horror/slasher flicks - can benefit from the contagious sense of dozens or even hundreds of viewers reacting simultaneously.
I'm not a big fan of contagions either.
Any opinions about whether a movie is "good" or "bad" are, of course, completely subjective.
Our feelings about films are definitely subjective. But if we actually try, we can take that subjective experience and try and justify it using all sorts of objective measures. No, it never fully becomes a purely objective way to determine a films quality, but it's also not as easy as blowing everything off with the 'everybody's opinions are equally valid' piffle. They're not.
But it is fairly objective to say that the majority of people who have seen the movie enjoyed it and had a good time watching it.
I'm happy for them. But if those people try to convince me of the movies worth simply by explaining to me what a fun time they had, that obviously doesn't mean a single thing to me. I need to know what specific things about the movies construction made it good for them. Some thoughts on how they thought it worked, or what the director was doing and successfully accomplishing, or maybe point me towards a few things I may have missed. Give me some context that might make what I watched a little more interesting than the cheap, lazy and shallow thing I ended up watching.
But just having a bunch of people testifying to all the fun they had sounds like the kind of thing I wouldn't particularly want to be around, let alone have to hear about. I've already had enough fun in my life and I've got my fill. Fun stinks. Now all I want is some rigorous and pointless movie debate.
It is, in fact, one of the very biggest box-office hits that IFC has had. And regardless of how you subjectively reacted to the movie, the fact that it's a very big hit for a small distributor is good news, even for you, because it gives that distributor the funds with which to make or acquire other movies in the future - and who knows, maybe one of those that IFC funds or acquires the rights to in the coming years will be something you will enjoy a lot.
I agree with all of this. Even though I hated it, I am happy when any small budgeted, not necessarily mainstream content does well. And maybe next time the masses will choose a somewhat less lifeless small budget film to champion.
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