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Parents' Guide to

A Classic Horror Story

By Brian Costello, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Gory violence, language in Italian horror tale.

Movie NR 2021 95 minutes
A Classic Horror Story Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 18+

Based on 1 parent review

Livk8
Livk8 Adult
September 29, 2021
age 18+

All around a good movie

It's not over the top horror movie but all in all good movie for horror and gore fans
See all 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In A CLASSIC HORROR STORY, Elisa (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) has joined four strangers in a ride-share camper bound for southern Italy. The four include a sullen middle-aged man named Riccardo who claims to be a doctor, Fabrizio, a goofball local who owns the camper and makes vlogs of his travels, and Mark and Sofia, a loving foreign couple taking in the sights of Italy. Once these five hit the road, Fabrizio breaks out the beer and shares it with the other four while he drives. Later, Mark, who has been and continues to be drinking, takes over driving duties once it gets dark, swerves out of the way when he sees a dead goat in the road, and crashes the camper into a tree. When the five return to consciousness in the morning, Mark's leg is broken, and they find their camper in the middle of a field across from an old farmhouse. Of course, there's no phone service, and so, after doing their best to reset Mark's broken leg, they venture into the farmhouse. Inside, they see gruesome artwork that Fabrizio tells them is rooted in a local legend based on human sacrifice to three knights that kept the people alive during a famine. While checking out the attic, they look out the window and see Mark being dragged by masked and hooded people, and through holes in the floor, witness Mark's gruesome killing. Unable to rescue Mark, they try to escape through the woods when Mark's killers leave. They rescue a girl named Chiara, whose tongue had been removed by members of the death cult, and when they find themselves in the same field by the farmhouse after hiking for hours, things take an even more mysterious and horrifying turn. Now, the survivors must find a way to escape this death cult and find out what's really going on with these people in these woods.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (1 ):
Kids say (2 ):

As the title implies, this is a self aware horror movie, a love-it-or-hate-it experience. While one expects story twists and gruesome violence in horror movies, A Classic Horror Story takes the twists to extreme and/or absurd levels, and the violence ultimately leads to a discussion on violence in horror movies, consumption of violence in media, and the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for violence, either in story or in "reality" entertainment. The audience itself is implicated, and even Netflix is implicated. The title and the first two acts of the movie, with horror movie trope after trope, and nods to so many other horror movies, comes across as the kind of cynical irony often employed in movies where making money takes precedence over any pretensions of artistic expression, but the third act, after so much unpleasant blood and gore, turns the movie into something else.

A Classic Horror Story's confrontation with itself, its genre, its streaming service, and its audience will be provocative to some, overwrought to others. It will anger some, when these same people should reserve their anger less for this movie's messages on horror and violence and more for how uninspired, cheesy, and gratuitous most horror movies are. That said, the movie wants it both ways. It uses the very violence it confronts to the same extremes as any other gory horror movie, and so much blood and so many body parts are shed before the "big reveal" that pranks and implicates everyone. While one hopes that the meta self criticism employed by the filmmakers is a comment on their own part in the very industry they're confronting, it's hard to tell if that part of the movie's message is earnest reflection or smug cynicism. Still, in a genre known more for heart skips and adrenaline, this is surprisingly thought-provoking.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about horror movies like A Classic Horror Story. How is this similar to and different from other horror movies you've seen?

  • Movies like these always have story twists. What is the story twist in this movie? Did you expect it? Why or why not?

  • What messages is the movie trying to communicate in terms of violence, society, media consumption?

Movie Details

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