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“Oh my god, there’s something in the room…chairs!!” (No disrespect to Obsession or Backrooms, I just thought this was funny)

Spoiler

A comic in 2 parts:

Old Horror Icons

A picture of Freddy Krueger, from the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, with the caption: Melted Faced Killer with a Knife Hand

A picture of Pennywise, from the movie IT, with the caption: Creepy Clown Killer

Modern Horror Icons

A picture of a liminal office as seen in The Backrooms with the caption: A Room

A picture of a sad girl, Freaky Nikki from the movie Obsession, with the caption: A guy’s girlfriend

  • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
    49·
    3 hours ago

    Slightly related, but my wife won’t watch horror films because ghosts and zombies and shit are too scary for her.

    She loves watching true-life documentaries about unsolved cases of people who just vanish and theres not even any evidence that they’re dead. Just gone. Which is infinitely scarier to me than any knife-clown or ghost-botherers

    • placebo@lemmy.zipEnglish
      16·
      2 hours ago

      Documentaries aren’t usually made to be scary though, there are no jump scares and other tricks that horror movie makers employ. So while life can be truly horrendous, I can see why she can handle these documentaries.

      • MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
        4·
        1 hour ago

        Adding to this, the documentaries also include interviews with people saying “I thought they should look into this more and they didn’t”, or “Our department was really trying to solve this, and it just took awhile.” The implication that someone out there cares. It is less isolating than horror movies generally are, which tend to show how things went wrong usually because no one cared or no one knew anything was up. I guess the documentary is the natural sequel story - we couldn’t stop the bad thing from happening, maybe multiple times, but we are at least aware of it and trying to figure it out.

  • nullspace@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 hour ago

    I think this is more of a comparison between different genres of horror and how slasher movies or franchise monsters aren’t as big now as they used to be. I’d say for slashers in particular it’s more difficult now because the camera resolutions are unforgiving and with things like video games depicting violent deaths in every way you can imagine, people have seen it all so there’s less novelty.

  • xkbx@startrek.website
    28·
    3 hours ago

    (Pre-amble, I don’t think the meme should be taken seriously and I do find it funny)

    Horror is my favourite genre because it genuinely seeks to express the most primal and furious of all emotions: fear. From the goriest, straight-forward splatter fest to the subtlest discomforts of tense artsy horror films, the popular and cult favourite movies offer a fantastic reflection of that generation/culture’s deepest vulnerabilities.

    Slashers like Friday the 13th were about the internalized self-criticism of modern, white Judea-Christian values (pre-marital sex, drugs, etc) and Nightmare on Elm Street was about parents, society, the government, etc, being unable and unwilling to help with the problems they created, problems that turn lethal. Suicide due to depression from repression, OD’ing from drugs because you need a way out, getting killed because you got mixed up with the “wrong” crowd at the wrong time, these were all things that happened to people because the “system” pushed you into a corner, and vilified any means you sought to escape.

    Even “torture porn” like Saw was about feeling trapped and what extremes you’d take to “free” yourself. Terrifier, too, can offer a reflection of extreme violence offering some form of release.

    Backrooms and Obsession are so relevant because they too talk about our fears of being trapped in the endlessly mundane, or attachments that we cling to beyond the safety of ourselves and others.

    This is a really general rant so I’ve glossed over and even ignored so many nuances. Not to mention that I’m really not eloquent enough to really hit every nail on the head… and each person will pull their own unique experiences from horror.

    I genuinely love it when people find something they can connect with in horror, regardless of what generation or subgenre they find.

    edit: head not hand

    • Diddlydee@feddit.ukEnglish
      5·
      41 minutes ago

      Liminal spaces, the breakdown of reality and memory, the horror of inferiority, sensory distortion, and an uncanny feeling throughout.

    • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      2·
      1 hour ago

      It’s based off an SCP post about a liminal space that goes on and on. There’s a lot more to it ofc. The game on Steam is a lot of fun, definitely recommend.

  • LittleBorat3@lemmy.world
    8·
    3 hours ago

    Shit got a lot more real if you ask me.

    This new obsession movie (I still loved her despite her flaws) and these ari aster movies are true horror.

    Old horror is dead

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    3 hours ago

    Backrooms resonates with people because it represents the fear of the unknowable, the fear of being in the presence of something you can’t see or identify, or understand its intentions. It’s practically infinite, easy to get lost in, and is way less empty than it looks. Maybe you’re fine. Maybe you’re seconds away from death. You can’t know.

  • farmgineer@nord.pubEnglish
    5·
    3 hours ago

    Thank you for the spoiler. I had no idea who “guy’s girlfriend” was meant to be. Well, I still mostly don’t, but at least I’ve heard of the source.

  • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    9·
    4 hours ago

    Is “a guy’s girlfriend” from Obsession? (Oh, I see the spoiler.) Also sorta applies to It Follows, though the stalker wasn’t anyone in particular; in fact, it could be “anyone”.

    How about “an adorable little girl who looks at you funny”? Samara from The Ring (RIP Daveigh), MEGAN, Arya Stark from Game of Thrones if you’re one of the dozens of people she killed… there have got to be more. Wednesday Addams was kind of a horror icon, or tried to be. It just seems there are a lot of creepy little kids in horror.