What do you believe qualifies a movie as horror?

[mayoisthedevil]

Originally posted by Stingy Jack
Well, this isn't necessarily true. The Ring, The Eye, The Blair Witch Project, and Poltergeist were all horror films (to name a few) that did not have gore.

ooo...good point. i've haven't watched the Ring, The EYe, or Blair Witch (i'm probly not gonna watch that one) but i'll put that on my to do list. :)

[Stingy Jack]

bwind22: I think that The 6th Sense is a horror movie. True, just because it has ghosts does not make it a horror film. But the child in the movie is haunted, and is constantly afraid. Even though most of the ghosts are not malevolent, we, as an audience, do not know this and fear for the child's safety. Even so, they (the ghosts) are frightening, and they are meant to give the audience the major creeps: (the ghost with the back of his head blown open, the girl vomitting beneath the "tent", the group of ghosts hanging in the hallway.) These are all horrific images.

And I would say that a good horror movie has to have a load of suspense. It just has to. You can't have one without the suspense. However, once you take a "suspense" film and add creepy spirits, a clairvoyant child, and a conflict that revolves around the premise that "I need to do something so these things will stop scaring the ever-loving shit out of me", then you have a horror film. True, the threat to the child is not against his physical life, but his emotional one. He lives a life of fear and paranoia.

Does the threat of death need to present for it to be a horror film? I don't think so. Again, I cite Jacob's Ladder and The Eye as examples.

[movieman64]

The films you cite, (IMO) are cross-overs. They are hard to fit into any one catagory, and contain elements of, horror, thriller, ghost story, at least for me.

Horror is... I'd like to think that almost every horror-movie have got some supernatural elements, or is circled around ancient curses, killers of some sort, and I'd also like to say that almost every horror-movie have got some violence, or at least that one or more persons is killed. It's difficult to settle presicely what a horror-movie is.

Italian Horror is easier to say what is: Fulci, Argento, Soavi and Bava, to name a few, have all got some gore in their films. The Italian market like gore, and Fulci and Argento etc. is satisfying that market. I love italian horror. Fulci is the king!

[Sam The Egg]

Originally posted by bwind22
Agreed. Anyone that tries to call A clockwork Orange a horror movie needs a good slap. Se7en is slightly closer, but like you said, it's more of a suspense-thriller. I'll probably take some crap for this, but I don't even consider The Silence of the Lambs a horror movie. It's an excellent movie, and a brilliant psychological thriller, but I just never considered it horror. In all actuality, Hannibal is way more of a horror movie that SotL. Another one that always bugs me is 6th Sense, but I already mentioned that in this thread so I won't go off on it again.

I classify Se7en a horror movie on atmosphere and visuals alone. If it had been just a regular serial killer-type thriller movie, I'd agree with you. But it has the atmosphere of a horror movie, and especially the look of a horror movie.