Scary asylums! Creepy disfigured people! People being punished for ‘not moving on and letting their trauma control them’! Violent and dangerous ‘crazy’ people! Poverty coded scary old women who must be a witch!
While asylums are less common horror locations these days, it still doesn’t stop the genre from using pop psychology to frame itself as deep while simultaneously expousing harmful messages. Usually written by people with very shallow understanding of the themes they’re employing for cheap scares at the expense of some of the most marginalized groups.
Also this might be cringe taste but some horror I actually do like are Jordan Peeles movies, because the themes of those are things like “Wow racism is horrificly dehumanising” and “Animals should be respected.”
Asylums were legitimately scarey not because of the people inside them but of the conditions its patients were kept in. They basically were a pit people were thrown into and kept drugged up.
might be cringe taste
Peele’s movies are great, idk why tf that would be cringe
People hate the term “elevated horror” and for good reason, but I am a big fan of horror movies with strong themes or concepts, however you want to define the category.
I agree and would also add transmedicalism and transmisogyny to the list of harmful stereotypes perpetuated in that subgenre. To me, movies like Psycho or Silence of the Lambs are in the same tier of hateful propaganda as Birth of a Nation. But they have normalized their message so successfully that even in leftist spaces, people will just prove my point by doubling down and outright tell me “well the killers in these movies aren’t actually trans women, look they even have a gatekeepy psychiatrist on screen who explains to us why that’s just a dangerous man in a dress.”
And what makes matters worse is that horror as an inherently transgressive medium actually makes it very easy to get away with a message that would be too subversive in other forms of genre fiction. You can make the perpetrators of institutional violence the monsters, or you can at least openly symapthisze with the monster. That’s something you can get away with in horror. And i don’t mind a sympathetic monster. It’s not bad to teach people that the scary outcast actually has a point and deserves to be treated with kindness instead of being attacked on sight. Yet most writers and directors choose not to do that and stick to reactionary formulas.
The asylum thing is particularly galling because the system of involuntary institutionalisation and the myriad horrific abuses innate to it present very big, juicy targets for horror to hit and comment about systemic crimes and the horrors of healthcare under capitalism… but under capitalism, horror will only gesture and say “wow people with disabilities and neurodivergence sure are evil”.
It reflects the horror the neurotypicals feel when they see a person with a disability irl like when someone at work figures out I’m autistic and they treat me like I have the plague or something
“Oh don’t worry you can be yourself around us”
Means either
Affirm that you too are racist, and we’ll let you into the fold
Or
Out yourself as ND so we can find a way of performance managing you into quitting, or so we can end your contract during probation as a ‘bad cultural fit’
Sometimes it means both
Yeah
Truly detestable characteristic of the genre
There are some good ones out there that focus on the doctors more.
the system of involuntary institutionalisation and the myriad horrific abuses innate to it present very big, juicy targets for horror to hit and comment about systemic crimes and the horrors of healthcare under capitalism
For an example of a work that actually takes this angle, check out The Heilwald Loophole.
Nah, this one isn't just torture porn, it has the entire catharsis of escaping a traumatic situation, alive but forever changedIt’s torture porn
Now don’t you see Jigsaw was justified because those people weren’t appreciating life hard enough or something
the podcast “Horror Vanguard” has a really good series on the saw movies. If the name wasn’t obvious it’s from a leftist perspective. I honestly kinda fell off listening to the podcast because it’s too smart for my lil silly brain but the saw series is very good.
From what I kniw of the Saw movies, the first one was a pretty good indie movie, but the sequels kind of flanderized it. Would that be a fair assessment?
Yeah saw 1 was kinda neat as a concept and you were able to be like “oh the movie doesn’t think the killer is correct or anything” but it did not need any expanding upon and the subsequent ones are incoherent and fascist
Yeah, HV is great. Their Resident Evil run-through was… so goddamn long. Good times.
And seconding them being too cerebral for me - plus I’m barely aware of half the stuff they watch, and I consider myself something of a slop guzzler. That sounds wrong but I’m leaving it in.
Hv is good for learning words like ‘oneiric’ and ‘proprioception’ and killing 9 hours listening to their Halloween special end-to-end
And there’s like fifteen of these movies
How are there fifteen of these?
Its a soap oprea honestly.
Can say this about nearly every show in the last 50 years tbh
Fair enough
💰💰💰
You hate horror cause its harmful. I hate horror cause im a scared lil baby. We are not the same.
Most modern horror does a bit of a better job at this.
I def recommend The Menu for example, about class issues vs ruling class. I can pull up my list and find some others too if you are ever in the mood. I’m a big horror fan.
But yes it is interesting when problems still show up. Horror fans are normally from various marginalized groups because we jive with the themes and relate to the baddies most of the time. I think that has contributed to the shift. But that doesn’t stop the slop (and I don’t mean fun slop like Frogs)
Looking through the comments. I extend to anyone. Hit me up if you’re ever interested but don’t want to sit through the shit. Also ALWAYS check through "does the dog die’ I’m too desensitize anymore, sadly mostly from IRL.
Editx2 holy shit how the hell did I forget Sinners? Like most amazing horror movie lead by Black people. Like just amazing.
Oh shit you’re right. Sinners is amazing. Everyone go watch Sinners. It avoids all those bad tropes I talked about.
I want to add a caveat to my post that while I know I said I hate most of the popular horror tropes, I still do appreciate it when horror is done well and can understand why people like it.
Don’t take my taste too seriously either, I am the kind of person that likes old rubber suit Kaiju movies, after all
Look up The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and watch it
You will (probably) not be disappointed
Cadavra
‘Alucard is Dracula backwards’ ass name. I love it
(Or Nilbog is Goblin backwards for the more literary amongst us)
You should watch it too, it’s great
There’s aliens, a mutant, a skeleton, and a meteoronomer (not a meteorologist)
Hell yeah give me recommendations. I don’t like truly terrifying stuff and loath jump scares (I startle very easily) but I love creeping dread and uncanny stuff.
Sinners was awesome, I enjoyed a chinese ghost story (comedy horror), the Nosferatu remake and the classic, I can’t remember more off the top of my head but generally dread/doomed characters/supernatural stuff are my jam.
Sadly I’m not as versed in Chinese stuff yet; I need to go a little deeper than Stremio for those. I have a few Korean ones, though.
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R-Point (2004): I don’t remember jumpscares in this and it’s entire thing is slow dread. Saving Private Ryan with ghosts, filmed on a haunted location.
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I would say the Last Voyage of Demeter is very much about slow dread. There is animal death.
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Hokum does some nice stuff with supernatural dread feel, but there are some jump scares
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Lake Mungo is honestly a pretty good classic and I would argue the whole thing about it is to create a feeling of dread. There is a scene with some very explicit grooming thing (portrayed as bad) going on, but the whole thing is a fake documentary style. There is one scene that you could argue is a jump scare but I don’t think it’s much of a jump scare as it is something is suddenly there through the fuzzy of the camera.
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The Haunting of Hill House season 1: is a awesome series, however, there are a few jump scares there as well. However, that uninterrupted shot that goes on for 15 minutes is absolutely amazing.
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Good Boy (The one with the dog): I think fits this pretty well, a horror movie from the dogs perspective.
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Iron Lung is honestly nothing but dread. I think there is about one jump scare-ish thing, and little gore till the very end.
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The new Undertone movie was pretty good and very much supernatural dread. I do think there are a few jump scares, though.
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Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (irnoic given what is being talked about here) But I think this one focuses more on the doctor causing harm then anything. There are jump scares though.
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Pontypool I love this one, though it def has its drawbacks, It doesn’t stick the final act very well, and there is a very weird racist scene towards Arab people in the middle of it.
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Host: Love this one, however there is a LOT of jump scares in it. Seance over zoom gone wrong.
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Hell House series (especially the new one Carmichael Manor) absolutely love these, I think this would be very good for supernatural dread and not a whole lot of jump scares. And the ones that exist are not very sudden and have a build up that is builds up and builds up. So they are not as surprising. More toaster “why did I jump at that” jump scare"
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I would say Blair Witch Project (the first one do not touch anything else) but I have to acknowledge that, as someone who grew up at the height of the marketing campaign of people telling you it was a real story, I don’t know if it has the same feel as it did back then. I would say it hits what you are describing perfectly, but def go in with the idea that this is real and someone who is new to analog horror. It’s honestly best watched in a dark room on a laptop with headphones.
(As always, make sure to check out Does The Dog Die. I love recommending horror films but always feel like someone who has smoked a lot of weed trying to gauge a good dose for a new person, if that makes sense? This may or may not be based on a true story of my sister-in-law giving me a 10g gummy for my first weed experience)
This is what I have from my list as of right now. I’ve only started keeping a list within the past year so there might be some I’m forgetting to get on here.
Thanks :)
NP! I hope its fun or useful in anyway lol.
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A lot of it’s cultural too. Compare how horror movies that get American adaptations almost always get shifted into a more black-and-white, down-punching shape. Not that European and Asian horror is perfect. Compare Pulse/Kairo (2001) vs. the American Pulse remake where instead of having a sympathy with the ghosts (and reiterates theres a larger system at work) the ghosts are malevolent beings who are jealous we’re alive and they’re dead.
the ghosts hate us for our freedom
People watch horror movies for a similar reason that they listen to sad or angry music. We like art that validates our experience. It makes us feel better. But especially art is useful for things that is not validated through daily life, for example trauma, anger, sadness, and sexuality. In my experience, society encourages constant happy demeanor and likewise doesn’t know how to deal with negative emotions. We might hold a single event like a funeral or send someone a card, but regarding chronic emotions, the answer is basically “ok, we said we sympathize with you, why are you still sad? Also I expect you at work on Monday.”
Horror in general is neutral imo (as I’ve seen already discussed in other comments) and it’s the class context in which certain stories are written which imbues a class perspective. For example, old school Westerns confront the audience’s fear of violence “savage” natives or oppressed minorities, the material basis of which is settler colonial society. Nonetheless it is a general fear among white society and that’s why people need that validation. Likewise I don’t think these same people will usually relate to a story which confronts the trauma of the marginalized and/or racialized segments of the working class. There’s a reason the Soviets and the Maoists almost immediately grasped the political nature of art. (And so did the capitalists, that’s why Hollywood exists.)
I can sympathize with that. Sometimes I feel the same, but my perspective has become a little different lately, I see a flood of media that is dark, depressing and cynical in an attempt to seem realistic, mature and deep, which is fine every now and again, but I feel popular culture has been drowning in this lately and I’m a little burnt out on the wallowing as most of these stories provide little insight other than “Gee, isn’t everything shitty? (don’t try to change it though, that’s idealistic)”
One of the reasons I avoid anything with M. Night Shyamalan. Every single movie of his except probably The Sixth Sense (it probably does but I don’t remember) has some advanced level ableism that goes beyond the usual ableism found elsewhere. It’s like he refuses to talk to any people who are disabled or the experts who treat such conditions.
It’s a problem throughout Hollywood, though. The same nonsense happens with racism, sexism, etc. And when they do make movies about these topics, they still aren’t helpful because of how they still insist on using negative stereotypes. Just look at bullshit like Mississippi Burning or Shallow Hal.
Get out and Us are brilliant movies. Stuff that has a suffocating sense of foreboding is usually my preferred horror. Only things to have made me feel that way is Possum and Speak no Evil. The descent is also enjoyable and 28 days later is my favourite zombie movie.
But most horror is ass unless its subversive or has an actual point. American horror is just replaying the same old boring tropes until the movies are more comedy than horror.
I want a horror movie where it’s just some incel veteran who’s this girls next door neighbor and over time she uncovers his horrifying reddit and discord history
isnt there a short movie about a guy with a facial disfigurement going on speed dates and getting rejected by each one of them, then he meets a girl who does like him and they go home only for him to be revealed to be an actual serial killer eating her?
I’m generally a fan of bleak stories so where’re a few horrors I really enjoy. (His House was a great haunted house story where the true horror lies in being a political immigrant in/to the uk).
I think ND people can be a really good and thought provoking aspect in horror without it being straight up ableist as fuck (as for any other medium), sadly it’s really rare.
on a side note, I recently read Manifest Delusions by Michael R. Fletcher, which plays in a world where people who have delusions will see them manifest irl, like a pyromaniac will create fire, a sociopath will become an asshole of a king, etc. I don’t know how to feel about it, I liked it but it felt kinda icky ? Idk I thought the concept was original at least.
Good take.
I also hate seeing gore. Ghost themed horror ends up my favorite as a result, but I just don’t look for horror.
