Okay, time to catch up on this thread. I was reading along, just had a rough couple of weeks.
The Old Mill
Glad you liked this. It does have that Bambi quality but without the attached childhood trauma.
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943 Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid)
Is this a time loop or is it a dream or something else, your guess is as good as mine.
It's a weird one. Don't ask me to explain, but I love how surreal and visual it is. It does have a bit of a Bunuel quality to it, but without the violent trauma.
Scream (mildly spoilery)
If I wasn't 9 when this came out, I felt this would have been such a great film to see in theaters for the first time. Kinda like how my dad talks about Halloween, although that film basically made him swear off horror films forever.
Scream (1996 Wes Craven)
Well this one has the same problem Psycho had a few months ago, I knew a fair bit about the film going in.
I could see this one not being impactful if you know too much. I lucked out with both Scream and Psycho in that I didn't know the twist and so it worked well for me. I still think like 1SO says in this thread that the opening is one of the great horror openings and there are lots of beats along the way, especially the comedy moments, that make Scream work for me as a great meta-horror film. I feel like watching this in the context of seeing old slasher films first helped me appreciate it a lot more.
Cat People
I feel like Sam would prefer I not like the movie I watch for him because if I loved it he would have to rethink its placement. Such is the nature of our inverse preferences. I'm excited to say that this fit the bill.
Guess this solidifies me including it in my top 100 when I was really on the fence about it at the time. I'll echo 1SO in saying the remake is probably more your speed. Maybe at least seeing this will give you a better appreciation for that film which I don't enjoy so you'll probably love.
Scream
Sandy: It's as if I need to replace what I saw with other things, like the need to heal my soul, I guess.
KOL: I sense that it was a less than a good experience.
Sandy: It's hard to define good. I'm not desensitized from watching numerous horror movies, so it's raw to me. I'm an empath for goodness sake! I don't have enough protective filters!
KOL: Your empathic capacities means that you enjoyed Scream less?
Sandy: I don't watch films lightly. They affect me.
I can kinda identify with this some. When I first got into horror I had some dark moments where I felt like watching The Exorcist or something like that was spiritually taxing on me and I needed some Malick rewatches in my life to balance out the darkness. I think being introduced to horror in the context of a film class gave me a better understanding of what these films are trying to do by unmasking evil and not shying away from the violence.
I think for some people it really does affect them. One of my mom's dearest friends couldn't watch any film with bloody violence because it was too emotionally traumatic for her. She couldn't get into that mindset of seeing it as all for show. It felt too real for her. I felt that way more about war movies because even though it was a reenactment, I knew it was depicting real experiences.
There are countless books written about horror and how it's a kind of coping device for different traumas. Cloverfield and 9/11, slasher films and sexual awakenings, etc... Sometimes horror is just transgressive for its own sake and those tends to be the ones I find distasteful (see Hostel/Saw). I think most good horror deals with trauma in some ways so they should be traumatic experiences which means that some people should probably not be watching them. My sister had a roommate show her Scream and she said it terrified her and I told her I would have never shown her that film.