Post by kevin on Jun 20, 2018 9:32:03 GMT
Does anyone have a good explanation for the divisiveness of horror movies, especially the last years?
It seems like most horror movies with fantastic reviews are slammed by many moviegoers, who say they are
boring, slow etc. There is only a very select group of horror movies that get both audience & critical praise.
If you look at Metacritic and IMDb, there are actually only 3 horror movies since 2010 that have a Metacritic rating over 70 and
an IMDb rating over 7.5. Those are A Quiet Place, Get Out & Train to Busan. But even among those movies the highest rated one, A Quiet Place, 'only' has a 7.9, which makes it the #92th highest rated movie since 2010. Just think about that. The most acclaimed horror movie of the decade isn't even in the top 90 movies of the decade. And it gets worse, a lot worse, when you look at many horror movies that received universal critical acclaim. Just look at the list below:
Hereditary - 87 MT - still reasonably high at IMDb, but now already at a 56% RT Audience
The Babadook - 86 MT - 6.8 IMDb
The Witch - 83 MT - 6.8 IMDb
It Follows - 83 MT - 6.8 IMDb
The Love Witch - 82 MT - 6.2 IMDb
Annihilation - 79 MT - 7.0 IMDb
It Comes At Night - 78 MT - 6.2 IMDb
We Are What We Are - 71 MT - 5.9 IMDb
Only looking at Rotten Tomatoes percentages, the difference gets even bigger. Movies like We Are Still Here (95% critics, 48% audience) & Willow Creek (86% critics, 33% audience) have even bigger differences. I could go on and on, there are so many recent examples of this. Surpringly, a few of the only acclaimed movies with reasonably positive audience reviews are foreign language horror movies like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night & The Wailing. What's also interesting to see is that most highly rated horror movies this decade on IMDb have Metacritic ratings between 60 and 70. For example I Saw the Devil (7.8 IMDb, 67 MT), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (7.6 IMDb, 65 MT), It (7.5 IMDb, 69 MT), The Conjuring (7.5 IMDb, 68 MT), The Conjuring 2 (7.4 IMDb, 65 MT), Split (7.3 IMDb, 62 MT).
So what is going on? What I see is that most movies with the highest audience ratings have Metacritic ratings between 60 and 70, indicating okay/generally positive reviews. This means that not many people may think they are amazing, but they're usually also safer movies than the ones that get more acclaim. They give the audience what they expect to get and while there may not be many people that love movies like that, there are also not many people that hate those kind of movies. That's why they get pretty good average IMDb ratings. Exceptions aside, most movies that get critical acclaim receive mixed to negative audience reception. Is it because we're living in the time of instant gratification and people don't like 'slow' (horror) movies anymore? Do people only think that fast-paced jumpscares equal true horror and reject everything that doesn't fit that description? Are directors not giving what the audience wants or expects to get? Or are they just bad movies?
It seems like most horror movies with fantastic reviews are slammed by many moviegoers, who say they are
boring, slow etc. There is only a very select group of horror movies that get both audience & critical praise.
If you look at Metacritic and IMDb, there are actually only 3 horror movies since 2010 that have a Metacritic rating over 70 and
an IMDb rating over 7.5. Those are A Quiet Place, Get Out & Train to Busan. But even among those movies the highest rated one, A Quiet Place, 'only' has a 7.9, which makes it the #92th highest rated movie since 2010. Just think about that. The most acclaimed horror movie of the decade isn't even in the top 90 movies of the decade. And it gets worse, a lot worse, when you look at many horror movies that received universal critical acclaim. Just look at the list below:
Hereditary - 87 MT - still reasonably high at IMDb, but now already at a 56% RT Audience
The Babadook - 86 MT - 6.8 IMDb
The Witch - 83 MT - 6.8 IMDb
It Follows - 83 MT - 6.8 IMDb
The Love Witch - 82 MT - 6.2 IMDb
Annihilation - 79 MT - 7.0 IMDb
It Comes At Night - 78 MT - 6.2 IMDb
We Are What We Are - 71 MT - 5.9 IMDb
Only looking at Rotten Tomatoes percentages, the difference gets even bigger. Movies like We Are Still Here (95% critics, 48% audience) & Willow Creek (86% critics, 33% audience) have even bigger differences. I could go on and on, there are so many recent examples of this. Surpringly, a few of the only acclaimed movies with reasonably positive audience reviews are foreign language horror movies like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night & The Wailing. What's also interesting to see is that most highly rated horror movies this decade on IMDb have Metacritic ratings between 60 and 70. For example I Saw the Devil (7.8 IMDb, 67 MT), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (7.6 IMDb, 65 MT), It (7.5 IMDb, 69 MT), The Conjuring (7.5 IMDb, 68 MT), The Conjuring 2 (7.4 IMDb, 65 MT), Split (7.3 IMDb, 62 MT).
So what is going on? What I see is that most movies with the highest audience ratings have Metacritic ratings between 60 and 70, indicating okay/generally positive reviews. This means that not many people may think they are amazing, but they're usually also safer movies than the ones that get more acclaim. They give the audience what they expect to get and while there may not be many people that love movies like that, there are also not many people that hate those kind of movies. That's why they get pretty good average IMDb ratings. Exceptions aside, most movies that get critical acclaim receive mixed to negative audience reception. Is it because we're living in the time of instant gratification and people don't like 'slow' (horror) movies anymore? Do people only think that fast-paced jumpscares equal true horror and reject everything that doesn't fit that description? Are directors not giving what the audience wants or expects to get? Or are they just bad movies?