Not trying to nitpick, but there is high-fantasy vs. low fantasy and hard sci-fi vs. soft sci-fi. But that has less to do with the "literary value" and more to do with setting and other genre elements.
It's a thing. Black Mirror being soft sci-fi whereas Star Trek being hard. Harry Potter being low fantasy whereas LOTR being high. Just a way to gauge what level of genre-immersion to expect going in.
All true but I don’t think sci fi fans are writing think pieces about like …Children of Men vs Pacific Rim lol
Exactly. I think it’s stupid to assume just because something is genre-fiction that its themes are shallow.
If anything prestige horror should be replaced with a tonal qualifier that doesn't signify, uh, quality.
“Elevated” and “prestige” are elitist terms in this context for sure, but I think the problem is less that they exist and more the films they’re arbitrarily attached to. Like I think about The VVitch, Get Out, and Hereditary as the top three examples, all movies I love, and I don’t even really see the shared DNA. I guess they’re stylish? They all share themes of possession? By that logic are A Cure For Wellness and Insidious prestige? It just feels like a pointless term unless you can make a real argument for a specific film being genuinely groundbreaking
I don’t really get it either and I don’t think there’s shared DNA (at least thematically) between the movies named. Also, when you loop in Us, The Lighthouse, Babadook, Annihilation… They’re all horror films that made it big/outgrew primarily horror audiences, that’s about the only connection I can make between them.
I don't really mind the term as shorthand in certain conversations because, like someone said before, there are movies that have been attatched (Hereditary, It Follows, Babadook, The VVitch) to it and can just be a quick way to mention those. I think it meant more on the tail of all those shitty paint by numbers studio horror movies from the aughts, but is mostly meaningless now.
and no one needs to see scream 5 one of the most annoying and terrible things about that movie is that “elevated horror” is such a meager and incoherent concept around which to base a meta-thesis about horror
i couldn’t stand it but i prob/def have heavy wes craven baggage that i brought in the theater with me because i love him so much rip king