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Introducing: Horror Movie Madness

on horror, horror movie madness, movies

This is going to be fun.

I love horror movies. I love them! More than any kind of movie. It’s not March anymore, and it’s not yet October, but I thought it would be fun to match my favorite horror films against each other, March Madness bracket-style. I love too many horror movies to limit myself to just the traditional 64, which means this bracket will be SUPER SIZED with 128 MOVIES in 8 CATEGORIES.

I’ll be doing one match-up at a time until I'm done, and will explain my rationale for choosing the winner of each. If I had graphic skills I’d make a nice bracket graphic, but here is the slate for Round One! I'll delve more into my thinking behind my division of these films into each of these categories as I write about them.

Monster Mash: The Monstrous

Some of the oldest and finest works in the genre allow us to explore our fear of the other, the unknown, the almost-but-not-quite human. Here you get your witches, your zombies, your Draculas. If it’s a monster with supernatural origins, it belongs here. The sixteen films competing will be:

It's Alive: Mad Science

Not every monster has supernatural origins, however: some are made in labs. If the weird shit going on has a pseudo-scientific justification (no matter how ridiculous), it belongs here. Here you find your rogue scientists, your genetic splicing, and your evil aliens. The sixteen films competing will be:

Three Final Girls Walk Into A Bar: Meta Horror and Horror Comedy

Comedy and horror are sister genres, and some of the earliest films blend the two. Here you’ll find not only horror parodies but films that use horror tropes to comedic effect. This is horror poking fun at itself. The sixteen films competing will be:

All Day Permanent Red: The Slasher

There’s horror that’s clever, there’s horror that’s cerebral, there’s horror that’s more quietly haunting than terrifying. And there’s horror that’s nothing but blood, blood, and more blood. Some of the films I picked for this category are more proto-slasher than true slasher, but they are all full of murder. The sixteen films competing will be:

Haves and Have-Nots: Home Invasion Horror

They say that your home is the place where when you go there, they have to let you in. It’s also the place where sometimes people in masks will break in and try to murder you for no reason. Nothing can highlight class tensions quite like a good home invasion story. The sixteen films will be:

Whatever Walks There, Walks Alone: The Haunted House

Not all dangers invade a home; some come attached to it. Whether it’s a house, a castle, a school, or a hotel: if people live there and ghosts do too, it belongs here. The sixteen films competing will be:

God Won’t Help You Now: Religious Horror

This was a trend in horror that exploded in the late sixties and early seventies: when young people were rejecting social convention on a mass scale and everyone was afraid of all institutions breaking down. But even before that, there was nothing scarier than the devil. The sixteen films competing will be:

The Monster In The Mirror: Socially Conscious Horror

Look, nearly all horror has subtext of one kind or another. It’s a genre that runs on subtext. And how can we better examine the state of society than by examining what scares us? Many of the films in other categories have rich political themes, but this category is for the films in which the sub-textual is made textual. These films have messages. The sixteen competing are:

Caroline

I read a lot of books and watch a lot of movies. I like to talk about them and bore people to death. Now I'll write about them.

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