What are your thoughts on horror movies?

[Misery]

I can't stand watching humans fighting or getting hurt, injured, tortured or what have you, but I love a good cheesy paranormal show or movie that doesn't involve violence or gore.

If anyone has some cheesy recommendations, please send them my way, BTW

Yeah, this is generally how I feel about it, sorta. I can handle some violence, but a lot of horror movies are like, well we cant really think of how to make a good story here, so... I GOT IT YOU GUYS, LETS ADD MORE STABBING! Genius!

And... that's it. That's what so many horror movies are. And of course sometimes you get some that get really extreme about it.

What I want is some good surreal freakiness, creepy happenings, and spooky weirdness that has a definite scare factor or is quite unsettling, but nobodies head explodes.

I found that for that, I must go to Youtube. That site is a freaking treasure trove of exactly the sort of content I'm after.

I like stuff like this:

That video is from very late in that series (Gemini Home Entertainment, one of my favorites), so a ton of context is missing and the ending wont make even the slightest bit of sense, but still that's my favorite example. That one really had me on edge the whole time, I remember watching it the first time and I got to the "conscious mind" part, and just about jumped out of my chair when that thing vanished. Its very subtle, a small and kinda quiet sound effect, but still, that absolutely had me.

Also stuff like the Backrooms series by Kane Pixels, or Monument Mythos, which I absolutely adored, I even bought merch related to that one. Talk about a wild ride, that one is gloriously bizarre.

If you want an extra strange example, look up one called "This House Has People In It". I've seen that, and all of its side content, like 50 times and it still confuses the heck outta me.

Rreally anything analog or digital horror. That's a deep rabbit hole.


Honestly, it's kinda sad, that this kind of creativity doesnt seem to make it through in actual Hollywood. They seem to just want to fart out yet another Saw movie or whatever instead. MOAR STABBING!!!

 

[Metalhead]

 

[Ken]

Oh - I did recently watch the Haunted Mansion at the theater. I didn't find any of it scary, but I thought is was very funny and entertaining.

 

[Forest Cat]

Things have changed a lot, when I was a kid some horror movies were actually illegal here. They were deemed to be too violent and horrible. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for example, it was banned from 1974 into the 1990s I think. So of course everyone wanted to see it, it had a mythical status for a while. You had to smuggle that into the country from the Netherlands or something if you wanted it. Now that movie is on a streaming service on my tv. And you can see much worse things on tv all the time. The world is a little harder and meaner than it used to be in a way. The Saw movies are also on a streaming service on my tv, those would have been banned so fast had they been released just a few decades ago.

 

[Dagan]

Adding to Forest Cat, same kind of thinking, so many horror movies are set back in time, lately. Technology advances are exactly the reasons. In fact, I wrote an article once that technology has been the latest cliche that had to be added to horror movies. Everyone has to mention either not having cell service or showing that they somehow have damaged or lost their phone or computer.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

What I do not like in horror, especially slasher movies, is the omniscient Villain. Supernatural horror bores me. The horror that engages me are Hitchcock's themes of evil, insanity, and mistaken identity, all of which I thoroughly enjoy. Not horror, though thoroughly enjoyable was his last movie, Family Plot.

 

[Luca]

I can't stand watching humans fighting or getting hurt, injured, tortured or what have you, but I love a good cheesy paranormal show or movie that doesn't involve violence or gore.

If anyone has some cheesy recommendations, please send them my way, BTW

Same exact thing here.
I love paranormal horror (in films and on YouTube) but anything with torture or graphic imagery is a big nope. I find it really disturbing and it truly terrifies me.

 

[Tarkus]

I really hate screamers.

Also I don't believe in the paranormal.

Love The Shinning tho.

 

[Jacks Brain]

I used to have a horror webcomic. It sounds like most of you would be appalled by it.

I wasn't a big fan of horror, but in high school my younger sister and her friends ate up all the Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, and Stephen King stuff. Somewhere I read an article that claimed the fascination with horror among girls was a coping mechanism for dealing with the trauma of child birth and possible death.

One thing that was on my mind as a young man was that I'd rather have a fan base of young women than young boys, so I wasn't going to make something like Dragon Ball Z.

Another thing I wanted to express was a sense that there was something very, very wrong at the top of society. Many years later, it's clear that, as horrible as my book was, it wasn't horrible enough.

I'm still not into the slasher films, but monster movies like The Thing, Alien, and Aliens are cinematic and storytelling masterpieces. The first two Hellraiser movies are better than I thought they'd be, although they suffer a bit from being low budget. Pitch Black was clever, but it's not Alien.

One other thing I'd like to add - when I was young and had my whole life ahead of me, I was disturbed by the idea of bodily harm. Now that I only have old age to look forward to, I'd rather get stabbed by Freddy Kreuger than have a long wasting death in diapers and feces, stuck in a nursing home with raping and murdering staff, and my mind ruined by dementia. Just add fire and you've got hell.