Poll: Is Gore Truly Scary?

[Twilight_guy]

No. Mutilation is scary, death is scary. Gore is just repulsing. repulsing can be used to create scary but on its own is not scary. An open sewage pit is repulsing and revolting, but not really scary (unless you fall in). Gore as a focus is not scary but can make other things scary or create scary.

 

[Reaper195]

To me...gore isn't scary at all. But how it's procured is. Look at the Saw movies. Some of the traps (like the swinging pendulum) seemed really over the top and just wanted to throw blood and guts at the screen....but that pit of needles? Or that massive device which rotates your limbs a full 360? That's creepy. But true horror to me will always be the subtle stuff. The atmosphere, where you actually don't see anything. Somewhat like the Paranormal Ativity monster...only more than a one trick pony. After the first time it grabbed someone, it stopped being surprising and scary. But the build-up was good. Same with the first Dead Space, or Silent Hill 2. Or Amnesia.

But the new Evil Dead, with the exception of the tree rape thing (Because that was just fucked up, even in the orignal, without being overly violent (As non-violent as rape goes...)) looks incredibly dull. The original was alright, but I never considered it scary, probably because I saw it a decade or two after it first came out, as well as already having seen a tonne of horror movies (Good ones, at that). The remake looks so over the top. One can only hope they make sequels and the sequels follow the same style as the original series (From horror film to outright BOOMSTICK!).


So...in summery...gore is not scary. To me.

 

[malestrithe]

By itself, Gore is not scary. It is nothing more than a tool that many people use to highlight certain effects. It can become downright funny if you use too much of it during your movie.

When it's used properly, Gore can highlight a sense of dread.

I am a fan of Less is More horror movies. A barely visible corpse draped on a meat hook will elicit more emotions out of me than a well lit slaughterhouse with a thousand corpses hanging on the hooks. One is an isolated occurance, the other makes it feel common place.

 

[Joccaren]

Its not scary, its just disgusting. I don't feel fear when I see gore, more a slightly sick feeling, growing dependent on how bad it is. From this can come fear of throwing up, but for me gore itself is not scary.

 

[Nexxis]

Personally, I think gore can be scarey if used well. I'm not a huge fan of gorefest films as I feel like they just use gore to get an "ew" out of the audience, and they usually use them to such an extent that it just becomes predictable and boring. For me, gore is scarey when you don't see it coming and it is used in moderation.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

It honestly depends on the context and how it's used. Real-life gore is truly horrifying though, I don't think I've seen a movie, horror or otherwise, capture the intense shock of seeing horrible things happen to another human body. But it can work, even if it doesn't work all the time. An argument can be made for the use of gore as a horror element, certainly.

 

[MammothBlade]

I've been desensitised quite a lot, and splatter gore doesn't scare me at all. I brush off anything if it's just gore- people being disembowelled by a lawnmower, beheaded by a ax crazy psychopath, or being cut into little pieces. It might as well be comedy. There has to be a strong psychological element to it, or I might as well just accept that every character in the film is going to die, and write them off completely. Extraterrestrial, lovecraftian, and psychological terror are the best weapons a horror film can use.