That was something that Gervais and Merchant allegedly advised to the US producers while they were writing the first season of the remake.

Exactly! Half of what people call “horror” is just “bad.” Horror often seems to equal screechy off-key stringed instruments and then trying to startle you. That’s not what good is!

BREAKING: Austin bar gets incredibly swift legal notice from 20th Century Fox, complete with Cease and Desist

Why would Moe have a Squishy machine?  Did he steal it from the Kwik-E-Mart?

I never made the connection between Dianne in Shaun of the Dead (one of my favourite movies) and Etta in Wonder Woman until just now, so first and foremost: thank you for that.

Same! I’ll watch any “space monster eats people in a spaceship” film, like Alien. Or “normal/huge monster eats people elsewhere” like The Meg or Jaws or Anaconda or The Descent. Or “spooky demon is haunting and OH NO IT’S REAL” like Paranormal Activity or Hereditary or any number of films in the past decade. But “ha…

I think most people miss the comedy aspect of horror too. Horror is meant to be fun, and the majority of horror movies are B movies. The good ones take advantage of that and upend viewer expectations by making something you can get scared at and laugh as well. I guess you could classify B movies into their own genre…

And you know there have been instances where the horror genre and superheroes have blended together.

True—horror is by its nature almost always a sort of hybridization, because the uncanny element is established by being a blending of the known (comforting) with the unknown (scary!), which cuts across many kinds of storytelling.

I think it also bears mentioning that horror opens the door to all manner of creative and dramatic elements. Monster designs, dreamlike settings, perilous setpieces.

I’ve also found that focusing on the technical aspect of the movie helps get me through particularly bad spooks. Hereditary filled me with absolute dread, but I got to wondering how they did certain shots or how the makeup was done and I could engage my thinkin’ side to avoid totally falling into my terror side.

I’ve had a similar relationship with the genre. I watched some horror movies as a child and they terrified me and put me off for a long time. What scared me so much wasn’t the gore or the jump scares, but the idea that the main character might not make it through, that evil could, in fact, win.

You would too, David.

You’re right, it should have been R.

So your mummy sent you a mummy card. Gotcha

My grandma does this. She’s 85 years old and still sends me cards for every damn holiday, usually with a check for ten or fifteen dollars. I keep telling her not to and that I don’t need it, but she ignores me. 

Amusingly, the reason the bears were in town is because the ice floes had melted early, so the polar bears couldn’t use them to catch as many fish as usual. In desperation and hunger, they ventured toward human settlements.

My in-laws are both retired and have absolutely nothing to talk about to each other. So they just spend their time talking about buying cards, buying cards, signing cards, sending cards and then calling to see if we got the cards.

I know that the card section in Target always has Halloween cards, so people must still be buying and sending them enough to keep stocking them.

Every holiday short of Arbor and Flag Day means getting a card from my sister.