It's not the gore (or relative lack of it despite its reputation?) that I disagree with, it's the depravity. Depravity and gore are orthogonal (although, of course, often along for the ride with one another).

I'm certain humans are capable of really depraved stuff in the real world, I just don't want to "capture it", watch it. As I said, I feel more strongly this way as I get older (for whatever reason).

w.r.t. depravity vs gore:

I remember in a director's commentary for Fight Club there was a scene where Ed Norton is on top of someone and punching their face repeatedly, to the point where the character is later shown as disfigured. They originally shot it from above, but it was deemed too gory, so they refilmed it as a view from below where all you see is Norton's face as he is punching and small amounts of blood spatter up onto him (this is the version that is in the final cut).

The director's opinion was that the original was definitely more gory, but the final version was far more disturbing.

What I get out of the depravity isn't of educational value; it's not about understanding what humans are capable of.

Rather, it's like a nightmare. Like one of those really dark Goya paintings. I wouldn't hang it on my wall but, for me, it's worth a detour becuase of how it makes me feel.

To each his own, of course. And, interestingly, my older relatives are moving in the same direction as they age (avoiding the kind of horror movies they used to like).

As I get older, some media makes me anxious in a way that did not previously occur. It's not specific to horror, I find it can be as bad with dramas (e.g. Succession). I see that this is a relatively common change in preferences, but that some peers will still opt to over-consume "junk" 24h clickbait news cycles that also make them anxious. I don't understand that inconsistency.

I can still appreciate creepy psychological horror or the "fun" kind of schlock that doesn't take itself too seriously, but stay away from things that just feel too dark (e.g. Hereditary). I'm not sure if depravity is the deciding factor, it's kind of a "I know it when I see it" sort of assessment.

Very interesting, I was with you in the first half of your comment. But Hereditary is one of my favorite movies. And Men In Black is one of my least favorite, for these reasons. MIB is a disgusting film because it is utterly dehumanizing of the other. Aliens, although fully sentient and obviously "human", are fair game for cruelty, casual dismemberment, and mirthful laughter when their bodies are violently splattered onto other characters. Nobody really bats an eye because they're not Homo sapiens; it's literally the color of their guts which makes it okay to explode them.

That's only one example of the kind of depravity that turns me off of a lot of media, including some very fun Star Wars video games. The parallels with racist thinking are obvious to me; if any being can ask you to respect its bodily autonomy, does it really matter whether or not the creature is familiar? I'll probably get (as I always do) some angered responses that I'm taking things too far. I wonder what those people felt when they watched District 9, but perhaps that movie was too obvious about its protagonist for all viewers to generalize their feelings.

(So why am I okay with Hereditary? It's a literal demon. It's not framed as children's entertainment, it's horror; the filmmakers are very clearly not endorsing the violence depicted.)

To be fair you can make the same criticism of James Bond films or anything similar, with people gunned down wantonly for entertainment. More recently, Deadpool. Personally I'm usually unmoved about gratuitous violence.

Gratuitous violence, to me, seems more entertaining when the victims “deserve” it. For example in Django Unchained. Or when it serves to introduce the villains who will get what’s coming to them. Unfortunately, common horror movies inflict it on kids having sex, or being rude. It is a bit of a turn off.

I guess but there's certainly no moral distinction to me.

I believe you've entirely missed the point I was making, as there are only humans in James Bond films and they're mostly (entirely?) "bad" people.

I guess I am missing the point, because I don't see the difference between those and "bad" aliens. Which don't exist. It's impossible to relate to your sense of disgust except by contriving that aliens necessarily represent people with different skin color.

I feel this already spelled out in my previous post, and I feel strongly that you're not arguing in good faith here by calling my position impossible, but I'm content to try once more if only for readers. I can't stop you from replying but I won't be responding further to you.

James Bond movies typically treat all his enemies more or less the same. The only scene I can think of where someone actually explodes frames it as a pretty horrific affair. Characters in the movie and viewers alike are expected to have an uncomfortable reaction when the violence is extreme.

MIB doesn't do that. When a non-human is killed, whether or not they're even a hostile enemy (and they aren't always), there is no level of violence and gore that's off-limits. And it's a goddamn childrens' comedy. Do you think the movie would be the same if the aliens were replaced with humans? Or human-looking "elves"?

> there is no level of violence and gore that's off-limits

This is a PG-13 film. It's necessarily limited. I find it weird that you feel that strongly about a decades-old film.

I think I hear what you're saying. I have started to think of "depravity" (as you call it) as the "body horror" of a collectivist body politic. It takes the form of an agent of our collective, like some social gangrene, participating in a grotesque destruction of itself, the social fabric that binds us. Or alternatively, of the whole human super-organism turning on itself, in the case of disaster or zombie apocalypse movies where ppl riot and turn on one another in conflict.

In the real world, though not always, we're often better than the grotesque versions of ourselves we are forced to watch.

Maybe you're becoming more of a collectivist as you age, and you have less patience for the seeming distortion that is part of the experience?

How time and context can shift our view of a film