Why the “high terror” label needs to fucking die

Talk about “elevated terror” is wasting time. Writing more about that label is exhausting, tiring, counterproductive, very heavy. But today it’s time to do it again. The meme”Ah shit, here we go again!” appears when you have to debate, discuss and justify why there is nothing that is classified as “elevated terror”. Rains, it pours. It doesn’t feel like it, it doesn’t add up, it’s contradictory, because by renaming those two words we give it, once again, a balloon of oxygen.

 

We have already discussed here the origin of the “term” extensively, so it is not worth recapitulating that it is an idiom invented by a critic with a lack of historical perspective that he gave that name to some films that he did like and considered that, effectively, it could house a category of works that he considered suitable for his personal consumption because, in short, he is one of those types of people who, when he does not know how to have fun He likes to wrinkle his nose to see if the others have a little less fun.

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1nJrBfEg8BBz_Q7EwZi0cxrsfrUYNabtY?usp=sharing

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1GRTw0P2xdPPoyqcpgFH3T6X-JA7t6wKK?usp=sharing

https://new.c.mi.com/tr/post/11462/

The one I have here hanging

Why do you have to go back to batter in the same mud again? For nothing in particular. But on the Filmin platform They’ve decided to prod a bit of a bunch of suspicious subscribers with a collection called, guess what, “high terror.” On its cover, the poster for ‘ella She Will’, a stylized but insufferable witch movie that tackles her themes with a literalness that would scare even the “reactionary” subtext of ‘Friday the 13th Part VIII’. Inside, they limit themselves to putting on a simple “open debate” before reeling off their 64 titles from all eras.

 

Filmin selects a series of films that some have currently considered within that label and is encouraged to include some classics and films from the 20th century traditionally considered within the genre, such as ‘Eraserhead’ or ‘Shadow Menace’, on the one hand acknowledging that if that tag exists now, it should have been used long agoand on the other hand because it is very convenient for them to take some samples from their catalog that are in their ‘horror’ category and revalue them to get a little slice of it, of course.

 

The problem here is that shaking a debate from five years ago is a bit of a joke about the dog Mistetas. A little your Latin teacher saying “guachi”. It is not open debate, it is ignorance. Forgive the vehemence. Although there have been many voices criticizing those who criticize the use of the term, those who find it exaggerated to make such a fuss every time the subject returns to the old ways, and even those who like the category and at the same time defend Filmin for his sense of humor, in an impossible contradiction.

 

The historical association of terror with exploitation

Let it be said that nonsense would be harmless if it stopped perpetuating itself, but since the hammer continues, it is worth clarifying that it is not a matter of drama or indignation, it is simply a job of correction, because it is cinema, it is culture and of course that there are people who care about the correct taxonomy. It is not about crying because it is believed that the genre looks down on itself, It is not about pointing out the attempt at petulance or inferiority complexes, it is simply about rigor. And not to be ignorant.

 

Because today we have culture at a click and there are no excuses to continue thinking that gender is what we want it to be. Let’s say that what the prophets of “high terror” want is for us to separate the chaff from the grain, where the chaff is the slasher or cinema with monsters and grain auteur cinema, usually drama and at times surreal or abstract cinema, which has normally been known as “art and essay”. Removing everything in between, so far, good.

 

The amount of low-budget production in the video market and the proliferation of killer movie sequels has made us think that terror is strictly that of blood, guys with masks and deathsbut the association of low budget and pure exploitation has really only been like this in a very specific period of history, since since the 90s indie cinema and without many means has been the constant seed of new currents of all kinds, far removed from of the binomial of blood and tits.

 

the past does not exist

The foundation of the genre is made up of the many Murnau, Dreyer, Lang, Whale, Tourneur, or G. Ulmer. Needless to say, a shot or two from ‘Satan’ (1934) or ‘Vampyr’ (1932) are more “high” than Charlotte Colbert’s entire debut, but at the time there was no need to distinguish. Subsequently, the category has been closed to what we could determine as “horror drama”, or what we have considered all our lives as “psychological horror” or “A24 films”, which are the ones that end up falling into that category.

 

The absurdity is complicated when the defining element is the symmetry of the planes or the time in which they are sustained without movement in them. The aesthetics, the beauty. You can now make “high terror” lists on platforms that, no matter how many classics with pedigree they include, would never include films like ‘The Cell’ (2000), a riot of form over substance that no one will let into the club cool for starring Jennifer Lopez and having a pocketbook plot.

 

Key examples of the great modern commercial cinema such as ‘Jaws’ (1975) or ‘Signs’ (2002) would be unthinkable because their creators are great visible heads of terror as a show on the big screen, but of course their surnames are above any category . Nevertheless, Analyzing his films leads us to a redefinition of the “elevated” because both in their visual expressions and in their humanistic complexity they have much more behind what an empty whim like ‘I am the beautiful creature that lives in this house’ (2016) can suggest.

 

The dilemma of auteur cinema and the pyramidal view of art

That if we enter into segregation by authorship we have a problem that goes much further than the horror genre. We enter, of course, in the pyramidal conception of art, where the fit is at the top and the disposable at the bottom. A self-conscious look that takes its maximum expression in genre cinema. However, we have rarely heard of Western raised. You can already imagine. In the section would appear ‘The murder of Jesse James by the cowardly Robert Ford’ and while ‘Centaurs of the desert’ would be “of cowboys and Indians”.

 

With ‘The Thin Red Line’ we would have elevated war films and with ‘Saving Private Ryan’ one of Spielberg’s killing Nazis, the elevated science fiction of ‘The Arrival’ would leave ‘The Twilight Zone’, one of the most influential audiovisual fictions in history that define the entire work of Jordan Peele. Imagine now if we enter to value Tarantino, Sam Fuller, Ken Russell, or John Waters. The concept of auteur cinema and let’s not say “elevated” or “not elevated”.

 

Others interpret “elevated” as a way of talking about cinema that “goes beyond horror”, and to begin with as if terror itself were something to get rid of, because it smells bad. Like create atmospheres, consolidate aesthetics, or orchestrate good scares did not have a tradition, heritage, artistic process in short, less valid than other disciplines. But in addition, the genre of horror is spoken of dryly as if it had ever been something in itself, dryly.

 

The fallacy of terror that goes “beyond”

Interestingly, films that “go further” are only considered if they are solemn, full of honorable rictus. But ‘An American Werewolf in London’ (1981) offers comedy as well as horror, and it’s also a very sad drama. Doesn’t it go further? The same ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 2’ (1985) masks a representation on the repression of homosexuality, or ‘Zombie’ (1978), a satire on consumerism and human nature in the midst of collapse. The horror genre has always gone beyondanother thing is that to see it some prefer to see the movies that make it clearer.

 

It is not that ‘Midsommar’ is not a satire of a breakup in the middle of a nightmare of sects, it is that it leaves it crystal clear at the plot level, and even through its visual language, but there are not many who have elucidated that ‘The Birthday ‘ (2004) works exactly the same idea, only that the vicissitudes seemed to be above the discourse. doAnd if it turns out that the only thing elevated that some movies have is the obvious?