The Gore Connoisseurs

The danger with meta horror is that any genuine scares are suffocated with a deluge of nods and winks. The movie can end up looking just a bit too self-satisfied by its discovery that the horror genre is kind of silly and full of clichés. Yes, we have noticed. Films like Scream and Friday the 13th: Jason Lives are outrageously entertaining, but nobody can accuse them of being that scary. You're meant to view everything from an ironic distance and actively enjoy the characters' gruesome deaths. Even Cabin in the Woods , Drew Goddard's mega-ambitious meta horror, isn't that scary. It's very clever and it tries to explore why we love horror so much rather than just poking fun at the genre, but you're unlikely to be screaming in fright. The Cabin in the Woods aka the more successful Evil Dead reboot Ruin Me, Preston DeFrancis's debut film which premiered at the 2017 Screamfest and has recently come to Shudder , may have upped the meta horror ant...

We've been poking around YouTube trying to find the best horror short films so you don't have to. This week: Final Girls by Michelle Hanson Synopsis:  Jessica (Anna Leeper) and Courtney (Cat McApline) are a lesbian couple hiding out in a tent after their friends have been dispatched by a crazed masked killer. Courtney, like the cast of  Scream,  is clearly a horror nerd and has realised that only one of them can survive and become The Final Girl. Background:  The horror genre has a bad rep for its handling of female characters, particularly the "final girl" trope. This slasher flick cliche has a lone women – who is typically presented as less sexual and more intelligent than the other female characters – surviving the carnage. Think Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , Friday the 13th. The trope is still going strong with modern slashers like You're Next  or even Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead remake. Michelle Hanson has tackled this horror trope...

Hereditary 's Twitter account is a constant source of entertainment for me. In the run up to the movie's cinematic release, they've been retweeting the visceral reactions some cinemagoers have been having to the film – from audible screaming to under-the-breath chains of expletives.  Hardened horror fan that I am, I only jumped once when I finally saw the movie. It was scary yes, and expertly made, but there comes a point when horror films don't work the way they used to. I used to be petrified during relatively tame outings like Insidious and The Cabin in the Woods. Now I can watch  Ringu with barely a shudder. There are times, however, when the adrenaline truly started to pump during a horror flick. For those who, like me, are tired of the hyperbolic "will haunt your every waking moment" tosh you get on horror film posters, these pulse-raising moments from classic and modern horror films might actually do it for you. When a tall man breaks into y...