He also gets, even more fundamentally, that while everyone has buttons, they are very individual with pressure variations, and horror is both individual and universal and where a lot of filmmakers get it wrong
Yes, this. And there's such a variation between what terrifies us and give nightmares, what scares us in a good way (scared, heart pounding, but able to sleep that night) and what just creeps us out and doesn't really work at all (the graphic grossness factor, the "torture porn" which does describe a whole bunch of Hollywood films really well).
Also, all that talking about lions and Watership Down has left me with childhood memories of my own. Firstly, that I watched Watership Down many, many times as a child and other than finding the glowing eyes of the rats extremely scary (I still don't like rats), I liked the film. It was only rewatching as an adult that made me realise how incredibly creepy it is in places. The second is of watching some ABC half hour kids show about a tiger than came out when the clock sturck a certain time at night, and being terrified of that idea. Despite only seeing it once, there are scenes of kids dancing in halls around that tiger that stuck with me as soemthing terrible.
...although, huh, a bit of a google search shows it was an adaptation of "Jandy Malone and the Nine O'Clock Tiger". I think I should re-read that just to prove it's nowhere near as scary as I thought.
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Yes, this. And there's such a variation between what terrifies us and give nightmares, what scares us in a good way (scared, heart pounding, but able to sleep that night) and what just creeps us out and doesn't really work at all (the graphic grossness factor, the "torture porn" which does describe a whole bunch of Hollywood films really well).
Also, all that talking about lions and Watership Down has left me with childhood memories of my own. Firstly, that I watched Watership Down many, many times as a child and other than finding the glowing eyes of the rats extremely scary (I still don't like rats), I liked the film. It was only rewatching as an adult that made me realise how incredibly creepy it is in places. The second is of watching some ABC half hour kids show about a tiger than came out when the clock sturck a certain time at night, and being terrified of that idea. Despite only seeing it once, there are scenes of kids dancing in halls around that tiger that stuck with me as soemthing terrible.
...although, huh, a bit of a google search shows it was an adaptation of "Jandy Malone and the Nine O'Clock Tiger". I think I should re-read that just to prove it's nowhere near as scary as I thought.