FRIGHT NIGHT & CHILD’S PLAY Director Calls “Elevated Horror” Pretentious

Personally, I find the term “Elevated Horror” pretentious. And it looks like I’m not alone as today Child’s Play and Fright Night director Tom Holland says the same.

He tells Collider: “…elevated horror, it sounds pretentious to me. But I’m the guy that did the ’80s and ’90s horror. Now, if you talk to Mike Flanagan, who I think is terrific, he’d probably disagree with me. If you talked to [Andy] Muschietti, he’d probably disagree with me. But you can tell in the reviews. I can’t think of the titles now, but Hereditary is one of them. There’s the one…the guy who gets nominated at Cannes all the time. Yes, there are films that seem to carry more intellectual weight with them. The one about the ballerina that nobody could figure out.”

I think he’s talking about Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria… Maybe Black Swan.

Holland adds: “If you’re talking about something that travels worldwide, and that has a chance of lasting, like, say, The Exorcist, you have to have people that you like in danger. The story has to be simple enough, basically, that you get it in the first…five, seven, eight minutes. Then once you have that, the emotional life of the people involved in the dangerous or traumatic situation, that becomes where you can elevate the film. The emotional life of the characters involved.”

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