Skulls of your enemies, but planted with succulents
June 17, 2023 1:24 PM Subscribe
What is cozy horror? At the Mary Sue Julia Glassman explains the subgenre and offers examples, notably Over the Garden Wall.
Jose Cruz breaks down what he sees as the subgenre's basic elements.
Jess Nevins offers a historical perspective.
Books in the Freezer praises and explores cozy horror.
Cora Buhlert criticizes the debate over cozy.
Goodreads offers 140 titles.
A 2022 Author Wheel podcast episode has this exchange:
"I was calling it... cozy horror. And there is no such thing."
"Oh, I don't know. I would probably read cozy horror."
Simon McNeil criticizes the Mary Sue article.
Raquel Benedict warns readers of cozy horror's advent on a Twitter thread and a podcast episode.
Nick Mamatas thinks this is just about simpletons on Twitter and the Mary Sue.
Cherie Priest describes writing a cozy horror novella. Sheyna Davis recommends Shaun of the Dead and her own Soul Sign.
Previously and related.
Jose Cruz breaks down what he sees as the subgenre's basic elements.
Jess Nevins offers a historical perspective.
Books in the Freezer praises and explores cozy horror.
Cora Buhlert criticizes the debate over cozy.
Goodreads offers 140 titles.
A 2022 Author Wheel podcast episode has this exchange:
"I was calling it... cozy horror. And there is no such thing."
"Oh, I don't know. I would probably read cozy horror."
Simon McNeil criticizes the Mary Sue article.
Raquel Benedict warns readers of cozy horror's advent on a Twitter thread and a podcast episode.
Nick Mamatas thinks this is just about simpletons on Twitter and the Mary Sue.
Cherie Priest describes writing a cozy horror novella. Sheyna Davis recommends Shaun of the Dead and her own Soul Sign.
Previously and related.
I'm a big wuss, so I don't read or watch horror. However, I love Shaun of the Dead and this might just be up my alley (or in my bailiwick, or my cuppa, whichever you prefer) I will see.
posted by evilDoug at 2:45 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by evilDoug at 2:45 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think there is something to be said for separating tropes and imagery from effect and, maybe, technique. Paranormal romance uses horror tropes with romantic effect — the tension is hot a horror tension, but a romantic one. Similarly. Alien uses SF tropes for horror effects, and the power of Barbarian is that it uses a whole raft of tropes for horror effects. I’ll argue that “He Turn of the Screw” uses romantic images for horror effects.
If you’re going to argue that it’s not “horror” because it’s not gross of graphic enough, frankly, you’re ignorant of your genre and probably should be ashamed.
Horror struggles with familiarity. One vampires and ghosts and werewolves have become established, it gets harder to evoke the unsettled frisson and catharsis of good horror. Cthulhu et al is increasingly hard to write seriously, as it’s familiarity makes it too cozy to be scary — our own cstross manages it, although the lens of government malfeasance and rising fascism — and Victor LaValle also manages it, although Ruthanna Emrys does not, although I don’t think she was trying. Vivian Shaw’s Van Helsing books are enormously well-informed on horror history but the images are not deployed for horror effects.
Anyway, from what I see, cozy horror is less horror and more horror tropes used for different purposes, which are no less entertaining to read, assuming you are ok with that.
And YA is a totally different thing. Children and young adults are scared by different things than adults, the stakes are different, and the desired outcomes are wildly divergent from horrorvmeant for adults. That seems like a weird hill to defend.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
If you’re going to argue that it’s not “horror” because it’s not gross of graphic enough, frankly, you’re ignorant of your genre and probably should be ashamed.
Horror struggles with familiarity. One vampires and ghosts and werewolves have become established, it gets harder to evoke the unsettled frisson and catharsis of good horror. Cthulhu et al is increasingly hard to write seriously, as it’s familiarity makes it too cozy to be scary — our own cstross manages it, although the lens of government malfeasance and rising fascism — and Victor LaValle also manages it, although Ruthanna Emrys does not, although I don’t think she was trying. Vivian Shaw’s Van Helsing books are enormously well-informed on horror history but the images are not deployed for horror effects.
Anyway, from what I see, cozy horror is less horror and more horror tropes used for different purposes, which are no less entertaining to read, assuming you are ok with that.
And YA is a totally different thing. Children and young adults are scared by different things than adults, the stakes are different, and the desired outcomes are wildly divergent from horrorvmeant for adults. That seems like a weird hill to defend.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think I'm supposed to hate Mamatas for some reason but I forgot, so I can say he's right on this one--you don't have to get baited by some article in the Mary Sue, of all places, and act like your whole life and livelihood is set on fire because they're putting out the same old article they always do. Let your spirit rise above SEO!
posted by kingdead at 3:27 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 3:27 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
When I was a kid, my grandfather used to faithfully watch Mystery! on PBS. I’ll always love the old Edward Gorey titles with host Vincent Price, even if one could argue that it’s mystery and not horror at all. It’s the kind of thing that’s so much better to watch at night in a darkened room.
posted by chrisulonic at 4:10 PM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by chrisulonic at 4:10 PM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
D'oh. Tea cozy (teapot) cozy horror.
Straightend that out.
I'd say 'The Thing' (1951) is the coziest horror/sci movie. Also, The Stand miniseries was rather cozy as was Cadfael.
"My first bleeding"
-Brother Oswin
posted by clavdivs at 4:24 PM on June 17, 2023
Straightend that out.
I'd say 'The Thing' (1951) is the coziest horror/sci movie. Also, The Stand miniseries was rather cozy as was Cadfael.
"My first bleeding"
-Brother Oswin
posted by clavdivs at 4:24 PM on June 17, 2023
I don't see why cozy horror, or at least the stuff I've read, shouldn't be considered horror, and I'm annoyed by the gatekeeping. Just because the *whatever* isn't actively menacing doesn't make it familiar and not unsettling. I'm going to look at two T. Kingfisher novels, because I'm familiar with them, and they're labelled as "cozy horror."
What Moves the Dead isn't that scary. Nobody's menaced, and what little danger there is, is theoretical. If I was asked to chacterize it, I'd probably consider it more Gothic than anything else.
Nonetheless, I found the line, "I've been dead for a month," to be far creepier than anything in a lot of standard horror. I think that it's because in standard horror, at some point the "reasonable thing" rips off its mask/face, and reveals itself to be the monster. That never quite happens here. There's a reveal, but it's more disquieting than terrifying.
The other one is The Hollow Spaces. This is apparently cozy horror, because the MC is able to retire to the coffee shop run by her Gay friend next door after venturing "elsewhere." Is the MC changed for the worse, both physically and emotionally by the end of the story? Yes. Is the bad thing defeated? No, it gets what it wanted. What about the schoolchildren? Don't ask. But there's a coffeeshop, so it's cozy horror.
The problem is that we've got these really broad categories and books get stuck in one because they have to go somewhere. It's easy to point at one and say, "that's not what I'd call horror," for whatever reason. In my case, I'd say that Experimental Film is more dark fantasy than horror, but everyone else calls it horror, so oh well?
posted by Spike Glee at 5:03 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
What Moves the Dead isn't that scary. Nobody's menaced, and what little danger there is, is theoretical. If I was asked to chacterize it, I'd probably consider it more Gothic than anything else.
Nonetheless, I found the line, "I've been dead for a month," to be far creepier than anything in a lot of standard horror. I think that it's because in standard horror, at some point the "reasonable thing" rips off its mask/face, and reveals itself to be the monster. That never quite happens here. There's a reveal, but it's more disquieting than terrifying.
The other one is The Hollow Spaces. This is apparently cozy horror, because the MC is able to retire to the coffee shop run by her Gay friend next door after venturing "elsewhere." Is the MC changed for the worse, both physically and emotionally by the end of the story? Yes. Is the bad thing defeated? No, it gets what it wanted. What about the schoolchildren? Don't ask. But there's a coffeeshop, so it's cozy horror.
The problem is that we've got these really broad categories and books get stuck in one because they have to go somewhere. It's easy to point at one and say, "that's not what I'd call horror," for whatever reason. In my case, I'd say that Experimental Film is more dark fantasy than horror, but everyone else calls it horror, so oh well?
posted by Spike Glee at 5:03 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Huh, a YouTuber I began watching occasionally refers to his content as "comfy, cozy horror". He is mostly a let's player but is incredibly chill. Didn't know this was a thing.
posted by charred husk at 5:10 PM on June 17, 2023
posted by charred husk at 5:10 PM on June 17, 2023
I was trying to think whether I’d read anything I’d describe as cozy horror without seeing that as a possible subgenre, and the first thing that occurred to me was Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife, which I read more than twenty years ago, and which was published in 1943.
And Wikipedia tells me it was awarded a 'retro-Hugo' in 2019!
How the hell did that happen? When I read it it was very obscure, and a couple of people I thought of as Leiber completeists had never read it — or seemed to want to, for that matter.
A fair bit of his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series has aspects of cozy horror too, IMO.
posted by jamjam at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
And Wikipedia tells me it was awarded a 'retro-Hugo' in 2019!
How the hell did that happen? When I read it it was very obscure, and a couple of people I thought of as Leiber completeists had never read it — or seemed to want to, for that matter.
A fair bit of his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series has aspects of cozy horror too, IMO.
posted by jamjam at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Huh. T. Kingfisher is an interesting case, since she’s got three horror-ish books published. The Twisted Ones is very solidly horror and a pretty good novel. I’d classify The Hollow Places as horror, since that’s the register the story is told in; yes, the characters come out the other side, but they are touched by the experience; the world will always be soft to them. What Moves the Dead is also horror to me, although I think it’s less well written than the other two — this might be the length, as the story needed more room, yet also seemed overlong as a novella. Honestly, I blame Poe for that, whose stories always feel too long and too short for me.
Experimental Film is an astonishing novel — an autobiographical horror novel — and if someone doesn’t see the impact of that, I don’t know what to tell them.
Anyway, none of these feel particularly cozy to me, each being a sack of pins and glass, and having that unsettling quality that I want in horror, plus images that linger long after the cover is closed and which offer neither comfort nor absolution.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:07 PM on June 17, 2023
Experimental Film is an astonishing novel — an autobiographical horror novel — and if someone doesn’t see the impact of that, I don’t know what to tell them.
Anyway, none of these feel particularly cozy to me, each being a sack of pins and glass, and having that unsettling quality that I want in horror, plus images that linger long after the cover is closed and which offer neither comfort nor absolution.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:07 PM on June 17, 2023
when I saw the post title I was expecting a story on Kat's Creepy Creations.
posted by mr vino at 7:31 PM on June 17, 2023
posted by mr vino at 7:31 PM on June 17, 2023
You're not the only one, mr vino!
posted by inexorably_forward at 8:48 PM on June 17, 2023
posted by inexorably_forward at 8:48 PM on June 17, 2023
(I'm about to try and re-create a line of argument about horror I read years ago, I think on a Livejournal post by Nick Mamatas, so please bear with me.)
(a) Horror is about catharsis—confronting our fears and purging them.
(b) Horror is a tone that can be layered on or added to just about any other fictional genre. You can have a detective story that's also horror (The Silence of the Lambs). You can have SF that's horror. You can have high fantasy horror (T. Kingfisher demonstrates this in her Saint of Steel books). You can even have romance/horror—the entire paranormal romance subgenre teeters on the age of horror, playing with vampires and werewolves and demons: it routinely falls in.)
But also:
(c) Horror fiction is escapist.
If you want a realistic horror story it would be: we are going to take a close look at a hospital bed.
The bed is occupied by a middle-aged married man or woman, who is on a ventilator. He or she is still breathing, but it's mid-2020 and COVID19 has turned their lungs to the consistency of bloody cinderblocks. Their husband or wife is sitting next to them, gowned and masked and lucky (although they don't appreciate it at the time) to be allowed 15 minutes in which to say goodbye. The occupant of the bed is mostly conscious, in and out of delirium due to the fever, intubated so they can't speak, oxygen trickling into their nostrils as they gasp for air because they're drowning on dry land. The person sitting by the bed is weeping quietly and helplessly. Nobody can hear their sobs in the frantic bustle of an overstretched hospital ward. Monitors and infusion pumps are beeping and alarms are sounding, as the patient squeezes their spouse's hand and tries to say I don't want to die, or maybe did you get me the ivermectin? but they can't hear them because of the tubes and the beeping and the squeaking wheels and rattling undercarriage of another bed being pushed past—
And in the background we know that in the next half hour someone is going to switch off the ventilator because the man or woman in the bed is beyond hope of recovery and there's a queue of people in the corridor who might still be saved.
This is a true horror story, repeated tens of thousands of times over, millions of times—and we read cozy horror about opening a bookshop for tea drinking vampires to chill in because the true horror is simultaneously terrifying, inescapable, and banal.
posted by cstross at 5:18 AM on June 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
(a) Horror is about catharsis—confronting our fears and purging them.
(b) Horror is a tone that can be layered on or added to just about any other fictional genre. You can have a detective story that's also horror (The Silence of the Lambs). You can have SF that's horror. You can have high fantasy horror (T. Kingfisher demonstrates this in her Saint of Steel books). You can even have romance/horror—the entire paranormal romance subgenre teeters on the age of horror, playing with vampires and werewolves and demons: it routinely falls in.)
But also:
(c) Horror fiction is escapist.
If you want a realistic horror story it would be: we are going to take a close look at a hospital bed.
The bed is occupied by a middle-aged married man or woman, who is on a ventilator. He or she is still breathing, but it's mid-2020 and COVID19 has turned their lungs to the consistency of bloody cinderblocks. Their husband or wife is sitting next to them, gowned and masked and lucky (although they don't appreciate it at the time) to be allowed 15 minutes in which to say goodbye. The occupant of the bed is mostly conscious, in and out of delirium due to the fever, intubated so they can't speak, oxygen trickling into their nostrils as they gasp for air because they're drowning on dry land. The person sitting by the bed is weeping quietly and helplessly. Nobody can hear their sobs in the frantic bustle of an overstretched hospital ward. Monitors and infusion pumps are beeping and alarms are sounding, as the patient squeezes their spouse's hand and tries to say I don't want to die, or maybe did you get me the ivermectin? but they can't hear them because of the tubes and the beeping and the squeaking wheels and rattling undercarriage of another bed being pushed past—
And in the background we know that in the next half hour someone is going to switch off the ventilator because the man or woman in the bed is beyond hope of recovery and there's a queue of people in the corridor who might still be saved.
This is a true horror story, repeated tens of thousands of times over, millions of times—and we read cozy horror about opening a bookshop for tea drinking vampires to chill in because the true horror is simultaneously terrifying, inescapable, and banal.
posted by cstross at 5:18 AM on June 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
when I saw the post title I was expecting a story on Kat's Creepy Creations
Here you go, mr vino and inexorably_forward.
posted by doctornemo at 6:03 AM on June 18, 2023
Here you go, mr vino and inexorably_forward.
posted by doctornemo at 6:03 AM on June 18, 2023
This is not meant to contradict your and Nick Mamatus' account of horror at all, cstross, and in fact I see it as complementary, but goosebumps — aka piloerection, or most relevantly in in this context, horripilation — quite directly stimulate hair growth. And hair, for all genders, is an important aspect of being good looking.
So it may not have mattered very much in premodern times when ambient temperature driven opportunities to be chilled were superabundant, but with the sybaritic warmth in which many in the developed world now luxuriate, we might reasonably be said to risk a chill deficit.
Fortunately, horror fictions have risen to, ah … fill in the gaps.
posted by jamjam at 10:01 AM on June 18, 2023
So it may not have mattered very much in premodern times when ambient temperature driven opportunities to be chilled were superabundant, but with the sybaritic warmth in which many in the developed world now luxuriate, we might reasonably be said to risk a chill deficit.
Fortunately, horror fictions have risen to, ah … fill in the gaps.
posted by jamjam at 10:01 AM on June 18, 2023
Finally realizing this fact was a revelation for me, and it was aided by modern horror masterpieces like Midsommar and The Witch, which lean hard into atmosphere but don’t make you piss yourself in instinctive terror.
I'm sorry, but The Witch of all movies is "cozy horror?" The Witch is incredibly disturbing and intense.
It’s also undeniable that this problem is gendered. Endurance is associated with masculinity, and coziness is associated with femininity. Maybe that supposed femininity is what makes cozy horror feel so threatening to people who consider themselves hardcore horror fans. The cozy horror debate is almost identical to the YA debate: instead of recognizing that genres are fluid and multifaceted, people run screaming from anything associated with teen girls.
I'm glad this baseless claim is prefaced with the fact that it's "undeniable." This is sexist to all genders, deriding masculinity as macho posturing and infantilizing femininity. It's also dismissive of the various reasons various types of horror appeal to its various fans, and ironically narrows the possibilities of what horror can be. The Haunting is scary as hell and just as much horror as Texas Chainsaw Massacre despite not being a gory endurance test.
At any rate, a lot of what I've heard described as cozy horror seems like YA and/or fantasy and/or magical realism with some plot elements (ghosts, etc) in common with "actual" horror, as nebulous as that description can be. And that's fine! There's nothing wrong with liking YA and fantasy and magical realism! They're fun and there's good shit in those genres. I guess people should call it whatever they want, but insisting that some of this is actually horror seems weirdly dismissive of those other genres and sort of defensive.
posted by brundlefly at 12:56 PM on June 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm sorry, but The Witch of all movies is "cozy horror?" The Witch is incredibly disturbing and intense.
It’s also undeniable that this problem is gendered. Endurance is associated with masculinity, and coziness is associated with femininity. Maybe that supposed femininity is what makes cozy horror feel so threatening to people who consider themselves hardcore horror fans. The cozy horror debate is almost identical to the YA debate: instead of recognizing that genres are fluid and multifaceted, people run screaming from anything associated with teen girls.
I'm glad this baseless claim is prefaced with the fact that it's "undeniable." This is sexist to all genders, deriding masculinity as macho posturing and infantilizing femininity. It's also dismissive of the various reasons various types of horror appeal to its various fans, and ironically narrows the possibilities of what horror can be. The Haunting is scary as hell and just as much horror as Texas Chainsaw Massacre despite not being a gory endurance test.
At any rate, a lot of what I've heard described as cozy horror seems like YA and/or fantasy and/or magical realism with some plot elements (ghosts, etc) in common with "actual" horror, as nebulous as that description can be. And that's fine! There's nothing wrong with liking YA and fantasy and magical realism! They're fun and there's good shit in those genres. I guess people should call it whatever they want, but insisting that some of this is actually horror seems weirdly dismissive of those other genres and sort of defensive.
posted by brundlefly at 12:56 PM on June 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Oh, here it is. I was looking for this before. One of the writers whose work is referenced in the Mary Sue article:
as one of the creators of mooncakes, to see my work used as a cudgel in a shitty little argument that infantilizes other women's opinions on horror is so, so embarrassing. ps if we are splitting hairs, we never saw mooncakes as a horror book, it was purely a YA fantasy
posted by brundlefly at 1:01 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
as one of the creators of mooncakes, to see my work used as a cudgel in a shitty little argument that infantilizes other women's opinions on horror is so, so embarrassing. ps if we are splitting hairs, we never saw mooncakes as a horror book, it was purely a YA fantasy
posted by brundlefly at 1:01 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
(c) Horror fiction is escapist.
Well, true, but, then all fiction is escapist by this metric. Anything you want to know about, you can find non-fiction that will be more informative (and usually more harrowing) than anything you will get in fiction. Fiction has to smooth off the edges in order to work, and, of course, it can present us with scenarios that have never happened, which non-fiction (or, at least, accurate non-fiction) cannot.
I also don't agree with (b). I think horror images can be layered with anything, but horror is a surprisingly fragile genre in that, when you add other things to it, you usually lose the horror. In the Mary Sue article, the author makes the weird assertion:
Similarly, if you mix horror images and romance, you get a romance story. Fantasy, SF, and Westerns are a little less assertive, but it still takes care to make sure that the horror intent is the main theme. (John Langan's "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky" is a interesting example of a horror stiry that slides into SF and back into horror, and some of Gemma Files' short stories manage the trick as well. There is a reason that none of the sequels of Alien were horror movies.
Now, I want to make it very clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a cozy story with horror imagery. As I said in an earlier comment, I very much enjoy Vivian Shaw's Van Helsing novels, which play very gracefully with classic horror images (the second one is a set of extended jokey riffs ion MR James stories). They aren't horror, but they are a lot of fun and quite cozy, if your sense of coziness leans toward the macabre. I am not an excessive fan of gore or the grosser sorts of horror, but at least their intent is horror rather than something else.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:20 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, true, but, then all fiction is escapist by this metric. Anything you want to know about, you can find non-fiction that will be more informative (and usually more harrowing) than anything you will get in fiction. Fiction has to smooth off the edges in order to work, and, of course, it can present us with scenarios that have never happened, which non-fiction (or, at least, accurate non-fiction) cannot.
I also don't agree with (b). I think horror images can be layered with anything, but horror is a surprisingly fragile genre in that, when you add other things to it, you usually lose the horror. In the Mary Sue article, the author makes the weird assertion:
The more viscerally terrifying something is (the reasoning goes), the better it is at being horror. The Ring, according to this logic, is better than What We Do in the Shadows, because it’s scarier.Well, no, The Ring is a better horror film (or at least, more of a horror film) than What We Do in the Shadows because it it is a horror film that intends to scare ratehr than a comedy that aims for laughs. There are a few moments in WWDitS that are frightening or disturbing, but they are besides the point. The film wants laughs. And pretty much no horror comedy is scary, because the comedy erases the horror. Even something as gross and splattery as Re-Animator doesn't scare so much as maybe shock. It's funnier than it is terrifying.
Similarly, if you mix horror images and romance, you get a romance story. Fantasy, SF, and Westerns are a little less assertive, but it still takes care to make sure that the horror intent is the main theme. (John Langan's "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky" is a interesting example of a horror stiry that slides into SF and back into horror, and some of Gemma Files' short stories manage the trick as well. There is a reason that none of the sequels of Alien were horror movies.
Now, I want to make it very clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a cozy story with horror imagery. As I said in an earlier comment, I very much enjoy Vivian Shaw's Van Helsing novels, which play very gracefully with classic horror images (the second one is a set of extended jokey riffs ion MR James stories). They aren't horror, but they are a lot of fun and quite cozy, if your sense of coziness leans toward the macabre. I am not an excessive fan of gore or the grosser sorts of horror, but at least their intent is horror rather than something else.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:20 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry, but The Witch of all movies is "cozy horror?" The Witch is incredibly disturbing and intense.
Um, spoilers for The VVitch
Absolutely, yes. There is nothing cozy about the film, even in the watered-down form most audiences seem to have approached it. We literally see a baby mashed into a ritual paste in the first 20 minutes or so.
And if you watch the film with an understanding of Puritan Calvanist theology? The film is brutal and heart-breaking. The family goes out into the wilderness in full faith that they are the Elect, and, over the course of the film, they are all shown to be wanting. By the end of the movie, they are not only dead but thoroughly damned. The father, who is, to be fair, the architect of the family's destruction, makes the enormous sacrifice of offering up his own salvation to save his children, although he should also be aware that he had none to offer at that point. And the people who see the ending as Thomasin achieving liberation... within the film's framework, she has traded the only thing that has any value for a life living in the woods and doing evil. It's an awful, bleak, appalling film. So, not cozy at all.
Also, apropos of nothing, it's interesting to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre held up as a gory film when there is very little blood in it, mostly, I think due to the lack of money for practical effects. It's a brutal film and a shocking film, but not all that bloody. My favorite scene in the entire movie is when Leatherface goes into the parlor and sits down with his head in his hands, overcome with the trouble that his ungrateful family and these dumb travelers have brought to his quiet house. It's a weirdly quiet and human moment, especially considering that the person on screen is a cannibal wearing a tanned human face. It's very delicately done.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:35 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Um, spoilers for The VVitch
Absolutely, yes. There is nothing cozy about the film, even in the watered-down form most audiences seem to have approached it. We literally see a baby mashed into a ritual paste in the first 20 minutes or so.
And if you watch the film with an understanding of Puritan Calvanist theology? The film is brutal and heart-breaking. The family goes out into the wilderness in full faith that they are the Elect, and, over the course of the film, they are all shown to be wanting. By the end of the movie, they are not only dead but thoroughly damned. The father, who is, to be fair, the architect of the family's destruction, makes the enormous sacrifice of offering up his own salvation to save his children, although he should also be aware that he had none to offer at that point. And the people who see the ending as Thomasin achieving liberation... within the film's framework, she has traded the only thing that has any value for a life living in the woods and doing evil. It's an awful, bleak, appalling film. So, not cozy at all.
Also, apropos of nothing, it's interesting to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre held up as a gory film when there is very little blood in it, mostly, I think due to the lack of money for practical effects. It's a brutal film and a shocking film, but not all that bloody. My favorite scene in the entire movie is when Leatherface goes into the parlor and sits down with his head in his hands, overcome with the trouble that his ungrateful family and these dumb travelers have brought to his quiet house. It's a weirdly quiet and human moment, especially considering that the person on screen is a cannibal wearing a tanned human face. It's very delicately done.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:35 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yep. After I posted I realized Texas Chainsaw was a really bad example. I'm not sure why I chose that, as I've often pointed out that despite it reputation and much like the original Halloween it's not particularly gory at all. Tobe Hooper was aiming for a PG rating (before there was a PG-13) but it was just too intense for the MPAA.
In retrospect I should have gone for something like Cannibal Holocaust or something more recent like High Tension.
posted by brundlefly at 2:54 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
In retrospect I should have gone for something like Cannibal Holocaust or something more recent like High Tension.
posted by brundlefly at 2:54 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: [btw, this has been added to the sidebar]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:40 AM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:40 AM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm a little surprised at T. Kingfisher being classified as cozy horror, as The Twisted Ones seemed to be all about how seemingly cozy things (your grandmother's house) can metamorphose into something otherworldly and eldritch and filled with ill intent specifically aimed at you.
posted by unicorn chaser at 3:37 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by unicorn chaser at 3:37 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by cstross at 1:52 PM on June 17, 2023 [12 favorites]