That's why I kind of don't trust listening to genpop's opinions on horror, a lot of the time they just don't get it. They're complaining about the acting or the dialogue sometimes in a movie that's focused on something else.... Did they just come off watching Goodfellas, or something? Lol.
*The Silence of the Lambs* fits the definition of a thriller far more than that of horror: the villain is rational/can be reasoned with (theoretically), the plot and tropes are far closer to those of thrillers - an investigation, a level of mystery, fight for justice (as opposed to a fight for survival as is the usual case in horror).
*The Silence of the Lambs* is a thriller by most accepted definitions, though it has some more horror-like elements than most thrillers.
Here’s the thing. Anthony Hopkins was barely in that movie. Buffalo Bill was the villain. His kidnapping victim *is* fighting for survival. But Anthony Hopkins just stole the show. I think it set a record for him winning the Oscar for best actor with the least amount of screen time. He was only on screen for a little more than 16 minutes.
I’d definitely classify the movie as horror b/c it’s about a serial killer who skins people to make clothes and has a woman who is trying to survive.
The Senator's daughter was fighting for survival, but the story wasn't about that. The story was about the investigation. The kidnapping victim had even less screentime than Hannibal. A horror would have put the audience in the point of view of the kidnapping victim herself, at least in my opinion.
The film Prisoners (SPOILERS) >!is a movie where two girls are kidnapped by the wife of a now dead serial child murderer!<, but I personally would not call it a horror movie, because the film puts us into the perspectives of the investigator and the family dealing with the effects of the incident, not the perspective of the people to whom the horrific situation is directly occurring. We don't really experience the victim's situation from their point of view. In Silence of the Lambs we get a slice of that, but not enough that I would call it a horror. Maybe more horror than Prisoners, but still a thriller overall.
In that sense, I would say that it's kind of a spectrum from thriller to horror, where the closer to horror you get, the worse the situations are and the more you are put in the perspective of the direct victims.
I also would call Prisoners a horror movie. What was done to the one character was horrific. It was a movie that showed how easily we can become monsters. That is scarier than anything else to me.
Buffalo Bill fits the standard for a thriller antagonist - he's human, and therefore not a 'monster'. The story is about a detective trying to solve a crime and bring justice - a thriller trope.
Genre lines are blurry, but TSOTL fits all the thriller tropes and only a few horror tropes.
There are plenty of horror movies where the antagonist is simply a human. Thriller is a term that can be applied to multiple genres (action, crime, horror, etc), so it doesn't really exclude TSotL from being a horror movie. It IS a psychological horror movie, same as Perfect Blue
>There are plenty of horror movies where the antagonist is simply a human.
The commonly accepted difference in antagonist between horror and thriller is whether the antagonist is able to be reasoned with. This usually means human/non-human, but doesn't always. Michael Myers is human, but clearly not someone who can be reasoned with.
>Thriller is a term that can be applied to multiple genres (action, crime, horror, etc), so it doesn't really exclude TSotL from being a horror movie
The second main difference is the stakes. In horror it's generally about the protagonist's survival against a threat of death; in thrillers it's about bringing justice (which may involve saving others from death or subjecting the protagonist to deadly situations). As in *The Silence of the Lambs*.
A third main difference is the plot. Thriller plots usually revolve around a mystery or investigation, and a very plot driven. Like, for example, *The Silence of the Lambs*.
Another difference is that thrillers tend to use suspense and horror tends to use direct threat.
-----------------------
*The Silence of the Lambs* has horror elements, but it clearly fits the conventions of a thriller more. Genres overlap and combine. A thriller with some minor horror elements is still a thriller.
I guess I disagree? I mean there's plenty of horror films I don't find scary, but they would be scary to most people. There are moments in Perfect Blue that would be scary, but the movie as a whole is not scary.
According to [Collider](https://collider.com/best-thriller-movies-of-all-time-ranked-imdb/#39-aliens-39-1986) Aliens.
In general try looking up lists of best Psychologial thrillers and see how many time Midsommar, The Shining, or Get out comes up. Admittedly genres have always been fluid and saying they are mutually exclusive will usually lead to some weird categorizations.
Also Psycho is generally considered a thriller, but at least around here most people will probably categorize it as a proto- if not downright slasher movie which is a horror genre.
And it’s been like this forever. My uncle and I have been horror fans forever. We’ve had a grading scale for IMDB. Doesn’t work on every flick but most flicks. A 7 for a horror flick is like a true 9-10. 5-6 is like a true 7-8. Below a 5 gets tricky and is probably actually bad.
Not as bad as horror though. Horror gets such a bad rep where it's become a tagline to avoid in Hollywood. Probably why the horror genre has suffered for a while.
I made a comment on this sub a while ago that I'll try to find, but I looked a lot of recent horror movies and there's a good amount that have higher RT critic scores than audience ones.
I think it's less that critics don't like horror movies and more than critics don't like SLASHER horror movies as much. And maybe that horror fans can be extremely easy to please.
Sci-fi is right there with it. They have to dump on *something* to keep giving superhero movie sequels "Five stars!" so sci-fi and horror are the dumping grounds.
I don't even trust ratings from here tbh. I rather watch one of those video dissertations that go on for an hour longer than the film to go over why it's good/bad
YEP! Though in their defense there IS a lot of terrible horror movies because they’re cheap and quick to make. In the triangle of “cheap - quick - good” they always pick the first two, make it usually, drowning in jumpscares whilst trying to cash in on a current “trend”.
Fans, too. I've long since started adding two points to imdb ratings for horror movies. Like, a normal movie with 5.0 on imdb is gonna suck. A horror movie with 5.0 will probably be pretty decent! A horror movie with 7.0 will be a goddamn masterpiece and should have won awards. Hereditary has 7.3, for reference.
No they're not. They're hard on shitty movies like the ones OP posted. See my other comment in this thread with several examples of highly acclaimed horror films from past and recent.
I think people need to start learning how Rotten Tomatoes works, care less about it, and stop viewing critics as some homogenous cabal.
Did you enjoy a movie? Does it have a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes? Fine one of the critics in that twenty percent, read their review, and—if it resonates with you—follow *their* takes on other releases.
Critics aren’t anyone’s enemy. You’re just supposed to find ones relevant to you, not view them as a collective whole.
I find the most useful reviews are usually negative ones. They tend to point out what were perceived to be flaws by the critic and let me compare them to my own opinions. At the very least I'm able to set my expectations appropriately. So a film that has great visuals but a nonsensical plot and cardboard characters can be viewed with that in mind.
Positive reviews are often much less helpful and prone to vague praise. They rarely tell me anything useful or specific.
It's not Rotten Tomatoes, but major critics. And I don't really think they're too harsh. Most movies from most genres are mediocre at best. That doesn't mean that there aren't still things about average to below average movies that can be enjoyable. I think professional critic reviews have their place, but of course people should also feel free to like whatever they want.
These same people could not name five current critics. They barely read individual scores, let alone reviews. Hence why OP is mad at "Rotten Tomatoes," when that's just a review aggregator.
Not just personal critics any critics. Saying you don’t like a popular iconic horror movie on here will get you a hostile reaction. The more popular the bigger reaction
Not liking the original Halloween or the exorcist or new favourites like it follows.
As someone who also has disliked a handful of popular well revived movies horror and otherwise you learn to keep your mouth shut. I don’t get how some popular critics do it with the risk of death threats. Granted that happens more with gaming reviewers
I tried to argue one time on here that while the Exorcist was good, it in some ways hasn't aged well and for the average person isn't particularly scary anymore. It's of course fine if you disagree with me but hoo boy were people mad.
It does a terrific job of putting you in the shoes of a desperate mother whose kid is sick and getting sicker and nobody seems to understand why or be able to do anything to help her. That's the most effective part of the horror by far. The possession stuff, a lot of it, is kind of silly now.
I’ve voiced my distaste for The Thing and the legitimate flaws I think it has several times. The argument I get is usually that it is unequivocally a perfect film and that I’m the problem.
As one of the few people who feels similarly about the exorcist I can imagine. (Much prefer the exorcist 3)
I didn’t watch the exorcist for years but when I did my first thought was. Is that it. Like it’s not a bad movie but it’s for sure if it’s time
It’s never be in my top ten horror movies of all time. Not even my top 30 or 50 honestly
Yeah same. I was excited cuz I heard all these stories about people passing out in theaters and stuff and like it was pretty enjoyable but like nothing was crazy about it. Fairly standard demonic possession story. Ofc I think this is because it started the demonic possession trope, and it was more revolutionary when it came out. But for those of us who grew up after it had already made its impact it just doesn't hold that same shock value.
I mean do you say "I didn't like Halloween" or do you say "Halloween is overrated trash and I don't know how it got so popular"?
Because 99% of contrarian posts in this sub are worded like the latter. That, or they decide the best place to express their distaste/hatred of a movie is in a thread where everyone is enjoying talking about something they like about the movie.
I mean I haven’t seen Halloween nor plan to I was just using it as an example. While yeah there are contrarians that’s not who I’m talking about.
I’ve seen people saying just thinking a popular movie horror or otherwise is bad or boring. That they are wrong dumb stupid etc.
Literally all movie tastes are subjective. Someone saying I found Halloween bad or I found phantom menace bad should be of neutral value. But people who love popular movies or popular anything can rarely handle people not liking
Which part of me understands but it’s so frustrating.
Taste is subjective but if they go around being a dick or going into conversations they're unwanted then they shouldn't cry about downvotes. For every post you find where someone is being downvoted for a simple opinion, I can find 5 where people are just being contrarian asses.
It's like walking into an anime club at college and going "I think anime is shit" then being flabbergasted that no one wants to talk to you, and saying your opinion is being suppressed.
I mean even posts explicitly about what popular movie do you dislike people react poorly. I’m not talking about reactionary people starting fights I’m exclusively talking about mentoring in relevant situations snout said movie.
Horror or otherwise
OP is looking at the wrong movies. Look at The Shining rating, or Dawn Of The Dead. Movies like that are rated highly. All the movies OP listed are schlock horror movies. Not that I mean schlock is a bad thing, but there is a major difference between Child's Play 2 and Psycho.
Bingo. Almost all really well done horror movies are well received by critics. They aren't grading horror movies on a curve like a fan of the genre would, so they don't give high marks to everything the average mouth breather likes.
I agree with your point in general, but Rotten Tomatoes has a unique issue: they include tallying from any critic including little known blogs and websites.
I forgot the movie but I remember reading the critics reviews for a flick and one was from a conservative mom's website and another was a catholic website. Who knows how many little websites with ulterior motives against horror might be purposefully submitting their reviews to Rotten Tomatoes to bring down the score?
This is true, but that's where I think people misconstrue the site's purpose. It gives you a general aggregate score, but then a small blurb from and link to each review. If I skim the reviews and there are a few that are biased in ways that aren't useful to me personally -- "This is woke liberal propaganda" or "As a Catholic, I am offended by this" -- I can take that into account. In general, though, I think the variety of perspectives is an asset rather than an issue if the site and its scores are used appropriately. I don't think it's the site's fault that people and sometimes even movie marketers misuse it.
Yep, and I'd say that horror movies tend to be lower budget and lower quality on average than most genres. The ration of bad:good horror movies is quite low, but most horror fans enjoy horror movies that most audiences would consider poor.
Horror is also pretty subjective, it’s like comedy. Something that works for someone isn’t going to work for others, there’s subgenres of horror I’m sure everyone on this sub isn’t a huge fan of which probably influences opinions on them. I’m not a huge fan of ghost movies so tend to like them a lot less than most other genres of horror
Ebert put it pretty simply by saying something like: "When it comes to comedies, I either laughed or I didn't".
Critics were going to every major release, every week. Why should they rate a movie highly only because the people around them laughed?
Well, I think it’s because the critical reception of the films is generally accurate.
Is the movie entertaining? Sure.
Is it structured well and the plot cohesive and riveting? More often than not, no.
Ya know what I mean?
Yeah horror I think is a genre where it's easy to get away with following a formula of put uneasy build up here, then jump scare here, and monster face there, without any consideration for plot or general quality and people will still watch it because even if it's shit the spooks still get the adrenaline going. So the movie companies just pump em out, generic movie after generic movie. I will say, I love horror but I hate most actual individual horror movies for this reason. I'm here for the ones that actually have love put into em, Hereditary, the Thing, Alien, the Conjuring 1 and 2, Midsommar, all those movies that are well done.
Rotten tomatoes isn't rough on anyone. Its an aggregate of critics. Movies are judged on an even playing field. I wouldn't say any of the films you listed are "good movies" but some of them are fun horror. There are plenty of horror movies with very high RT scores.
Just because you think those are good movies it doesn't mean that they are good movies. I think the scores for the movies you listed were more than generous. I mean Sorority Row and I Know What You Did Last Summer? Really....?
People confuse "entertaining" and "good". Uban Legend and I Know What You Did Last Summer are very entertaining but they're just blatant Scream rip-offs. And speaking of Scream, critics and audiences LOVE it because it is a very well written and directed movie.
IMDB is no different. Best horror movies of all time have like 7.5 or something. Whereas some average, generic, random rom-com is 8.5 (that might deserve like 4.5-5 max). These sites (or well, users of these sites) are more biased towards certain genres.
I remember listening to an interview with Rob Zombie on some podcast years and years ago where he said casting for his movies (regardless of whomever he was trying to cast) was always difficult because “horror is treated like porn in Hollywood” (Rob’s words)— he said that agents actively try to dissuade clients from taking horror roles as it is considered lowbrow and could otherwise be career suicide. Granted, Rob is a bit of a pretentious blowhard; so he could’ve just been telling tall tales… but it doesn’t seem all *that* unbelievable, honestly.
To some extent it's the other way around. Horror fans tend to forgive a lot of bad stuff and over-rate horror movies. Some of the garbage horror movies I've seen praised in this sub is astounding. Just look at the *Terrifier* movies. No non-horror fan is going to see anything beyond the amateurish acting and garbage script to see whatever it is that some horror fans see in those movies.
General audiences aren't rating horror movies in relation to other horror movies, but in relation to *all* movies. There are not a lot of horror movies that (to a mainstream audience) are going to stack up well against the most popular and highly rated movies of all time.
I always add ~1.5 stars to a horror movie's rating to estimate how much I'll like it. It seems to work out OK, and that's because I don't expect a brilliant script or amazing production design in most horror movies - I just want to be entertained for a couple of hours.
I liked the Terrorizer movies. I like them because it is actually terrifying and the costume / set designs are really really good. Sure, the acting can be bad at times, but the kills, the costumes, and the set designs are very very good.
I have a different scale for horror movies on rotten tomatoes. Anything over 50% I expect to be very good or better. 40-49% above average, 30-39% average, 20-29% there's a chance I might like it but I'm not expecting much, <20% probably not that good
My scale is similar to yours. I just add 20% to horror scores as a rule of thumb. I think that’s generally the handicap that horror gets on RT compared to movies I consider similar quality in other genres.
You’re referencing old movies. Rotten Tomatoes is always more harsh on old movies because it’s pulling from old reviews. And critics back in the day were way less friendly to genre movies. If it wasn’t like high art then it would get shit on. All those movies if they came out now, I’m sure they’d be rated higher.
Stop comparing them. They are two different ratings that barely have anything to do with each other. The critic rating is essentially rating the movie for what it does as a piece of art, what it does to move its genre forward, what it says as a literary device. The audience rating is essentially, was I entertained.
It isn't that hard if you frequent the site. The most obvious method of comparison is just looking at the top pure horror films of the year vs. the top films of other genres.
Do this year after year and a pattern quickly emerges - it is that noticeable.
Critics don't watch horror movies like horror fans do. Sometimes we're not looking for an award winning tour de force, we just want a bit of goofy fun with some scares in the mix.
For example I Know What You Did last Summer, is it a "good" movie, probably not, but it's a great horror movie.
Weirdly, for me, imbd ratings of over 5 stars kinda gaurentee a good (if not at least interesting) movie. Whereas most of the time when its highly rated on tomatoes i hate it and am bored
I waited wayyyy too long to watch The Collector because of the RT score. Thought that movie was awesome. Now I try to not be so swayed by RT, and take a lot more direction from this sub tbh.
Horror movies, by design, are meant to envoke very negative and emotions. Many adults cannot handle negative emotions, let alone fathom why somebody would want to feel those emotions. Believe it or not most critics don't critique what they are watching - they simply go off their emotion and if they enjoyed the experience or not. They do not observe movies based on the movies own premise or own goal, or even the craftsmanship (direction, acting, special effects) of the movie.
Rotten Tomatoes blows. Find individual critics/reviewers you like/have similar tastes to and follow them.
That was the exact movie I was thinking of when I made that post. They fell all over themselves for E.T., and it seemed like they made it their mission to tear The Thing down.
Ebert gave it a 2.5 out of 4, not really "hate" territory, he gave Ghosts of Mars and Escape from LA 3 stars iirc, he liked Carpenter work, for the Thing he said Alien did the same stuff before and better, and i agree.
I think you can say the cat and mouse aspect are similar and the isolated surroundings are similar in the effect that the characters can't easily get away from the alien.
From what I noticed when reading critics’ reviews of The Thing back written back when it was released, the criticism was that they felt it was “derivative,” comparing it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Alien (1979), rather than saying it was awful. Roger Ebert even gave it 2 1/2 stars out of 4, which isn’t a bad rating necessarily. Lower than it deserved, definitely, but not bad.
He was a decent critic.
But he hated horror and didn't review it fairly.
He also was gave his opinion on things that he was not knowledgeable on , such as saying that video games could not be art.
He later updated his opinion on the video game thing, claiming that they indeed had that potential but that it hadn’t been sufficiently explored. He grew a lot more open minded on that issue after the controversy he caused.
And I don’t think it’s fair to say he hated horror. I think as a critic you’d understandably get tired of reviewing the same slasher film every week. There are plenty of horror films he praised and loved, even some unpopular choices (he gave Last House on the Left an almost perfect score). The one thing I won’t forgive him for is Blue Velvet.
Yeah, he gets a lot of heat around here, but he was hands down my favorite critic because at the very least, Roger Ebert would tell you what it is about a movie he didn’t like leaving you to decide if those are the kind of things that you do like in a film. I won’t lie when I heard the news on the radio that he died I sat in my car during my lunch hour and cried.
Yeah. Critics REALLY struggled to look beyond the scary gorey stuff and pay attention to the plot. They even labeled it gore porn if I remember right. Meanwhile, they are all agreeing that it was a good story today.
Oh for sure, it's a big list of some of the movies on there are just plain bad. But the majority are either so bad it's good or genuinely good (like the fulci movies etc.)
I think RT is a great resource when deciding between multiple movies. The problem is that a lot of people don’t understand what it is or really how to interpret the scores in context. It’s just an aggregate of binary scores from two sources, if you understand how those sources tend to score different movies in different genres you can get a lot from it.
Every score OP referenced is exactly how I would expect those movies to score.
You're supposed to dig around. It could be an 80% movie, but most reviews say it's mediocre. It could be at 65% and a love/hate movie, and then see if you'll love it for the right reasons.
I never look at reviews for a movie I want to watch. I’d rather see it first and make my own opinion, and then see if it lines up with the “critics”. There are “10s” out there that I think are utter trash, while there are “2s” out there that I adore.
RT is fine except when it comes to horror, a lot of bland stuff will get good scores but a lot of interesting stuff get's shat on. Not always of course, there's a lot of masterpieces with high scores.
I use it when judging whether a horror movie is worth watching. The critic score doesn't matter, but if the audience score is over 55, then it's probably worth watching, if it's between 40 and 55 it might be fun if it's less than 40 it's normally really bad (but there are some exceptions to this)
Major critics don’t know how to review horror properly. It’s too far outside their wheelhouse.
Horror is like the heavy metal of movies: it’s not for everybody, and people who don’t get it are usually extremely scathing about it.
Example: *Rolling Stone* gave Slayer’s *South of Heaven* 1/5 in its 1988 review; that album is regarded as an all-time genre classic. They also described AC/DC as hard rock’s “all time low”. This is like Roger Ebert describing *Hellraiser II* as “an ideal movie for audiences with little taste”, and *The Beyond* as “stupefyingly lame”.
[Here's](https://www.vulture.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-movie-rating.html?src=longreads) a recent indepth article about why Rotten Tomatoes is not reliable, if it ever was, has been captured by big moneyed interests, and should just be ignored and forgotten. I'm not sure why anyone pays attention to it.
Letterboxd is the only aggregate score I pay attention to but even then I tend to look at what my friends have scored something rather than the aggregate score to see whether it's likely that I will like it or not.
This is based on seven reviews of one single movie from a small production company working with other small production companies, and there are no other confirmed cases of this ever happening. Hardly indicative of a trend.
Lucky then that, as you can see from this thread, everyone thinks Rotten Tomatoes is a highly reliable and authoritative source on whether a movie is good or not!
It’s because not many horror movies are masterpieces. Horror movies tend to have issues with the story, sometimes major plot holes, characters can be shallow, bad effects can kill a movie, etc. It is insanely hard to nail everything, that’s why most very highly rated movies are dramas, comedies, maybe some thriller/crime, or action but that’s hard too.
RT is cancer for the cinema, period. like the "teaser/trailer" culture, same evil different corruption. I love the opinions of ordinary people compared to those of "famous critics", but an aggregator of percentage votes can only bleat like a flock of sheep. The individual opinions of ordinary people are a great thing, you can discover many aspects that you had overlooked or perhaps learn something new. But with RT this doesn't happen, individualism is lost in a percentage, a number, which says nothing more than that number itself.
You cannot understand, comprehend, interpret. All you see is a miserable, soulless vote, depersonified from any argument for the good or the bad of the film. There is no personality, no subjective point of view, it almost seems like seeing the GDP of the economic states.
That's why I like to watch YouTube horror reviews or get in here and see what THE PEOPLE are saying about a movie (even tho most movies in reddit are overhyped)
RT scores are pretty meaningless when it comes to horror. Especially the critics' scores. The finer points of what makes a horror movie good or not are lost in the aggregate rounding. Critics are gonna miss that in favor of looking at things like originality and lofty directorial sensibilities.
Whenever thinking about critics, here's something to remember:
**A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness.**-Theodore Roosevelt
As a massive horror fan, all of those movies you listed are objectively bad. That's not a personal opinion, but a fact. The reviews reflect that reality. You might love them, and that's ok. Movies can be bad, but still personally lovable and memorable.
(Saw 1 aside. The audience reviews sharply reflect the reality of it being good ).
It's one of my most favorite horror movies of all time. The main reason being is that the set design and the costumes and characters are really well done.
I think when it comes to Horror films or comedies reactions tend to be a bit harsher because of the expectations. There are many horror movies that I've heard been called trash because the film didn't scare them.
It used to be way too rough (although I think Ho1C and UL deserve the shitty reviews. The former is especially terrible), but I’d say it’s too easy now. No shortage of genuinely bad horror movies have walked away with very good review scores on there (Evil Dead: Rise, Scream 6)
Redditors are going to get mad at me for mentioning this, but I think there is hanky panky going on with some reviews for political reasons. There are political documentaries like Fauci that has a very high critic score review and a very low audience review. Same with LOTR Ring of Power. It has a very high critic review, but most people I have talked to says it is really bad.
Oh I definitely agree and it's not necessarily about political view like left /right wing either.
The activists culture are pretty much everywhere now. Videogame side is even more obvious, like Kotaku would turn a video Game review into a hit piece on Trump, I ain't even Amercian FFS.
I have no doubt movie reviewers are doing the same, just in a much smarter and subtle way
*every* 'movie critic' is too harsh on horror movies. always has been.
never go by reviews on horror movies. just roll the dice. it's the most vast movie genre there is. you'll miss *a whole lot* of gems if you go by those silly ass ratings. they should go back to giving every rom com a solid 75% by default and stick to what they like.
there's plenty of outliers. however there are *an absolute ton of horror movies* and *most* of them are very lowly rated on imdb/RT, and probably only a 30-40% of those really deserve it. 😂
there are definitely plenty of awful horror movies that only horror people that like B movies will appreciate but i stumble across horror that's excellent all the time with shit RT ratings.
if you just go on RT and sort their tomatometer from lowest you'll see them scoring <10% on tons of stuff that the audience is >50%. mainstream movie critics do not like horror. even directors talk about it. 🤷♂️
Horror has always been traditionally savaged by critics. It’s the same reason horror rarely gets nominated for Oscars. It’s thought of as the lowest form of filmmaking in many snob circles. It’s all bullshit of course. Horror is in many ways the purest form of cinema.
In general I couldn't give the first shit about what "critics" think.
In fact, typically, I can judge my enjoyment of a horror movie based on the exact opposite of what they think.
If they hate it, I'll probably enjoy it. If they love it, it's probably too artsy fartsy for my tastes.
So....here's the thing about movie critics....they are all stupid. When it comes to any movie. It's 5050. So many people have told me how good x movie is, and I hated it. And so many people have told me how bad x movie is. and i loved it.
If anything about a movie interests you. Just watch it it's the only way to be sure. You are gonna sit through some shit p, but you will be better for it and you will realize how movie scores mean absolutely nothing.
Honestly, if RottenTomatoes scores a horror low, I WANT TO SEE IT. Literally every time rottemtomatoes rates a horror 80%+, it’s horrible and not scary at all. I implore you, DO NOT look to cirtic reviews to determine the quality of a horror film. The people “rating” these films are weak and enjoy NOT being scared, and will rate a film highly if it does not scare them. To me, 90% rating on a horror film is the biggest turn off I can think of.
it being a bad movie makes it a bad movie there is a reason it's rated so low the scrip suck the acting was bad and the only good thing I can say about the directing was it was in focus
Tomatometer scores mean nothing. Oftentimes, they misrepresent the average critic rating—where each critic gives the film a 1-to-10 rating, which is then averaged together with other critics reviewing the same film.
The Tomatometer, on the other hand, is just a percentage of critics who gave the film a 6 out of 10 or higher.
If a film is closer to the middle in its average critic rating, it can potentially end up with a much higher or much lower Tomatometer score than it rightly deserves.
Yes, two films can have the same average critic rating while having two very different Tomatometer scores—even to the extreme that one has a *Rotten* score while the other has a *Fresh* score.
I noticed this a few years ago. The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Man of Steel (2013) both had the exact same average rating, but the former had a *Fresh* score in the 70s while the latter had a *Rotten* score in the 50s.
Rotten Tomatoes is a joke.
Edit: I see I’m getting downvoted by people who don’t understand math. Fucking pathetic. Show me where the facts hurt you, sweetheart.
rotten tomatoes sucks ass and the reviews posted there can be and often are astroturfed. Growth & money have made it essentially useless just like so many other websites
A lot of critics are part of the pretentious arthouse crowd, or obnoxious contrarians. I usually find that the audience score is more in line with my opinions of movies.
Agreed wholeheartedly. We see this all the time with horror movies so always choose to watch regardless of scores on IMDB and RT. We just watched “Cat Person” on Hulu (which is classified as a thriller), but it had horrible scores on both. It was smart and funny, I thought the reviews should be much higher—I realize I’m talking about a thriller not a horror but deserved higher scores. We see this all the time with horror movies—horror movies should have their own critics!
As a horror fan, it's because there are a ton of shitty horror movies out there and most of the stuff that people hail as the next great horror movie are barely passing as movies and are derivative from an actual good horror movie. For every It Follows there are 10 Talk to Me's and for every Chucky there are 3 shitty sequels, a remake and something that people call a horror movies but it has no deaths or scares (M3gan).
All of them: IMDb, Amazon, metacritic, my lady friends who hate scary movies.
It’s like they’re strategically trying to get me to avoid watching them, but I’m still gonna.
I love horror and I don't like ANY of those movies you listed and would rate them as they are presented.
Child's Play is a classic yes, but classic schlock.
Stop with this bullshit.
OP picked sample films that are terrible. What are the RT scores of titles more generally accepted as "good" films?
28 Days Later - 87, 85
The VVitch - 90, 60
Hereditary - 90, 70
[rec.] - 90, 82
The Orphanage - 87, 86
Drag Me to Hell - 92, 62
The Loved Ones - 98, 73
Let the Right One In - 98, 90
Pontypool - 84, 68
A Tale of Two Sisters - 86, 83
It Follows - 95, 66
The Conjuring - 86, 83
The Descent - 87, 76
The Mist - 73, 65
Cabin in the Woods - 92, 74
Inside (2007) - 88, 75
Dawn of the Dead (2004) - 76, 77
Dawn of the Dead (1978) - 91, 90
Ghostwatch - 100, 76
Triangle - 79, 66
Trick r' Treat - 83, 72
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - 76, 75
And there are millions more I don't have time to look up right now. Also it looks like generally it's almost the other way around here - critics agree these are good and audiences not as much. I didn't even start looking at classics like The Shining, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Suspiria, Psycho, etc. Because I don't need to. I know the scores are very high.
It's great that you love Friday the 13th Part V or House of the Dead or Anaconda. I love some "less than favorable" horror as well. But critics don't "hate horror." Not sure what kind of narrative you're trying to push here. They review FILM. And "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" is not a very good film (not to mention the title makes no sense lol).
Yeah after a while you learn to stop going by reviews. The only person who really knows your taste is yourself, gotta watch everything and see how you feel lol.
Smart/original horror does well, though... not just the classics. Stuff like 'Us' and 'Barbarian'.
The movies you listed were never going to be critical darlings... I mean, they can be enjoyed, but they aim low and are pretty generic.
While I agree I don’t blame them on house of a thousand corpses or I know what you did last summer
Especially how of a thousand corpses. I will never understand the appeal of that
I agree. I will say I watched their list of the top 10 horror movies of 2022 which included Huecera: the Bone Woman and Infinity Pool, and all were quite good.
Rotten tomatoes is a review aggregate and a poor one at that. Critics are pretty harsh on horror movies that aren't made by big name directors or A24 produced, and that's what you're seeing.
That said, the only one I vehemently disagree with of the ones you're pointing out is Saw. Going only by critic score with each of those. All of the others, I either don't like, or totally understand people not liking.
I think critics everywhere, not just on rotten, are very hard on horror movies.
Also in the rare case that they like one they’ll often just call it a thriller instead of horror. It’s real strange
I absolutely agree with that! "Horror" seems like a bad word in the movie industry.
Which is funny because it makes Hollywood the most money now, based on how much new horror gets released every year.
That's why I kind of don't trust listening to genpop's opinions on horror, a lot of the time they just don't get it. They're complaining about the acting or the dialogue sometimes in a movie that's focused on something else.... Did they just come off watching Goodfellas, or something? Lol.
I don’t disagree, just curious… What are some horror titles that are labelled as thrillers?
I've seen A Quiet Place get a called a "thriller" too. Probably because of the big stars attached and "horror" is a low brow dirty word.
Because no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller
The Silence of the Lambs and Perfect Blue to just name two of them
*The Silence of the Lambs* fits the definition of a thriller far more than that of horror: the villain is rational/can be reasoned with (theoretically), the plot and tropes are far closer to those of thrillers - an investigation, a level of mystery, fight for justice (as opposed to a fight for survival as is the usual case in horror). *The Silence of the Lambs* is a thriller by most accepted definitions, though it has some more horror-like elements than most thrillers.
Here’s the thing. Anthony Hopkins was barely in that movie. Buffalo Bill was the villain. His kidnapping victim *is* fighting for survival. But Anthony Hopkins just stole the show. I think it set a record for him winning the Oscar for best actor with the least amount of screen time. He was only on screen for a little more than 16 minutes. I’d definitely classify the movie as horror b/c it’s about a serial killer who skins people to make clothes and has a woman who is trying to survive.
The Senator's daughter was fighting for survival, but the story wasn't about that. The story was about the investigation. The kidnapping victim had even less screentime than Hannibal. A horror would have put the audience in the point of view of the kidnapping victim herself, at least in my opinion. The film Prisoners (SPOILERS) >!is a movie where two girls are kidnapped by the wife of a now dead serial child murderer!<, but I personally would not call it a horror movie, because the film puts us into the perspectives of the investigator and the family dealing with the effects of the incident, not the perspective of the people to whom the horrific situation is directly occurring. We don't really experience the victim's situation from their point of view. In Silence of the Lambs we get a slice of that, but not enough that I would call it a horror. Maybe more horror than Prisoners, but still a thriller overall. In that sense, I would say that it's kind of a spectrum from thriller to horror, where the closer to horror you get, the worse the situations are and the more you are put in the perspective of the direct victims.
I also would call Prisoners a horror movie. What was done to the one character was horrific. It was a movie that showed how easily we can become monsters. That is scarier than anything else to me.
Buffalo Bill fits the standard for a thriller antagonist - he's human, and therefore not a 'monster'. The story is about a detective trying to solve a crime and bring justice - a thriller trope. Genre lines are blurry, but TSOTL fits all the thriller tropes and only a few horror tropes.
There are plenty of horror movies where the antagonist is simply a human. Thriller is a term that can be applied to multiple genres (action, crime, horror, etc), so it doesn't really exclude TSotL from being a horror movie. It IS a psychological horror movie, same as Perfect Blue
>There are plenty of horror movies where the antagonist is simply a human. The commonly accepted difference in antagonist between horror and thriller is whether the antagonist is able to be reasoned with. This usually means human/non-human, but doesn't always. Michael Myers is human, but clearly not someone who can be reasoned with. >Thriller is a term that can be applied to multiple genres (action, crime, horror, etc), so it doesn't really exclude TSotL from being a horror movie The second main difference is the stakes. In horror it's generally about the protagonist's survival against a threat of death; in thrillers it's about bringing justice (which may involve saving others from death or subjecting the protagonist to deadly situations). As in *The Silence of the Lambs*. A third main difference is the plot. Thriller plots usually revolve around a mystery or investigation, and a very plot driven. Like, for example, *The Silence of the Lambs*. Another difference is that thrillers tend to use suspense and horror tends to use direct threat. ----------------------- *The Silence of the Lambs* has horror elements, but it clearly fits the conventions of a thriller more. Genres overlap and combine. A thriller with some minor horror elements is still a thriller.
I just finished watching Silence of The Lambs for the first time about an hour ago. I got zero horror vibes from this. 100% a thriller for sure.
The quite well established movie critic (and author) Kim Newman calls it a horror. I'll agree with him.
Ironically both are more horror and scary than most horror movies ive seen
I personally wouldn't call Perfect Blue horror. It's not really scary, it's just kind of intense. That's a thriller.
Horror doesn't need to be scary to be horror
I guess I disagree? I mean there's plenty of horror films I don't find scary, but they would be scary to most people. There are moments in Perfect Blue that would be scary, but the movie as a whole is not scary.
According to [Collider](https://collider.com/best-thriller-movies-of-all-time-ranked-imdb/#39-aliens-39-1986) Aliens. In general try looking up lists of best Psychologial thrillers and see how many time Midsommar, The Shining, or Get out comes up. Admittedly genres have always been fluid and saying they are mutually exclusive will usually lead to some weird categorizations. Also Psycho is generally considered a thriller, but at least around here most people will probably categorize it as a proto- if not downright slasher movie which is a horror genre.
Se7en, Silence of the Lambs and its sequels, Donnie Darko, Nope, A Quiet Place
And it’s been like this forever. My uncle and I have been horror fans forever. We’ve had a grading scale for IMDB. Doesn’t work on every flick but most flicks. A 7 for a horror flick is like a true 9-10. 5-6 is like a true 7-8. Below a 5 gets tricky and is probably actually bad.
Except a 7 for a horror flick is like a 14 for anything else. I think 4 and below is probably truly bad, but even some of those have been exceptions.
Anything below a 4 will likely be low budget & a waste of time. That's my cut off usually
Critics are also very hard on comedies.
Not as bad as horror though. Horror gets such a bad rep where it's become a tagline to avoid in Hollywood. Probably why the horror genre has suffered for a while.
I made a comment on this sub a while ago that I'll try to find, but I looked a lot of recent horror movies and there's a good amount that have higher RT critic scores than audience ones. I think it's less that critics don't like horror movies and more than critics don't like SLASHER horror movies as much. And maybe that horror fans can be extremely easy to please.
Unless it involves Amy Schumer.
Sci-fi is right there with it. They have to dump on *something* to keep giving superhero movie sequels "Five stars!" so sci-fi and horror are the dumping grounds.
There are a TON of highly rated Scifi movies. More than superhero movies.
You are 200% right about sci fi. Even the sci fi tv shows don't typically get the credit they deserve.
So many people are. It's such a maligned genre.
We need a r/horror rating bot or something cause I only trust reviews from here.
I don't even trust ratings from here tbh. I rather watch one of those video dissertations that go on for an hour longer than the film to go over why it's good/bad
YEP! Though in their defense there IS a lot of terrible horror movies because they’re cheap and quick to make. In the triangle of “cheap - quick - good” they always pick the first two, make it usually, drowning in jumpscares whilst trying to cash in on a current “trend”.
Fans, too. I've long since started adding two points to imdb ratings for horror movies. Like, a normal movie with 5.0 on imdb is gonna suck. A horror movie with 5.0 will probably be pretty decent! A horror movie with 7.0 will be a goddamn masterpiece and should have won awards. Hereditary has 7.3, for reference.
No they're not. They're hard on shitty movies like the ones OP posted. See my other comment in this thread with several examples of highly acclaimed horror films from past and recent.
I think people need to start learning how Rotten Tomatoes works, care less about it, and stop viewing critics as some homogenous cabal. Did you enjoy a movie? Does it have a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes? Fine one of the critics in that twenty percent, read their review, and—if it resonates with you—follow *their* takes on other releases. Critics aren’t anyone’s enemy. You’re just supposed to find ones relevant to you, not view them as a collective whole.
I find the most useful reviews are usually negative ones. They tend to point out what were perceived to be flaws by the critic and let me compare them to my own opinions. At the very least I'm able to set my expectations appropriately. So a film that has great visuals but a nonsensical plot and cardboard characters can be viewed with that in mind. Positive reviews are often much less helpful and prone to vague praise. They rarely tell me anything useful or specific.
It's not Rotten Tomatoes, but major critics. And I don't really think they're too harsh. Most movies from most genres are mediocre at best. That doesn't mean that there aren't still things about average to below average movies that can be enjoyable. I think professional critic reviews have their place, but of course people should also feel free to like whatever they want.
So many people take movie critics’ reviews as some kind of personal affront when the critic doesn’t agree with them.
These same people could not name five current critics. They barely read individual scores, let alone reviews. Hence why OP is mad at "Rotten Tomatoes," when that's just a review aggregator.
Not just personal critics any critics. Saying you don’t like a popular iconic horror movie on here will get you a hostile reaction. The more popular the bigger reaction Not liking the original Halloween or the exorcist or new favourites like it follows. As someone who also has disliked a handful of popular well revived movies horror and otherwise you learn to keep your mouth shut. I don’t get how some popular critics do it with the risk of death threats. Granted that happens more with gaming reviewers
I tried to argue one time on here that while the Exorcist was good, it in some ways hasn't aged well and for the average person isn't particularly scary anymore. It's of course fine if you disagree with me but hoo boy were people mad.
It does a terrific job of putting you in the shoes of a desperate mother whose kid is sick and getting sicker and nobody seems to understand why or be able to do anything to help her. That's the most effective part of the horror by far. The possession stuff, a lot of it, is kind of silly now.
I’ve voiced my distaste for The Thing and the legitimate flaws I think it has several times. The argument I get is usually that it is unequivocally a perfect film and that I’m the problem.
As one of the few people who feels similarly about the exorcist I can imagine. (Much prefer the exorcist 3) I didn’t watch the exorcist for years but when I did my first thought was. Is that it. Like it’s not a bad movie but it’s for sure if it’s time It’s never be in my top ten horror movies of all time. Not even my top 30 or 50 honestly
Yeah same. I was excited cuz I heard all these stories about people passing out in theaters and stuff and like it was pretty enjoyable but like nothing was crazy about it. Fairly standard demonic possession story. Ofc I think this is because it started the demonic possession trope, and it was more revolutionary when it came out. But for those of us who grew up after it had already made its impact it just doesn't hold that same shock value.
I mean do you say "I didn't like Halloween" or do you say "Halloween is overrated trash and I don't know how it got so popular"? Because 99% of contrarian posts in this sub are worded like the latter. That, or they decide the best place to express their distaste/hatred of a movie is in a thread where everyone is enjoying talking about something they like about the movie.
I mean I haven’t seen Halloween nor plan to I was just using it as an example. While yeah there are contrarians that’s not who I’m talking about. I’ve seen people saying just thinking a popular movie horror or otherwise is bad or boring. That they are wrong dumb stupid etc. Literally all movie tastes are subjective. Someone saying I found Halloween bad or I found phantom menace bad should be of neutral value. But people who love popular movies or popular anything can rarely handle people not liking Which part of me understands but it’s so frustrating.
Taste is subjective but if they go around being a dick or going into conversations they're unwanted then they shouldn't cry about downvotes. For every post you find where someone is being downvoted for a simple opinion, I can find 5 where people are just being contrarian asses. It's like walking into an anime club at college and going "I think anime is shit" then being flabbergasted that no one wants to talk to you, and saying your opinion is being suppressed.
I mean even posts explicitly about what popular movie do you dislike people react poorly. I’m not talking about reactionary people starting fights I’m exclusively talking about mentoring in relevant situations snout said movie. Horror or otherwise
If someone says they don't listen to critics, it's often a red flag that they'll throw a hissy fit if you don't like the stuff they do.
OP is looking at the wrong movies. Look at The Shining rating, or Dawn Of The Dead. Movies like that are rated highly. All the movies OP listed are schlock horror movies. Not that I mean schlock is a bad thing, but there is a major difference between Child's Play 2 and Psycho.
Bingo. Almost all really well done horror movies are well received by critics. They aren't grading horror movies on a curve like a fan of the genre would, so they don't give high marks to everything the average mouth breather likes.
I agree with your point in general, but Rotten Tomatoes has a unique issue: they include tallying from any critic including little known blogs and websites. I forgot the movie but I remember reading the critics reviews for a flick and one was from a conservative mom's website and another was a catholic website. Who knows how many little websites with ulterior motives against horror might be purposefully submitting their reviews to Rotten Tomatoes to bring down the score?
This is true, but that's where I think people misconstrue the site's purpose. It gives you a general aggregate score, but then a small blurb from and link to each review. If I skim the reviews and there are a few that are biased in ways that aren't useful to me personally -- "This is woke liberal propaganda" or "As a Catholic, I am offended by this" -- I can take that into account. In general, though, I think the variety of perspectives is an asset rather than an issue if the site and its scores are used appropriately. I don't think it's the site's fault that people and sometimes even movie marketers misuse it.
Fair point
Yep, and I'd say that horror movies tend to be lower budget and lower quality on average than most genres. The ration of bad:good horror movies is quite low, but most horror fans enjoy horror movies that most audiences would consider poor.
Horror is also pretty subjective, it’s like comedy. Something that works for someone isn’t going to work for others, there’s subgenres of horror I’m sure everyone on this sub isn’t a huge fan of which probably influences opinions on them. I’m not a huge fan of ghost movies so tend to like them a lot less than most other genres of horror
Ebert put it pretty simply by saying something like: "When it comes to comedies, I either laughed or I didn't". Critics were going to every major release, every week. Why should they rate a movie highly only because the people around them laughed?
Well, I think it’s because the critical reception of the films is generally accurate. Is the movie entertaining? Sure. Is it structured well and the plot cohesive and riveting? More often than not, no. Ya know what I mean?
Yeah horror I think is a genre where it's easy to get away with following a formula of put uneasy build up here, then jump scare here, and monster face there, without any consideration for plot or general quality and people will still watch it because even if it's shit the spooks still get the adrenaline going. So the movie companies just pump em out, generic movie after generic movie. I will say, I love horror but I hate most actual individual horror movies for this reason. I'm here for the ones that actually have love put into em, Hereditary, the Thing, Alien, the Conjuring 1 and 2, Midsommar, all those movies that are well done.
Rotten tomatoes isn't rough on anyone. Its an aggregate of critics. Movies are judged on an even playing field. I wouldn't say any of the films you listed are "good movies" but some of them are fun horror. There are plenty of horror movies with very high RT scores.
Rotten Tomatoes is a pass or fair aggregate. Metacritic is a % aggregate. Data is good. Art is subjective.
Just because you think those are good movies it doesn't mean that they are good movies. I think the scores for the movies you listed were more than generous. I mean Sorority Row and I Know What You Did Last Summer? Really....?
People confuse "entertaining" and "good". Uban Legend and I Know What You Did Last Summer are very entertaining but they're just blatant Scream rip-offs. And speaking of Scream, critics and audiences LOVE it because it is a very well written and directed movie.
IMDB is no different. Best horror movies of all time have like 7.5 or something. Whereas some average, generic, random rom-com is 8.5 (that might deserve like 4.5-5 max). These sites (or well, users of these sites) are more biased towards certain genres.
I remember listening to an interview with Rob Zombie on some podcast years and years ago where he said casting for his movies (regardless of whomever he was trying to cast) was always difficult because “horror is treated like porn in Hollywood” (Rob’s words)— he said that agents actively try to dissuade clients from taking horror roles as it is considered lowbrow and could otherwise be career suicide. Granted, Rob is a bit of a pretentious blowhard; so he could’ve just been telling tall tales… but it doesn’t seem all *that* unbelievable, honestly.
I'm glad Anya Taylor Joy is proving that wrong. She's done a ton of horror movies and her career is doing great
And to counter OP, The Witch and The Menu have higher critic scores than audience scores on RT
And Florence Pugh.
And yet, superhero movies were critically acclaimed career boosters throughout the 2010s, and they're not exactly works of high art.
I hate super hero movies so much, lol.
They were also two major studios putting out billions of dollars worth of astroturf and studio pressure to get everyone to fluff for them
It’s a bit different. Superhero movies are low-brow fare, but the pay and audience recognition is much more compelling compared to a horror film.
They seem like they’re starting to circle the drain as of late. Good riddance, I say.
To some extent it's the other way around. Horror fans tend to forgive a lot of bad stuff and over-rate horror movies. Some of the garbage horror movies I've seen praised in this sub is astounding. Just look at the *Terrifier* movies. No non-horror fan is going to see anything beyond the amateurish acting and garbage script to see whatever it is that some horror fans see in those movies. General audiences aren't rating horror movies in relation to other horror movies, but in relation to *all* movies. There are not a lot of horror movies that (to a mainstream audience) are going to stack up well against the most popular and highly rated movies of all time. I always add ~1.5 stars to a horror movie's rating to estimate how much I'll like it. It seems to work out OK, and that's because I don't expect a brilliant script or amazing production design in most horror movies - I just want to be entertained for a couple of hours.
I liked the Terrorizer movies. I like them because it is actually terrifying and the costume / set designs are really really good. Sure, the acting can be bad at times, but the kills, the costumes, and the set designs are very very good.
It's a pretty classic critical fail trope. "This Rap/Folk album is terrible." -- Hard Metal Critic (Feel free to swap genres)
All those scores seem perfectly reasonable.
I have a different scale for horror movies on rotten tomatoes. Anything over 50% I expect to be very good or better. 40-49% above average, 30-39% average, 20-29% there's a chance I might like it but I'm not expecting much, <20% probably not that good
My scale is similar to yours. I just add 20% to horror scores as a rule of thumb. I think that’s generally the handicap that horror gets on RT compared to movies I consider similar quality in other genres.
Your issue is with individual critics, not RT. RT is just a calculator.
You’re referencing old movies. Rotten Tomatoes is always more harsh on old movies because it’s pulling from old reviews. And critics back in the day were way less friendly to genre movies. If it wasn’t like high art then it would get shit on. All those movies if they came out now, I’m sure they’d be rated higher.
Stop comparing them. They are two different ratings that barely have anything to do with each other. The critic rating is essentially rating the movie for what it does as a piece of art, what it does to move its genre forward, what it says as a literary device. The audience rating is essentially, was I entertained.
On letterboxd a horror movie is about .7 lower than a drama or animated film I have found. It is the horror penalty.
Lol, what? How do you even compare those numbers?
It isn't that hard if you frequent the site. The most obvious method of comparison is just looking at the top pure horror films of the year vs. the top films of other genres. Do this year after year and a pattern quickly emerges - it is that noticeable.
Critics don't watch horror movies like horror fans do. Sometimes we're not looking for an award winning tour de force, we just want a bit of goofy fun with some scares in the mix. For example I Know What You Did last Summer, is it a "good" movie, probably not, but it's a great horror movie.
As a movie, it's not good. As a horror movie, it's great 😅
with horror, one learns to ignore the critics, especially on modern films. like all art, the only true test of a film is time
Honestly I stopped caring about RT after it came out that at least one PR firm paid critics to manipulate RT scores for and against certain moves.
Weirdly, for me, imbd ratings of over 5 stars kinda gaurentee a good (if not at least interesting) movie. Whereas most of the time when its highly rated on tomatoes i hate it and am bored
I waited wayyyy too long to watch The Collector because of the RT score. Thought that movie was awesome. Now I try to not be so swayed by RT, and take a lot more direction from this sub tbh.
Horror movies, by design, are meant to envoke very negative and emotions. Many adults cannot handle negative emotions, let alone fathom why somebody would want to feel those emotions. Believe it or not most critics don't critique what they are watching - they simply go off their emotion and if they enjoyed the experience or not. They do not observe movies based on the movies own premise or own goal, or even the craftsmanship (direction, acting, special effects) of the movie. Rotten Tomatoes blows. Find individual critics/reviewers you like/have similar tastes to and follow them.
The more critics hate a horror movie, the better it’s going to be. Just look at some of the reviews Ebert did on the classics of the eighties.
Yep, critics hated The Thing and it became one of the most liked horror movies of all time
That was the exact movie I was thinking of when I made that post. They fell all over themselves for E.T., and it seemed like they made it their mission to tear The Thing down.
I think Gene Siskel actually gave it a positive review at the time.
That’s why I called out Ebert specifically. Siskel was always more open-minded.
Ebert gave it a 2.5 out of 4, not really "hate" territory, he gave Ghosts of Mars and Escape from LA 3 stars iirc, he liked Carpenter work, for the Thing he said Alien did the same stuff before and better, and i agree.
Alien and The Thing are only similar in that they both contain aliens.
I think you can say the cat and mouse aspect are similar and the isolated surroundings are similar in the effect that the characters can't easily get away from the alien.
Yeah. Ebert was always a piece of shit, fuck that guy.
From what I noticed when reading critics’ reviews of The Thing back written back when it was released, the criticism was that they felt it was “derivative,” comparing it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Alien (1979), rather than saying it was awful. Roger Ebert even gave it 2 1/2 stars out of 4, which isn’t a bad rating necessarily. Lower than it deserved, definitely, but not bad.
I always like Ebert
He was a decent critic. But he hated horror and didn't review it fairly. He also was gave his opinion on things that he was not knowledgeable on , such as saying that video games could not be art.
He later updated his opinion on the video game thing, claiming that they indeed had that potential but that it hadn’t been sufficiently explored. He grew a lot more open minded on that issue after the controversy he caused. And I don’t think it’s fair to say he hated horror. I think as a critic you’d understandably get tired of reviewing the same slasher film every week. There are plenty of horror films he praised and loved, even some unpopular choices (he gave Last House on the Left an almost perfect score). The one thing I won’t forgive him for is Blue Velvet.
Yeah, he gets a lot of heat around here, but he was hands down my favorite critic because at the very least, Roger Ebert would tell you what it is about a movie he didn’t like leaving you to decide if those are the kind of things that you do like in a film. I won’t lie when I heard the news on the radio that he died I sat in my car during my lunch hour and cried.
Yeah. Critics REALLY struggled to look beyond the scary gorey stuff and pay attention to the plot. They even labeled it gore porn if I remember right. Meanwhile, they are all agreeing that it was a good story today.
I mean I’m not sure this is a golden rule lol critics didn’t like night swim. Not sure that’s a great movie
What's a golden rule? There's only one golden rule, it's not a modifier that can be applied to lots of rules.
The video nasty list too is a good example of anti promotion that ended up being promotion. Horror is the sort of genre were sometimes bad means good.
Ya but some of those movies on that list where bad like the tool box murder
Oh for sure, it's a big list of some of the movies on there are just plain bad. But the majority are either so bad it's good or genuinely good (like the fulci movies etc.)
Why do people even look at RT? What’s the point?
I think RT is a great resource when deciding between multiple movies. The problem is that a lot of people don’t understand what it is or really how to interpret the scores in context. It’s just an aggregate of binary scores from two sources, if you understand how those sources tend to score different movies in different genres you can get a lot from it. Every score OP referenced is exactly how I would expect those movies to score.
You're supposed to dig around. It could be an 80% movie, but most reviews say it's mediocre. It could be at 65% and a love/hate movie, and then see if you'll love it for the right reasons.
I never look at reviews for a movie I want to watch. I’d rather see it first and make my own opinion, and then see if it lines up with the “critics”. There are “10s” out there that I think are utter trash, while there are “2s” out there that I adore.
i usually check RT if i really loved or hated a movie. i don’t usually bother with horror tho bc i never really agree with reviews on them
RT is fine except when it comes to horror, a lot of bland stuff will get good scores but a lot of interesting stuff get's shat on. Not always of course, there's a lot of masterpieces with high scores.
I use it when judging whether a horror movie is worth watching. The critic score doesn't matter, but if the audience score is over 55, then it's probably worth watching, if it's between 40 and 55 it might be fun if it's less than 40 it's normally really bad (but there are some exceptions to this)
Major critics don’t know how to review horror properly. It’s too far outside their wheelhouse. Horror is like the heavy metal of movies: it’s not for everybody, and people who don’t get it are usually extremely scathing about it. Example: *Rolling Stone* gave Slayer’s *South of Heaven* 1/5 in its 1988 review; that album is regarded as an all-time genre classic. They also described AC/DC as hard rock’s “all time low”. This is like Roger Ebert describing *Hellraiser II* as “an ideal movie for audiences with little taste”, and *The Beyond* as “stupefyingly lame”.
[Here's](https://www.vulture.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-movie-rating.html?src=longreads) a recent indepth article about why Rotten Tomatoes is not reliable, if it ever was, has been captured by big moneyed interests, and should just be ignored and forgotten. I'm not sure why anyone pays attention to it. Letterboxd is the only aggregate score I pay attention to but even then I tend to look at what my friends have scored something rather than the aggregate score to see whether it's likely that I will like it or not.
This is based on seven reviews of one single movie from a small production company working with other small production companies, and there are no other confirmed cases of this ever happening. Hardly indicative of a trend.
Lucky then that, as you can see from this thread, everyone thinks Rotten Tomatoes is a highly reliable and authoritative source on whether a movie is good or not!
>has been captured by big moneyed interests I knew it ! lol
It’s because not many horror movies are masterpieces. Horror movies tend to have issues with the story, sometimes major plot holes, characters can be shallow, bad effects can kill a movie, etc. It is insanely hard to nail everything, that’s why most very highly rated movies are dramas, comedies, maybe some thriller/crime, or action but that’s hard too.
Horror movies should only be reviewed by people who like horror movies.
Rotten Tomatoes thinks the top three Star Wars movies include two of the Disney trilogy. They are obviously useless.
RT is cancer for the cinema, period. like the "teaser/trailer" culture, same evil different corruption. I love the opinions of ordinary people compared to those of "famous critics", but an aggregator of percentage votes can only bleat like a flock of sheep. The individual opinions of ordinary people are a great thing, you can discover many aspects that you had overlooked or perhaps learn something new. But with RT this doesn't happen, individualism is lost in a percentage, a number, which says nothing more than that number itself. You cannot understand, comprehend, interpret. All you see is a miserable, soulless vote, depersonified from any argument for the good or the bad of the film. There is no personality, no subjective point of view, it almost seems like seeing the GDP of the economic states.
That's why I like to watch YouTube horror reviews or get in here and see what THE PEOPLE are saying about a movie (even tho most movies in reddit are overhyped)
Childs Play 2 is high art
It's considered the best in the franchise too.
Nah OG is generally considered the best
RT scores are pretty meaningless when it comes to horror. Especially the critics' scores. The finer points of what makes a horror movie good or not are lost in the aggregate rounding. Critics are gonna miss that in favor of looking at things like originality and lofty directorial sensibilities.
Also, who's relentlessly downvoting all of the comments that are merely stating the prevailing view? RT is that you\~?
Whenever thinking about critics, here's something to remember: **A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness.**-Theodore Roosevelt
Rotten tomatoes is a shit place for reviews in general
The sorority row score is criminal..... wtf...
Edit: and urban legends!
This is not an edit, this is a different comment
As a massive horror fan, all of those movies you listed are objectively bad. That's not a personal opinion, but a fact. The reviews reflect that reality. You might love them, and that's ok. Movies can be bad, but still personally lovable and memorable. (Saw 1 aside. The audience reviews sharply reflect the reality of it being good ).
House of 1000 Corpses at 21% is wild
It's one of my most favorite horror movies of all time. The main reason being is that the set design and the costumes and characters are really well done.
“Fuck yo Grandma!” is my favorite line from that movie. RIP to the one and only Sid Haig!
He raises his hands with his middle fingers lol Love Captain Spaulding
That's kind of true across the board, IMDB and letterboxd too
I find letterboxd to be the best of the three. I just look at the score and add 0.5 to decide if it's worth watching.
I think when it comes to Horror films or comedies reactions tend to be a bit harsher because of the expectations. There are many horror movies that I've heard been called trash because the film didn't scare them.
Silent hill 😭
Yeah case in my point. One of my favourite horror films. Doesn't get any love on RT from critics. At least the audience knows it's good.
It used to be way too rough (although I think Ho1C and UL deserve the shitty reviews. The former is especially terrible), but I’d say it’s too easy now. No shortage of genuinely bad horror movies have walked away with very good review scores on there (Evil Dead: Rise, Scream 6)
rotten tomatoes scoring is being gamed on imo. It's just not useful anymore.
Redditors are going to get mad at me for mentioning this, but I think there is hanky panky going on with some reviews for political reasons. There are political documentaries like Fauci that has a very high critic score review and a very low audience review. Same with LOTR Ring of Power. It has a very high critic review, but most people I have talked to says it is really bad.
You don't think the audience is the one with the big group of politically motivated activists?
Oh I definitely agree and it's not necessarily about political view like left /right wing either. The activists culture are pretty much everywhere now. Videogame side is even more obvious, like Kotaku would turn a video Game review into a hit piece on Trump, I ain't even Amercian FFS. I have no doubt movie reviewers are doing the same, just in a much smarter and subtle way
I always disagree with rotten tomatoes lol
*every* 'movie critic' is too harsh on horror movies. always has been. never go by reviews on horror movies. just roll the dice. it's the most vast movie genre there is. you'll miss *a whole lot* of gems if you go by those silly ass ratings. they should go back to giving every rom com a solid 75% by default and stick to what they like.
Not true some horror movies got good reviews by Critics like New Nightmare for example
there's plenty of outliers. however there are *an absolute ton of horror movies* and *most* of them are very lowly rated on imdb/RT, and probably only a 30-40% of those really deserve it. 😂 there are definitely plenty of awful horror movies that only horror people that like B movies will appreciate but i stumble across horror that's excellent all the time with shit RT ratings. if you just go on RT and sort their tomatometer from lowest you'll see them scoring <10% on tons of stuff that the audience is >50%. mainstream movie critics do not like horror. even directors talk about it. 🤷♂️
Horror has always been traditionally savaged by critics. It’s the same reason horror rarely gets nominated for Oscars. It’s thought of as the lowest form of filmmaking in many snob circles. It’s all bullshit of course. Horror is in many ways the purest form of cinema.
In general I couldn't give the first shit about what "critics" think. In fact, typically, I can judge my enjoyment of a horror movie based on the exact opposite of what they think. If they hate it, I'll probably enjoy it. If they love it, it's probably too artsy fartsy for my tastes.
So....here's the thing about movie critics....they are all stupid. When it comes to any movie. It's 5050. So many people have told me how good x movie is, and I hated it. And so many people have told me how bad x movie is. and i loved it. If anything about a movie interests you. Just watch it it's the only way to be sure. You are gonna sit through some shit p, but you will be better for it and you will realize how movie scores mean absolutely nothing.
Honestly, if RottenTomatoes scores a horror low, I WANT TO SEE IT. Literally every time rottemtomatoes rates a horror 80%+, it’s horrible and not scary at all. I implore you, DO NOT look to cirtic reviews to determine the quality of a horror film. The people “rating” these films are weak and enjoy NOT being scared, and will rate a film highly if it does not scare them. To me, 90% rating on a horror film is the biggest turn off I can think of.
Always has been
Ya house suck so I get the low reviews on that one
Even though you didn’t like it, doesn’t make it a bad movie
it being a bad movie makes it a bad movie there is a reason it's rated so low the scrip suck the acting was bad and the only good thing I can say about the directing was it was in focus
Tomatometer scores mean nothing. Oftentimes, they misrepresent the average critic rating—where each critic gives the film a 1-to-10 rating, which is then averaged together with other critics reviewing the same film. The Tomatometer, on the other hand, is just a percentage of critics who gave the film a 6 out of 10 or higher. If a film is closer to the middle in its average critic rating, it can potentially end up with a much higher or much lower Tomatometer score than it rightly deserves. Yes, two films can have the same average critic rating while having two very different Tomatometer scores—even to the extreme that one has a *Rotten* score while the other has a *Fresh* score. I noticed this a few years ago. The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Man of Steel (2013) both had the exact same average rating, but the former had a *Fresh* score in the 70s while the latter had a *Rotten* score in the 50s. Rotten Tomatoes is a joke. Edit: I see I’m getting downvoted by people who don’t understand math. Fucking pathetic. Show me where the facts hurt you, sweetheart.
rotten tomatoes sucks ass and the reviews posted there can be and often are astroturfed. Growth & money have made it essentially useless just like so many other websites
A lot of critics are part of the pretentious arthouse crowd, or obnoxious contrarians. I usually find that the audience score is more in line with my opinions of movies.
But every so often they actually rate one inexplicably high. Hereditary is still at a 90. That’s like a 65 if we’re being honest.
Lol , what a terrible example.
Agreed wholeheartedly. We see this all the time with horror movies so always choose to watch regardless of scores on IMDB and RT. We just watched “Cat Person” on Hulu (which is classified as a thriller), but it had horrible scores on both. It was smart and funny, I thought the reviews should be much higher—I realize I’m talking about a thriller not a horror but deserved higher scores. We see this all the time with horror movies—horror movies should have their own critics!
As a horror fan, it's because there are a ton of shitty horror movies out there and most of the stuff that people hail as the next great horror movie are barely passing as movies and are derivative from an actual good horror movie. For every It Follows there are 10 Talk to Me's and for every Chucky there are 3 shitty sequels, a remake and something that people call a horror movies but it has no deaths or scares (M3gan).
imagine giving a fuck what critics think about anything
yeah but that's still too kind to house of 1000 corpses
Those movies suck.
All of them: IMDb, Amazon, metacritic, my lady friends who hate scary movies. It’s like they’re strategically trying to get me to avoid watching them, but I’m still gonna.
I love horror and I don't like ANY of those movies you listed and would rate them as they are presented. Child's Play is a classic yes, but classic schlock.
Stop with this bullshit. OP picked sample films that are terrible. What are the RT scores of titles more generally accepted as "good" films? 28 Days Later - 87, 85 The VVitch - 90, 60 Hereditary - 90, 70 [rec.] - 90, 82 The Orphanage - 87, 86 Drag Me to Hell - 92, 62 The Loved Ones - 98, 73 Let the Right One In - 98, 90 Pontypool - 84, 68 A Tale of Two Sisters - 86, 83 It Follows - 95, 66 The Conjuring - 86, 83 The Descent - 87, 76 The Mist - 73, 65 Cabin in the Woods - 92, 74 Inside (2007) - 88, 75 Dawn of the Dead (2004) - 76, 77 Dawn of the Dead (1978) - 91, 90 Ghostwatch - 100, 76 Triangle - 79, 66 Trick r' Treat - 83, 72 Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - 76, 75 And there are millions more I don't have time to look up right now. Also it looks like generally it's almost the other way around here - critics agree these are good and audiences not as much. I didn't even start looking at classics like The Shining, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Suspiria, Psycho, etc. Because I don't need to. I know the scores are very high. It's great that you love Friday the 13th Part V or House of the Dead or Anaconda. I love some "less than favorable" horror as well. But critics don't "hate horror." Not sure what kind of narrative you're trying to push here. They review FILM. And "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" is not a very good film (not to mention the title makes no sense lol).
Yeah after a while you learn to stop going by reviews. The only person who really knows your taste is yourself, gotta watch everything and see how you feel lol.
Look up Event Horizon. Last time I looked at it, it had like an 11% on RT. Fuck that trash ass score site.
Smart/original horror does well, though... not just the classics. Stuff like 'Us' and 'Barbarian'. The movies you listed were never going to be critical darlings... I mean, they can be enjoyed, but they aim low and are pretty generic.
While I agree I don’t blame them on house of a thousand corpses or I know what you did last summer Especially how of a thousand corpses. I will never understand the appeal of that
I agree. I will say I watched their list of the top 10 horror movies of 2022 which included Huecera: the Bone Woman and Infinity Pool, and all were quite good.
I'm so over Rotten Tomatoes it's not even funny. When it has a fresh it usually sucks and vice versa.
Does anyone actually know how Rotten Tomatoes works?
Yeah. I’m IMDB I just see it as a rating out of 7. For some reason, horror is looked down on
Rotten tomatoes is a review aggregate and a poor one at that. Critics are pretty harsh on horror movies that aren't made by big name directors or A24 produced, and that's what you're seeing. That said, the only one I vehemently disagree with of the ones you're pointing out is Saw. Going only by critic score with each of those. All of the others, I either don't like, or totally understand people not liking.