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mcdevinpants · 11 months

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Horror thinky thoughts

Been thinking kind of a lot about the horror genre, and what I do and don't like about it and from it. Inspired by both having been watching The Haunting of Hill House (thanks to @kasadilla11 for that), and discussions about it with @helloallec and @tatianaluz, among others.

I definitely don't like jump scares. No doubt about that, that's not fun to me, and I'd rather not have any at all (even in action movies). I just don't enjoy them. No criticism of them as a thing, some people like that and I'm all for them having what they want. They're very effective tools to be sure.

I think that speaks a lot to what I want or don't want out of horror. I'm not looking to be scared. Certainly not acutely. I much prefer more...broad is maybe the word? Things like slow realizations or escalating dread. But I also want it to have something to say. And I know that most horror is or at least can be interpreted to be commentary on a whole variety of things, and the stronger the commentary the better, I think. I certainly like thinking about that. I have a whole line of thoughts just on vampires and how versatile they are as a metaphor.

And Hill House had a lot to say. I think that was what made me stick with it. Despite the jump scares I was very invested in seeing it through, and I'm still processing the ending to a degree. It was extremely good. And I'm planning on following it up with Bly Manor, although maybe after a little bit of a break.

My gold standard for horror, not only my favorite piece of horror media but also one of my favorite pieces of media of all time is The Magnus Archives. Most of my friends by now know that I love it and I strongly recommend it. But it's also hard to talk about it without major spoilers. But suffice to say it has a lot to say on the nature of fear, it has shaped the way I think about fear and horror, and it has maybe two jump scares in 80ish hours of podcast, which I'm not even entirely sure were intentionally so. Ask me about it if you're interested.

One of the things I said in previous discussions was that I didn't like horror as a genre per se, but rather as a tool in service of something else. Thinking about that more it kind of feels like six of one, half a dozen of the other, but also I don't think that's necessarily even how I actually feel about it. I think I'm just picky. I've enjoyed a decent amount of eldritch horror (although not so much the stuff that's massively racist, thanks HP Lovecraft), and based on what I've been told it sounds like I'd enjoy gothic horror (and in fact already do, yay Poe!). So I'm going to be looking more into that.

#the haunting of hill house #the magnus archives #the haunting of bly manor #horror #long post #maybe? dunno what counts as long for people so I'm tagging that

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