The Rewind

What is the difference between a mean horror movie and a cruel horror movie?

Over the past few days, I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends about Evil Dead Burn. One of them — this week’s podcast episode with Certified Forgotten cofounder Matt Donato — will even be available to our subscribers a little later this afternoon.

And to borrow a phrase from my buddy Noel Bartocci, many of those conversations have come down to the difference between “mean” horror movies and “cruel” horror movies.

Now, if you’ve read my review of Evil Dead Burn at the site, you’ll know I’m a big fan of the film. And I find it to be a surprisingly funny movie to boot, full of vicious takedowns of terrible people. But others — including Donato — find that the movie teeters a bit more into the cruel category, reveling in the pain it administers to its victims.

There’s a razor-thin line between mean and cruel, and what strikes me as mean — which can still be fun and buoyant, as so many of the Evil Dead movies are — may strike others as undeservedly ill-humored. Hell, our own definitions of the phrases can vary wildly from screening to screening. I thought Evil Dead Rise was fun, ol’ fashioned meanness on my first watch, but its treatment of the characters didn’t quite sit the same way on a rewatch.

A lot is tied up in those distinctions. Does the violence flow from character development? Does the movie still build empathy with its characters or are they just objects to be slaughtered onscreen? Are the horror set pieces more interested in eliciting a reaction from us than they are in moving the story along?

I can’t answer that for you. I can barely answer that for me. What I will say is that I find Evil Dead Burn to be a mean movie, but not a cruel one — and perhaps the first Evil Dead movie ever where the characters kind of deserve what they get. As always, your mileage may vary, but I hope you’ll still make time to find out for yourself.

Matthew Monagle
Cofounder, Certified Forgotten

I’ve heard wonderful things about Fantasia International Film Festival over the years, but the timing has never quite worked out for me to attend in person — despite me and Montreal’s bagel scene having some seriously unfinished business. But I’m excited to be covering the festival remotely this year, with a few major releases extremely on my radar. Here’s my list of the five movies I’m most-excited to watch.

The big movie in theaters this weekend is The Odyssey, but wouldn’t you know it, we just don’t seem to have any articles released to Greek myth. So instead, here’s one of my favorite pieces from the last few years! Christine Makepeace’s piece on Livescreamers put this franchise solidly on my radar, and maybe this bump will serve as a reminder that I still need to stream them sometime soon. Maybe it’s time to update my weekend plans.

Quick hits from around the world of horror and indie journalism.

Want more? Certified Forgotten also offers a weekly podcast series featuring some of the biggest names in the horror genre. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast platform of choice.