What Makes A True Horror Film?

Since Halloween is coming up, I figured that I'd make another horror movie topic.

Many people have come up with what they consider to be the best horror films ever. However, I can't help but wonder if some of them even qualify as horror films. For example, several lists have stated The Thing and Alien, which I have never really understood. To me, those films classify more as very dark science-fiction stories. While they do have some scary elements, the fact that they involve aliens and future technology seems much more sci-fi. Then again,I consider the film Se7en to be a horror film, but some could also argue that it is simply a crime-thriller drama.

So what say you? What classifies as a horror film in your eyes?

To me, it all depends on the intention of the director. If the movie is made with the intention of scaring the audience throughout, then it's a horror film.

That doesn't mean that movies with scary moments in general count, though. A few scares here or there in a movie that's meant to make the audience laugh overall doesn't count, for example.

Hence why I consider Plan 9 From Outer Space to be a horror movie. Is it scary? Hell no. But the director made it with the intention of frightening his viewers. Therefore, it's a horror film, even if it fails completely at being scary.

I think The Thing and Alien are definitely horror films.

Horror and sci-fi aren't mutually exclusive.

Horror is anything made with intent to scare. "true horror" varies from person to person.

In my opinion it is when you can look at the victim/villain and think "that could be me. "

Blood... Guts... Gore... Mutilation... Bodies on fire... Strangulation...

What about Halloween1978, which features almost none of that?

edited 22nd Oct '13 3:51:21 PM by maxwellelvis

On that note, look at The Exorcist. Many consider it to be the best horror film ever made, but its director, William Friedkin, doesn't consider it to be a horror film:

Also, he said this in an interview:

"I understand that people think of “The Exorcist” as a horror film, I totally get it. You don’t have to worry about it, it’s only a horror film. But I think it deals with issues far more profound than what you find in the average horror film. To be frank with you, [writer] Bill Blatty and I never set out to make a horror film. The idea never crossed our minds.

To me, “The Exorcist” was a story about the mystery of faith, and I tried to depict that as realistically as possible. I had read the files in the Jesuit archives in Washington DC of the 1949 exorcism case that prompted Bill to write his novel. You can Google it, it was on the front page of The Washington Post. Then I spoke to the president of Georgetown, which is a Jesuit university, about that case and what he knew about it, and I was convinced that what had happened was something that was beyond our general understanding of illness and how to cure it. This was not simply a scary story, this was something of the supernatural in the natural world. And that’s how I approached the film."

What say you? Do you guys agree?

edited 22nd Oct '13 4:14:43 PM by LDragon2

edited 22nd Oct '13 10:36:32 PM by joeyjojo

C'mon man, you gotta read the whole thing.

He does bring up some pretty interesting points.

I think the best horror movies are fairly subtle...they don't splash blood all over the screen (unless they do it in a symbolic manner) or show a lot of bodies. Instead they concentrate on out deepest fears. The exorcist works so well because it deals with something uncontrollable, and I think the impact is even better if you have catholic upbringing which causes you to believe in the devil deep down, even if your mind tells you different.

And yes, I think horror movies with a deeper meaning work the best - or those which actually could happen.

No he didn't, it's typical genre-fiction-writer self-hatred. He's internalised the wrongheaded idea that genre fiction is inherently trivial and superficial, even while creating a genre work (horror) that (according to him) transcends that superficiality. Instead of taking this as evidence that genre fiction can be deep and meaningful, he's decided that his film isn't horror at all — because to him, horror==trite shit with monsters on a rampage or something.

It's essentially circular logic. All genre fiction is shallow and meaningless; those works which have any depth or meaning aren't really genre fiction, because all genre fiction is shallow and meaningless.

True dat.

I kinda have the same opinion of The Shining. I like the movie but for me it's the horror movie for people who don't like horror movies. Just because Kubrick's name is attached to it, posh movie critics feel compelled to like it but quickly distance themselves from classifying it as a straight horror movie, and instead justify themselves by pretending it's something else. It's just a horror flick. It's not even that scary.

Kinda like Miyazaki is anime for people who don't like anime, but I digress.

Tension and atmosphere. If you can get those everything else is gravy.

Since The Shining is loosing every psychological aspect which is present in the book - yes, it is totally a horror movie. I really don't see how it could be anything else. It is the one aspect which gets emphasised the whole time, and most changes (like the twins and the blood flood) are added to heighten the horror aspect, and not to add some deep meaning.

Anything (it may be gore, it may be psychological/cosmic, it may be a simple vampire story, etc.) that can make you think about it after the movie ends. Doesn't matter if it features vampires, aliens, Cthulhu or devils.

The most important part of making a horror film is that it has to contain horror.

Film comes second. It may or may not be a film. But horror is a must.

edited 25th Oct '13 2:12:24 PM by TobiasDrake

If it's meant to make you squirm and feel uncomfortable due to a malignant force, tangible or intangible, supernatural or not. The Shining would still be a horror film without the ghosts—if it was a hallucinating, schizophrenic boy and his batshit father, it would still be freaky. Obviously you can't set a statement like that in stone, but as a general rule that's what I consider a horror movie.

For the purposes of discussion, I have no problem taking films that cross genres and discussing them as horror films. Fantasy and sci-fi might dominate a movie, but they can have totally effective horror elements. Take Pan's Labyrinth...the effin' Pale Man. The way the scene is constructed is brilliant. Obviously it loses a little punch on a tiny YT video, but imagine that sound design in a surround-sound theater...shiiiiit.

But, Pan's Labyrinth is generally considered a fantasy movie.

edited 26th Oct '13 12:27:22 PM by phoenixflame