My son was hell-bent on seeing The Exorcist from an early age … begged and carried on and we were, like, “No … far too shocking and intense for a young mind!” I remembered writing the local ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh when I was a kid because the tv trailers for it scared the hell out of me (and they sent a note back on station letterhead apologizing).

We finally gave in when he was maybe ten and let him watch it. He was happy to see the actual upstream of decades of pop culture references, but when it was over he just sat there and said “that’s it?” Completely nonplussed. Just went upstairs to play Minecraft or whatever.

He’s home from college this month and it came up because of the new sequel coming out and he was very clear on why it hadn’t phased him years ago: “You and mom raised me atheist. Why would I be afraid of demonic possession?”

I was raised agnostic and for years I couldn’t understand why people found religious themed horror scary, until one day I realized “Oh, they think this might actually happen to them”. It’s a strange phenomenon to observe from outside. Horror based on the mythology of other cultures is out there though, it’s just not widely available because of western hegemony.

no, demons are not exclusive to christians. there’s differences, i’m not sure how often you’d encounter “possession” in China but certainly a malevolent spirit taking a human or familiar face, which is a pretty close kind of scare imo.

and of course devils/demons are pretty similar in jewish & islamic folklore to the christian versions

They might not have the same properties, but evil spirits that control people are present in lots of folklore throughout the world

100%. Officialy Catholics aren’t even supposed to do exorcisms. Most mainline protestants don’t do it either. It’s mostly wacky evangelicals and christian fascists.

I saw a Turkish horror movie a while back that was also possession by a djinn so that is a concept in Islam as well. It was pretty good but I forget the name ( it was a sequel ). The main heroine was

I watch those movies and cheer for the demon

God yes. I hated the Paranormal Activity movies which nearly put me to sleep, and idk if it’s changed at all recently but there were so many identical haunted house movies that came along with it, and I couldn’t get into them at all. They’re all stifilingly predictable.

I want a movie where it starts out like it’s a typical evil ghost movie but it turns out the ghost isn’t evil and it’s actually a psychological horror deconstructing how someone relates to something they don’t understand and can’t control. The only times I’ve seen a subversion like that, it’s always “This ghost wasn’t evil, in fact it was holding back this other ghost that’s the real problem.” I’d also love to see movies with supernatural beings that don’t fit into clear good/evil categories. You could totally do a horror movie about some kind of fey or trickster spirit (pronouns check out) that isn’t driven by hate or revenge, but simply doesn’t place any value on human life.

Instead it’s always, "This spirit suffered from some past wrong, and now it’s irrationally angry at me, and I need to figure out how to make it shut up and leave me alone, and obviously nothing can be done to address its irrational grievances, and the only question is whether to the solution is to call an exorcist and forcibly put it down, or to understand its pain and say “I’m sorry” .

But then, a movie that deviates from and deconstructs this formula would be critiquing the typical target audience for haunted house movies so it probably wouldn’t be very popular.

I wasn’t raised religious but liberalism itself is fundamentally mystical which is why even debatebro atheists can be frightened by this shit. Despite not being raised religious, I still believed in god and ghosts and demons even as a teenager. I liked The Exorcist but also didn’t find it terribly frightening? A movie like Threads, on the other hand, is terrifying and depressing. Nothing is more frightening than fascism, liberalism, capitalism, settler colonialism, imperialism.

four olds campaign against christianity

I mean, obviously?

If the audience had to believe in the premise of the horror movie to be scared by it, you’d think movies about cursed VHS tapes or guys with knife-gloves who haunt dreams would have flopped. I can kinda see where you’re coming from in that I found myself nonplussed by Hellraiser II because I don’t believe in a dimension of pure evil, but I think that’s more Hellraiser II being a shitty movie and failing to draw me in than anything about religion.

.rec has a pretty neat double supversion of posession and zombie movies.

There was that really goofy action movie years back where the angels decide to wipe out humanity for some reason but one angel decides to save baby jesus 2.0. Lots of dumb gunfights it’s great.

The old Keanu Reeves Constantine movie was really dumb fun.

Frighteners is an ancient horror comedy about a fraud excorcist and his ghost buddies stumbling on something truly frightening.

Silent Hill is.a pretty neat movie. Almost all the protagonists are women and no one does anything silly

Fallen is a neat, albeit copaganda, supernatural thriller from way back in 98.

Dogma is an old comedy that’s kind of a take that to a lot of silly catholic shit. Features J and Silent Bob. Very lib, very 90s.

100%, I have never given a single shit about the last decade of “The Haunting in the Conjuring House with the Exorcism of the Scary Nun Doll” movies for exactly this reason

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