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#Housebound

frenemymine
@frenemymine

Horror movies! Are they worse? Or am I worse?

I am really having trouble figuring out whether I was just spoiled by a golden era of low- to mid-budget horror from the late 2000s through the mid 2010s and the genre is really worse now, or if I’m just older and tropes don’t feel fresh to me in the way that they used to. I remember so many absolute bangers from those years— Pontypool, Lake Mungo, Housebound, It Follows, The Battery, The Guest, Dream Home, REC, Green Room, Starry Eyes, The Invitation, The Innkeepers, You’re Next, etc., etc., etc. I could keep listing stuff all day. There was SO much amazing stuff coming out all the time, and even the bad stuff was often really interesting.

I’ve been trying to get back into horror films as I pretty much completely fell off the genre for a few years and I’m perplexed, stuff just isn’t hitting. I’m watching movies recommended by the same critics I used to like back then, movies that have stellar reviews across the board, and things are at best decent and usually just lame. I watched Deadstream recently which was repeatedly recommended by a critic I really like and has a fantastic RT score and it was just… not good. It wasn’t good.

I want to say I started noticing this decline in 2019 when I saw Ready or Not in the theater which had been hyped so much, and it felt like it was checking all of the boxes of the horror films I liked, but something just wasn’t falling into place. It was entertaining, I didn’t feel like I had wasted my money, but I felt as though it wasn’t quite what it should have been.

I even got scared that maybe if I went back and watched all the old movies I liked I would realize I didn’t like them anymore, so I went back and watched Pontypool, Lake Mungo and The Invitation and nope, they were still amazing, so that’s a relief at least.

The only horror films I’ve seen recently that I quite liked were The Menu, Barbarian and When Evil Lurks and even so I didn’t love them and wouldn’t watch them again. The latter especially coasted by on its amazing first act and my goodwill had petered out by the time the second ended. Am I just old and unable to appreciate new things now? Do I need to find new critics to listen to? What the heck is going on lol

nex3
@nex3
Housebound Review

This has too many twists and turns for me to say much substantial about it without spoilers, but it's too fun for me to want to hide my praise behind a click-through. So I'll just say: if you're looking for a good time that's more horror-themed than genuinely scary, this is well worth checking out.