is 'Gravity' a horror film?

A little about ‘Gravity’: A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after an accident leaves them adrift in space. Stars: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris.

 I think Gravity, when it comes down to it, is a horror movie. There are lots of similarities to Alien: The claustrophobic feeling of space, the looming, unseen dangers that could pop around at you at any second, right down to the some of the quotes. A note at the opening of the film tells us, “In space, you do not have the ability to speak,” a line that sounds very close to Alien’s, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

But the alien in this movie is space itself, which Alfonso seems to realize is more frightening in real life than the most monstrous extraterrestrial our imaginations can come up with. Like the scariness of the monster is the laws of gravity them self. Think if you got a tiny nudge and had nothing to hold on to you would continue to go at that rate forever unless something stops you…that’s scary, the fact that you are out in the depth of unknown space drifting is more fearful then being eaten by a monster.

The horror of ‘Gravity’ relies upon putting yourself in the place of these characters. And here, we have to imagine ourselves in a state of absolute helplessness, a place where the two things that can usually get us out of a jam, our muscles or our speech, are equally useless. Alfonso does a good job of demonstrating the great range of ways to die in space, including, but not limited to, “burning alive, being impaled, and slowly suffocating while performing an infinite series of unintentional backflips”.