Horror, trash tier: the movie Oculus, which I once watched having decided I had abstained from horror far too long. Manipulative and meaningless, it didn’t make a good case for lifting the ban. Some cool scares: I have seen the Devil, and he is me. Yet you kinda wish you had looked away–it’s just not worth it. At night you still think about it.
Horror, genuine tier: the movie Hereditary. Garden variety supernatural tropes shot through astonishingly un-subtle familial grief porn. Narrative vision that’s both over the top in its drama and wonderfully abstracted, so you have to work for it. The horror is as deterministic as in Oculus yet doesn’t feel meaningless so much as unknowable, as befits tragedy. You never wish you had looked away. At night you still think about it.
Horror, abstract tier: that time when you were alone in the flat and you heard that strange sound like a creaking megaphone and for a moment you went back to that idea that your entire life is a simulation made to cover up the reality of slaving away at some hellhole, not so much The Matrix as the Tethered from US even though it wasn’t out yet. At night, you still think about it.
the Budafoki amended 