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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)

Transcript

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

  • tio_bira@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    12·
    1 day ago

    Each generation horror icons represent their fears.

    This generation ia afraid to date and real estate bussines i guess…

  • fisch
    17·
    1 day ago

    Bruh, the creepy fascist pedo clown is president of the United States now. I don’t need this in my entertainment.

    • cannedtunaOPMEnglish
      2·
      24 hours ago

      Thanks. I usually label the extra captions alt text (because of xkcd since that’s how they show it) and the description of the image transcript. I guess I missed changing spoiler on this one

  • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
    103·
    2 days 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
      44·
      2 days 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.

      • kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        24 hours ago

        It is also the athmosphere of anxiety. Horror movies try to intentionally create feelings of fear, and uneasiness, which then is present in the color scheme, camera angles, music (or lack of), spacing… everything. In documentaries and the like, usually the incidents themselves, also speak for themself.

        I cannot take horror at all either - I cannot usually watch even horror comedies - but one of my favorites, is to watch real tsunami footage. The point is not to see people dying or some unreal scary stuff, it is to witness the real absoluteness of destruction nature is capable of, yet also people managing to survive, and help each other, in the middle of it.

      • BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
        61·
        2 days ago

        You said documentaries aren’t “usually” made to be scary, so you’re implying that there’s some documentaries out there that’s got jump scares and shit. It makes me want to see such a documentary.

        • placebo@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          Probably not jump scares, but scenes with actors that do employ tricks with lighting, music, practical effects, and other cinematic tools that increase tension.

      • MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
        11·
        2 days 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.

  • Rooskie91@discuss.online
    531·
    2 days ago

    It’s just being reductive about modern horror and descriptive about old horror. Here, you can just as easily flip the script:

    Old horror: A clown. Dreams.

    Modern horror: Endless trauma labyrinth. Male fantasy gone horribly wrong.

  • xkbx@startrek.website
    60·
    2 days 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

    • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
      6·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, like there’s this place with really good chicken, but you can’t eat any because that means you hate gay people. But it’s sooooo good.

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
    172·
    2 days 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.

      • FiniteBanjo@feddit.onlineEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        In life you have this general assumption that by doing things correctly and living in the right place that you will live to somewhere around 81 years old, which is the national average for UK.

        You could die at any moment but you roughly know what the odds of that are: slim. In the backrooms; you do not know.

  • LittleBorat3
    11·
    2 days 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

  • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    121·
    2 days 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.

  • GhostFace@lemmy.today
    71·
    2 days ago

    Both are good? There’s different types of horror.

    Although I don’t really like the older horror movies. The effects and acting aren’t good enough. Older Scream movies will always be an exception but that’s because it’s more comedic horror.

    I’m not sure if I could ever find Freddy or Pennywise scary anyway. Not that much scares me at this point. I thought the Silent Hill movies had their moments. Heart Eyes is more comedic horror but it’s really good. Terrifier series has been okay too.