Throughout the semester we've encountered various ghosts and some demonic possession, both of which can be seen in Ghostbusters with the various forms of the ghosts and the possession of Dana and Louis by the Gatekeeper and Keymaster, but the tone of this movie allows the hauntings to be humorous rather than aiming to deeply scare the audience, buy hey come on who doesn't think this thing is freaky?
I love the change of pace for this movie because overall the ideas of this creature called Zuul and the various supernatural phenomena could easily be rewritten and reworked into something significantly more creepy, but the decision to make this a more lighthearted movie is probably why it's a cult classic and loved by so many.
The humor of the characters and the way the ghosts look overall adds to the fun of the movie, and while people may not typically think of Ghostbusters as a horror movie, I think it mostly just shows that within the horror genre is a category of...what should we call it, humorous horror? horror for the lighthearted? I don't know, but either way I think movies like this need horror fans just as much as non-horror loving fans to embrace both the humor and potential for a darker story if the laughs were taken out.
Happy Hauntings,
Sara
I love this move too!! (probably more than a grownup should). And humor-horror is a genre that's starting to get a bit more traction lately even though we've always seemed to have a taste for gallows humor. Evil Dead, The Burbs, and Beetlejuice would near the top of my personal favorites. Also, a recent fav would have to be Tucker and Dale Versus Evil... an absolute riot (Oh, and we can't forget Shawn of the Dead!). It's hard to pull off though, and now that I think about it Ghostbusters doesn't really feel like it belongs on this list... maybe because they use science to capture ghost thereby making it less scary and more technical? Not sure...
ReplyDeleteI feel this movie balances humor with horror very well. It may not be up there with my favorite movie, Army of Darkness, but it comes close. I wrote in my own blog post that it could have been ridiculous, which it is to a point, but even the final monster is handled well. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man could have been nothing more than a joke; but because he is nonthreatening and one of the Ghostbusters thought if he focused on a childhood favorite then nothing bad would happen, it became a believable destroyer, all because of they got to choose what would be the villain.
ReplyDeleteGah, I love Dan Aykroyd and his writing style. I agree, this movie definitely has the potential to be worked into something truly creepy, or at least full of jumps, but it's so funny and beloved. How many people have watched this movie since they were small children? It's great that a cult horror comedy could be loved by so many people.
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