Poll: Is Gore Truly Scary?

[likalaruku]

After watching horror for 22 years, I'm desensitized to gore to the point of finding it funny. Furthermore, I'm familiar with severe medical deformations & have seen every congenital birth defect known to man, & I'm desensitized to that too.

Well, there are a couple of things I won't watch because I find them to be in profoundly bad taste, such as "Slaughtered Vomit Dolls" torture porn exploitation films, & anything with real or fake animal cruelty.

 

[Nouw]

"You don't create fear with gore. You create disgust," as the wise James Cameron once said. I completely agree. Both fear and gore is the sensation of discomfort, but they are different kinds of discomfort for different reasons.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I'm terrified of things being cut, slit, slashed, sliced, etc. Anything mutilation. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it :|

We're exactly the opposite there. I actually like seeing that, in a strange way. xD

I can understand why it would "rub" people the wrong way though!

How can you like seeing it? O.O

Weirdly it's just the actual process of seeing it happen is what freaks me out.

The aftermath doesn't bother me at all..

I have a similar "problem". Chopping, hacking, bludgeoning, gunshot wounds, being torn limb from limb, no problem. As soon as you get a blade being drawn across flesh, doesn't even have to cut, I can't stand it. Most of Texas chainsaw massacre was fine but that bit at the start when the crazy guy starts cutting himself with a razor and then attacks the rest of them...AAAAAAHHHH!

 

[Casual Shinji]

I initially voted 'no', but gore can bring about a terrifying effect by way of bodyhorror (if used correctly).

Cronenberg's The Fly is by no means a scary movie, but it is a horrific movie that does facinate and captivate through the use of physical deformaties.

Gore is fear of the physical and our own body, while the traditional "scary" is fear of the psychological and our own mind.

 

[RustlessPotato]

Not really. Gore usually brings out disgust etc... A good "scary" film will have you tense and watch over your shoulders. That's why I don't count the Saw films etc as scary. It doesn't make me tense. It doesn't make me say "what's that sound" when I hear my cat doing its nightly antics at night .

 

[Gaiseric]

Not scary. Unnerving at times, but not scary.

To me gore in a horror movie can make me think, "Uh oh, stuff is definitely going down" and if done right can help set the scene. That's as far as it goes for me though.

 

[Amaury_games]

I thought Inconvenient Truth was terrifying, but don't find Gore all that scary anymore.

Truly terrifying.

What makes this most funny for me is that Al Gore was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this thread's title and I had to ponder for a sec "Wow! I didn't know Al Gore made people so uncomfortable with his movie and message that people are really scared of him now!"

XD

 

[Harker067]

It depends on how its used. This is like asking are vampires scary? They can be but they aren't necessarily scary either.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

No, gore is just gruesome. You want to scare me? Show me LESS, not more.

 

[Pink Gregory]

No, gore is just gruesome. You want to scare me? Show me LESS, not more.

John Carpenter would disagree.

I remember watching an interview with him as part of a documentary on the history of horror movies (can't even remember the title, Mark Gatiss was involved, BBC); apparently Carpenter isn't a fan of showing less, expressing a dislike for Val Lewton's techniques in particular (Lewton pioneered using unexpected, but familiar sounds as shock after building up tension, commonly referred to as the 'Lewton bus', due to a scene in his film 'Cat People', in which the protagonist is shocked by a bus suddenly letting off its air brakes)

Not really relevant, just an innaresting perspective.

I can't remember what the series was called, so I can't really give you the source material, but it's a great documentary series.

 

[kickyourass]

Not by itself, just seeing a guy get his head lopped off is not scary, and giving it some sort of insane blood effect just makes it silly most of the time. But if used right it can be pretty terrifying, like for example John Carpenter's The Thing, that movie makes even the smallest drop of blood feel like the scariest thing ever.

 

[shrekfan246]

Not if it's in a film.

But I've seen some photos on a Cracked article about old fashioned medical treatments they used to do and I really felt sick.

As well as a video of some guy who cracked his face in half right down the middle.

Both got to me because they were real, and I knew (or thought) they were.

Ooh. You got me with that one.

Yeah, what he said. Movies and games are always a bit stylized and 'clean' when it comes to this stuff, so it never really hits home, but when you see the reality there's some truly gruesome shit out there.

So yeah, I'd say if it's real, then it can be creepy/scary/disconcerting/unnerving/whatever other synonyms you want to use.

If it's fake, not so much, but it can help contribute to an overall atmosphere of dread and hopelessness.

 

[Thistlehart]

Gore isn't scary. It is unsettling. Horror movies tend to include a lot of gore for some folks gore is what defines the genre (and perhaps why it has gotten rather toothless in some cases), so I'll address the inquiry thus...

I came to a realization some time ago when I went with a friend to see the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. We didn't make it through the first half hour of the movie before we just got up and walked out.

We went there to be scared, not grossed out.

Some time afterward, I picked up 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King, wanting a good creepy vampire read. What I got was more sickening imagery.

In each case I was horrified, but I wasn't scared. These experiences led me to a realization.

Horror isn't scary. It's just unsettling. A better term to describe the kind of scares most people expect from horror would be "suspense" or perhaps "thrills". When going to a horror movie, people expect something that will put them on the edge of their seat and make them scream or jump when something weird happens; Paranormal Activity (cue laughter), The Grudge, The Thing, hell even Critters are good examples of this. They all build tension, bit by bit, and then release it in a bowel-shuddering howl of activity.

Don't get me wrong. Horror movies often include elements of suspense, often some of the best horror movies are full of suspense leading up to knots of writhing gore that serve as the climactic scare, i.e. The Thing. I just think that horror is a misused term as far as entertainment media goes.

 

[DugMachine]

Well growing up on violent video games I'm pretty desensitized to it. So it isn't scary but extremely realistic gore can still make me shudder from time to time. But I'm not a horror fan and mixing jump scares, extreme gore and creepiness all in one never sat well with me.

I can handle gore/horror games way better than movies for some reason. Guess because I have control

 

[Playing The System]

Gore to me can just be disturbing if done right in a movie, don't see it as a point to be scary just something to make you go "Blehh".

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

Well, you get movies like Hellraiser and Evil dead that combine gore and suspense with terrifying results, rather than just chucking a mutilated corpse at you and saying BOO! When you can make someone terrified BEFORE you've even hinted at throwing a corpse at them, you're doing something right. Gore is more... Shocking, than scary. It's like Dead Space Vs Amnesia. Dead Space simply jumps out on you, waves it's bloody tendrils at you, hits you in the face with a brick and you're scared for a second before continuing to live your life (Or not, it happens) whereas amnesia Threatens to wave it's bloody tendrils for a while, and leaves you to imagine ust how bloody these tendrils are, and how much that brick is gonna hurt, and what's gonna happen, and ooo, scared now.

It's like that.

 

[DrBonBon]

Gore is a useful tool that needs to be used right to get results. Case in point, The godfather of gore, Lucio Fulci and the classic Zombie:

Spoiler: Ouch!