For me its terrifier. Just too much shock for the point of being edgy. They also seem mean spirited and I’m more of a horror comedy guy. I don’t like any in the series. What about you all?
Any of the saw stuff. It’s just torture porn, no matter how well made. I’m not against that sub genre existing, I just don’t enjoy it. I enjoy slasher stuff, which can cross into torture porn sometimes, but there’s a line for me. Saw is well on the other side of that line.
The Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring serieseses. I find them extraordinarily tedious and so formulaic that they seem better suited for people who have never seen a horror film in their entire lives.
The first Paranormal Activity was damned tense, but I can see that not being your jam. And FFS, one was enough.
Honestly, almost anything PG-13. If it’s not R, it’s not going to scare me. The one exception I can think of is OG Insidious, because on first watch that movie scared the shit out of me. But it’s not necessarily a need for gore or swearing, but in my experience a movie doesn’t need those to be scary, or R. I’ve seen movies that are R because they’re so damn scary, like The conjuring. But even a lot of people’s favorite, Drag Me to Hell, was boring and predictable to me. More often than not I finish a PG13 flick asking why the creators even bothered.
You might have missed the point of Drag Me to Hell. It’s about the protagonist suffering an eating disorder.
Almost all the horror involves things going into, or coming out of, her mouth, and she won’t physically touch food. In fact, every time food is on screen, something horrible happens to her.
She has nose bleeds and loses hair, anorexia symptoms. Notice how those around her don’t react appropriately had those hallucinations been real? She used to be fat as a kid, the Swine Queen. Now she’s thin, even for a Hollywood actress. So very much more.
Try it again with all that in mind. :)
Not so much “scary” as “disturbing”, but Spoorloos (1988), aka The Vanishing, is billed as being suitable for 12-year-olds. Definitely worth watching (and definitely worth going in without any information). In fact, it was that film that made me de-discount anything aimed at 15-years-old or younger. I was thinking “if they can’t even swear then how serious and atmospheric can it really get?” but I was dead wrong.
I agree with you about Drag Me to Hell. I liked that movie but I didn’t think it was scary. It was fun though.
I think the only movie that actually creeped me out in the past decade was It Follows and Hereditary.
Hereditary was good separately on another level if a person enjoys the history of horror. Hereditary managed to write a story that pulled elements from the 1970’s Horror movie greats. So, it felt like a homage to those greats while also not being predictable. They went for it.
I agree with you about most horror—especially PG13 horror. Those kinds of “horror” are for teens to ignore on a date at the movies rather than an actual horror film.
The Descent.
I did not care that a bunch of underwear models who should have been very hungover went into a cave. Could not have given a shit less about the characters.
It’s probably Smile and Smile 2. The first one was kind of alright up to the ending but the second one was just straight up garbage all the way through. I felt like I was taking crazy pills when I read other people talk about it.
Midsommar deserves a honorable mention too, I couldn’t get into it at all despite it being immensely popular upon release.
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