ok lets all shit our pants to something new: post 2005 horror film thread

xp - okay, fair point. i'm a fuddy-duddy.

I'm comfortable labelling as 'horror' any work featuring at least two or three of these elements:

-suspense
-dread
-psychological abnormality
-physical monstrosity
-the supernatural/uncanny/unknowable/unexplainable
-gore

Some fairly standard thrillers might hit two of those marks and not quite make the cut, but I think that otherwise covers the bases for even the most tenuous cases of what I would personally consider horror.

I'd say those are pretty safe criteria.

counterpoint: UNSAFE

Confession: Among other things, I'm attempting to set up and enforce separate but overlapping Venn bubbles for "horror movies" and "films in which terrible sights are seen". As a fan, I'm troubled by the tendency to subsume any film that graphically depicts rape, torture, gory violence or "disturbing"/"shocking" subject matter into the horror genre. I push back against this because I believe the genre is inherently trivializing and deserves better than to become a catchbasin for grimy exploitation of every sort.

This kind of moralistic boundary policing is utterly futile, I know. Like the old school "Famous Monsters" fans who are said to have objected to the arrival of gory slashers, I'm clearly on the wrong side of history ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i watched Citadel the other night. Despite some absolutely nonsensical premise-points and a questionable approach to the 'hoodie horror' sub-genre, i thought it was nevertheless pretty good at doing the Babadook trick of juxtaposing mental anguish with a supernatural entity.

Don't really understand the need to gatekeep horror, any more than I understand the need to gatekeep jazz - nothing much to be gained by insisting on rigid formal boundaries, far as I can see. If people want to say it's horror, it's horror.

FWIW, some of the gore in Green Room was nasty enough to make me look away from the screen - as good a working definition of horror as any, I'd say.

yeah sorry, i'm with contenderizer on this one. i think it's more useful to separate supernatural horrors and 'extreme thrillers' (as it were). Obviously there's overlap. I can't bring myself to think of Green Room as a horror. But something like Eden Lake or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I might do for some reason and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because in the former, the situation is very real and the bad guys are very human and fallible, whereas in Eden Lake the kids seem to have near-preternatural powers. And again, SAW though, is a gore movie but I'm not sure about the horror element despite the premise being firmly in the fantastical.

I guess there's a difference between films that make you flinch and films that make you want to go to sleep with the lights on.

contenderizer bang OTM

less rigid genre definitions are good, but when it becomes so loose as to become meaningless, i think it damages the genre.

this list for example -
http://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/the-25-best-horror-films-of-the-21st-century-so-far-270790/

is good until it gets to the top 5.

under the skin is horror?
mulholland drive is horror?

these kinds of choices to me ruin it for the real horror films to be given the credit they should get.

here too -
http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/why-mulholland-drive-is-a-great-horror-film.html

im not with this attempt to gentrify horror

It's not gentrifying horror when Walter De La Mare, Oliver Onions, Henry James and Robert Aickman are foundational creators. If Mulholland Drive and Under The Skin were never mentioned it'd be a change for the worse, not in keeping with the longer history if anything.

xp to be fair, Mulholland Drive is the only film I've watched in my adult life with my fingers over my eyes.

I like the Venn diagram approach because I do like some separation. I'm a weird fantasy fan primarily and I'm rarely in the mood for violent thrillers, so if I was running a horror magazine I wouldn't cover the latter even though it is horror. I can't explain how it works exactly but I think personally curating your ideal version of a genre goes in interesting directions and cultivates a more interesting scene. Forest J Ackerman's ideal had an influence on what gets made eventually.

Personally I think I disagree with both the gatekeepers and the expansionists. I take the Wittgenstein road of family resemblances and overlapping traits and general consensus-forming through use, but then I also say that part of the fun is arguing about what fits and what doesn't. It's fun in itself, it makes you analyse the films better, it lets you work out what parts of the genre appeal to you (if you've never really reflected on that before), whether your preferences have meaning beyond 'it entertains me', etc etc.

If you are a critic attempting to put Mulholland Drive in the horror genre as pure horror, you probably took 'Star Wars is a western' type statements in your film studies classes far too literally. Or are scared far too easily. However, if you're a critic who is simply suggesting that people analyse Mulholland Drive as a horror, and laying out your reasons, then you're provoking thought. That is a good thing.

I will say that sometimes boundary-blurring is a terrible thing. From some discourse somewhere (possibly here, possibly irl) I had got it into my head that Snowtown was a horror. It's not a horror, it is horrific. I mean, a great film, but I wasn't mentally prepared for it at all. Horror to me is usually fun of some sort, even if it's gruesome or thought-provoking or somewhat disturbing or even actually scary at the time.

As a fan, I'm troubled by the tendency to subsume any film that graphically depicts rape, torture, gory violence or "disturbing"/"shocking" subject matter into the horror genre. I push back against this because I believe the genre is inherently trivializing and deserves better than to become a catchbasin for grimy exploitation of every sort.

― oculus lump (contenderizer), Friday, 15 July 2016 05:53

You can't control how people are going to watch your films but I don't think it's inherently trivializing. Some horror creators are primarily concerned with extreme suffering in a very serious way. Even though it's problematic, the horror audience is probably the best audience they're going to find for it. You've also got the hard lives/misery porn/child abuse memoir scene which is probably even more exploitative.

Our household are big fans of creepy, uncanny and supernatural horror but have little time for gore and torture, so the problem with looking through lists of 'horror' films is you don't always know what is what really.

Reminds me of Boomkat (I think) whose website lumps footwork and drum'n'bass into the same category, probably because they're roughly the same tempos and can be mixed together, but if I'm looking specifically for footwork on that site it can be a bit of a headache.

but then I also say that part of the fun is arguing about what fits and what doesn't. It's fun in itself

― emil.y, Friday, 15 July 2016 13:12

There's a fun discussion between Clive Barker and Peter Atkins in CUT! HORROR WRITERS ON HORROR FILM in which they argue over why Night Porter is horror but Marathon Man isn't. Not particularly long or deep but fun.

I think part of what makes classification difficult is that horror is sometimes defined by the way the material is framed. A particular directorial vision, for instance, might be enough to tip the scales on a movie that, in the hands of another director, might not be anything like horror.

Horror to me is usually fun of some sort, even if it's gruesome or thought-provoking or somewhat disturbing or even actually scary at the time.

― emil.y, Friday, July 15, 2016 5:21 AM (10 minutes ago)

You can't control how people are going to watch your films but I don't think it's inherently trivializing. Some horror creators are primarily concerned with extreme suffering in a very serious way. Even though it's problematic, the horror audience is probably the best audience they're going to find for it.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, July 15, 2016 5:23 AM (8 minutes ago)

Point is, as a pop genre, horror's dark offering is, for its huge inbuilt fan audience, fun. It's entertainment, diversion, a 90-minute thrill. Anything offered in the name of horror, no matter how serious or transgressive, will eventually be consumed that way. A lot of what I've been saying here reflects my observation that, in the internet era, shock-hungry horror fandom has been pushing hard to expand the definition of the genre to incorporate basically anything that can be described as "disturbing".

I believe the taste for genuinely disturbing and/or shocking cinematic experiences is quite different than the taste for the scares, tropes, atmosphere and themes that characterize the horror genre. Movies like Snowtown (mentioned by emily.y and considered horror by many fans), The Last House on the Left, Salo and A Serbian Film appeal to the former, not the latter.

Another way to say that: horror is not simply "that which disturbs". It's a particular approach to disturbance.

xxxxp I think combining the two from a horror standpoint is pretty defensible (since people again have been doing it for 40 years or so) while from a dance music it only makes sense if you basically only have ONE electronic/dance music section.

And thank you for the kind words, StillAdvance. Unfortunately, I'm the type who'd put Under the Skin and Mulholland Dr. on a list of my favorite horror films. Though not traditional genre exercises, they're atmospherically nightmarish and otherworldly enough to satisfy my demands.

xxxxp based on your latest explanation I fail to see how Green Room and Last House could not meet your criteria for horror as their primary offering is absolutely disturbance and approach is clearly exploitative (Green Room about 70 millions better in terms of overall quality than Last House but doesn't really change the base approach).

I'd say both of those are horror films as well. Mulholland Drive is about three or fifty other genres as well though (like Twin Peaks is) so I do get the confusion with Lynch.

based on your latest explanation I fail to see how Green Room and Last House could not meet your criteria for horror as their primary offering is absolutely disturbance and approach is clearly exploitative (Green Room about 70 millions better in terms of overall quality than Last House but doesn't really change the base approach).

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF)

Well, like I said, horror and exploitation are similar but not identical. A big part of exploitation is the unapologetic and typically rather crass provision of forbidden sights and subjects: sex, gore, shock, misbehavior, transgression of whatever sort. In this, it satisfies desires the high-minded insist should be suppressed.

Horror, meanwhile, offers a very particular sort of funhouse thrill: the opportunity to be safely scared. To experience not just the exhilarating, vicarious thrill of danger (the realm of suspense thrillers and action films), but also a shiver of atavistic, nape-prickling dread. Both thrillers and horror films can be more or less exploitative, gory, violent or whatever, but they aren't intrinsically exploitative by nature.

I'd say that Green Room is a straightforward suspense thriller with some fairly mild exploitation elements (lashings of gore, basically), while Last House is full-on exploitation sleaze.

i tend to associate "suspense thriller" with a situation in which the protagonist is basically equipped to do something extraordinary despite the odds being stacked against them, e.g. espionage, whereas films like Green Room or Eden Lake have people who slip helplessly from a mundane situation into an extraordinary one in which there is a sense of dread because they are totally unprepared for what they're forced to deal with. that slide from the mundane to the extreme is one of the best horror movie tropes.

Well some of the difference here is that I don't watch horror primarily for "fun", which should shock nobody on this thread probably.

what do you watch them for? ideas?

I wouldn't use 'fun' as a blanket descriptor of horror. That's only part of what I like about the genre. And I know people who have zero time for fun horror.

Pleasure feels like a more appropriate word than fun

I can see what you're getting at Contenderizer, and I feel the same about a lot of these things but there's still probably loads of things that don't fit into that breakdown. If enough of the genre audience wants and expects a thing, it will become a part of the genre.

Some classics that don't fit in that well upon scrutiny: Bride Of Frankenstein (more of a dark Disney film), Freaks, Cat And The Canary, Invisible Man and Hunchback Of Notre Dame.

I posited it in passing, but what if Green Room were exactly - exactly - as is, but instead of neo-Nazis they were vampires on the down low, who didn't want their vampire punk rock club to be discovered, and needed to clean up their mess before the sun came up? Horror?

Or what if they were devil worshippers?

xp That's p much Dusk Til Dawn

If Green Room were a vampire movie, the action would have to change a bit in order to accomodate some vampirey stuff - blood sucking or whatever.

"TARANTINO! (dog latin)
Posted: July 15, 2016 at 9:56:04 AM
what do you watch them for? ideas?"

Uh.

Yes?

For reference:

Enjoying horror films - why do we (or don't we)?

i'd shorthand any hobby or cultivated interest as something one does for "fun". maybe that's too narrow for some, i dunno. "pleasure" works just as well, afaic.

I absolutely watch horror films for "ideas" - addressing difficult/taboo/controversial/subversive subjects through the lens of genre tropes is probably my favorite thing about horror

could say the same thing applies to my interest in sci-fi, noir, superhero comics

I posited it in passing, but what if Green Room were exactly - exactly - as is, but instead of neo-Nazis they were vampires on the down low, who didn't want their vampire punk rock club to be discovered, and needed to clean up their mess before the sun came up? Horror?

...Or what if they were devil worshippers?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, July 15, 2016 8:17 AM (30 minutes ago)

Well, any useful definition of horror is always going to be, as emil.y suggested upthread, more a loose set of potential family resemblances than a single fixed formula. Among that set are the familiar devices and tropes of horror's cultural history. For that reason, if Green Room had occult or supernatural elements but was otherwise almost exactly the same film, I'd probably find it easier to call it horror.

Still, I'm obviously kind of narrow-minded about this stuff. I consider action/combat films with horror elements (Aliens, Carpenter's Vampires, Dog Soldiers, 30 Days of Night) kind of peripheral to the genre, where most others make no such distinction.

I think I'm similar.

In my head:

HORROR
The Wicker Man
Kill List
The Thing
Berberian Sound Studio
Mulholland Drive

NOT HORROR
Alien
Dog Soldiers
Green Room
SAW

There's pretty much no rule to this.

I excluded Alien from the recent 70/80s horror franchise button poll based on similar reasoning

is Jaws a horror?

I excluded that one too! I don't really have solid reasoning, it just feels like more of an update of an outdated mode of horror (the monster movie, or idk the Blob) than something that fit in with the genre as it existed at the time.

Is Jurassic Park a horror

are you a horror are you a lady

I would argue that, just as my chocolate is still chocolate after you get your peanut butter in it, so too is a horror movie still horror when it overlaps with other genres.

well what is the chocolate:peanut butter ratio, cuz if it's more like 1:2 than I would argue really it's peanut butter