Horror’s popular, but it’s too often treated as a cinematic curiosity, with analysis of its aesthetic qualities ignored in favor of exploiting its scare quotient. What’s ironic is that cinematography is integral to a good scare, and perhaps we’re too freaked to properly appreciate the technique that helped elevate the moment.
Aesthetic Horror, a new Twitter account, is working to change that by isolating frames from iconic horror movies as a means of capturing the indelible. The captured images are not just striking to see on their own—they also take on an added weight in the memory of whichever scare it helps forecast. And even if you don’t know the movie, the images conjure their own kind of contextless horror.
The account’s no snob, either. One of its most endearing qualities is the way it highlights not only horror classics but also forgotten Hollywood toss-offs like 1998’s Urban Legend or 2009’s My Bloody Valentine 3-D. Those may not have been good movies, but Aesthetic Horror shows there’s terror to be found in the isolation of particular images. Hell, we kind of want to see Valentine now.