10 Scary Movie Classics That Fans Love To Debate

Some fans acknowledge The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a landmark piece of horror and say that the film simply wasn’t for them. Others say the movie lacks any character development and is more annoying than scary.

Those who don’t like The Exorcist are split on whether the film is “boring” or “funny” instead of scary. The detractors also highlight that the film’s reputation precedes it in a way that makes you expect a great movie, and that expectation doesn’t help the film at all—some note, though, that they love The Exorcist III.

Multiple people say that they can’t stand The Shining. Some say they prefer the book and that you can’t enjoy the movie if you’ve read it. Others say Shelly Duvall’s performance and the behind-the-scenes stories of how she was treated ruin the film for them. And, as will become a refrain in this list, some call it “boring.”

One of the earliest cinematic adaptations of Bram Stoker’s classic novel of the same name and the first Universal Monster movie, 1931’s Dracula, is considered a “slog” and “the worst of the Universal classics” by some horror fans.

Several people highlight that Bela Lugosi’s performance as the eponymous vampire is iconic and fantastic in an otherwise not-very-good movie, and one goes so far as to say, “The rest of the movie is a disaster.”

Another film that significantly impacted the history of horror, The Blair Witch Project, has many detractors who see the film as nothing more than “1 hour and 20 minutes of watching three idiots bicker and argue like little kids in the forest.”

It’s a movie that one fan says is a love it or hate it with no middle ground, and there are certainly those who hate it.

John Carpenter’s slasher classic Halloween may be important for bringing the subgenre to the mainstream. But several fright fans find the film, you guessed it, “boring.”

One says, “​​What bothers me the most is that for all intents and purposes, he and Jason could be twins, but Jason manages to have ten times the personality of Myers.”

Speaking of Jason, many fans note that the original Friday the 13th is a ripoff of Halloween meant to cash in on the slasher formula and argue that it’s not even a very good ripoff.

The usual complaint of “boring” is lobbed against the film, but one person goes so far as to call it “one of the top three worst movies in the franchise” in part because it doesn’t feature Jason.

Many horror lovers don’t get the hype about Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead trilogy. Some say the original is cringe, others don’t like how ridiculous the films are, and there are even those that say Army of Darkness is “unwatchable.” There’s significant discussion of the franchise and Raimi’s work in general, with some saying that they love some Evil Dead entries and hate others and a few people saying they find Raimi overrated as a filmmaker.

Suspiria may be the most well-known and well-loved Italian horror movie of all time, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe from complaints.

Most fright fans who dislike the movie call out the overuse of the movie’s prog-rock theme by the band Goblin, and some take issue with everything except the cinematography. One says the film is “like Tommy Wiseau had a really good cinematographer.”

Conversations about movies are undoubtedly prone to hyperbole, but the fan who says the “original Hellraiser is literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen” may take the cake for this discussion.

While they’re not the only horror fan to dislike the movie, they certainly go the furthest; most others focus on the lack of Cenobites in a film ostensibly about those creatures.

This thread inspired this post.

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