But nobody is asking you, “Hey Legacy, are the IPs you find personally and subjectively scary coming?” They aren’t even asking you, “Hey Legacy, are the IPs that I find personally and subjectively scary coming?” When people ask if “scary IPs” are coming, they are talking about intellectual properties that recognizable as horror, directly associated with the horror canon as a whole (which Ghostbusters is expressly not—it belongs more in the American comedy canon) and (probably most importantly) marketed as horror. Obviously “anything is scary.” But surely you can understand how something like, say, The Munsters is decidedly not scary compared The Strangers or Event Horizon or 13 Ghosts when you think of it aesthetically/thematically/stylistically, if not altogether empirically. Sure, someone out there might giggle at The Strangers but poop their pants at just the thought of Herman Munster, but that’s not the question at hand lol. Again, it’s pedantic.Except, it matters. I don’t find Exorcist, The Shining, or Friday the 13th scary at all. Despite their “horror” classification, and many pointing to them as “scary” IPs, I found their presence at HHN boring and unimpressive. The “Titans of Terror” get a collective shrug, and don’t get me started on the snooze-fests that are most A24 horror films. Event Horizon, 13 Ghosts, and The Strangers mess me up.
So, it matters. There is a possible IP I find humorous but by wife finds terrifying, to the point where I avoid mentioning it to her. So, is the IP scary?
People got scared by moments in Ghostbusters and Stranger Things. People watched House of a Thousand Corpse bored out of their skulls. So, when people say “I want scary IPs,” what they’re saying is, “I want the IPs I find scary.” That’s why the subjectivity is important to remember.