people who don’t watch horror movies are SO confident that they know everything there is to know about the genre. like it’s okay to not know things. it’s okay if you don’t like friday the 13th or whatever. i promise you don’t need to make an ass out of yourself on the internet about it
horror is an incredibly diverse genre, because there is potential horror in everything. it’s in nature, it’s in architecture and technology, it’s in human relationships, it’s in folklore, the past, the future, the mundane. there are horror movies from all over the world. it is straight up anti-intellectual to pretend that the handful of B slashers you’ve vaguely heard about comprise the totality of what horror has to offer. If you’re just not interested in horror, or if you dislike certain subgenres of horror, then that’s fine, you’re not obligated to like anything at all. but smugly announcing that you don’t like horror because you dislike a handful of VERY specific non-universal tropes is just as stupid as saying that you hate comedy because you don’t like adam sandler movies.
Honestly I’m not surprised that people feel this way about the genre. There’s so much (in the past) that has been wrong with it. Things like the hyper sexualization of women, killing off of POC/ethnic stereotypes, and even harmful portrayals of mental illness.
Yes there have been amazing horror films in the past (Night of the Living Dead is my go to example) that don’t have any harmful tropes, but horror now is better than its ever been. It’s diverse in a lot of ways and it mostly has to do with the emergence of better directors. And I think this trend will continue so I feel bad for anyone who deprives themselves of good horror.
Here are my recommendations:
1- Hereditary : Ari Aster does an amazing job showing grief and loss. Probably my favorite horror movie in the past decade. (Midsommar is amazing too)
2- It Follows: Really interesting approach to horror and sexual assault
3- Anything Jordan Peele. Whether its his last 3 movies or his version of The Twilight Zone. This man tackles literally every bad horror trope and is my favorite director in this genre.
4- The Lighthouse, The VVitch, The Ritual, Men, Annihilation and so many more movies in the past 5ish yrs have all given us content that is so far removed from “classic horror”
5- Watch horror movies from other countries. I don’t even wanna get into how much you’re missing out by defining horror in a very “western” sense.
Anyway horror is by far the most entertaining genre in film and its rapidly evolving.
