Today’s movie just managed to sneak into the Time Out Top 100 horror films and it is as madcap and grotesque as advertised. Another product of the apparent eighties horror boom, Re-Animator (1985) is filled with gore, wackiness and crazy characters. It’s largely about two medical students in an American university: the first one, Dan, is pretty straight-laced, the second one, Herbert, who becomes Dan’s roommate is a complete loose cannon. Essentially Herbert has been transferred in from Germany, is generally very odd and seems to have figured out how to “re-animate” dead things.

It contains all of the hallmarks of a good eighties film, or a good horror film, or a good eighties horror film; it’s gruesome, silly, unpredictable, the special effects are outlandish (check out the fluorescent re-animating serum), there’s gratuitous nudity aligned with gory/hilarious sexual practices, and an ending that is predictably unpredictable.

“Cat dead. Details later.”

What are the best bits (intentionally-vague slight-spoilers)? So many special effects. The whole Herbert West character, who is a fantastic anti-hero. It cracks along. It manages to take some recurring motifs that are typical of film/storytelling and inverts them (I’m thinking of the resuscitation scene amongst others). There’s a really nice Frankenstein vibe.

What are the worst bits? People still make strange decisions about the best course of action to take in any given situation, but the whole film is strange, so that makes it ok. It doesn’t suffer from an adherence to reality.

Have you learned anything else about horror films recently? I feel like the last few days/films haven’t added much to my general knowledge or insights, into horror films as a genre. Sadly, it feels like I’m beginning to form a rough estimation of what to expect, or what I might ‘prefer’ when it comes to horror. This may be due to some sort of horror ‘fatigue’ from spending every evening watching a new film, many of which rely on gore, or shock value, to carry a thin story. Unfortunately, whilst there have been instances of gore (or at least impressive special effects) that I’ve enjoyed, I do seem to struggle with ‘shock.’ I think the most impressively ‘shocking’ scene I’ve seen so far might be towards the end of Hereditary, but I can’t say it was particularly scary or unsettling.

So are horror films about being scared? I think that maybe they’re not and that might be something I’ve learned over the month. Scary films do not have to be scary, or at least not for everyone. Horror, therefore, cannot be judged purely on their ability to frighten or even disgust as, certainly from my subjective viewpoint, that’s pretty difficult to achieve with fictional (and generally unlikely) scenarios. The movies I’ve enjoyed most so far haven’t tried too hard to be frightening or clever. There may be a little more to learn, but I think I’m mostly going to be relieved when this is over…