What makes a better horror movie: murderer or monster?

No animosity taken.
I am just The Horror Police.
I always have been.
I've had this discussion maybe a couple dozen times across multiple forums and in person and it's just my thing. I have accepted that it is not everybody's thing. But it's my thing.
My post above explains some of it, though there's a lot more. But again, it really comes down to real-world horrors not being what scares me or what I enjoy in Horror.
An interesting example is one movie that scared the **** out of me - until it didn't - and why. The movie Ils (2006) had me about to poop myself.

But why? I think that scene is an excellent example of, if not a jump scare as such, the kind of ‘over-the-top’ horror trope that’s actually not fundamentally disturbing in the slightest.

Whether I fully agree or not, this is a good post. I certainly can't fully disagree.

I mean, I almost entirely agree with you.
I feel like slashers/giallo are probably Horrorish if not outright Horror. Just tweak the killer a tiny bit for me, like The Funhouse, or F13, or Halloween, or whatever, and you have me. Just don't try to make me be scared of some random dude who's lost his mind. I know how to call the cops and my phone battery isn't always dead/out of range/a stormy night/whatever. If you ain't got a gun, you ain't gettin' me without a fight and if you use a gun, you're not really a Horror villain, you're a Thriller.

Scared the absolute piss out of me.

Yeah, I did ‘feel’ it at the time, and I liked it. It achieves what it wants to for sure. Not the most sophisticated thing, perhaps, but it works.

I do see what you’re saying. But how about Funny Games? Your phone DID, for once, fall in the sink because the intruder dropped it there. Your husband is a pussy. The people who are in your house cannot be reasoned with. They definitely will kill you. You’re a petite woman. How is that not disturbing?

Actually recently watched this with a female relative and she became so upset (not scared, perhaps, but disturbed) that she went to bed very annoyed at me. I think she did relate to the scenario on a personal level. Point being, you can’t always call the cops and even if you do, you will be dead before that.

I can relate to that, sure. Can’t say the supernatural ‘ruins’ the disturbance for me, but I understand how it can.

Ha! ‘Course, should have known. And there I was, wondering: Silence? Discussed in a horror thread? What is the world coming to!

Well, again, something like Funny Games just wouldn't be a Horror movie to me. And I emphasize "to me". Home Invasion movies, for me, are another thing someone on the old RT or Corri, I believe, coined "Horror Adjacent". I don't remember if that was me or Captain Terror or who, but it's a great distinction in my mind. I find pretty much all giallos Horror Adjacent because they feel like Horror movies even though, in a film like Blood and Black Lace for example, a victim could absolutely have kicked the killer's ass if they had their wits about them and the villain didn't just get the drop on them. That's not Horror to me. But the movie (and so many like it) kinda feels like Horror. Meanwhile, another of Bava's films, Kill Baby, Kill, which pits a witch versus a ghost (hellz yeah!) is absolutely Horror to me even though it is not necessarily "scary".

In response to the latter part of what you say above, Tak and I actually had a discussion, as I have with several of my IRL female friends, that what I as a 200lb. dude who used to box and owns a bunch of guns finds scary is not necessarily the same as what many women might find scary, regardless of boxing or guns or whatever. Because force equals mass x acceleration. For most of my female friends, there is nothing more frightening than a home-invasion film. But in my head, whether it's true in real-life or not, I ****in' dare you to invade my home. Just don't bring a witch with you or I will crap my pants.

It was

Hmm. Yes, I didn’t phrase that in a way that makes sense but in my defence, I am drunk. I see what you mean, though. If we’re talking about French horror, I thought what made Martyrs effective for me is that last scene where . If it was just, yeah, they’re all a random bunch of sadists, it would be far less scary.

I have yet to see Martyrs because torture is almost never for me. And that's almost all I know about the film. I've done an amazing job of really learning nothing about the movie because I do intend to watch it someday but I don't even re-watch my Rob Zombie films much because I don't enjoy the brutality. Even though the brutality works in his films, IMO. Like, I hated Hostel. And I think I turned off Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning when Leatherface was basically just making beef jerky out of that one guy in camera. But I loved House Of 1,000 Corpses.

When this guy draws a bead on your a**, it doesn't matter how good your cell reception is. That's all I'm sayin'.

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Amen to that.

PS- And I think your post might be the best use of The Demon yet.

Oh, I love it. I was just sort of wondering out loud if Yoda will ever get over his fear of this sequence, or if it will forever haunt him...

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Oh, I see. I mean, yes, maybe it is legitimately disturbing, especially in the original. I don’t know. It’s weird. I think it wears off once it becomes infamous/a parody of itself.

Real horror is when they don't validate your parking.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Yeah anything real. Car crashes especially. I am absolutely terrified of traffic accidents. Did not enjoy the film Crash at all (it's not hyper real or anything but the content is just horrible).

That said I also hate spiders so wouldn't watch 8 legged freaks. But probably wouldn't watch that anyway.

Just comes down to individuality at the end of the day. I feel monster movies have to rely on things like jump scares or horrific gore or body horror to get their scares across. While a film like 'Angst' is just terrifying because it almost feels like a documentary.