hmm interesting. Everyone keeps hyping this movie, and the more I find out about it, the less interested I am. I think it's because I turn to horror to unpack fears in interesting ways, whereas what I see here is bringing in ultimate evil and just giving it a lot of ornate arbitrary rules to operate by and then setting it against general goodness. I don't feel like seeing it is gonna help me think anything new about religion, paranoia, stranger predators, men who terrorize their families and children or women and children. I guess I'd be more likely to see The Witch, where there seems to be somewhere to go with the perception we get about how evil acts on people and how people act on evil. I mean, no matter how detailed the lore is, I'm unconvinced here that it functions to do more than simply make the evil complex and intentional. I don't even think that makes it more scary - random evil is just as threatening, if not more so, when the stakes are similarly high. So if it doesn't make it more interesting, isn't this just repetitive pushing of emotional panic buttons? Is this a good movie, or just an intricately made one? Whither complexity?
hmm interesting. Everyone keeps hyping this movie, and the more I find out about it, the less interested I am. I think it's because I turn to horror to unpack fears in interesting ways, whereas what I see here is bringing in ultimate evil and just giving it a lot of ornate arbitrary rules to operate by and then setting it against general goodness. I don't feel like seeing it is gonna help me think anything new about religion, paranoia, stranger predators, men who terrorize their families and children or women and children. I guess I'd be more likely to see The Witch, where there seems to be somewhere to go with the perception we get about how evil acts on people and how people act on evil. I mean, no matter how detailed the lore is, I'm unconvinced here that it functions to do more than simply make the evil complex and intentional. I don't even think that makes it more scary - random evil is just as threatening, if not more so, when the stakes are similarly high. So if it doesn't make it more interesting, isn't this just repetitive pushing of emotional panic buttons? Is this a good movie, or just an intricately made one? Whither complexity?