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timepiececlockMy roommate K and I just got into a long argument about what genre the movie Signs falls into, and how one defines a "horror" movie. I said a horror movie has to scare you and has to have conventional horror things like monsters or excessive gore. She said it has to follow a specific "horror movie" plot structure (which in her opinion is epitomized by Friday the 13th-- I think you have to also consider older horror films like The Birds when you're talking about traditional horror film structure.)
I said that's not the only way to judge a horror film, because by her definition of plot structure, Signs is a horror movie: as it follows a small group of isolated people being terrorized by deadly monsters, and their area of safety gets smaller and smaller, and there's crazy animals, and people are dying around them, and there's creepy children, and they have to survive the night and battle the monsters. It also makes you jump and shriek with fright. She said it's a science fiction movie-- I said it may have aliens, but the aliens were so off-screen they could have been replaced by any other farm-terrorizing monster and the plot would be exactly the same. They don't interact with the threat in any kind of science fiction way-- the way they defeat the aliens is even more reminiscent of horror than of science fiction: they find it's magical weakness, in this case liquid H20, and use it to fight the monsters off. From the family's point of view, the fact that they're aliens and not Boogiemen is incidental, academic to their situation. Signs doesn't follow the plot structure of a science fiction film, it follows the plot structure of a horror movie. But-- it's about aliens, not monsters. And main characters don't die along the way-- only the dog dies (although the animal going crazy is a very typical horror movie thing), and also people off-screen that you can't see, only hear about on their television and radio. So what is it? She says it's a thriller--- but does it follow the plot structure of a thriller, as by her argument that plot structure defines genre?
No. It has the plot structure of a horror movie. Silence of the Lambs, which also came up in discussion, has the plot structure of a thriller, but it has enough gore and is frightening enough to be called a slasher horror movie.
There's also the basic question: Do you go to get scared? I go to an M. Night Shayamalan movie expecting to get scared. Not every scene, but I expect it to be creepy or unsettling or to make me jump at least once. So what does that mean?
My whole point in this argument was that you can't say archetypal plot structure is the only way to define a film's genre. Movies can have the elements of a horror film but the plot structure of a thriller-- like War of the Worlds (recent), or vice versa, as with Signs. You have to look at the elements of the story and characters as well as the plot structure to categorize a film in one particular genre or another.
Blade Trinity was fun, though. Certainly re-watchable, whereas in the last five years I've had no desire at all to see Blade a second time.
Although, the ending of B:Trinity left me with a big WTF?. I watched the extended/unrated edition, and I guess they changed the last scene from the theatrical edition, but it didn't make any sense and even after talking to my roommate about it (she saw the theatrical version), she didn't know what to make of it either.
I said that's not the only way to judge a horror film, because by her definition of plot structure, Signs is a horror movie: as it follows a small group of isolated people being terrorized by deadly monsters, and their area of safety gets smaller and smaller, and there's crazy animals, and people are dying around them, and there's creepy children, and they have to survive the night and battle the monsters. It also makes you jump and shriek with fright. She said it's a science fiction movie-- I said it may have aliens, but the aliens were so off-screen they could have been replaced by any other farm-terrorizing monster and the plot would be exactly the same. They don't interact with the threat in any kind of science fiction way-- the way they defeat the aliens is even more reminiscent of horror than of science fiction: they find it's magical weakness, in this case liquid H20, and use it to fight the monsters off. From the family's point of view, the fact that they're aliens and not Boogiemen is incidental, academic to their situation. Signs doesn't follow the plot structure of a science fiction film, it follows the plot structure of a horror movie. But-- it's about aliens, not monsters. And main characters don't die along the way-- only the dog dies (although the animal going crazy is a very typical horror movie thing), and also people off-screen that you can't see, only hear about on their television and radio. So what is it? She says it's a thriller--- but does it follow the plot structure of a thriller, as by her argument that plot structure defines genre?
No. It has the plot structure of a horror movie. Silence of the Lambs, which also came up in discussion, has the plot structure of a thriller, but it has enough gore and is frightening enough to be called a slasher horror movie.
There's also the basic question: Do you go to get scared? I go to an M. Night Shayamalan movie expecting to get scared. Not every scene, but I expect it to be creepy or unsettling or to make me jump at least once. So what does that mean?
My whole point in this argument was that you can't say archetypal plot structure is the only way to define a film's genre. Movies can have the elements of a horror film but the plot structure of a thriller-- like War of the Worlds (recent), or vice versa, as with Signs. You have to look at the elements of the story and characters as well as the plot structure to categorize a film in one particular genre or another.
Blade Trinity was fun, though. Certainly re-watchable, whereas in the last five years I've had no desire at all to see Blade a second time.
Although, the ending of B:Trinity left me with a big WTF?. I watched the extended/unrated edition, and I guess they changed the last scene from the theatrical edition, but it didn't make any sense and even after talking to my roommate about it (she saw the theatrical version), she didn't know what to make of it either.
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Date: 2006-02-05 05:15 am (UTC)