Are there (good) low-to-no-Gore/Sex Horror Movies?

[Coidzor]

1. Is this possible or would something like that definitionally place a work into another genre instead?

2. What are some good examples of this sort of work, something that gets more psychological than mindless violence, jump scares, and/or poor attempts at comedy with how it murders off unlikeable and unsympathetic caricatures of characters?

[Tiki Snakes]

Sure it's possible. I expect you to be drowning in examples soon enough, but the one that springs immediately to mind is The Shining.

[Dumbledore lives]

There are a few decent examples, I don't think it's necessarily a function of the genre that there is a lot of blood/sex, just many of the most popular films have featured it. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre actually has relatively little gore and no sex, though it's such a dark movie that I'm not sure it counts for your purpose. Going back further there is the classic Universal Monster movies, and stuff like Nosferatu. There is also a recent film called Resolution that is relatively unknown but is absolutely awesome and has no gore or nudity, though a lot of swearing.

[JDMSJR]

Sounds like Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock is what you are looking for.

[Metahuman1]

Sure it's possible. I expect you to be drowning in examples soon enough, but the one that springs immediately to mind is The Shining.

Spoiler: Um. (Shining Spoilers.)

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This is the same Shining movie were the elevator opens and blood floods out at one point, right?

I'll second the Psyco.


Maybe John Carpenters first Halloween movie? Low Gore, not sure about low Sex (It's been along time and my memory of the movie is sketchy.)


Depending on how you define Gore, you could make an argument for Alien. Again, Depending on the definition of Gore here.

[Tiki Snakes]

Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, I'm totally considering it a valid suggestion on account of the particulars of that sequence.

Spoiler

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Red liquid coming from an elevator is not what I'd call gore, nor is it exactly a jump-scare or anything like that.

Certainly less gore and body horror than I remember in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not sure if I'd call Psycho a horror film or a thriller, personally. Good though.

[TheThan]

You need to go watch some old Universal Horror films.

They’re both classic movies and fill all the criteria you want.

Adding to that list I would go with Young Frankenstein. It’s hilarious and one of Mel Brooks’ best works, not to mention it still has the same spirit as the original films.

[JoshL]

There are definitely some great "family friendly" horror films. The works of Joe Dante come to mind: Gremlins has a couple gore moments, but The Hole was pretty fun. The latter reminded me of The Gate, which I love, but looking on IMDB was slightly gorier than I remember. My scale is a bit skewed, I think. There were also some great early 80s Disney horror films: Something Wicked This Way Comes, Child of Glass, Watcher In The Woods. One of the best horror films I've seen recently was Haunter, by the director of Cube (definitely NOT a gore-light film), and I love The Others. I enjoy ghost horror films more than most!

[Bhu]

1. Is this possible or would something like that definitionally place a work into another genre instead?

2. What are some good examples of this sort of work, something that gets more psychological than mindless violence, jump scares, and/or poor attempts at comedy with how it murders off unlikeable and unsympathetic caricatures of characters?

Define how low you mean by low and il get you a list

[BeerMug Paladin]

The only thing that really comes to my mind immediately is Pontypool. And it's really good.

I think of it as low gore, at least. I don't know if it would fit someone else's idea for low gore.

[Eldan]

Quite a few Guillermo del Toro movies.

Also, while I'd say it's entirely possible to make a horror movie without any blood at all, I can't actually remember any right now.

I'd say Alien, as it relies mostly on atmosphere, but it is also quite spectacularly bloody in a scene or two.

[BWR]

A lot of Japanese horror should fit.
"The Grudge", "Dark water", "The Ring", to name the biggest names.
The Western remakes of DW and the Ring were generally inferior to the originals but the remake of the Grudge is pretty decent.

"Rosemary's baby" is a classic for good reason. You should also check out the original "The Omen" and "The Exorcist".
"Nosferatu" is amazing and, as a friend of mine said, far creepier than any movie that old has a right to be. I like the old German expressionist films, some of which are easily considered horror like Nosferatu, Dr. Mabuse, The cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

[Yora]

I'd say Alien, as it relies mostly on atmosphere, but it is also quite spectacularly bloody in a scene or two.

It got a spectacular scene in which there is blood, but in the world of horror movie, I would call it almost gore-less.

Depending on what you dislike about gory horror movies, The Thing might either be super-gory or very tame. The shapeshifting monsters transformations are quite horrific, but that's the manifestation of its ability. When it attacks people, it does so pretty quick and cleanly. I personally completely hate gore-orgy torture-porn slasher movies because of the ludicrous hyper-violence, but The Thing is a movie I very much enjoy.
If it's more the visuals than the violence that repulses you, it's clearly not a movie to watch! The visuals are gruesome, the scenes are not. It's repulsive as a "thing that should not be".

[Kid Jake]

I was also going to recommend The Thing. The creature itself is pretty trippy, but most of the kills happen off-screen and considering it takes place in an arctic wasteland staffed by Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Kurt Russel and a bunch of dogs you can be pretty confident you're not going to see much eroticism.

I'd also recommend Night of the Living Dead. For its time it might have been shocking but it's actually pretty tame considering the subject matter.

[Brewdude]

If you remove the gore and sex from horror, you basically end up with thriller.

[HandofShadows]

Certainly less gore and body horror than I remember in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Saw something by the people who made the first TCM and they said that they had to limit what they showed on screen (I have never seen the move BTW) and that a LOT of the things they do are actually implied rather than shown.

Spoiler: example used

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There is one scene where a character is picked up and thrust onto a hook (into her back) and left to hang. But you never see the character actually get impaled. And there isn't a hint of blood. But you darn well know the character is dead. In some ways it may be be more horric BECAUSE you don't see what happens and your imagination gets to work it out.

[BWR]

If you remove the gore and sex from horror, you basically end up with thriller.

I don't know if the correct response to this is "what sort of horror have you been reading/watching?" or "what sort of horror haven't you been reading/watching?"
Horror isn't about blood or sex or even violence. It's about fear and wrongness. It's the weird tale. It's about being ripped out of the comforting view of the world you had and given the stark truth that it is different than you had known up until now and that you are (ideally) powerless to do anything about it. There is usually some element of violence there but the blood and gore aspects can easily be left out or glossed over and left implicit rather than explicit.
i'd say that all the best horror I've read/watched has had very little explicit blood and/or sex in it. There's a lot of horror in Lovecraft but you'd be hard-pressed to find graphic descriptions of blood and gore, let alone sex. I'd hardly call those stories merely thrillers.

[factotum]

How about Poltergeist? There's one fairly gruesome scene where a man is looking into a mirror (anyone who's watched the movie will know the one I mean), but other than that, it's largely free of sex and gore.

[F.H. Zebedee]

People get on its case a lot, but Signs by M. Night Shyamalan is an exquisitely filmed horror movie with no sex and less gore than a lot of PG films. It has a moment or two of oddity, but the film as a whole is fantastic. :)

Jaws is also quite good. There's some severed limbs, and a bit of blood, but it's rarely lurid or fetishistic about things.

[Coidzor]

Thank you all. Looks like they ended up going with this Aussie film called Badadook this time, but I'll be sure to pass on the rest of the suggestions for if there's a next time.

My housemate was having a friend over whose favorite movies are scary ones without gore or sex, though she's apparently already seen all of the good ones he knew of, and he was, for some reason, having the challenge of selecting the movie for the evening.

You need to go watch some old Universal Horror films.

They’re both classic movies and fill all the criteria you want.

Adding to that list I would go with Young Frankenstein. It’s hilarious and one of Mel Brooks’ best works, not to mention it still has the same spirit as the original films.

I do need to actually watch those just for the history, yeah...x.x

Young Frankenstein is great, but, unfortgunately the other parties involved hate movies that intentionally set out to be Comedies, which kind of confuses me because Mel Brooks is amazeballs.

Define how low you mean by low and il get you a list

Not enough violence to count as a slasher-flick, less gore and bodies being reconfigured into horrible monstrosities than The Thing. No tits getting flashed just for them to be impaled with a pitchfork or otherwise murdering people for having sex, preferably no more than partial nudity or none at all due to the hangups of the other people involved.

Something that is actually scary though is the main goal that was expressed to me.

[TheThan]

I do need to actually watch those just for the history, yeah...x.x

Young Frankenstein is great, but, unfortgunately the other parties involved hate movies that intentionally set out to be Comedies, which kind of confuses me because Mel Brooks is amazeballs.

alot of those classics are genuinely good movies to boot.

I just watched SpaceBalls yesterday.

[Verte]

I guess it depends on what you consider to be good movies, but I would say that are definitely plenty examples of horror movies that little sex or gore. I'd also say that the idea that horror movies require sex and gore to be scary originated probably in the late '70s or '80s.

I would definitely second The Others (2001) and Haunter (2013) as more recent examples. For the most part, the sex and violence in those movies is largely implied, the main characters have depth, and there are decent relationships and character development throughout. The Woman in Black (2012) isn't a brilliant movie, but there was little to no sex, and if I recall correctly, there were only two brief instances of gore.

If I recall correctly, Dark Water (2002) has some implied violence, but no gore or sex. Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) has some gore in the first scene, but not much more than implied violence throughout. Both are definitely horror movies.

It also depends on whether you're up to watching older movies. I'd definitely recommend Frankenstein (1931) and the Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but if you never watch movies from that period, I don't know how much you'd like them or most of the other movies in this paragraph. Also give both versions of Nosferatu a try, as well as The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1920) and The Hands of Orlac (1924). I'd also say to check out The Haunting (1963) and The Innocents (1961), which are early '60s movies that could be considered psychological thrillers as well as horror movies. You could also check out The Changeling (1980), which has some violence, but no gore and no sex.

[hamishspence]

The Blair Witch Project maybe?

[Dasgovernator]

The Blair Witch Project maybe?

^Probably the best example of that kind of horror movie. I'm pretty sure there's absolutely no gore or sex there, though it pioneered the idea of (very) shaky cam, which makes it hard to watch for some people.

Along similar lines, Paranormal Activity is worth a look. Never actually seen it myself, but I'm pretty sure its goreless & sexless.

The Legend of Boggy Creek is supposed to be decently scary and it's rated G. YMMV though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Boggy_Creek

[Bhu]

My memory is iffy so bear with me, I watch a bajillion films a year for my job:

Attack the Block
Frostbite
The Innkeepers
The Perfect Host (some language)
The Quiet Family
.Rec
Absentia
Acolytes
A Tale of Two Sisters
The Barrens
Below
The Birds
The Changeling
Dark City
The Devil's Backbone
Fallen
The Last Winter
Matango
The Objective
Red Sands
Sauna
Session 9
Shiver
Shutter (thai version)
Timecrimes
Triangle


I ommitted what's already been mentioned. Some of these have multiple films with the same name, so if there's any confusion just pm me. It's not a big list but I thought it'd keep you busy for now.

[BeerMug Paladin]

List...

Although I can agree with some of the movies in this list that I've seen are good, I kind of question the placement of some of these as horror. The Perfect Host is great, but it's more of a suspense/thriller movie than a horror movie. Same with Below. I'd recommend both movies to general audiences, but probably not to someone who wanted to specifically see horror.

Dark City is more like an aventure mystery movie than horror.

Of course, nobody here has really provided a strict definition of horror, so the distinction between horror and suspense is probably not worth getting extremely nitpicky over.

For the record, my own distinction between the two happens to be one of atmosphere. In a thriller, you're kept aware that something bad might happen because you see the aftermath of a bad thing having happened. In a horror, you're actually seeing bad things happen as they take place. In a movie, you usually only see one or the other. Not both.

For the example of a killer on the loose plot. Horror would be showing a kill on screen. Thriller would be showing someone discovering a kill after the fact. These produce different atmospheres for the viewer. Obviously sometimes there's going to be crossover both ways in both types during a movie's run, and it's not going to be exactly definitive, but what happens in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the movie is probably most indicative of the movie's genre.

[BannedInSchool]

Dark City is more like an aventure mystery movie than horror.

If you're watching Dark City for the first time, mute the opening narration that explains the whole movie.

[Lurkmoar]

If you're watching Dark City for the first time, mute the opening narration that explains the whole movie.

That opening narration nearly made me froth with rage(okay hyperbole, but I was still annoyed) when I saw Dark City in the theaters. My buddy even said, "It was a murder mystery where they tell you up front who the killer is, and then the mystery plays out like you're not supposed to know who the killer is."

[Giggling Ghast]

Oculus and Tremors spring to mind. For not quite as good but still half-decent, I would try The Conjuring, Mama or Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

People die in these movies, but they're not overly gory and all sex-free.

I was also going to recommend The Thing. The creature itself is pretty trippy, but most of the kills happen off-screen and considering it takes place in an arctic wasteland staffed by Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Kurt Russel and a bunch of dogs you can be pretty confident you're not going to see much eroticism.

But it has a **** ton of gore.

[Zrak]

I think the question of whether or not losing gore and jump scares changes a film's genre depends very much on who is doing the classification. The line between "psychological thriller" and non-jump horror is pretty fine, if you ask me.

Gore is also pretty relative. For example, The Shining and The Birds both include some pretty bloody scenes, but wouldn't really be gory by a lot of standards. Are we talking about an absolute lack of bloodshed or merely a lack of scenes so graphic as to be cut from a network TV release? The same questions apply to sex; are you looking for horror movies that keep their nipples covered, or do we not even want to see so much as an open-mouthed kiss?