The horror film industry is not perceived as "high" art, but among the representatives of this genre there are a lot of really decent and smart films that make the viewer think about important issues
Horror for many viewers is a genre of "low" art. Yes, indeed, a "ton" of clichéd films with the same plot are released per year, after watching which the viewer, probably, will not even shudder. But on the verge of horror, thriller and beautiful visuals, sometimes what I personally would call art and deep cinema is born. Attitude to this genre, you will be helped to change several directors and their works.
Guillermo del Toro ("The Devil's Ridge" and "Pan's Labyrinth")
Guillermo del Toro is a scary visual. Terrible, of course, in a good meaning. For him, the aesthetics of fear and horror are almost a religion, and the monsters in films are not soulless scarecrows (Faun and the Pale Man from Faun's Labyrinth, for example).
The Devil's Ridge is the first film in Guillermo's planned trilogy, the second is known to be Pan's Labyrinth, and the third will never be released. The script was written by the director while still in college, and the film was produced by Pedro and Augustin Almodovara. The film tells the story of a 12-year-old boy Carlos, whose dad died in the war (Spanish Civil War 1939), fighting on the side of the Republicans. He ends up in an orphanage where children with similar fates live, but the boy does not tie up with peers and he finds a battered ghost friend in the basement.
The film is, of course, filled with realism, gore, headshots, etc. Guillermo managed to catch the idea of how to show the world of war through the eyes of a child. And to convey the idea that war is not only where there is battle, there is war in every day, where pain and fear and horror are opposed to love, friendship, hope.
The mystical component of such a film acts only as an assistant for revealing the plot and character of the characters. Mysticism and drama come out in a beautiful, atmospheric symbiosis. It seems that if "The Devil's Ridge" showed the harsh reality in the prism of boyish eyes, then the terrible time in Spain, 1944, the times of Franco's dictatorship and the cruel persecution of all dissent are shown in the fantasy world of a little girl. Many have compared the work of Guillermo and Alice in Wonderland. Although the picture as a whole is a parody of the world of that time, Pan's Labyrinth shows how a child perceives the world around him through the prism of his own feelings. The fantasy world and the real world are connected through this "labyrinth", and the main thing in the fantasy world is the main character's dad.
Juan Bayon (Shelter)
This is the first full-length film directed by Guillermo del Toro. This is a very, very scary story. She is scary not with ghosts, but with her feelings, thoughts and allusions to reality.
The film tells about a husband and wife who have a little adopted son. The mother of the family returns back to the orphanage, where she spent her childhood until she was adopted herself. She is obsessed with reopening the orphanage for sick children. But their whole idyll is ruined by the fact that their son is missing. I will not hide the film striking the ending, for the sake of it it is worth watching. But philosophical moments about loneliness and love are also drawn to the surface. Parents do not listen to their son, they do not see those calls that he gives them. Parents do not listen to each other either. Sometimes the truth of life is much more terrible than any mysticism.
Darren Aronofsky ("Mom!")
The cast is amazing: Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem are the main parents here, Edd Haris is a minor one.
The heroes have no names, the whole story revolves around He and She. He is a creator and he has a creative crisis, but the heroine will finally live up to the title of the film, having become pregnant, and her husband will come out of the crisis and begin to write a new masterpiece. A film about … a patriarchal system of values, I would say so. About the suppression of a woman, because He does not need her, He needs a muse in her. The film turned out to be completely non-genre and experimental, with biblical overtones, a reference to Mom! as to Mother Earth. The film has been compared to Kubrick's The Shining and Rosemary's Baby by Polanski, but Aronofsky is not Kubrick or Polanski. Aronofsky is an original and looking for a new director. And it seems in his search he succeeded.
