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 💯
I watch those movies and cheer for the demon
My son was hell-bent on seeing The Exorcist from an early age … begged and carried on and we were, like, “No … far too shocking and intense for a young mind!” I remembered writing the local ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh when I was a kid because the tv trailers for it scared the hell out of me (and they sent a note back on station letterhead apologizing).
We finally gave in when he was maybe ten and let him watch it. He was happy to see the actual upstream of decades of pop culture references, but when it was over he just sat there and said “that’s it?” Completely nonplussed. Just went upstairs to play Minecraft or whatever.
He’s home from college this month and it came up because of the new sequel coming out and he was very clear on why it hadn’t phased him years ago: “You and mom raised me atheist. Why would I be afraid of demonic possession?”
I was raised agnostic and for years I couldn’t understand why people found religious themed horror scary, until one day I realized “Oh, they think this might actually happen to them”. It’s a strange phenomenon to observe from outside. Horror based on the mythology of other cultures is out there though, it’s just not widely available because of western hegemony.
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”
.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.
