Slightly related, but my wife won't watch horror films because ghosts and zombies and shit are too scary for her.

She loves watching true-life documentaries about unsolved cases of people who just vanish and theres not even any evidence that they're dead. Just gone. Which is infinitely scarier to me than any knife-clown or ghost-botherers

(Pre-amble, I don’t think the meme should be taken seriously and I do find it funny)

Horror is my favourite genre because it genuinely seeks to express the most primal and furious of all emotions: fear. From the goriest, straight-forward splatter fest to the subtlest discomforts of tense artsy horror films, the popular and cult favourite movies offer a fantastic reflection of that generation/culture’s deepest vulnerabilities.

Slashers like Friday the 13th were about the internalized self-criticism of modern, white Judea-Christian values (pre-marital sex, drugs, etc) and Nightmare on Elm Street was about parents, society, the government, etc, being unable and unwilling to help with the problems they created, problems that turn lethal. Suicide due to depression from repression, OD’ing from drugs because you need a way out, getting killed because you got mixed up with the “wrong” crowd at the wrong time, these were all things that happened to people because the “system” pushed you into a corner, and vilified any means you sought to escape.

Even “torture porn” like Saw was about feeling trapped and what extremes you’d take to “free” yourself. Terrifier, too, can offer a reflection of extreme violence offering some form of release.

Backrooms and Obsession are so relevant because they too talk about our fears of being trapped in the endlessly mundane, or attachments that we cling to beyond the safety of ourselves and others.

This is a really general rant so I’ve glossed over and even ignored so many nuances. Not to mention that I’m really not eloquent enough to really hit every nail on the head… and each person will pull their own unique experiences from horror.

I genuinely love it when people find something they can connect with in horror, regardless of what generation or subgenre they find.

edit: head not hand

It's just being reductive about modern horror and descriptive about old horror. Here, you can just as easily flip the script:

Old horror: A clown. Dreams.

Modern horror: Endless trauma labyrinth. Male fantasy gone horribly wrong.

We forgetting that a house was a horror icon for decades?

Old: we knew who the enemy was

New: the enemy is everywhere

Backrooms resonates with people because it represents the fear of the unknowable, the fear of being in the presence of something you can’t see or identify, or understand its intentions. It’s practically infinite, easy to get lost in, and is way less empty than it looks. Maybe you’re fine. Maybe you’re seconds away from death. You can’t know.

Bruh, the creepy fascist pedo clown is president of the United States now. I don't need this in my entertainment.

Watch The Good Place. Life can be Hell.

Is "a guy's girlfriend" from Obsession? (Oh, I see the spoiler.) Also sorta applies to It Follows, though the stalker wasn't anyone in particular; in fact, it could be "anyone".

How about "an adorable little girl who looks at you funny"? Samara from The Ring (RIP Daveigh), MEGAN, Arya Stark from Game of Thrones if you're one of the dozens of people she killed... there have got to be more. Wednesday Addams was kind of a horror icon, or tried to be. It just seems there are a lot of creepy little kids in horror.

Each generation horror icons represent their fears.

This generation ia afraid to date and real estate bussines i guess...

Shit got a lot more real if you ask me.

This new obsession movie (I still loved her despite her flaws) and these ari aster movies are true horror.

Old horror is dead

Weapons is the exception to this

Both are good? There's different types of horror.

Although I don't really like the older horror movies. The effects and acting aren't good enough. Scream will always be an exception but that's because it's more comedic horror.

I'm not sure if I could ever find Freddy or Pennywise scary anyway. Not that much scares me at this point.

You've mixed up spoiler and alt text (which belongs in the image).

The blades on Freddy Krueger’s glove were made from scissors, not knives

I think this is more of a comparison between different genres of horror and how slasher movies or franchise monsters aren't as big now as they used to be. I'd say for slashers in particular it's more difficult now because the camera resolutions are unforgiving and with things like video games depicting violent deaths in every way you can imagine, people have seen it all so there's less novelty.

All the modern horror icons can be summarized as muh mental health.

Except terrifier, which is just a reflection of weird degenerate clowns with chainsaws out to kill everybody; like Javier Milei and Elon Musk

I was half expecting "voice call" to be on here.

The beautiful thing about the new horror icons is they're so cost efficient!

Thank you for the spoiler. I had no idea who "guy's girlfriend" was meant to be. Well, I still mostly don't, but at least I've heard of the source.

Old horror: scarly looking guy.

the kane pixels backrooms are much more

I would love to meet some guy's girlfriend in a room. I would give her the d, all day and all night and everything is blue. Shit, sorry. Music in the background.

What is backrooms even about? (May was to tag responses with a spoiler for others)

og resident evil(1st film), silent hill is one too.