Highest Rotten Tomatoes Audience Rated Horror Movies

[Kandarian Demon]

Originally Posted by metternich1815

I agree with most of what people have said in this thread. I actually remember learning about this in my Intro to Philosophy course. Horror movies are really an open-concept (A thing that has certain characteristics, except when it doesn't). Many people, on the other hand, try to treat it as a closed-concept (thing with a clear definition, such as a triangle). Personally, I group the War of the Worlds (1953), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Evil Dead II (1987), Jaws (1975), Godzilla (1954), Them! (1954), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Seven (1998), and Dawn of the Dead (1978) as a horror (with Pan's Labyrinth, Seven, Dawn of the Dead, Jaws, and Evil Dead II being clearly horror). With the understanding that horror is not really a clearly defined genre. As stated, genre grouping is often artificial with some films not fitting into a certain category or sometimes fitting into multiple simutaneoulsy. I think we generally understand what is a horror movie and what isn't. Casper simply is not a horror movie. Young Frankenstein, I don't consider horror, but understand the argument. Additionally, sometimes "scary movie" is used interchangeably with horror movie, but this is not always the case. Jaws or Psycho, for instance, are not particularly scary (unless you are in a motel or in the ocean), but are definitely horror. Thus, a horror movie is scary unless it's not. Ultimately, horror movies cannot be easily categorized or grouped because they are not a closed-concept.

I agree with you, it's not really that easy to define what a horror movie is.

For example, to me, just because a movie is gory does not mean it's horror. A crime story with a lot of blood is still a crime story, and that's really what I think most of today's so-called horror movies are.

But, if you ask someone else, they'll have a totally different opinion about that, and in fact I have been in many debates with people who claimed that their (in my eyes) crime movies were much more horrifying than my silly supernatural fairytales.

It doesn't really bother me much what other people consider to be horror... although when I talk to slightly younger people (I'm 35), I can tell that their idea of a horror movie is often very far from my own, and I know that the future horror releases will be aimed at them and not me...