What's the definition of a "horror" movie?

Horror movies these days are just loud noises. How anyone can say Silence Of The Lambs is not a horror compared to the horror movies around today is clueless.

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Funny - the original movies for both were in my mind when I asked the question - they both are sci-fi, they both involve dangerous "monsters," and both include horrific scenes of people being killed.

Frankenstein involves unnatural things - parts of corpses reanimated into a monstrous being where as King Kong involves somewhat natural (albeit extinct) animals - don't know if that makes a difference, but I kind of agree with you that when I think Frankenstein I think "horror," but not so much with Kong.

It seems here that most of the big horror fans don't think SOTL is horror, while many others who don't favor the genre think it is. I always thought of it as a tense and scary thriller, making it a great thriller.

Would you class Scream as a horror?.

To be fair it does fit the crime thriller category but has serious horror elements. Doesn’t fit the slasher genre but that is a horror sub genre. Given I was born late 80s a slasher type horror with jump scares is my basic understanding of a horror but it’s not so simple as the genre was alive and well before Halloween. Then you have films that have horror elements....do you lump them into the horror category?

I’ve been saying that Jurassic Park (original) is a horror but completely understand that mostly it is adventure type film yet you could stack up the horror moments and they’d be a good portion of the entire film.

I'm planning on watching it again but from what I remember yes. To me it's a difference between the focus being on the killer killing their victims, and law enforcement hunting the killer. SOTL is about the FBI hunting a killer; to me that's crime thriller. I don't think a couple of scenes or a couple of scares make the genre.

Jurassic Park has a dark tone, but I wouldn't say it was a horror. Silence Of The Lambs has some very very disturbing scenes, a very dark tone, and some very tense moments. The scene with Lecter and the guards is terrifying.

I'm not laying down any concrete definitions, but a few things SOTL does not have is anything supernatural or paranormal, an unrealistic villain (such as one who keeps getting up after being stabbed, shot, pummeled or burned). What it does have is a crime investigation in a modern setting and situations based on reality. Now, I'm not saying you can't have any of these things in a horror movie or that it must contain the unrealistic elements to be "horror" - only that SOTL has enough of the "thriller-crime-drama" elements to have people classify it as only that genre.

Now, we could compare it to Psycho or Texas Chainsaw Massacre (both those movies and SOTL contained characters based on or inspired by real life serial killer Ed Gein) and all three are basically set in reality for the most part (although Leather Face begins to take on qualities of the unrealistic villain mentioned earlier). TCM seems more horror than SOTL with Psycho somewhere in the middle!

It does however a lot of it is investigating/clue hunting with additional deep character interactions. One of my favourite films ever but not solely a horror imo - much more then that but also a horror haha.

The original scream (imo) is a flat out horror similar to a Halloween. The sequels go silly, not to say there’s no self aware horror tropes but not nearly as distracting and overbearing as in the sequels. People get murdered straight up, they get gutted, you see it, there’s jump scares, etc. it’s still scary imo.

Now Alien: perfectly sci-fi and perfectly horror, seamlessly combining the two genres.
However, most people would not view the sequel Aliens as horror, but just as sci-fi / action (with horror elements as a lot of sci-fi movies have).

True but you could slap a horror tag on it, along with a sci fi, action tag.

I was thinking about Alien. Sci-Fi and Westerns can be funny genres, sometimes judged just by setting. I wouldn't say Alien isn't Sci-Fi, but I couldn't show that to someone and just say I got a Sci-Fi movie without being misleading. I could tell someone I got a horror and not be misleading. I mean, I could never argue against it's Sci-Fi elements, but that's pure horror. To me, Aliens is not horror, because it's not close to the dominant genre.

Yeah, I've always been in the "Alien is a horror film" camp.

I can't really separate it - as a sci-fi buff (and not so much a horror buff) I rank Alien as one of the greatest sci-fi movies, but it's also one of the best horror movies as well. So I'll just say it's still probably the greatest sci-fi / horror movie!

I would say Alien is more of a horror movie with sci-fi elements. When I think purely sci-fi I think of movies like Planet of the Apes, where as Alien has more of a haunted house monster horror movie structure story, but set on a futuristic space ship with an alien.

A movie based on a serial killer and investigations going on, the horror in it is the gruesome murders and beatings,but it has no jump scares, no eerie music, it is clearly not a horror movie. And i would say it has 30 % of horror elements,not enough qualify as a horror film, i can t believe there s even a debate here....
The conjuring is a horror movie, the nun is a horror movie, but the ones we are talking about herr are not

Yes, alien is a scifi horror, goes in the same boat as: event horizon, the thing

“I don’t think this is scary, therefore no one else should.”

Scream darn right it is a horror film, it is the source of jump scares and eerie music