I was watching a horror movie a couple of weeks ago with my sister. We wanted to recreate the days back when we would get under the covers and cover our eyes, and so we picked the scariest one based on the trailer— “Talk to Me.” And while it held our interest for the first half, the rest fell short of our expectations. It was labeled as horror and yet it wasn’t horrifying at all.
Because they revolve around trauma and not actual scare elements – recent horror movies should not be classified as just horror, but rather as thriller.
There is a very distinct difference between horror and thriller. Horror relies on jump scares, angles, ominous music, and gore in order to captivate viewers. These have you on the edge of your seat, and while predictable, nevertheless manage to scare. And while some horror movies do this, there are some that solely rely on deeper meanings and messages to draw the audience in. This makes them unnerving, but in a unique way.
Examples of “Horror” Horror Movies
“As Above So Below”: Directed by John Erick Dowdle, this 2014 horror is about a woman in search a treasure known as Flamel’s Philosopher’s Stone. When she finds out that the stone is hidden in the Paris catacombs, she goes to explore with a group but doesn’t realize what she is in for. The documentary-style footage is the main event of this movie. It is filmed from the perspective of explorers, and the shaky, low-quality images of the film make it seem as though you are watching recovered footage from a real occurrence. The characters are stuck in a loop within the catacombs, with jump scares placed deliberately throughout the movie. It interferes with your perception of time and the horror is psychological.
“M3gan”: This film was released in 2022 and directed by Gerard Johnstone. It is about a woman named Gemma who gives a lifelike doll robot to her niece after the passing of the girl’s mother. However, the M3gan, the robot, gains a conscience of its own and becomes protective of Gemma’s niece. M3gan goes on to become more and more sentient, and overly protective of the girl to the point where it’s willing to kill for her. With humor elements, this movie was the perfect example of comedic horror. I watched this with my family, and we enjoyed laughing and screaming together.
“In the Tall Grass”: This movie is really similar to “As Above So Below.” Directed by Vincenzo Natali and released in 2019, the film follows a pair of siblings who enter a field of grass in the middle of nowhere in order to rescue a boy whose voice they had heard. Later, they find out that the exit has shifted and that they have no way out of the grass. It muddles the passing of time and confuses the viewer. There are many disturbing scenes such as the decomposing of a dog, a woman eating her newborn baby and its placenta, as well as the turning of loved ones on each other. This movie was done well in terms of scare factor, and I could never predict what was going to happen next.
Examples of “Horror” Thriller Movies
“Talk to Me”: Released in 2023 and directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, this movie is about a relic—the mummified hand of a psychic— that allows teenagers to connect and communicate with the dead and have out-of-body experiences. The main character comes across the opportunity to use the hand and ends up enjoying the few seconds of escape it provides. Being reckless, she lets her friend’s little brother try the hand, and while possessed, attempts to hurt himself. He becomes hospitalized and his family shuns her. Convincing herself that she saw her dead mother in him for a moment, she becomes obsessed with the relic, just to communicate with her mother for a bit. Listening to her “mother,” she tries to murder her father, because she’s convinced he’s an imposter, as well as her friend’s brother to relieve him from the pain, and eventually herself. This shows how grief and guilt are recurring and affect mental health. The message is similar to the next movie, “Smile.”
“Smile”: This 2022 movie was directed by Parker Finn and is about a condition that spreads though America. It starts off with the main character, who is a therapist, witnessing a suicide before her eyes. Not long after, she starts hallucinating and having visions of a terrible entity that is out to get her. This manifests in people around her, as they smile creepily at her wherever she goes. She’s losing sleep, not acting like herself, and loved ones are concerned. One moment in the movie her pet cat goes missing and later is found, dead, inside a gift she had wrapped up for her sister’s son’s birthday party. The whole movie is a metaphor for the grief and trauma that humans experience after a death, and how sometimes it can consume us and change the way that we act, and even the way we think and feel. Once you realize that is the message, the movie becomes less scary.
“The Platform”: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia directed this movie, and it was released in 2019. The film takes place in a prison with a new system called the Vertical Self-Management Center, where prisoners rotate levels among 333 levels each month. The higher up you are, the more food is available for you, and people past the level of 100 barely receive anything to sustain themselves. I saw this movie as criticism for the way in which our economy works. Those with more power take more, leaving the less fortunate with nothing. It wasn’t so much scary as it was a blunt representation of our society.