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Jul. 11th, 2012 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreMovie night at Bainbridge. This month, we watched The Exorcist.
Y'know what I forget when I am not watching The Exorcist? I forget the fact that The Exorcist is really frelling dull. Seriously, it's not even the fact that it's a movie from the 70's and I tend to hate those. No. It's just long stretches of tedium and characters that the audience is given no reason to care about, broken up by moments of disgust. I mean, I am willing to accept that other people find it scary. Possibly, if I was a Christian, I would find it scarier (though I kinda doubt it). But I mostly just find it gross, and disgust is way down on my list of Emotions I Want My Horror Films to Elicit*.
It's important to the genre historically, okay, and it's an interesting cultural document but it's neither enjoyable nor edifying to watch and I spent 90% of the movie thinking, "Man, I could be at home watching The Wicker Man right now."
An interesting question was brought up in discussion, though, which I am going to throw out to the internet because I don't watch a lot of possession/exorcism horror. (I find it unpleasant in a way that I don't want my horror films to be.) Are there examples of possession/exorcism horror where the possessed person is male? I can think of some examples of men and boys being possessed in horror film, but not examples of them being exorcised. Do you guys know of any?
*For the record, the list is Terror (the purely mental stuff), Horror (here the body gets involved, so we mix terror with revulsion), Fright (shocks and jumper scares, which are fun but aren't worth much), and then, way down at the bottom, Disgust. I will take Gleeful Humor, of course, but it goes on a different scale.
Y'know what I forget when I am not watching The Exorcist? I forget the fact that The Exorcist is really frelling dull. Seriously, it's not even the fact that it's a movie from the 70's and I tend to hate those. No. It's just long stretches of tedium and characters that the audience is given no reason to care about, broken up by moments of disgust. I mean, I am willing to accept that other people find it scary. Possibly, if I was a Christian, I would find it scarier (though I kinda doubt it). But I mostly just find it gross, and disgust is way down on my list of Emotions I Want My Horror Films to Elicit*.
It's important to the genre historically, okay, and it's an interesting cultural document but it's neither enjoyable nor edifying to watch and I spent 90% of the movie thinking, "Man, I could be at home watching The Wicker Man right now."
An interesting question was brought up in discussion, though, which I am going to throw out to the internet because I don't watch a lot of possession/exorcism horror. (I find it unpleasant in a way that I don't want my horror films to be.) Are there examples of possession/exorcism horror where the possessed person is male? I can think of some examples of men and boys being possessed in horror film, but not examples of them being exorcised. Do you guys know of any?
*For the record, the list is Terror (the purely mental stuff), Horror (here the body gets involved, so we mix terror with revulsion), Fright (shocks and jumper scares, which are fun but aren't worth much), and then, way down at the bottom, Disgust. I will take Gleeful Humor, of course, but it goes on a different scale.
