A couple of classic horror movies
Jan. 12th, 2026 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterI haven't watched a horror movie since my slasher phase all the way back in high school. Now I've just watched two in as many evenings. Not sure what's come over me but I'm having fun!
The Blair Witch Project was really, really scary. :D It's about three young filmmakers who get lost in the woods while filming a documentary about a monster of local folklore called the Blair Witch. They go missing and are never seen alive again; the film is ostensibly pieced together from the recently discovered footage they recorded during the ordeal. Everything about it just worked. I loved the shaky handcam, the found footage styling, and the choice to keep the lurking, stalking menace 100% offscreen. I kept expecting jumpscares - we were blundering around in pitch dark wilderness, the setting was practically made for jumpscares - but they never came and the resulting suspense without any catharsis was somehow so much scarier.
Aside from the...you know, horror part...there's something strangely nostalgic about watching movies like this where the premise depends so heavily on a pre-internet technological environment. Obviously I'm not saying you can't get lost in the woods anymore, but the specific trappings here - the characters being so isolated with no way to call for help or for anyone to track their location, filming in low quality with dismal night vision, entirely reliant for navigation on a paper map that can so easily get lost - feel dated in a way that cast me right back to my 90s childhood. If my appetite for horror continues, I'll have to watch some much newer movies next to find out what we're all scared of in the era of GPS and sprawling 5G coverage.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was also extremely scary. Five young adults run out of fuel while on a van roadtrip through rural Texas; seeking help from the locals, they stumble into the hands of a family of deranged cannibals who set about killing them, sometimes with a chainsaw but more often with (false advertising!) a simple hammer.
This film had none of the subtlety of Blair Witch, but it also wasn't the tasteless, mindless splatterfest I'd osmosed it to be (possibly relevant disclaimer: my osmosis dates from primary school, courtesy of my parents and their seething disapproval when they found out that several of my friends had been allowed to watch it). The onscreen blood and gore were actually very muted, with most of the viscera obscured by camera angles or placed offscreen entirely. It was unhinged and suspenseful and intentionally, powerfully gross but just honestly not that gory. I think the single most horrifying moment for me was seeing Pam thrown onto the cattle hook, and we never even saw the puncture, just the look on her face. The production values weren't high but by God, the directors made the most of what they had. The stench of the abbatoir, the taste of that horrible "barbecue", the drip of putrescent corpses and the relentless, baking heat all somehow leapt right off the page. I spent the whole ninety minutes feeling as much queasy and unsettled as frightened.
The Blair Witch Project was really, really scary. :D It's about three young filmmakers who get lost in the woods while filming a documentary about a monster of local folklore called the Blair Witch. They go missing and are never seen alive again; the film is ostensibly pieced together from the recently discovered footage they recorded during the ordeal. Everything about it just worked. I loved the shaky handcam, the found footage styling, and the choice to keep the lurking, stalking menace 100% offscreen. I kept expecting jumpscares - we were blundering around in pitch dark wilderness, the setting was practically made for jumpscares - but they never came and the resulting suspense without any catharsis was somehow so much scarier.
Aside from the...you know, horror part...there's something strangely nostalgic about watching movies like this where the premise depends so heavily on a pre-internet technological environment. Obviously I'm not saying you can't get lost in the woods anymore, but the specific trappings here - the characters being so isolated with no way to call for help or for anyone to track their location, filming in low quality with dismal night vision, entirely reliant for navigation on a paper map that can so easily get lost - feel dated in a way that cast me right back to my 90s childhood. If my appetite for horror continues, I'll have to watch some much newer movies next to find out what we're all scared of in the era of GPS and sprawling 5G coverage.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was also extremely scary. Five young adults run out of fuel while on a van roadtrip through rural Texas; seeking help from the locals, they stumble into the hands of a family of deranged cannibals who set about killing them, sometimes with a chainsaw but more often with (false advertising!) a simple hammer.
This film had none of the subtlety of Blair Witch, but it also wasn't the tasteless, mindless splatterfest I'd osmosed it to be (possibly relevant disclaimer: my osmosis dates from primary school, courtesy of my parents and their seething disapproval when they found out that several of my friends had been allowed to watch it). The onscreen blood and gore were actually very muted, with most of the viscera obscured by camera angles or placed offscreen entirely. It was unhinged and suspenseful and intentionally, powerfully gross but just honestly not that gory. I think the single most horrifying moment for me was seeing Pam thrown onto the cattle hook, and we never even saw the puncture, just the look on her face. The production values weren't high but by God, the directors made the most of what they had. The stench of the abbatoir, the taste of that horrible "barbecue", the drip of putrescent corpses and the relentless, baking heat all somehow leapt right off the page. I spent the whole ninety minutes feeling as much queasy and unsettled as frightened.
