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

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

xpost That's a good point, I don't necessarily consider Alien horror, but then again, I think I *would* consider the rampaging werewolf siege of Dog Soldiers horror. Because werewolves. But then ... not carnivorous aliens?

Some similar debate going on in the AV Club comedy thread. Lots of funny movies are not comedies, imo. Or are they?

If a boat is replaced plank-by-plank

We have been having the horror and comedy arguments I think literally the entire time I've been on ILX. Can't believe we haven't solved the equation yet.

If a boat is replaced plank-by-plank

Shark eats boat PROBLEM SOLVED

Why haven't we just polled each individual film to determine whether it is a horror or a comedy

The revenant: horror or comedy?

Comedy when bear attacks, horror when bear fails to eat DiCaprio

Been looking over Fangoria covers (why is there no database of them all?), some real surprises in there, but it's usually some sort of character or creature that required special effects or someone threatening (for Twilight New Moon they used an angry faced guy with red eyes), but they did also have characters like Spock, C3PO and R2D2 on occasion.
In Book Of Lists: Horror, one of the editors listed the covers he regretted most.

I think if there was only the first Alien film more people would say it's horror. 1-4 certainly have quite powerful horror imagery.

How many posts before a new thread is required?

Fangoria didn't start as a horror-specific magazine so using their covers as a rubric might be problematic.

I guess this is related, though I can't draw any conclusions from it: I recently started a goodreads account, and created two shelves that cover my horror books - 'horror and mystery' and 'speculative fiction'. Anything that's horror goes in both, but I'd look in them for different reasons. And I have to say that the few 'mystery' books I have seem far more out of place with horror than horror and sci-fi sitting together.

Wonder why they called it Fangoria if they wanted to have broader coverage? They still feature superhero, fantasy and scifi films, especially if they have creatures.

It's a mystery, for sure.

"Hey, guys, I just realized that our magazine sounds like a horror rag. Maybe we should shift our focus?"

The revenant: horror or comedy?

Clearly it is a horror-comedy.

i remember when the american trailer called John Woo's "The Killer" a "thriller/comedy that will leave you breathless!"

*its american trailer

I feel like everyone agreed that You're Next was a horror movie, so is the line whether people are wearing masks then?

i don't think you're next is a horror movie, but i was more willing to indulge the consensus in that case. perhaps because it acts a bit more like a horror movie? in terms of music, suspense & scare setups, etc. also yeah, the mysterious masked "them" out there trying to get into our house and kills us.

See, I barely thought of "You're Next" as horror (and certainly not "The Guest," which I've seen even more inexplicably categorized as horror). "You're Next" is sort of a clever twist on horror that takes horror tropes and turns them around.

Horror is just a marketing term, everybody on the scene calls them "blood pictures"

Or 'blood sausages' in the UK

"The Guest," which I've seen even more inexplicably categorized as horror

SPOILER WARNING

for most of its running time, the guest is nearly as far from horror as green room, but the third act turns into an extended love letter to carpenter's halloween. this is set up early with the holiday setting, but kept on the back burner for most of the film's running time. the climax, with the chase through the haunted house, however, is clearly supposed to push 80s horror nostalgia buttons. and the villain clearly turns into something like "the boogeyman" in the film's final moments.

Yeah, but this came after a long turn into the Terminator.

speaking of, apparently the woods is now called....blair witch??????!??????

WTF? Why would they do that? I've even seen posters in theaters for the The Woods. So people looking forward to The Woods will ... never see it? Because it will be released as a Blair Witch reboot? Anyway, nice stunt, I guess, and I'm sure the film will be scary, but given that just about every found footage movie is to some degree a Blair Witch sequel, I don't see the point. Like Avatar, it's a movie I've never heard anyone truly want more of.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Moving on, I saw Deathgasm. Was OK, just OK, as a vehicle for bad taste gross-out FX, but there are one or two good gags (in every sense).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=girSv9UH_V8