Ryder begrudgingly gives in to his mother’s wishes and agrees to stay silent. The three argue over whether or not Ryder should come out to the entire family at the reunion, with his mom adamantly against it. In Take Me to the River, a young gay man named Ryder (Logan Miller) and his parents, Cindy (Robin Weigert) and Don (Richard Schiff), drive to a family reunion taking place at the family farm in rural Nebraska. The combination of these three traits arouse fear in the audience, and can be enhanced by characters in the story who demonstrate their own fear of the monster, which is then mirrored by the audience (Carroll). “Art-horror” is loosely defined as a sense of fear and/or disgust with the “monster.” The monster must meet three basic criteria, which are: 1) the monster cannot be explained by contemporary science, 2) the monster is threatening, and 3) the monster is impure. According to Carroll, a film can be included in the horror genre as long as the filmmakers have the intention of arousing “art-horror” in the audience. To begin, it will be useful to define what is meant by the practices of the horror genre and the concept of “art-horror,” as it has been laid out by Noël Carroll. Though by all approximation, Take Me to the River is not a horror film, it does produce a sense of “art-horror” for viewers, so much so that it works to transcend genre by mixing disparate narrative ands stylistic elements. Such is the case with Matt Sobel’s 2015 film, Take Me to the River. However, there are certain films that seemingly defy these genres, or lie on the periphery of their respective genre classification, or even combine elements of various genres, thus confusing any hope of true classification. In horror films, viewers expect to be frightened, or at the very least “unsettled,” and this can be achieved through a variety of different narrative forms and stylistic practices. When making a Western, a director knows that there are certain expectations particular to the genre viewers generally want to see films set in the past, often times in America, with vast landscapes, gunfights, heroes and villains, to say nothing of the various stylistic choices, often related to familiar music, staging, and exposition.
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