Site Labels and Review Series

The horror genre is a big space. You only need a passing awareness of the genre to start piecing together that lots of different elements and styles all fall under the same conceptual space known as "horror." This space is my feeble effort in trying to categorize those elements into Blogger-approved Labels. 

Labels

Labels are the hashtag analogs on Blogger pages. Here at Let's Scare Chad, I'm using Labels to represent horror subgenres. Each review I provide will have several labels associated with it for ease of navigation. If you go back to the home page, you should see a panel on the left side of the screen. There, you'll see the site's icon (which will take you back to the home page), an easier-to-see list of pages (for this one and the About Me section, with more potentially to come), and below that there's a site's archive and set of labels. From there, you should get a drop down list of every label I've used on the site. That way, you can easily filter out films by subgenre and style! Are you having a tough weekend? Then maybe try out a nice Slasher! Maybe you're feeling like pushing the boundaries of your squeamishness: check out these Body Horror flix! 

You'll find a whole host of different labels use, so I want to take this space to break down what those represent. 

• Chronological Labels: Films filtered by decade. Probably an unnecessary addition, but every decade brings with it a particular style, and sometimes its nice to have a list of those on-hand. Additionally, the Classic label is reserved for anything pre-1970; while there are notable differences between classic Universal Monsters of the 30's and the Kaiju era of the 50's, they are stylistically fairly similar at the end of the day and so I'm lumping them all together. 
• National Labels: In conjunction with the Foreign label, I've provided a label to further filter by country of origin. Using the Foreign label by itself will result in every non-English entry on the site, with each national label as a further way to filter out. Maybe you're wanting a Spanish film in the Basque language: well boy are you in luck!
• Series Labels: Each review belongs to a particular series on the site, especially the Spooktober series. Check out more information specific review series below!
• Review Labels: These films have reviews that are stylistic in their own right: Ironic reviews tend to be silly and comedically over-inflate an entry's score, while Hot Takes are generally the opposite: me being overly cynical, picky, and outright petty. 
• Stylistic Labels: These labels represent stylistic features that aren't quite subgenres but still help to differentiate them from other labels and aren't as specific as lists (detailed below). 
• Anthology films and series are collections of shorter, individual horror stories that are either presented in an episodic fashion and/or share an over-arching theme or guide. For example, Shudder's Creepshow is an episodic series where each story is only connected by the series' ghoulish host, the Creep, while Shevenge is an anthology film centered around the theme of revenge from the female perspective (and also has a host guiding through the film's subsections). 
• Body Horror: While I should probably wrap this into the Gore subgenre below, I'm keeping it separate for two major reasons: (1) body horror is a particular style of horror that fuses gore with the psychological terror of the self dissolving; while it showcases heavily graphic visuals of dismemberment, decay, and mutation, there's gore is to pound home the fact that the characters are becoming something other than human; and (2) I love body horror and want it to be special. 
• Found Footage entries utilize a limited framing in order to make the entries feel more realistic, as if they were recorded by the characters on-screen. These are often in first-person perspective and often use personal recording devices (like hand-held cameras or GoPros), but newer entries are utilizing online spaces like Zoom. 
• Lovecraftian Horror: Similarly to body horror, Lovecraftian horror is a particular style that fuses elements of cosmic horror--the fear of facing something primal, primordial, or otherwise something that makes humanity feel insignificant--with elements of psychological horror, surrealism, body horror, creature features and folk horror (Lovecraft's works typically involve creatures or "deities" so incomprehensible to the human mind that it drives us crazy so, naturally, cults pop up to worship the things). It's an incredibly specific mesh of elements, but one that's becoming increasingly popular. 
• PG-13 films are only listed because horror entries tend to be unrated, rated R, or are similarly restricted. PG-13 entries, then, tend to be much closer to being Family-Friendly. 
• Period Piece entries are predominately set in a period of time beyond what was current at the time. The time period has to have a meaningful impact on the style or substance of the film in order to get this label. 
• Surreal: This stylistic label is for entries that have an otherworldly or dream-like quality to them, even if only for certain scenes or acts. I'm also bundling psychedelic imagery into this category as well. 
• Subgenre Labels: The most potentially divisive label. Here at LSC, I'm only utilizing a small handful of subgenres with similar. 
• Gore: Primarily includes Torture and Splatter films, with the latter being a bit more comedic in tone than the former. Cannibal entries will also go here when I get around to reviewing them. These films are what they say on the tin: graphic. Of note, I'm going to feature Extreme films in their own series. 
• Psychological: These entries focus on matters of the mind and ways to get under your skin, and many focus on playing with the idea of what is or isn't real. 
• Slasher: Masked killers stalking their innocent and/or immoral prey, similarly masked killers breaking into homes or committing crimes, and masked or mutated hillbilly-folk hunting people in their neck of the woods: these films all involve a fairly mundane killer or killers doing some killing. Most of the iconic 80s films would fit this category. 
• Creature Features: This subgenre is likely to expand the most because it incorporates so many elements, and by "elements" I mean non-human things that want to kill you or otherwise ruin your day. Vampires, werewolves, giant insects, hordes of zombies, and everything else goes here. 
• Supernatural: While demons, devils, and witches can certainly take the form of spooky creatures, given their relationship to the occult, the dark arts, and other spiritual forces, I'm keeping them in their own category. Of course, subgenre crossovers do happen, especially if the spirits take on a particularly nasty, visible appearance. 
• Romance: By some strange twist of fate (and creativity), these films of managed to fit both horror and romance into the same storyline. Does the mix work? You tell me! 
• Thriller: Finally, this label encapsulates what you would think of the genre: namely entries that go work toward evoking suspense and tension. Additionally, I've lumped in Mysteries and Dramas into this label. Basically, if the film doesn't fit any of the other subgenre labels better, then it's a Thriller.

Series

Let's Scare Chad exists as an extension of my original series taking place on Facebook: the Spooktober challenge which involved me watching a new (to me) horror movie (or series, if I had the time to kill) and providing a quick and dirty review every single day throughout October. As mentioned, the series was originally hosted on Facebook as a way to connect with my horror-loving friends. But, my hobby (and patience) has outgrown that platform, so now we're here! Yay! 

In my effort to expand, I'll be bringing in new series throughout the year, so stick around! For ease of navigation, each Series will have its own label. Here's what's to come:

• Spooktober
• Into the Dark: I accidentally stumbled into this series by watching something like four of the films in a single Spooktober challenge. Into the Dark is a series of films produced by Blumhouse and are connected under the theme of holidays. Every Into the Dark film riffs on a specific holiday in its own way. 
• Series Killer: I don't review a lot of horror series around here largely due to how much of a time-sink they are. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but comparing 1-2ish hours per movie to something like 6+ hours for a whole series, it's just a lot more of an investment to get to them. But I plan on it! Every series reviewed will go here. 
• Remake Rampage: Remakes are sweeping the world by storm, and the horror genre is far from immune to the fad. In this series, I'll be doing side-by-side reviews of original films and their remakes and see what, if anything, survived the re-inspiration (or cash grab) process. 
• From the Vault: The secret archives of the Council of Chads will be opened one entry at a time. 
• Chad's On a List Now: Extreme horror! Let me get on a list so you don't have to! Or, let me tell you if they're even worth watching at all. 
• The Trash Panda Files: Going through the trash so you don't have to! Bargain bin horror never went away, it just got swept into Amazon Prime, Youtube, and Tubi, among other streaming platforms. In this series, I'll be sifting through garbage to see if there's anything worth watching. Who knows, we might find a diamond in the rough!
• Let's Scare Joe Bob: Joe Bob Briggs is back on Shudder! I'll be going through his Last Drive-In shoe to watch what he's watching, and I'll be giving a bonus review of his rambling monologues!
• ...And More to Come!