Thank you for saying this. I was afraid to confess it because I thought it might be automatic grounds for expulsion from QT3. :) I can’t remember the last horror movie I liked and every indie horror movie I’ve tried to watch I haven’t finished. They just seem stupid.
Finally, I get to be orthodox: hating horror is a crime and you should all feel bad.
Horror is easily the laziest and least demanding of all visual/audio fiction. It’s just too easy to do jumpscares, and ratchet tension with music, and gross people out with gore.
Most horror movie directors are just terrible directors, comparatively.
Horror is one of those genres that I’m convinced is pretty much always better as an idea that in execution. It can get my imagination running, when bits and pieces of a story find their way to me, but it totally falls apart the minute I see what the writers/directors have actually brought to the page or screen.
I want to love horror, and I actually consider myself a huge horror fan… but I can’t even point to five horror movies I actually enjoy from the last twenty years. Apparently I’m a fan of the idea or concept of horror movies, but not the movies themselves.
Yeah, I don’t enjoy horror either. Gore is also an instant turn-off in nearly every genre for me.
Generally speaking I too dislike horror because I can’t stop picking apart the logic flaws. But then I listened to the Qt3 podcast on It Follows and really liked Tom’s interpretation.
It’s true that directors (cf Sam Raimi) often start out with horror because you can do it cheap. And you’re also right that most horror is awful; but that’s just what makes it so great when you find one that isn’t. Anyway, most of everything is awful.
Given. I remember seeing Event Horizon in theatres and it fooled me with its premise. I thought it was going to be sci fi, but it turned out to be horror sci fi. It was great, one of my horror exceptions.
Another great horror movie I saw recently was As Above So Below. I wasn’t sure where that movie was going and was legit terrified when they all decided to go into the entrance to hell. I actually stopped watching (it was late at night) after the first supernatural encounter because I knew it would give me nightmares. The found footage added to that effect w lot, it was almost as good as Blair Witch. Oh, and that’s the third exception! Blair Witch was well done and one of the first handheld cam no traditional shots anywhere movie I saw. It was horror without the gore and almost no jump scares anywhere. My favorite kind of horror. I’m not sure what you’d call the tent scene.
But like, Hockey mask guy movies and everything like it? Yawn. Ghost or demon movies? Yawn.
Oh, I have a great one! I hate hate hate zombies. I’ve been in nerd hell for years, so I hear you, anti-superhero guys. At least you zombie nerds got World War Z, a million zombie TV shows, and zombified versions of Call of Duty, even. You don’t get much more mainstream than appearing in a Call of Duty game.
Meanwhile we robot nerds have the occasional all-teasing-no-fucking video from Boston Dynamics and the occassional Robot Wars season out of the blue on whatever channel I’m not sure. Maybe SyFy? Maybe Sci? Who knows.
Get outta here, zombie nerds! You know what, you too super hero nerds! Both of ya’s, get outta here!
You’re hogging up all the bandwidth.
Hey, you got Pacific Rim, and a sequel!
I mean, uh, yeah, legitimate gripe.
My big ones:
- I too think Batman’s dumb, or at least the way he’s presented nowadays. I’d rather him be some wily detective investigating lunatics and eccentrics than requiring me to suspend disbelief that he can pal around as the equal of Wonder Woman, Superman, and whatever other god-like DC superheroes there are. (I’m not a complete monster, I like the MCU movies from about the Winter Soldier on.)
- The only comic book I’ve ever read more than one issue of is Planetary. It was good I guess, but it seems a poor medium for narrative in my view.
- I hate most every science fiction novel I’ve ever read aside from Neuromancer and 2/3 of Snow Crash. I won’t even touch fantasy. (I like Burroughs’ Nova Trilogy, but it rarely gets mentioned by SF fans so I won’t count it.)
- The only space TV show I like is The Expanse and the first episode of Battlestar Gallactica. Yes, I’ve tried others. Yes, even that one.
- Since others are saying: I hate horror for the most part unless it’s a bit psychological, and even then, it’s rare. Especially zombies and slasher stuff. I want to like Gothic horror stuff, I just don’t think I’ve seen any good examples other than Poe and semi-obscure fin de siècle European decadents. Southern gothic is solid, but it’s not really horror in the stricter sense, I guess.
All right, you anti-horror types are starting to make sense. You say, “I hate zombies” or “I hate slashers” it whatever, yeah, ok. Everyone’s got their tastes. To take that out to “I hate horror” makes zero sense. Especially if you’re going to turn around and say “But I love Event Horizon!”, which is crap. I mean I love it too, but it’s total crap.
Dang, I thought I would catch flack for my horror statement. But this is so far removed from my tastes that I don’t think we could ever discuss books or movies.
In my defense, I do like lots of science fiction movies (ranging from the canon Kubrick-Tarkovsky stuff to big-budget Star Wars blockbusters to lowkey indies like Primer), some non-space TV shows too. I just never took to it in literature. I get the feeling that I might like Philip K. Dick if I gave him a chance.
Oh, I love Futurama, which is both sci-fi and in space. So that’s another exception.
Sci fi movies are ok but TV is not? Books a no go?
That’s so bizarre that I can’t map why. Can you share why this is the case? Or is it just one of those ‘because it is’ type deals?
I’m a big fan of Pynchon and Stephenson. Yet I quit both Mason and Dixon and Anathem halfway through. Just ran out of steam.
I can try to go a bit deeper than ‘that’s just the way it is,’ to mixed results I’m sure. It’s not like I have a standing order to dislike sci-fi TV shows and books, it’s just that none of the ones I’ve tried ever really connected to me. I don’t turn my nose up at them or anything either. I won’t state anything definitively because I’ve never really considered it before. The best I can think of is that maybe I think the ideas the genre grapples with are better explored in shorter bursts like movies?
Maybe it’s a matter of background? For example, most people I know that are really into science fiction are typically from STEM or STEM-adjacent fields. I’m from a humanities background (history and art history; sort of combined into cultural history for grad school). Most of the fiction books I like are somewhat grounded narratively (comparatively speaking at least) or are more interested in formalistic experiments than narrative. Those were usually the kinds of books I was exposed to growing up, in school or elsewhere, so I suppose that’s the kind I took to. None of my parents or friends were ever that interested in science fiction literature. My dad loved sci-fi TV and movies though (still does I assume), but he never passed on his love for the Star Trek TV series, despite my watching all the movies with him at one point or another. I think that maybe had it been a decade or two later with DVD box sets and streaming, he might have had a chance to get me into Star Trek, but it was a different time and getting into a show through syndication was tough.
As for TV shows, I’ve tended to prefer comedies until the ‘golden age of TV,’ and even now I’d rather watch Atlanta or Arrested Development over The Wire or The Americans (the latter two being my favorite drama series). Most of the beloved space opera shows were a little bit before my time or I was maybe too young to get into them. I’m an old millennial, so I was a relative child when Next Generation and Babylon 5 were big. I tried those later on along with Farscape and none registered. I don’t think they’re awful, they just didn’t leave much of an impression.
Obviously, I’ve played my fair share of sci-fi video games over the years as well. (I’ve played a ton of CRPGs too, so it’s not like I’m completely fantasy averse either).
That’s all I’ve got right now.
Edit: And yeah, I like Pynchon and Vonnegut to the extent they get classified as science fiction. I’ve been told that they don’t count by some, so ymmv.
I don’t think that’s necessarily all that unusual. I love Pynchon but it took me three different attempts over a few years to get all the way through Gravity’s Rainbow.
Huh, we’re pretty close in age then. I too broadly missed many of those 90’s sci fi tv shows. Even BSG I watched after it ended. But I’ve gone back to many as streaming became a thing.
Interesting, thank you for sharing. As I didn’t get into most of those until later, high school and college mostly starting around the rerelease of Star Wars, my attachment is not from childhood exposure. But, yeah, I am an engineer type so…