>well you know niggas be here. always hyping up certain titles
>yet clearly not respecting the genre in which they're in.
>
>Folk love this movie. But scariest film in years? now we're
>deciding what "Contemporary horror" is...OK

I'm not deciding what "contemporary horror" is. You define it how you want. I'm defining it as "films that can be defined as horror that came out over the last several years." I'm no expert on the particulars, nor would I claim to be.

But I've seen some James Wan joints, some of those haunted house joints, and some of the gorefest joints over the past several years. I try to see the ones that would qualify as "major." They all successfully startled me. The Babadook made me want to go to sleep with the lights on. So, out of all contemporary films that can loosely qualify as existing within the horror genre, this was the best one to me. By far.

I watched it a second time. Same result. Same goosebumps. Hiding my eyes even though I knew what was happening.

I'm sorry that it didn't scare you the way it scared me. I was really hopeful that we could all agree that this movie was outstanding in every way, otherwise I wouldn't have propped it up the way that I did. I could talk about all of the things I love about this movie for hours. (And I have.) And I would still love to, especially with my friends who are scary movie fanatics.

I put this next to Blair Witch and the first Paranormal Activity in the category of "movies that successfully freaked me the fuck out." Probably the only three movies in my lifetime that have made me feel that way. I love it that much. And honestly, because those are found footage style and this one is simply sleek brilliant filmmaking, there's plenty about this film that I love even more than the other two.

This is my opinion. It's neither genre disrespect nor intentional hyperbole (I think you'd agree I rarely engage in hyperbole on PTP solely to stir the pot... I'm not one of those). It's just how I felt, because I was so damn excited about how the great the movie is. And I still am.

Don't get hung up on my opinion about how scary the film is. Get hung up on how fucking brilliant the filmmaking is. Let's focus on that and talk about that. That will be more fun than the inevitable "these are scarier"/"no, I don't think so" back and forths.

I can't tell people what scares them more, this or The Conjuring. This scared me more. By a lot. Different things scare different people. And a fucking brilliantly written/directed/acted/edited film scared the piss out of me.