The movie will be about a rich cracker-ass family moving into a haunted McMansion and they’ll have like a seven year old daughter that will be like “I’m talking to my new fwiend” and the mom will be like “What do you mean, Madison, what friend?” and the kid will be like “Killy McStabberson!” and point to the haunted doll/mirror/whatever they found in the house when they moved in. And the mom will be like “WhAt Do YoU MeAn MAdIsOn?!?! ThE ReAl EsTaTe AgEnT SaId KiLlY McStAbBeRsOn HaS bEen DeAd for 50 yEaRs!” and the kid will be like “He told me to praise Satan”
And like the haunted whatever is like some blood covered doll.
Look, little kids aren’t idiots. If they see a blood covered ghost they are going to run and scream and hide under their bedcovers and call for their parents. Kids are scared of monsters in the closet, like hell they’d make friends with some random ghost.
“But what if they think its their imaginary friend?” Okay, I remember being a very young kid and letting my imagination run wild, but that was just playing. Kids don’t actually physically see their imaginary friends and would freak out if they did lol. Even if the ghost looked like a normal person, I’m pretty sure a kid knows that a person randomly manifesting in their home isn’t normal and would probably cry to their parents that a stranger broke in.
I hate, hate, hate the ‘kid that sees ghosts’ trope. The only time I’ve seen it done right is The Sixth Sense, because the kid reacted like a normal kid would, scared, weirded out and disturbed.
Are there any horror movie tropes that you hate?
Playing Lethal Company has taught me that people who carry walkie talkies in horror movies are not using them as much as they would realistically be
I hate the habit of a lot of horror movies where the violence happening is only scary because it’s happening to kids in the suburbs.
Going from there, I hate that it’s obvious who is going to be spared from the worst violence. Like the gory discretion shot would be given to a conventionally attractive white woman, while a black man or a fat person might have a drawn out and cruel death scene.
I also wish the violence wasn’t depicted as a just punishment for honest mistakes. Like yeah, they’re being stupid or careless, but you shouldn’t see somebody die in increasingly realistic ways and think they deserved it.
What do you think of se7en
It’s on my bucket list. I know a little about it through pop culture osmosis though. What part of my comment made you think of that movie?
It does most of the sins you mentioned
Oh shit lol. Would you consider it worth a watch?
I saw it so long ago that I don’t remember if its good. Maybe someone else can provide some insight?
I think you’d like it. It checks a lot of the checkboxes you list.
It takes place in the city. The gore is equally distributed.
If you haven’t seen it, don’t spoil it for yourself. Don’t read about it. I don’t usually care about spoilers but this one is worth not spoiling imo.
Acting is pretty great in it too. Spacey, Pitt and Freeman are well cast and deliver. Gwyneth Paltrow is also in the movie and does some of her best work in the final scenes.
There are a lot of good horror movies that do the “kids see ghosts” trope well, like The Shining, The Devil’s Backbone, The Innocents (1961), The Others (2001)
but yeah there’s plenty of shitty ones too like The Conjuring etc.
I hate the black guy dies first trope. At least it has gotten better in modern horror movies (to my knowledge)
One time I smiled at this kid with a little too much teeth showing and he ran off screaming so fast to his mommy
One thing I don’t like about horror is when the villain has a tragic past. I mean I get that, horror from the very beginning as a genre was about tragedy or social injustice. But it feels uneasy when the conclusion is that oppressed people turn into bloodthirsty monsters who must be slain because of their trauma. Maybe I’m missing something there
If you want kids done right in horror you gotta go international. Check out Joko Anwar. All the kids in his really fucked up movies act like kids
Horror movies are less scary and more rage bait. Barely any of them feel like a realistic portrayal of fear or human behaviour.
I can probably count on one hand the number of horror movies I actually liked.
Also yeah its always funny when the kid character is like “this ghost is my friend he does funny dances” and they show the ghost and its some Lovecraft horror. Did these people forget about being a kid?
Most recent horror movie i enjoyed was The Boy mostly because it ended up not being anything like I expected at all. Although at any hint of a doll being haunted I’d run a mile lmao
All of them tbh I can’t stand horror movies. Let’s contrive some scenario where we get to watch humans suffer for 2 hours and then at the end we can talk about how that relates to some real human suffering. And also now you can’t sleep for the next week because the nightmares keep you up. I don’t understand it.
I share a distaste for the slasher and torture subgenre’s of horror.
I just want a spooky story with some unsettling set pieces and lore. Give me a good “monster” story, I really dig those.
I find them more irritating than scary for some reason
Yes this is true. The ones that are really actually scary are just too stressful for me and the ones that are trying to hard are just annoying “how many ways can we combine different torture methods into one film!”
That’s what makes The Omen so satisfying. The kid isn’t a clueless dolt. He’s a calculating evil. Plus it’s got Gregory Peck.
It’s all for you Damien!
I love that movie
The flip-side of this is when the Kids have a perfect understanding of everything that’s going on but because they’re “just kids” nobody fucking believes them. It makes movies/TV shows that aren’t listed as “Horror” instantly into horror movies for me.
