That stuff is only scary to a very specific group of Christians.
Man I'm an asshole. But still, I feel the trope is played out in horror.
I just don't get it. How is a pentagram scary?
I hand't really thought of this, but it is really true.
I am willing to bet that more people are scared of evangelical christian cults more than satanic cultsWhat if they made a horror movie about an evangelical Christian church but, they do satanic cult stuff for Jesus. Or better yet, a Pentecostal church.
I imagine it's not a new idea though. They probably did it at least once in the 70s.
There is the movie Godless: The Easfield Exorcism where the horror is that Christians are exorcising a women who isn't actually possessed but is instead having a mental health crisis. It's based off a real story too. Not exactly what you're saying, but at least along the lines.
I also agree with this post, I'm tired of Satanic and Demonic imagery in horror. It does nothing for me.
Horror movie premise: papistry but the things papists believe are true
Never seen a satanist speaking in tongue and shaking their children while everyone around them dances like Elaine from Seinfeld.
I mean you say that but once I wore socks with a ouija board patrern to work and several of my coworkers had legit panic. I had two anonymous complaints go through HR. My socks weren't even fully visible and they're socks. They were still saying things like "don't come around me with that evil devil shit."
One coworker held up her crucifix and everything. Americans are like this.
Every day I live I become more convinced the Cultural Revolution was a fucking great idea
Fun fact, most of the deaths happened when the conservative faction of the party decided to crack down and end the cultural revolution, and weren't caused by the students themselves. Mao did nothing* wrong
*Except the stuff that he admitted was wrong. I don't want to cause a paradox here
I don’t find the occult or satanism scary. But the people involved can be. A lot of the secret societies are fascist adjacent or sympathetic.
Traditional Satan depictions aren't scary because nobody is scared of a middle-aged red guy with a goatee anymore. That's stuff that might have worked on my grandmother in her remote Italian village 80 years ago but, not anymore.
How is a pentagram scary?
It's super pointy and could poke you good
THESE WITCHES ARE GOING TO SUMMON SATAN TO DESTROY THE CHRISTIAN WOOORRLLLDDDD
I never really understood why they shove it in either. It isn’t scary and kills the horror because at times the movie was pretty believable until the satanic stuff came out. Seeing little girls with superpowers immediately takes me out of whatever immersion had been built up.
One of my big problems with the "scary little kid" trope in movies is that the acting of little kids can be pretty spotty, no fault to the kids of course, but it's tough to expect a kid to having the acting chops to carry intense stuff like that.
Sometimes it works but lots of the time it's just kinda meh.
Sometimes I’ll see them try to compensate with a lot of cheap looking CG that makes it funnier.
Are you thinking of the Silent Hill movie? Because that's what I'm thinking of
That, and a couple others like the Amityville Horror remake in the 2000’s
Putting me with an average evangelical would scare me way harder than a Satanist. I've met a few and they're pretty chill, it seems like a fashion statement more than a religion.
I think demon-possession stuff can be scary, or at least upsetting. Not so much when horror comes from a possessed person like in The Exorcist, but more like when demons are toying with the minds of mortals, making them unable to trust their own senses. There's a pretty-good movie no one saw called The Dark and the Wicked (not the greatest title imo) that does this pretty well. Is this person you just met real or was it actually the demon? Was it really them when you first met, and the demon the second time you met? Was it them or was it the demon when you spoke to them on the phone? Or did the demon make you think you were speaking to that person while you were actually speaking to someone else entirely? Were the words coming out of your mouth the same words you heard yourself say? Were you even speaking to anyone at all? It works because the horror comes less from a spooky monster who will kill you, and more from an inability to distinguish reality from illusion.
In a similar vein, one thing I liked about Hereditary was how the demonic forces were establishing "rules" for the protagonist just to fuck with her. I love the bit when she tries to burn the journal and is set on fire herself. So later on when she tries to get her husband to burn the journal, expecting to burn to death along with it, you're like "it's going to turn out that whoever burns the journal also burns, so the husband is going to die." But when he won't do it she throws the journal in the fire in frustration and the husband goes up in flames anyway. There are no rules to this. There were never any rules. The demon was just playing with its food.
So yeah, it's my opinion that if satanic stuff can tap into fears about losing control and losing your mind, it can be pretty scary.
I loved Late Night with the Devil, really encapsulated the whole "demon playing with it's food" theme.
It's honestly true.
Evangelicals? Probably.
But everyone else?
Not so much.
(Also, I protest that this isn't a bad post; it's just not.)
I thought the Exorcist really suffered from this. Most of the fear comes from the symbols and satanic themes being taboo. If you don't really care about it then it becomes much less scary. I still think that creepy satanic cults can be scary though, the VVitch, Hereditary, and Anthrum all used the tropes successfully. I don't like the found footage gimmick in Anthrum but you gotta admit that hillbillies with a rusty, decrepit Baphomet figure burning a child alive in a satanic bronze-bull-esque contraption is pretty scary.
That specific group would find the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Netflix series to be the scariest thing in the world, I imagine.
I mean it is scary when they're physically manifesting and killing people or turning into physical projections of their sins or something, and the aesthetic sets a certain mood
Like I heard the new Hellraiser sucks ass but I have seen clips of the fucked up guy with the glasses auditing people's sins on a weird typewriter machine and it's kinda cool
thats one of the older hellraisers, one of the cheaply made ones. but that character was cool.
the new Hellraiser is legit good. it has some flaws but really leans into the Clive Barkerness
don 't worry i watched some of the post numbered series ones at a friends on...DVD.. when they just came out
