You know, I used to love Horror movies/TV

[leethet]

I just sampled Penny Dreadful. Cut because potential slight spoilers. I had medium hopes - most TV horror is ... well, like this.

When did Horror as a genre become just gore, vomit, excessive violence, close-ups of pus and maggots and innards, people fucking like dogs (as opposed to having sex) and lusting after children?


This is not horror. This is disgusting. Things that generate disgust in mankind are not horror. Close-ups of someone vomiting, or of someone's suppurating wounds, is disgusting. It is not, however, horror in the literary/artistic sense. Horror is psychological at its best. Graphic violence isn't horror just because it's extreme, or committed by vampires or something.

The show is dark for the sake of dark. Everyone is disgusting or freakish, which makes this kind of "horror" quite easy. You know, the only scene that struck me as effective horror was at the very beginning, when a woman on a toilet was snatched by ... god knows what. It happens in an instant, with only a hint of warning, and with no idea of why or what will happen to her. That is horror. The rest of it is just gore, just vomit-porn.

Comments

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Exactly. There seems to be a race to see who can make the most sickening films/TV. There's no art in taking everything that's repulsive and focusing a camera on it.

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

I think it was in the 80's when it seemed to shift from let's scare people to let's gross them out and tell them they are scared. Or maybe it was Hammer and his gore-fest horror films, although now they seem tame when compared to 'Saw' and those films. There is a vast difference between scary and gory.