Even though Silence of the Lambs begins and ends through genre formula, it is my favorite because of how it presents the horror. Most horror films seem to be exercises in moods and tempos, yes, but brought along with that how to kill someone or show something terrible in the most effective way. Whatever the case, you are getting the end result of what the imagination by feeling the fear that Hannibal Lector has in all the possibilities of things he can do to you. In the film, he does absolutely nothing to the protaganist, Clarice Sterling, which is great because the imagination can bring so much more in possibilities of violence and such that can be never shown in movies. Hannibal Lector is my favorite bad guy in the movies, even if he was butchered in character in two movies afterwords. Hannibal was a throw away because it was an obvious removal of Lector's character into Jason mode. Red Dragon was for more dangerous in destroying the prestige he had in Silence because it made all the famous scenes in Silence up as farce, as routine scenes that could play in normal drama. In Dragon, all magic and terror with Hannibal is gone, though the actions remain the same. It reduced everything that was great about Silence into scenes of convenience for plot build up to other things. Fuck Brett Ratner. He is even more insulting than Jerry Bruckheimer ever could be.
~rougerum