I’ve realized that there is one type of plot that I hate: something is happening that one of the main protagonists is not aware of and we see him/her getting deeper and deeper into problems without even realizing it.
It’s often played for laughs in comedies and romcoms: look, he’s making a fool of himself and he doesn’t even know it. So funny. Except NOT. It just makes me cringe to the point where I want to leave the room.
But you find something similar in some horror movies, a genre that I love. The worst for me was The Last House on the Left in which… things happen to two teenagers while the parents of one of them are busy preparing a surprise birthday party for her. Just typing this makes me squirm. That’s the only horror movie that I stopped watching and turned off the TV. And I didn’t even have kids at the time.
My wife also can’t stand to watch anything where kids are put in harm’s way since we’ve had a child of our own. I does change the emotional valence for me, but don’t shun it.
There really aren’t genres that I used to like but can’t stand anymore. However, the type of movie called Torture Porn was never of interest to me. The perfectly innocent movie review website where I first read about Human Centipede I have never returned to from the moment I realized what the movie was about, and I wish the culture would stop making references to the film.
I don’t think I’ve seen a horror movie in about a decade. It really just gets annoying how they’re driven by people being stupid. That and I’m pretty done with zombie movies (though I guess that’s a subgenre).
Although I’ve never enjoyed gore, it is not the blood but the character’s distress that does it for me. You can cut off someone’s leg, but if you focus the camera on their face and the screaming, I’ll turn it off immediately. I only lasted through the first 30 minutes or so of “District 9” - the guy was in too much pain.
I make an exception for “The Human Centipede”; it’s so over the top, it crossed the line into hilarious right at the beginning and just kept on going.
Additionally, I’ve noticed my tolerance for bathroom humour wane as I get older. Every fart or vomit scene, especially used for the purpose of comedy, immediately lowers my internal rating of the film by about 20%. I get it, the character needs to puke; there are so many ways to suggest it without showing their mouth.
I’m with you there. I can’t stand it when an animal dies, even off-screen. There’s probably something wrong with me, because it bothers me way more than when humans die.
I kinda like over-the-top gory films, because I find them silly, and I don’t really “see” the violence, I see the special effect. For me, it’s like watching a magic trick, and trying to figure out how it’s done.
These movies are a lot less fun now that the answer is “CGI” 90% of the time.
I never liked really horrifically gory films, I think I’ve seen about 1/3 of a Saw film and that is more than enough. It definitely takes more skill to make a disturbing film without the gore, something like 1408 is pretty terrifying but there’s very little blood spilt. I never really enjoyed toilet humour either, although as I’ve aged I’ve become more appreciative of irreverent comedies.
I’ve long lost my tolerance for long fight scenes and car chase scenes. They have a reverse-effect on me actually. The more explosions - the more bored I feel and the more I can’t wait for it to be over.
The original was one of the few movies to make me feel a little sick. I still find I have been able to watch it again, though not very often.
The remake, bleh, just another terrible mistake where the people making it didn’t understand the original at all and just turned out a piece of garbage, like Godzilla 1998 or Ghostbusters 2016.
Same here. Interesting that you should mention 1408: it’s the only recentish horror movie that I’ve found really scary. It reminded me of the sort of movies that would give me nightmares when I was kid (main character faced with increasingly creepy happenings in a place he unexplainably can’t get out of). That’s the way you do it IMHO.
I was talking about the original. I’ve never seen the remake.
I’m kind of the exact opposite, a jump scare horror movie does nothing for me if it isn’t actually scary. For example if Green Room weren’t gratuitous it wouldn’t have been half as good.
Most people think you stop enjoying violent media when you have kids because you envision them in perilous situations so often (I’ve heard.)