤷‍♀️I’m okay with you feeling superior because of that. If it helps you through the day

If you really do teach film studies, the education system is in even more trouble than I thought.

Well, Poe, Shelley and Lovecraft are all better than King, Archer and Collins, yes. But actually Lovecraft is generic; and neither Poe nor Shelley are actually among the great novelists. Poe the best of all three; but Pym (not horror) is his best work, not the short stories or poems, which are melodramatic Gothic, fun as they are.

I’m not a fan, I hate feeling scared but I remember loving The Orphanage so I suggested that to watch with teenage DS who wanted to try some horror. I looked it up though to check the age rating and just the photo that came up was too much for me how!!

I was going to post the photo but I don’t want to traumatise you all!!!

I hated SOTL as a teen - many sleepless nights after that.

I feel the same about romance films and novel. I hate them as they bore me to tears. I wonder why people like them.

But we all like different things and that’s what makes the world go around.

now I’m going to find a good horror flick to watch 😁

The education system is in trouble because I teach that great art is better than Steven King films? Run that one by me again? 😆

You might want to work on how you get that across in writing, because none of it’s apparent here.

I love horror, not a huge fan of slasher type stuff, I can turn on the news to watch people hurt each other, that’s not what I’m after. I much prefer a good supernatural horror, I like a good ghost story, vampires, I am huge fan of films about possession and found footage. I like a slow burn, not jumpscares. I’m not a ‘risk taker’ I just like spooky things.

horror films are horrible

You don’t say.

I love being scared, and almost exclusively watch horror. I think it's the adrenaline. Interestingly, I hate roller coasters and once cried in a haunted house at the age of 24.

Some people get so snobby about horror in general including the entire panel of Academy Award voters I'd much rather watch a horror film than any Marvel dross, or the umpteenth Bridget Jones film. At least it actually makes me feel something.

Ah, I’m slain! Seriously, though: you think the education system should teach that Stephen King films are great art? Is that actually true, do you think?

Like The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile?

Or Misery?

@ghostyslovesheets You would rank them among the greatest artworks humanity has produced in the last 2000 years or so?

The greatest art works? Or films? Gosh I thought education was supposed to expand the mind and challenge convention - do you tell your students to only study films you feel fit that category? What if they submit work on film you sneer at - 3rd?

im interested though to know your top 5 greatest pieces of film art of the last 2000 years

So who or what is a great writer/ film in your opinion?
You have not answered that nor have answered why your opinion differs from almost all film critics?
Whete did you learn to become a "film teacher"?

I once saw Misery on stage starting Dirty Den. That was definitely not great art!! Not very scary. 🤣

there was a long running ghost story in the west end, name escapes me, that was quite an enjoyable level of scary!

did anyone ever watch scream in the cinema - with the cinema scene?! I can still remember looking over my shoulder.

I’m glad I was free to explore genres and themes rather than being told ‘these are the only film you will watch as all other films are unworthy’ 😂

You are a very poor teacher of film if you think horror = ‘Steven [sic] King films’, if you believe you alone can determine what is or isn’t ’great art’, and if you dismiss entire genres in the way that you did in your initial post.

I have no idea why you keep wanging about Stephen King at all, given that he is not a filmmaker, and the conversation is about an entire genre of cinema, not about the small number of films based on his books. It’s odd and disingenuous to equate a single author with an entire genre of film.

Horror is a great space for exploring and highlighting other issues as well if you read film you should know this?

try His House or Get Out or maybe look in more detail at women in horror?

Thanks for asking - I’ve got four Oxbridge degrees and was originally a specialist in eighteenth century and Victorian literature, but got into teaching film and cultural studies when I was a professor in comparative modern literature and culture in a US university. I now teach at a university here but across a range of eras. It’s fun!

I like teaching generic film - the history of musicals and animation are especially fun topics - but why do you think that enjoying something must mean we have to call it great art? Plenty of enjoyable things aren’t “great”. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy them!

You’ll find that most film scholars (as opposed to popular movie critics, eg for newspapers) don’t write on popular horror. Most film studies is on quite recherché topics like Cuban modernism and so on. Most of my film students are interested in things like noir, film tragedy, Postcolonial film and so on. I do try to get them interested in folk horror, which is rather a different beast from Hollywood studio horror!

Gosh the backpedaling is almost audible

Also I’m baffled that a teacher of film and cultural studies never touches on the horror genre? Really?

mind you I don’t have 4 posh degrees so I probably know nothing