Speaking in a broad sense, when I think of American horror films I think of the slasher, blood and guts films without a deeper psychological plot. When I want something to really make me think, I have the idea to look at foreign "horror" films instead. Sitting down to blog about it, though, I realize I am wrong, and I will talk about this.
The book poses the question, is classification of horror changing? I believe it has always been ambiguous, and that understanding of it needs to be changed. There are classically two types of horror, blood and guts and really frightening movies that get under your skin. So many movies, though, fall somewhere in between!
When it comes to blood and guts horror, there's Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street.. The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These movies are all American films, and the horror in them is the amount of brutal murder of seemingly average people, just like the viewer.
When it comes to psychological thrillers, I immediately thought of a French horror movie I recently watched called High Tension. It was about two women trying to escape a murderer after them.. but by the end of the film, the viewer realizes the film is not as shallow as that. It's actually a film about a woman suffering from split personality disorder and hallucinations, and throughout the whole film, the second woman is actually trying to get away from her.
But there are so many other kinds of American horror- for example, there is the Sixth Sense, which I believe classifies more as a thriller than horror, though it deals with ghost and it's terrifying ilk. Silence of the Lambs is another, as well as Psycho and all other Hitchcockian films, a term our book describes.
It's really not that easy though, and I have to think about my favorite horror movie of all time, Saw! The movie, on the outside is just another bloody "torture" movie which has become popular in American horror films lately. But with the amount of times I have watched these movies, I have to argue, they are more than that! Saw has a coherent plotline throughout all of the movies, and the movies add in elements of mystery and moral tension, so much that the "bad guy" becomes relatable. More than just a horror movie for cheap thrills and blood, Saw is psychological and makes it's viewers think, so much that the violence becomes secondary to the film, even.
... Right, guys?
I like how you point out the two sub-categories of the genre and gave examples. I've watched a few horror movies thanks to the wonder and magic of instant Netflix and I don't believe that there are many movies that fall in-between the two categories. I feel like Saw belongs to the physical gore genre more so than it does the psychologically manipulative genre. Saw is known for its traps and the gut-wrenching situations that it puts the characters in. The biggest question that my friends and I had left over from watching the movies was "Would you put your hand in this acid to grab the key and unlock the device before it crushes your head or just accept that you're probably gonna die either way?"
ReplyDeleteFor me, the horror genre has also always been split into two types of movies as well; the blood and gore type and the ghostly/unexplained type. Though I guess that ignores a third, psychological type as well. For me, I've personally always found the ghostly/unexplained type as the one that's actually scary. Blood and gore and crazy people, for me, are just too.... real. But a black shadow that moves across the room suddenly, an item that has moved and was not quite there before, anything by stephen king almost, these are the types of things that excite and freak me out. That being said, as soon as it becomes explained or made human, ie. a dead person's ghost with particular motives, the fear disappears yet again. I guess this would mean that the true fear comes from the mystery of the unknown. Wow, that comment went all over the place, didn't it?
ReplyDeleteHi Maria, I totally agree with you.
ReplyDeleteFor a while now I've been watching some horror movies (though they're really not my favorite genre-but I love Hitchcock and Stephen King so I getting into it more and more) and cant help but think of what is horror anyway? Hitchcock's movies Psycho and Shadow of a Doubt could be considered horror (they both deal with the same mentally disturbed,murderous and darkness type of thing and character) but I see them more as thriller/suspense type of movies. These movies instead of making me scared make me think beyond of what's right there in front of me. This is why where I think Hitchcock further than most directors in this genre. The risk of making a "horror" movie like Final Destination (which normally features a terrible, talentless cast)is that even though there's a lot of violence in it followed by the fact that everybody dies, it ends up looking too theatrical (or aka fake).
I completely agree with the two different types of Horror. I LOVE horror movies, correction, I love frightening horror movies. I love movies that place Barthes Enigma code and leave you constantly guessing and searching for answers to the puzzle. On the other hand, while I love to watch things like Trauma in the ER......I am not big on Blood and Gore Horror movies. They just dont do much for me. Every scene is someone getting a knife through the heart, or a saw down the middle of the brain and find myself covering my eyes so much that I miss half the movie. I like movies that actually scare me, not gross me out. :)
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