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

@ItGhoul Sorry, that was my autocorrect in Stephen, not me!

I mentioned King because almost all the films people say are great examples of horror are King adaptations — as people have done throughout this thread! Leaving aside thrillers, can you name some great Hollywood horror movies that aren’t King adaptations and aren’t Hitchcock or The Exorcist?

In answer to your question, probably the best genuine horror films might be something like Haneke’s original Funny Games; or even Get Out - but actually, both of those are more like satirical thrillers rather than what you might call horror.

On horror movies, do you think I should be recommending Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw or Bride of Chucky to my students who are paying nearly £10k a year? They tend to be keen on watching good stuff for their money!

His House is an absolutely brilliant movie. Beautifully acted and wonderfully shot. I had to laugh at the name of the night witch, the Apeth. In Old Yorkshire dialect that would be 'ya daft apeth' - a mild pejorative for a fool derived from the old northern word for 'halfpenny'.

I find it interesting that the very western genre of the Gothic has been used to view this 'haunting' from the fresh perspective of the South Sudan crisis. It's a rewriting of The Shining, according to Weekes, which might have been an acclaimed film (because it's Kubric) but it misses a lot of the subtlety of the novel. That story is a complex, layered narrative embodying a deep satire of gilded age America and the exploitation of the country's resources by the very rich - the Overlook Hotel being the main emblem for that and thus a sinister seat of evil. In the film adaptation the key figures which give it that depth are missing - namely Horace Derwent and Al Shockley, who the book strongly hints are the real villains of the piece.

There's definitely a Freudian analysis in there somewhere. Looking forward to more work from this director as this was excellent.

Ghost Stories had a long run in the West End. So did the Woman In Black - both were great.

Get Out was a pretty rubbish one of you ask me, not at all scary. But then you don’t watch schlocky horror films so you can’t really judge.

It Follows for example was brilliant.

Again, why are you asking me about ‘Stephen King films’? I’ve not even mentioned King, and I don’t much like his books. It’s really odd that you’re fixating on this.

It’s peculiar for anyone who supposedly teaches an arts/humanities subject to attempt to win an argument by disputing points that your opponent wasn’t making in the first place. I hope that isn’t how you teach your students to analyse and critique, because that’s really not how it works, and you’re setting them up for academic failure.

There is no such thing as ‘a Stephen King film’. He is not a filmmaker. Carrie (for example) is not a ‘Stephen King film’. It is a Brian De Palma film, with a screenplay adapted by Lawrence D Cohen from a Stephen King novel.

Either way, I don’t care about your views on Stephen King and I don’t really care what you think of any film adaptation of his work. I make no claims one way or the other for any films based on his novels to be ‘great art’. I think the term ‘great’ is pretty meaningless in the context of art, in fact.

I do take issue with you dismissing an entire genre of cinema as devoid of merit while purporting to be a teacher of film, and with your inability to recognise that your personal dislike of a genre does not mean it cannot have any artistic value.

I’m certainly grateful that the people who taught film and literature at my own universities didn’t teach like you.

@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’.

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.

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

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?

Now that is a good entertaining film.

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.

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!

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.

It Follows was bloody brilliant.

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.

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!

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?

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😀

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

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.

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.

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.

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 🤓

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.

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.