This could be a hot take, but I used to be deathly afraid of all things related to possession/demons while religious because I thought it was a real threat which required me to be vigilant (sounds extremely absurd I know). But my god did it all completely change the minute I started deconstructing my beliefs and thinking about what actually happens in the real world. Which leads me to believe these types of movies are only popular because of Christianity’s ubiquity. I’m sure other religions have better illustrations of the paranormal that would be cool to see, but all we have is the product of centuries of colonialism. Because even movies with those types of illustrations are extremely orientalist. Bleh just another example of mayos bungling another aspect of culture for everyone else

This also could just be me being a complete buzzkill, but psychological/cosmic horror is where it’s at 💯

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    ·
    10 months ago

    God yes. I hated the Paranormal Activity movies which nearly put me to sleep, and idk if it's changed at all recently but there were so many identical haunted house movies that came along with it, and I couldn't get into them at all. They're all stifilingly predictable.

    I want a movie where it starts out like it's a typical evil ghost movie but it turns out the ghost isn't evil and it's actually a psychological horror deconstructing how someone relates to something they don't understand and can't control. The only times I've seen a subversion like that, it's always "This ghost wasn't evil, in fact it was holding back this other ghost that's the real problem." I'd also love to see movies with supernatural beings that don't fit into clear good/evil categories. You could totally do a horror movie about some kind of fey or trickster spirit (pronouns check out) that isn't driven by hate or revenge, but simply doesn't place any value on human life.

    Instead it's always, "This spirit suffered from some past wrong, and now it's irrationally angry at me, and I need to figure out how to make it shut up and leave me alone, and obviously nothing can be done to address its irrational grievances, and the only question is whether to the solution is to call an exorcist and forcibly put it down, or to understand its pain and say "I'm sorry" liberalism.

    But then, a movie that deviates from and deconstructs this formula would be critiquing the typical target audience for haunted house movies so it probably wouldn't be very popular.