What's a horror movie?

[VinegarBob]

I was thinking about this in light of Brickwall's Macabre Month of Horror idea - a good idea, even though I'm not generally much of a fan of horror. Or am I? It got me to thinking 'what's a horror movie anyway'? To me when I think of horror movies I think of things involving some sort of supernatural element like ghosts or unexplained events. Films like Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, Jack Clayton's The Innocents, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead or George Romero's zombie movies. Then I thought of Texas Chainsaw Massacre which I would certainly consider to be a horror movie, but that has no supernatural elements. Those dudes in the house are just serial killers, so are all movies featuring serial killers horror movies? What about The Snowton Murders, for example? Or Angst - that's pretty fucked up, but is it a horror movie?

When I use the search function here and click the 'horror' genre filter it throws up stuff like Jaws and Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer - films that I wouldn't have categorised as horror if someone had asked me to categorise them.

What do you think of when someone says 'horror movie'? The following are some movies that showed up in my rankings when I filtered it to horror; which would you categorise as horror?

Alien
Aliens
Altered States
Jaws
Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer
The Invisible Man
Mad Max
Natural Born Killers
Only God Forgives
Se7en
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Is a horror movie simply a movie in which something horrific happens? Murder and rape are pretty horrific, but even though a movie like Hard Boiled features dozens of murders, and Irreversible is centred around a really horrific rape I don't think anyone would call either of them horror movies. Something that's creepy? Who's to say what's creepy?*

Curioser and curioser.....

*(Obviously the correct answer to this whole thread is 'who cares', but where's the fun in that?)

[ribcage]

Well horror's number one intent is to cultivate a fear as its means of entertainment...fear of ghosts, fear of being multilated and worn as somebody's mask, fear that your neighbor has a very violent and illegal hobby...and it tries to make this fear a visceral personal experience. And to me, for example, Aliens isn't primarily horror, though it certainly has some horror elements in the same way a "drama" is free to have jokes and not be a comedy. The intent of Aliens is to thrill you with the adventure of a squad of space marines in an action-packed showdown against the titular aliens. Does it use fear to entertain? Occassionally, but more prominently it uses bold action setpieces. Whereas the original and singular Alien was all about unknown things that might lurk just out of sight.

You can look at your movies about killers the same way. Is the focus characters and mystery, or maybe even a philosophical look at why humans are so inherently selfish that some of us start taking lives? Or is the focus on making you as a viewer feel "this could happen to you" and its intent to remind you very vividly that these killers are possibly much closer to home than you like to think about?

[JSchlansky]

Here are my thoughts on your list

Alien - Horror for sure.
Aliens - diverted from horror in favor of action.
Altered States- no idea what this is
Jaws - horror in a broad sense. I don't personally consider it a horror movie but if you're someone who considers Godzilla, or other monster movies horror movies, then you surely consider Jaws the same. I think a distinction when determining horror is presentation and intent moreso than the actual content at times. Monsters are certianly a staple of horror movies but having a monster in your movie doesn't automatically make it a horror movie kind of like how not every person with a mustache is a pedophile but every pedophile does have a mustache.
Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer - I would definitely consider this horror. There are a lot of serial killer movies that are dark thrillers and some bridge the gap into light horror.
The Invisible Man - classic horror.
Mad Max - Criticker considers this horror?
Natural Born Killers - definitely not horror as far as I'm concerned
Only God Forgives - Haven't seen it, from what I know it doesn't appear to be a horror movie.
Se7en - Rides that line of dark thriller but for me doesn't quite go into horror. It's real close, particularly with the presentation of the murder victims with the emphasis on gore or mutilation.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre - definitely horror. One of my favorite horror films.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me - This is an interesting one as Lynch is no stranger to horror. I'd like to ask whether or not you consider Blue Velvet a horror film (I do) Fire Walk With Me has horror elements to be sure and a few great horror scenes the overall film doesn't fall into the genre in my eyes.

Well horror's number one intent is to cultivate a fear as its means of entertainment...fear of ghosts, fear of being multilated and worn as somebody's mask, fear that your neighbor has a very violent and illegal hobby...and it tries to make this fear a visceral personal experience. And to me, for example, Aliens isn't primarily horror, though it certainly has some horror elements in the same way a "drama" is free to have jokes and not be a comedy. The intent of Aliens is to thrill you with the adventure of a squad of space marines in an action-packed showdown against the titular aliens. Does it use fear to entertain? Occassionally, but more prominently it uses bold action setpieces. Whereas the original and singular Alien was all about unknown things that might lurk just out of sight.

You can look at your movies about killers the same way. Is the focus characters and mystery, or maybe even a philosophical look at why humans are so inherently selfish that some of us start taking lives? Or is the focus on making you as a viewer feel "this could happen to you" and its intent to remind you very vividly that these killers are possibly much closer to home than you like to think about?

I'd like to add to this by saying that this is an aspect of the horror genre but not all encompassing. There are a lot of horror films that have no intention of scaring, creeping, or otherwise unnerving. Horror comedies for example like Shaun of the Dead and Tucker and Dale VS Evil. And there are also plenty of horror films that aim purely to entertain without attempting real scares.

Horror films tend to have more of a focus on death, blood, and general violence than films in other genres but at the same time you can have a horror movie without very much violence at all, Rosemary's Baby is a good example of that, and of course having an emphasis on death, blood, and general violence doesn't automatically put a film in the horror genre either. it's surprisingly hard to pin down exactly what the horror genre is which is probably why there are so many sub genres http://www.horroronscreen.com/2013/06/10/horror-genres/ This is a fairly comprehensive but it still leaves out a lot of the more obscure ones

[JSchlansky]

,

[VinegarBob]

I'd like to ask whether or not you consider Blue Velvet a horror film (I do) Fire Walk With Me has horror elements to be sure and a few great horror scenes the overall film doesn't fall into the genre in my eyes.

Absolutely, but I think Lynch films are probably the exception. Personally I consider almost all of his films to be 'horrific' in the sense that they're all extremely unnerving to me. Obviously Blue Velvet has no supernatural elements, but it's very disturbing thematically, and the atmosphere he creates is profoundly unsettling. Again though oftentimes it comes down to your own personal quirks about what you find creepy. The phone scene for example in Lost Highway with Robert Blake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZowK0NAvig) is just so...off. It really gave me the heeby jeebies. I was also filled with a pernicious dread for almost the whole 3 hour running time of Inland Empire. The man's a genius at creating a feeling of dread and disorientation imo.

I don't believe in the supernatural so I'm one step removed from the more spooky kind of horror films, and am always aware that I'm watching a movie that's trying to entertain me. Many of them do though if they're really well done and create the right atmosphere. I think Jack Clayton's The Innocents is amazing at that, and I very much enjoyed things like The Orphanage, The Devil's Backbone, or Let The Right One In, but it's mostly a matter of appreciating the technique with that kind of film for me.

The movies I find genuinely disturbing tend to have no supernatural elements in them. Rather they focus on the terrible things real people are capable of - man's inhumanity to man kind of thing - because these people really are out there and really do these terrible things. Although it's unlikely you're ever going to run into someone like that it's possible, whereas being accosted by a demon or something isn't. The most disturbing films to me are things like Irreversible, Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer, An American Crime, that sort of thing. Not sure I'd file them under 'horror' at the library though.

By the way that horror chart is pretty spiffy.

[paulofilmo]

dramatic horror should tap into primal fear and the vestigial over-active imagination of childhood — often using fantasy to bridge that gap. an atmosphere of dread(?), but maybe that's too easily shared with thrillers ; likewise, an empathetic feeling of being preyed upon.

something should be said about insanity. not the villain— but the hero losing their mind. A mature fear of loss of control and identity. this doesn't seem like horror to me, maybe because the predator is so abstract. but, fuck me, the videos showing the POV of a schizophrenic were unsettling.

[philamental]

Great discussion!

My own basic thoughts concern my own definition which is based on my own favourite film, Fincher's Se7en. I see above that brickwall feels it goes to the brink but doesn't cross the line into the horror genre. I've read a lot on this film, and one opinion I read years ago really resonated with me so much so it inspired my own avatar on here. They put forward the opinion (is this really a spoiler over 20 years later?)

[spoiler]that when John Doe turns himself in[/spoiler]

that's the moment the film turns from a thriller into a horror. The point being made was that was the moment when the viewer realised the relative comfort they had with the plot was lost. (might as well continue the spoilers) [spoiler]Instead of a standard thriller where cops chased the killer, the killer gives himself up with 30 mins to go. The killer has a masterplan and we're merely along for the ride from that point on.[/spoiler] That definition of horror resonated with me as I've said. When the events are 'horrific' and the protagonists aren't in control of their fate, that's horror to me. It's why a film like The Wicker Man is considered a horror film, and in recent years Kill List. To put it another way, I believe Horror films involve a tone that unsettles the viewer and presents a horrific scenario that in the real world would seem insurmountable. While many people can watch a 'horror' film and find them funny, if you really faced a razor fingered, wise cracking, dream demon, I'm sure it would freak you out!