The idea that horror movies have to be “scary” broke people’s brains and led to the overvaluing of jump scares, which are mechanical, require no special talent, and quickly become tedious. Dread, menace, spookiness, the violation of taboo: this is also horror.

Since this is getting ridiculous traction: I guess it was inevitable that this tweet would be reduced to “this guy hates jump scares“ or “jump scares bad!“ which is, of course, ridiculous. I’m looking at the genre holistically and complaining about a tendency. 1/2

It’s a big, versatile genre — probably my favorite of all genres – and it’s depressing/irritating to see how often the discourse gets reduced to “it wasn’t scary“ which, when you poke around a bit, means “not enough jump scares.” 2/2

Also now think about what happens to horror movies after whatever current vernacular they adopted fades over time. The movie becomes “dated“ and “not scary“ — or less scary. And then what are you left with? Atmosphere. Dread. Performances. Story.

Rosemary’s Baby, Bride of Frankenstein, the silent Nosferatu, the 1978 Dawn of the Dead, and so many other great horror movies are not “scary“ now in the way they were when they first came out. But they remain beautiful, poetic, moving, creepy. There is so much more to horror!

I did not imagine that this observation would be controversial or inciting. I always thought of horror as a total package, of which scariness is 1 component. I know that for some it is the *only* important thing — but not for me.

People with more encyclopedic knowledge than me can be more precise with this, but I think the turning point was the 1996 Scream, which strung a bunch of funny, self-aware jump scares together and goosed them with loud flurries of shrieking violins to make sure they “worked.“

I saw this formula repeated in movie after movie over the next quarter century, and it has crept into television as well. American Horror Story crudely forces many of its jump scares. Even the recent, fascinating Lovecraft Country reached for that formula too often.

A truly great jump scare — like the shower reveal in Psycho or the head in the porthole in Jaws — gets its power from all the combined, varied elements leading up to it. A dumb jump scare is the cinematic equivalent of yelling “heads up!“ And throwing somebody an object. 1/2

Yes, it is possible to construct an entire movie around the equivalent of yelling “heads up!“ and throwing something, and I would argue that some very successful films have done exactly that. But I don’t respect it. There is more to horror than reflexes. Or, there should be.

I love horror & respect it too much to let it be reduced to a series of visceral gimmicks. The fact that they “always work” in some basic sense— I.e., make us recoil—is a reason to be wary of how they are overused, especially at the expense of deeper, more expressive tools.

Muting this thread because I think it has reached the point where it’s going to be a nightmare to deal with semantic distinctions and subjective takes on what constitutes “scary.“ I think you get the gist what I’m trying to say here. Or at least I hope so?