10 Famous Movies Whose Genres Everybody Always Seems To Get Wrong
3. The Silence Of The Lambs
Mistaken Genre: Horror What It Actually Is: Crime Thriller 1991's "Best Picture" Academy Award winner stars Anthony Hopkins as the terrifying cannibal, Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster as FBI agent Clarice Starling. The film's trailer is chock full of horror movie clichés random screams, screeching staccato music, clanging of steel, etc. And who can forget those scenes of Hannibal wearing a face-mask a la Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers? Similar to my claims that The Dark Knight isn't a superhero movie, theres a sensibility and maturity to Silence of the Lambs that is cheapened by a horror movie classification. Lecter is a monster, but not in a supernatural way like Jason or Freddy Krueger. The character is far more sophisticated than your standard slasher movie villain and Hopkinss performance is infinitely more thought provoking. And the tensest, most entertaining parts of the movie revolve around Clarice and Hannibal speaking and relating to each other. Theres never a real threat of Hannibal jumping out and killing Clarice, and yet those scenes are so suspenseful because the performances are simultaneously daring and grounded in a grim and gritty reality.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
