Editorials
PSA: Horror Movies Don’t Have to Be Scary to Be Good
Greetings fellow horror fans! I wanted to talk about something that has been bugging me for some time now. Too many times I see the argument of “It wasn’t scary” being used when judging the merit of a genre flick on every comment thread. It’s pretty much every time. But here’s my question: When was the last time a horror movie you really liked scared you? I don’t just mean jump scares, as those can actually be ineffective, but I mean actually scared you into leaving lights on and left you thinking about it for days after?
If you’re like me and countless others, you probably have a hard time really letting movies get under your skin. It happens! When we first discover horror, we immerse ourselves totally and never truly come back out again. You sought out the grisliest, disturbed things you could just to see how much you could stand. And then eventually you had seen the “big ones”, like Cannibal Holocaust, Faces of Death, Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, etc… The more you watch, the less frightening everything becomes and a more complex motive for watching evolves.
Why watch horror movies if they don’t scare you? This is a question I’ve gotten from non-horror friends. Fair question but I have an answer. I continue to watch, read, live and breath horror because it’s a never ending quest. I will never, ever run out of horror movies to watch, especially with things like streaming and online shopping, not to mention TV. Not only do I have a pre-existing catalog from around the world, but hundreds of new horror movies come out a year. Is all of it good? Absolutely fucking not. Which brings me to my main point.
Not every horror movie is great, obviously. But not enjoying something because “it wasn’t scary” is always something that irks me. For me, there are many elements that make a movie good and they all apply to any movie no matter the genre. Is the production quality as good as it should be? Is the story well evolved? Are the characters bearable? You get the picture. All of those elements stay in my brain when I’m thinking critically of a movie. And yes, if the movie does happen to scare me once or twice or, in a much rarer occurrence, actually stays with me for a day or so, then I consider that a bonus.
I know that I’m jaded when it comes to scares, more than the standard movie goer. But writing off an entire movie because it didn’t scare you when you are a seasoned viewer seems incredibly backward. We don’t go into the next movie with the same fresh eyes as the first time we saw our first horror movie. It sucks, but we don’t. I used to be guilty of this when I first started to think I’d seen it all but then I started looking at film in a more mentally stimulating level and I realized I could appreciate a cavalcade of thrills.
What do you guys think?
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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