Editorials
These Secret Netflix Genre Categories Will Help With Your Horror Binges
You’ve just finished binging the entirety of Stranger Things Season 2. You stare blankly at the red glow of the Netflix logo on your screen. Surely, you can just find something else to watch amongst the myriad of titles offered through the streaming platform.
We’ve all been there, though. We start perusing through “Suggestions For You.” Nothing there sparks your interest. We move to browsing various genres, typically “Horror.” Still, there are so many options. You click one title, read the reviews, drop it in your queue. “I’ll come back to it.” A lot of times I’ll spend upwards of an hour just surfing through the films without being able to make up my mind. The truth is, there’s just TOO MUCH to choose from. And the current available categories are less than helpful, often so generic they cover a wide swath of different types of flicks. “Teen Screams” for instance is home to Yoga Hosers as well as Stake Land and Troll Hunter. And just how precisely do they differentiate between “Creature Features” and “Monster Films”?
Well, earlier today, I was scrolling through reddit in regards to the new-to-me service from Mitch Lowe (co-founder of Netflix), Moviepass. I ended up tumbling down a reddit rabbit hole and discovered this nifty little Netflix hack. Essentially, Netflix breaks all their films down into subcategories on the backend, but you can easily access these lists yourself by using different ID numbers. While it appears What’s On Netflix listed this “ID Bible” two years ago (again, new-to-me), I took it upon myself to dive through and pull out all the horror related subcategories for your pleasure.
The way it works is simple. First, you must already be logged in to your Netflix account. In the address bar, simply copy and paste this:
“http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/1111”
To locate a specific category listed below, merely replace the “1111” (unless you’re looking for a courtroom mystery apparently) with one of the IDs below.
Of course, the benefit of this is that by narrowing down your choices to a much more specific grouping of films, you’re likely to spend less time searching and more time actually watching a damn movie! I’ve included every possible genre related subcategory I came across. You might find that a few are currently empty…that’s because Netflix is constantly cleaning house. Thankfully, these codes don’t seem to change, so you can always drop in later to see if they’ve built the stock of titles back up. I’ve also included the IDs for the categories already present on the site, just in case they were to be removed anytime in the near future from the main “Horror” page.
Netflix Sub-Category IDs
Action Sci-Fi & Fantasy – 1568
Action Thrillers – 43048
Alien Sci-Fi – 3327
Anime Fantasy – 11146
Anime Horror – 10695
Anime Sci-Fi – 2729
B-Horror Movies – 8195
Classic Sci-Fi & Fantasy – 47147
Classic Thrillers – 46588
Creature Features – 6895
Crime Thrillers – 10499
Cult Horror Movies – 10944
Cult Movies – 7627
Cult Sci-Fi & Fantasy – 4734
Deep Sea Horror Movies – 45028
Experimental Movies – 11079
Fantasy Movies – 9744
Film Noir – 7687
Foreign Horror Movies – 8654
Foreign Sci-Fi & Fantasy – 6485
Foreign Thrillers – 10306
Horror Comedy – 89585
Horror Movies – 8711
Independent Thrillers – 3269
Monster Movies – 947
Mysteries – 9994
Political Thrillers – 10504
Psychological Thrillers – 5505
Satanic Stories – 6998
Sci-Fi & Fantasy – 1492
Sci-Fi Adventure – 6926
Sci-Fi Dramas – 3916
Sci-Fi Horror Movies – 1694
Sci-Fi Thrillers – 11014
Slasher and Serial Killer Movies – 8646
Spy Thrillers – 9147
Steamy Thrillers – 972
Supernatural Horror Movies – 42023
Supernatural Thrillers – 11140
Teen Screams – 52147
Thrillers – 8933
TV Horror – 83059
TV Mysteries – 4366
TV Sci-Fi & Fantasy – 1372
Vampire Horror Movies – 75804
Werewolf Horror Movies – 75930
Zombie Horror Movies – 75405
Whatever your specific taste may be or whatever mood you may find yourself in tonight – hopefully one of these hidden Netflix Categories will guide you to a night spent watching a cool new flick instead of hours spent surfing the never-ending Netflix “Horror” page.
Editorials
Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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