i think theres a weird grey area with being a fan and analysing horror movies where there is some underlying metaphor a director is asking you to examine, but people also completely over analyse them to the point of deconstruction
like, with hereditary, the movie is clearly about a family grieving and a change in dynamic and loss of love mixed with paranoia and cultism and ritual demonology - but people like to completely deconstruct hereditary to the point where ive read people say its not a horror movie, it is a movie about grief - but the point is that if it was an entirely single-minded movie about grieving, theres no real overt reason to make it a bloody, frightening horror movie. like, they didnt need to show a kids decapitated head to talk about how death is hard
i think sometimes its in an effort to intellectualise or forgive the sins of the genre, to make it a digestible metaphor, to ask non-horror audiences to look behind the curtain and see the thematic cogs turning underneath the bloody skin of the genre, to wipe away the red corn syrup and think about what the movie is trying to say - hereditary is about a grieving mother, saw is about the value of life, the vvitch is about the reclamation of gender, the thing is about the fear of HIV, etc. - and while i certainly do think those readings are true, relevant, and often intended, its incorrect to say the movie is ONLY about that theme, its also a horror movie! its about fear and trauma and horror, sometimes it hits the mark and sometimes it doesn’t, but you cant win over people to watching horror by claiming all violence is able to be ignored in favour of non-horror thematics. the horror makes the story
(via katelyndanger)