As someone of an older age, who has watched horror for a long time, and also as someone who used to participate in horror discussions on social media before all the gatekeeping annoyed me too much, I have to ask the question: Who Decided There Was A Right Way To Be A Horror Fan?
*You could probably say the same things below regarding movies in general, or music genres etc, but I am just using horror as an example since I am familiar with the fandom.
I’ve been wondering about this.
Horror fans seem to spend an awful lot of time telling each other how to enjoy horror movies- now, that’s a generalized statement of course, as it’s not everyone, obviously, but if you participate or have participated in horror discussions on places like Facebook or Reddit, you will know that statement is also not an entirely inaccurate one, as there’s definitely another side of horror fandom where everything becomes a test.
Have you seen the right movies? Do you know the classics? Have you watched enough obscure stuff? Do you like the “wrong” kind of horror? Do you know who directed some film made in 1974 that apparently everybody should have watched by now?
And if the answer to any of those questions is no, somebody will always be willing to let you know, and of course, this is the internet, people are, you know, more opinionated, but still, I don’t really get it.
I am someone who likes talking about movies, I like discovering films I’ve never seen and I like debating about horror with the right people, but I don’t need everybody to have the same taste as me either.
In fact, I’d much rather talk to someone who has completely different taste, because if we both like exactly the same movies and have exactly the same opinions about them, what the hell are we going to debate about?
The genre is too big for one type of fan.
The horror genre is enormous, because it’s not really one genre in the traditional sense, it’s a giant collection of completely different types of movies that happen to sit under the same umbrella.
A person can spend years watching slashers and barely touch supernatural horror, while somebody else might be obsessed with ghost stories but have absolutely no interest in gore.
Then you’ve got creature features, psychological horror, found footage, gothic horror, horror comedy, home invasion, cosmic horror, zombie movies, vampire movies and everything else that has finds its way into the horror section, because horror movies are not just about jump scares. (Shock).
I do think sometimes people forget just how personal taste is as well, as we talk about horror as though there’s an objective scale for what makes a good fan, when really we’re just talking about things that make different people react differently.
That’s why I don’t particularly care when somebody tells me they hate a type of horror that I love - they hate it, fair enough, I’m not going to take it personally, but if you start gatekeeping, I will put my hands through the screen and skullcrush you.
I don’t need to like every classic.
There’s also seems to be a strange pressure around the older classics.
And before anyone gets upset, I’m not saying they’re bad, quite the opposite, some of my favorite horror movies are old, and I think there’s enormous value in understanding where the genre came from.
But I don’t think watching a movie is an obligation just because other fans have decided it’s important, and there are films I’ve seen that I appreciate far more than I enjoy, and there are films I understand the importance of but wouldn’t necessarily choose to watch again, either.
That’s allowed.
I don’t need to pretend a movie is brilliant because it has been considered brilliant for fifty years, and I don’t think somebody who hasn’t seen it is automatically a worse fan than somebody who has.
Stop turning taste into a competition.
This is probably the bit that I find most annoying in an internet kind of way, as there can be a weird competitive streak in horror fandom, particularly when people start talking about how extreme their taste is.
You get this strange measuring contest where somebody has watched something more disturbing than somebody else, or something more obscure, or something that supposedly nobody else has heard of.
I never know what we’re competing for, because spoiler, nobody is going to knock on your door and give you a certificate because you watched a film that made everyone else feel sick.
If you enjoy extreme horror, brilliant, there’s a huge amount of interesting stuff being made in that area, but watching something more extreme doesn’t automatically make your opinion more valuable.
The same goes for knowing obscure movies.
I love finding obscure horror, as it’s one of the best parts of being into the genre, but discovering something that nobody else has seen also doesn’t make you a better fan, it just means you’ve found something interesting.
The internet has obviously made this worse because everything has become a public opinion and everybody wants to be heard, especially when it is a negative opinion, because apparently you can’t just like something anymore, you have to explain why, and you can’t say a movie was disappointing without someone producing a ten-point argument about why your opinion is incorrect.
You know, sometimes I just don’t like a movie, that’s it, and I don’t necessarily always have a carefully constructed argument ready to go - you’re allowed to dislike something without presenting evidence to a jury, and somebody else is allowed to love it.
All the gatekeeping in the fandom would be funny if it was not so sad
Please tell me, is there an official horror authority sitting somewhere deciding what counts as horror, and I somehow missed the memo?
‘Dread’, ‘scary’ and ‘disturbed’, or whatever other words you want to use, can all work in completely different ways depending on who’s watching, and they can be played out on screen in completely different ways too, because a horror movie doesn’t have to be moving at a million miles an hour, throwing a jump scare at you every five minutes, to be a horror movie, as sometimes the horror is in what the movie makes you think about rather than what it actually shows you.
Personally, my favorite type of horror is probably the stuff that messes with your mind without a visual ‘scare’ in sight, so give me something that gets inside my head and leaves me mentally drained and I am happy.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t like jump scares either, as I do, because a good one can work brilliantly, I’m just not convinced that seeing someone jump out from behind a door is the only acceptable way for a horror movie to make me feel something.
And the funniest part is when someone says, “It’s not a horror movie, it’s not scary”.
I once had a long ‘debate’ with someone who constantly argued that The Wicker Man wasn’t a folk horror film, or any kind of horror film, because it wasn’t scary to them, completely ignoring what folk horror is meant to accomplish and what style it purposely has - it may not be your style of horror, but scary isn’t one specific reaction, either.
Maybe I should start saying that comedy isn’t a comedy because I didn’t laugh, but that would be silly, as the reaction doesn’t decide what genre a movie belongs to - Sometimes I do have to wonder whether watching movies has just become a lot more complicated than it really needs to be.
Something I really enjoy is just making horror the loosest and widest genre ever. Scooby Doo? Horror. Why not. Gatekeeping is silly and dull.
This. I would add that you don't need to be a fan (let alone a "real fan"—whatever that means) to appreciate horror cinema or have a totally valid take on a film. I love that the internet allows these expansive fan communities to exist, but it's a bit sad that it is simultaneously creating this pressure to be a fan before you can say anything at all.