Cube wasn’t a shitty film, though. It was clever, and had a strong meaning, and was made on a shoestring budget.

I wasn’t saying that they are “shitty films” - movies like saw, etc are clearly popular, but don’t have the drama (as in acting, not crazy coworkers) that film reviewers like.

The problem for movies like Get Out and the quiet one (blanking on the name), is that they get placed in the “horror” bucket, which is increasingly dominated by the Saw-style torture porn movies.

I’m not entirely sure that I particularly buy the articles arguments, I think it’s more a reflection of which sub-genre is perceived by the general populace as reflecting the genre as a whole. As with many things the dominant sub-genre changes over time. The author seems to want a specific sub-genre to be regarded as the actual definition of the whole genre rather than allowing the overall perception of what a genre should be to change over time.

For instance the article is talking about the horror genre, and the torture vs suspense sub genres. But we can look elsewhere as well - compare what was considered an “action” movie in the 80s, vs 90s, vs 00s, vs today. We can see as the popularity of different genres ebbs over time. For action movies the sub genres /could/ be meaningful plot vs explosions and everywhere in between. Modern action movies (super heroes) try to have character development, 80s and 90s less so (predator, which might also be considered “horror”).

And I’m rambling incoherently so I’ll be off :)

I'll ramble on... I don't know, I certainly think that older action movies engage me more than new super hero movies in terms of characters. To some extent I guess it boils down to the fact that it's hard to suspend disbelief and make the protagonist relatable when he's got magic powers that he only uses while wearing spandex/latex.

Even the soldiers in The Predator seem more relatable and develop in more interesting and believable ways. Given their backgrounds, they react to the circumstances in plausible ways. The film doesn't hand you their backgrounds by having the first 30 minutes be some sort of genesis story and a montage, but by having the characters do what they do in a way that tells us more and more about them as the film progresses. I wouldn't call The Predator "subtle" but everything is relative.

There is a unique problem though.

If you have a shitty action movie, it'll still have action. Some fantasy movie will still have some fantasy and story telling, no matter how shitty. Even the shittiest B-movies manage to tell a story and have some action, which is fine for the genre, you get some of it.

But with horror the problem is that if you fuck it up, you don't get horror, you get torture porn or reflex training (jump scare). If you don't nail the horror, it seizes to be horror.

I don't think it's a unique problem. An action movie that fails to instill a sense of action is just as bad as a horror movie that fails to instill a sense of horror.

For example, I tried going through some of the later Steven Seagal flicks lately. The way they're cut and the pacing make them absolutely boring. The stories they tell aren't cohesive, and the action is the closest thing to stills of Seagal's limbs you'll get before you'd have to call them slideshows. Those are bad action movies, and I suspect that what you call bad action movies are actually just campy/shoestring/"so-bad-they're-funny" yet entertaining action movies.

Same for fantasy. If your fantasy film is utterly mundane, unoriginal and uninspiring it'll fail to deliver the fantastic. Not to mention comedy. If your comedy is not funny what's left is often a really thin plot revolving around unrelatable characters under unbelievable circumstances. Drama film has no drama if you don't care about any of the characters.

I'd still call these horror, action, fantasy, comedy and drama films, respectively. As much as I think it's bad, the intent is obvious, and a bad genre film is just one that was really bad at achieving it.

All kinds of film can fail (or be good) both at their genre, whatever it is, and at basic style and storytelling. For example, A Quiet Place maintains tension well, but it squanders its coherence and ruins a potentially great novel premise with pointless music and improbably contrived opportunities to let the characters speak.