Editorial - Horror Movies in Today’s Cinema
I was in the grocery store checking out a few weeks back, and the lovely, beautiful manager there, a mid-twenty-something that I've known for years, asked me if I was seeing The Final Destination that weekend. I said that modern horror really wasn't my cup of tea. She was quite surprised, it was her favorite genre and she and her boyfriend were going opening night.
Having known this girl for years but never having spent time getting to know her, I was a bit stunned that she loved them so much. She very rarely said anything dark or perverse, and was the nicest person I've met in a long time, and seemed a little quiet to enjoy the kind of bloody destruction that Final Destination would entail. Then again, I've only known her surface, since she works at a Food Lion, and she's always raving about how awesome her boyfriend is.
This started me thinking about horror in general, and who follows it. I'm hardly a national survey, so I don't really know the kind of minds that go see modern slasher films, but I know the target demographic is usually not women nearing thirty, it's usually males age 18-24. Obviously, they're violent, often dark, and they tend to have lots of beautiful women in them, which I'll show as we go on.
However, the genre of horror has changed since I was younger. I saw the first Friday the 13th on home video when I was fifteen or so, and it was scary, but not overdone. I saw Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 14, and that was very scary, but again, not overdone. It played on our psychological fears - claustrophobia, not being alone in the house, being stuck out in the woods, etc. Primal fears.
What has horror become? I have not personally seen the Friday the 13th remake, nor Rob Zombie's Halloween, but I saw enough internet clips to know I don't want to. It all boils down now to the same thing, over and over and over again - A group of teens alone somewhere for some reason, worried about their silly problems, getting naked, while a man in a mask that finds newer and interesting ways to destroy the human body, usually quite thoroughly.
Joss Whedon's got it right - he's released three posters for his upcoming 'horror' film (which will probably be a satire at best) Cabin in the Woods, each one giving a mockery of the genre:
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I about died laughing when I saw these posters, because they're so accurate! And there's nothing funnier than when someone calls Hollywood on their obvious ploys.
The Slasher film concept was lightly amusing in the 80's, and even some of the 90's, but at what point have you just done it? Perhaps I'm myopic in this, since I tend to think the same thing about cop movies - I hate to break it to people, but I'd seen The Departed probably three or four times in my life long before it was put into theaters, because all these cop movies do is recycle similar mysteries over and over again.
But it seems even more intense in slasher films. There are always some gorgeous teenagers-and-above doing something really stupid, getting naked or near-naked, and then paying the price as a serial killer cuts them up for chum. I'm curious, when did this rote-repetitive formula begin to appeal to massive crowds? I remember lines hanging out of the theater for some of them.
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The differences are like night and day, too. The point of Halloween (the first one, the GOOD one) was the oncoming storm of Michael Myers coming to kill you - he wasn't stoppable, he didn't breathe hard, he was like a machine, some kind of Hell-powered machine that simply wouldn't stop. It had a unique feel, a new idea, and imbued terror, at last in me. Rob Zombie's version, while it certainly had a few homages in there, did nothing to imbue the kind of terror and psychological fear that the first one did. It had some horror, at how people died, but it felt too hammy, too ridiculous to be as down, dirty, and gritty.
Now don't get me wrong, everyone loves a beautiful woman, even some women do, and we certainly do on this site, and we provide you with pictures of them quite often. I mean I was tempted to see Sorority Row just for the sheer amount of unfettered beauty in it:
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But then I read the synopsis somewhere, and it was just another stupid movie about stupid kids doing something that actually strikes me as exceptoinally amoral, and then dying in new, "innovative" ways.
And what about The Final Destination, the movie my friend asked me about? The first movie, Final Destination disturbed me on a variety of levels, and I suppose that's what horror is supposed to do, but frankly, the entire thing felt so contrived and so unavoidable that it became pointless to watch it. (I predicted the bus thing at the end.) And in that, it cuts through the normal crap you see in a slasher film and goes straight for the punchline - everyone's going to die. It's just a matter of time.
Perhaps I've played too much Silent Hill in my lifetime, but I like the concept of survival horror as a genre - where there's a chance the characters you root for might actually live. I tend to believe that life is much more exciting than being dead, so seeing them all bite the inevitable bullet, especially in Final Destination, just became predictable and non-thrilling.
But it's not just slasher movies that have this problem. What has happened to horror since Saw came out in 2004? Horror has degraded from a psychological play on fear of death to our built-in, sensible fear of pain. And I know, Saw tries to excuse it by carefully explaining that these people are, pardon the term, duchebags who need a lesson in life, but that doesn't excuse it. This is the industry known as torture porn. And most of these movies (except possibly Hostel) don't even bother with hot women, they just want to get right to the pain and killing.
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I was in a hotel a few months ago and they were showing Saw IV and I accidentally left it on that channel for a few moments while I did some unpacking, and the things I saw made me physically ill. Jigsaw's latest trap was to trap a person in a chair filled with knives so they had to press their way through the blades in order to get out of the trap, otherwise it would close and utterly kill them.
I'm sure he was some evil rapist or something, but that really doesn't make me feel any better. If you're going to kill someone, kill someone. I understand the principle behind "If they want to live, they have a right to live, but they need to suffer! Sorry, but isn't that what they did in the first place? I rarely say this, but doesn't this crap make you just as evil as they are?
What I don't understand is why do people watch this shit? What drives people to the theatre? Is it the hot ladies? They don't seem to happen as much, if at all, in the torture porn. Is it sadism? To enjoy this stuff you have to have an extra level of darkness riding around in your soul, at least that's the only thing I can conclude. What possible value could these movies have that drive men and women to see them crammed into a theater at 7pm or 9pm?
Furthermore... I don't think these concepts are scary. I mean, sure, it'd be scary if you were actually in it, but from a movie-watching perspective, it's just nauseating to watch, the fear effect doesn't happen, at least not to me. It's just sick. I'm trying to fathom why these movies make money. I'm trying to fathom why the nice girl I've talked to for years likes bloody death movies. It just doesn't compute. And I wonder if it speaks to the hollow emptiness of modern society that this is what we're drawn to now.
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Now don't get me wrong - despite my little diatribe here, there are horror films that haven't turned in to bloody slasher films or torture porn. I myself have recently seen The Unborn, a quasi-ghost story written by David Goyer and starring the unbelievably beautiful and talented Odette Yustman. That was a well made film about an unborn spirit trying to rebirth a child into the world so it can live. There was also the 2005 remake of The Fog, starring Lost's Maggie Grace and Smallville's Tom Welling, which was very entertaining and kind of a ghost story of sorts. It was very different from John Carpenter's classic rendition but somehow managed to come into its own.
Furthermore, one of my favorite movies of all time is the 1999 remake of The House on Haunted Hill, which for some reason got a lot of slams by critical reviewers, but was a very well made haunted house movie with a lot of thrills, excitement, and some very interesting characterizations. And of course, I needn't talk about Silent Hill again after last time! But still, that is also one of my very favorite survival horror movies.
Now yes, a lot of people in both of the last two movies died, but the main characters had a fighting chance to live, and they made the most of it, and came out the other side having learned something. The films were psychological, intense, scary, and keep you glued to your seat. And that, in my opinion, is what a good horror movie should be.
But, hey, I could be wrong.
--Chris B.
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I really enjoyed reading this Chris. Nice work! I loved how you opened; talking about some hottie that doesn’t want you, lol. That’s great stuff.
LOL! Thanks, I *think*!?
Some horrors are too damn cheesy these days. I like a few psychological horror.
More and more so called horror movies are nauseating.
The makers are just out of touch when it comes to horror movies. They have no idea what it is that we want, they’re just in love with the lazy remake formula and the sheep mentality from the public that goes with. Face it, the mid 90’s killed horror with the Scream movies and copies, while the reamakes from the last 4-5 years have put the final nail in this once feared and loved culture.
This Genre isnt Dead. I refuse to lay it down but It needs blood infusion. Life itself lends great story lines. Turning away from the carnage and blood but amp up the before and afters. Play the fear. The Teenager next door on a spree. Think people are immune to that .. think again.
American folklore beggs to have movies made off their variations.
but it requires a little brain power and some ability not some moron in a suit saying .. yeah we need a new Nightmare on Elm Street. Something I’m not even considering seeing because the old one still is scary.
Halloween redux by Zombie were awful they were horrible even in the homage catagory. uugh.
The gene isnt dead but the brain cells of those in charge are.
@Christian - Maybe so, maybe not, I’m not sure. Thanks for the comments though, I agree with you that certainly this genre has gone downhill thanks to the morons put in charge of it.
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