The gleefully dreadful power of the horror genre is its malleability. With the marriage of the human capacities for fear and creativity resulting in one, delectable, bottomless pit, to say nothing of the genre’s presence as a companion to a good deal of sci-fi, fantasy, and even comedy films, the possibilities of horror and its set pieces are matched only by the number of stars in the universe.
The stipulation, of course, is that these set pieces also include those that tingled our funny bones rather than our spines. Indeed, you could never have a pool of horror movie scares without ending up with a pile of failures, and stepping up to clean that pool are the masses of r/horror as they name and shame some of the most cringeworthy scare attempts in cinematic history.
With their real-world associations with innocence, it’s no wonder that children have become a popular vessel for horror, turning an otherwise endearing front into something deathly malicious. But apparently, there’s a limit to the fear factor present in fictional children.
Others pointed out a tired, ageist trope present in the likes of The Shining; one that Ti West masterfully flipped on its head with his slasher hit, X.
One user even took a jab at Ari Aster’s Midsommar, although it seems like this one has to do with their audio-processing ability more than any directorial/writing oversight.
It just goes to show the double-edged sword nature of our fears; despite our collective capacity for being scared knowing no bounds, the diversity of that which does and doesn’t scare us individually is just as widespread. Moral of the story for all you aspiring horror artists? Make something that scares you, and simply let the audience fall where they may.