Well, the big news here is that I received a link from the mighty Corner, The National Review‘s group blog. Mike Potemra comments on my discussion with Eve Tushnet of the Calvinist/arbitrary horror in Kubrick’s The Shining. This precipitates a discussion about Kubrick, Tarantino, Un Chien Andalou, etc. with Jonah Goldberg. (What does the fact that I’m actually pleased about getting linked to by NRO say about post-9/11 politics? That’s a topic for another post, I’m afraid.)
Bruce Baugh talks Wicker Man, pointing out two subtle strengths of a movie with many. He also reviews The Eye, yet another Asian horror film I’ve heard good things about, and Dario Argento’s Suspiria. (The only Argento I’ve seen is Deep Red, an experience which took a lot out of me. Man, that bathtub scene is… unpleasant.)
Big Sunny D talks about the ways your viewing conditions affect your receptivity to horror movies (a very important point, i think), and refuses to give up hope for a horror comic as scary as a really great horror film.
Rick Geerling asks whether less is more in horror, in terms of both what is shown and what is explained. The consensus seems to be that sometimes less is more, and sometimes more is more–it just depends on the intent and the execution. That’s my take on it, as a cursory glance at the films on my list might suggest. But beyond the fact that I like horror films that take a wide range of approaches to showing and explaining the horror, it seems that I tend to prefer films that show quite a bit and explain very little. But that’s not a hard and fast rule.
Finally, the Malaysian government has banned horror fiction (link courtesy of Dirk Deppey). Apparently they’ve decided that their revolting brand of Islamic quasitheocracy is scary enough.