A thriller at best.
I really got into this film, found it creepy and intensely intriguing... but it just seemed to lose it's momentum and become more of a drama towards the end.
I enjoyed it enough, but I just don't think it was scary or even jumpy enough to constitute as a horror.
I admit its more of a thriller, but a very creepy and effective thriller. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I also think that most of today's horror films are more thriller than pure horror film.
IT has elements of a thriller, suspense, horror and Drama.
If anything, it is a Drama masked with the horror/suspense mold.
I think that it definitely is more of a thriller but you have to think about what makes a horror movie a horror movie. Is it how many times you scream in the theater or how many scenes were really disturbing. So many horror movies consist of *beep* jumping out of corner for a cheap scare but how many could keep you from getting to sleep?
Honestly, I think it deserves a little more horror cred than it gets because; one, ghost children are creepy to me and two, the scene where they show Simon fall on the steps and then thinking about him dying in the way he did gets to me way more than most things in movies do today. There wasn't a lot of blood or gore in the scene but the way they filmed it was physical enough to feel real and left enough to the imagination to make you think about it.
I'm of the opinion that the conventional horror elements utilized in this film heavily outweighed the presence of any unconventional elements. It's horror in my book.
But I do recognize that there was an absence of any real sense of threat to her life, which is perhaps the MOST conventional and defining element in the Horror genre.
weird. I'm a huge horror fan and I consider this far and away the scariest film i've ever seen :/
There is no escape
What is horror really. In my book jumpscares is not what makes a movie a horrormovie (but this movie does have a few great jumpscares), but the general athmosphere in this movie tells me this is horror (especially the scene with the medium) and like jupiter I think this movie is quite scary and moreso than most generic american slasher movies.
Maybe people are just confused, that this is a horrormovie, which actually has a good plot and characters you care about.
Just thought I'd add, I don't consider this a horror. Great movie but not a horror.
shareyeah, i think a lot of people's perception of 'horror' is highly influenced by their experience of what 'horror' fiction they've seen, read etc.
obvious, really
"this isn't a pizza, where's the cheese?"
Beneath the Cherry Tree, where the Ripe fall
The same. I love horror movies, and this is the only one that's had me question whether I should be watching it alone with the lights off.
It takes a lot of skill to make a movie scary without having any "pop out" scares. Serious kudos to this movie.
You are being sarcastic...seriously. Scariest film ever? Exactly what part scared the hell out of you? Anything like the girl climbing through the TV in The Ring? I don't THINK SO! This film was very, very predictable. Until the very end. It was a perfect ending & unexpected. But scary? Also needed to be cut down to 1:40. Long as hell with nothing to fill in the gaps except teasing you that SOMETHING was going to happen but it doesn't. That happened the entire movie. EXCEPT when the one child at the mask party attacked her in the bathroom. Even then, her reaction was that she looked down at her fingers and was in horror that her hand hurt & had blood (more than that she had just been attacked!! omg...
shareI'd call it a horror/drama.
I watched this and Paranormal Activity recently, and this was about three times as scary. Paranormal Activity was over-hyped though.
___
"What does it do?"
"It doesn't do anything. That's the beauty of it."
it's heavy suspense... without any jump-scares.
the scene in the dark cave near the beginning... i was so prepping for a loud noise or something, like "Laura why are you going to take a look in the cave after watching your kid talk to something you couldn't see!??? WHYYYY" and all she saw... was a set of eerie footprints walking further INTO the cave. that kind of chill... is far more effective than the scream-and-forget bat-in-your-face or unnaturally-loud-violin-that-suddenly-goes-haywire.
the house had many corridor shots that were similarly haunting. the "kid in the sack" appearing to push Laura into the toilet... was bewildering and confounding. and it happened in broad daylight. the medium and the recordings... i was half expecting some violent scare, but instead it was just steadily building into an inexplicable supernatural incident (which Carlos later dismisses as a hoax). the handling of these scenes was powerful and yet subtle, letting the viewer draw their own conclusions.
then of course, there was the last few scenes. just Laura saying grace with the dolls... i was half expecting something huge to happen. the suspense of not knowing what to expect was overpowering! then the infamous to-and-fro pan-shots of the 1-2-3 knock on the wall game... that was just genius. and you thought the kids looked friendly enough... then a disembodied hand does the final tap! leading to... the horrific denouement in the basement. that exposition must rank as one of the best horror reveals ever!
so i dunno. some of you seem accustomed to a certain type of (i would say low-brow, jump-scare based) horror, while others seem to expect Asian creepy creatures over atmospheric eeriness. to each his own, i'd say.
Even if it doesn't scare you, it still has Horror elements, the supernatural, ghosts. You can't say it is not a horror, even if it didn't scare you. It didn't scare me, but i still regard it as a Horror.
shareWell I disagree. The only horror film that has ever scared me is Paranormal Activity 3 (and that is literally the only one) - but obviously that is not the only horror film in existence. I don't class a horror film only by what scares me.
My post was trying to say that it had many more elements of a thriller than a horror.
I found it to be more of a drama.
shareYou're not a horror! HA!
share^Haha!
Actually no I also found it more of a thriller. Say psychological slash supernatural thriller or mystery thriller.
You're more of a thriller. Say psychological slash supernatural thriller or mystery thriller!
share@ dalldorfw - You stated that it 'supernatural' that lands into the genre of 'horror' thus this is a horror movie if it has supernatural elements. Most films that are classified as Horror don't take it as if it isn't going to scare you, it means that he it has elements to make it a horror to begin with...
"Anne Rice destroyed vampires, and then Stephanie Meyer made it worse..."
I'd say it's a dramatic mystery film with horror and thriller elements...
But definitely more thriller than horror (missing kid, red herrings, investigations, etc)...
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
to me it is a horror.
horror isn't defined as "scary or even jumpy enough".
to me, horror has some gore scenes - shown or unshown, mixed with thriller and suspense. and this one has it all. so it is a horror