In my experience, the horror film genre gets a bad rap. In a conversation with a friend at the beginning of the year, I recommended
The Conjuring, but she responded by saying that horror movies are just evil and don't have anything positive about them. And to be fair, many mainstream slashers are a mindless exercise in seeing people die brutal deaths. At the same time, I strongly appreciate the horror genre. It has introduced us to amazingly skilled artists like Stan Winston (
Jurassic Park, The Thing) and Lon Chaney (
The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
The Phantom of the Opera) whose practical effects work would elicit praise from even the casual moviegoer. It can bring us stories of faith under pressure (
The Conjuring). It can help us deal with grief (
The Babadook). Or in the case of
It Comes at Night, it can bring us to terms with the inevitability of death.
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| Rated R for violence, disturbing images, and language |
