Laura Mee
As contributor
As commenter
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Yes absolutely - I think it's
Yes absolutely- I think it's really noticable with recent releases like Hereditary that this relabelling/reframing horror films as "elevated" is happening now even before release. The festival hype and subsequent critical examination of Her ... -
Oh, and the clip is
Oh, and the clip is spectacularly '80s! I love it. ... -
Great piece, Tom. I've yet to
Great piece, Tom. I've yet to see THTJB, but was struck by a lot of reviews which struggled for definition in attempts to tackle questions of morality (Von Trier for making it, the audience for watching it). T his review does something rare by asking ... -
That fluid, evolving nature
That fluid, evolving nature of genre is ever on my mind when we talk about new labels/cycles/subgenres. I wonder to what extent the specificity of horror plays in to that too- your point that "one person's horror is another persons thriller" ... -
There's certainly a scholarly
There's certainly a scholarly and critical persistance in distinguishing 'horror' from 'the gothic' that in many cases relates to heirarchy and legitimacy- as per both Shellie and Stella's comments above. I think this often i ... -
Get Out is a great example to
Get Out is a great example to open this discussion with, and I like the distinction here between how it was marketed vs. how it was received (horror fans & critics had no such issue understanding it as a horror film!). The attempts to distance it from ... -
Absolutely. These examples
Absolutely. These examples are spot on, but yes, I think they only serve to highlight how horror is a very specific subject of these debates. What's really notable about the latest attempts to elevate the genre is that, while the same examples (Get O ... -
Yes, rom-coms sprang to mind
Yes, rom-coms sprang to mind as a comparison, if only in the way they a similarly disparaged, often dismissed as trivial, with assumptions made about their audience, gendered criticism etc. But I couldn't think of many examples (perhaps because of th ... -
Great points. And it's
Great points. And it's especially interesting that, for a descriptor of transition, an "awareness of what came before", post-horror is often applied with seemingly little knowledge (or otherwise maybe wilful ignorance) of horror's hist ...