Community: Real Life

All blood and no guts


Jessica Thornsby

Jessica graduated from Bolton University. She loves restaurants, takeaways, coffee shops, chewing gum and playing the same CDs over and over again.

Jessica loves horror films but gets annoyed when buckets of blood substitute a gripping plot.

When my boyfriend told me he had to write an assignment on the current state of a film genre, I couldn't wait to stick my nose in. "Well, if it was me, I'd do horror," I said, launching into a rant about the unpleasantness of most modern horror films, particularly the current slew of gorno movies. These films are horror films where the horror is based solely on the levels of blood and guts in them. This has led many to dub them 'gore pornography,' shortened to 'gorno.'

An obvious example of gorno is Hostel. The film sees a bunch of hapless tourists tied up and tortured by rich business people who get a kick out of inflicting pain. I did try to watch it, but when the victim started screaming that they'd rather not be hacked up with a chain saw and they'd really like to be untied, I grew so uncomfortable that I had to switch it off.

The only scary thing about gorno is that people are willing to pay to watch them. Surely this casts both torturer and viewer in uncomfortably similar roles, as they both become gore-voyeurs, getting entertainment out of someone else's pain?

"Buckets of blood just leave many of us feeling nauseous, uncomfortable and not in the least bit frightened."

I may be coming across as a major wimp, but I love horror, and if that horror comes with lashings of blood, then fair enough. It's not the actual gore that's the problem but the fact that gore is replacing everything that I used to love about horror movies. Scream was gory, and it was great. That opening scene is perfection; imagine being home alone in the middle of nowhere, knowing that a killer's prowling around outside! Compared to that, someone getting their fingers cut off with a pen knife seems both obscene and strangely pathetic. All the classic horror movies work because they have situations you can all too easily imagine yourself in, and moments where you jump and scream and then laugh at yourself for getting so worked up over something that's not real. They're scary, but they're also good fun, and that's where horrors currently being churned out by Hollywood are going wrong. Buckets of blood just leave many of us feeling nauseous, uncomfortable and not in the least bit frightened.

But it's not just gornos that are sending the horror genre to an early grave, it's also the use of cheap scare tactics that may make you jump, but will leave you feeling tricked and cheated. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen a cat leap out of a cupboard at the heroine, accompanied by an excruciating screech that'll make you jolt in your seat simply because it's so loud. (You may think I'm making this up, but now it's been brought to your attention you'll start to notice just how many cat attacks there are in cookie-cutter horrors.) Or, even more cliché is the home-alone heroine who, upon hearing a noise in another part of the house, creeps through darkened, deathly silent rooms until she bumps into a college friend who has come to make sure she's OK. "You scared me!" the heroine will gasp, "But the front door was open!" the friend will reply, and the movie audience will groan, "Not this again!"


Films like Scream didn't need to stoop to this, and neither did bone-fide horror classics such as Cujo, The Shining or The Birds. No wonder world cinema horrors are starting to crop up in our shops. At least they haven't replaced genuinely spine-tingling moments with guts and gore, or cheap scare tactics.

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