I'm a horror movie fan. A fan of the horror movie genre. The sad thing is, this is a fact that I actually argue with myself about, as I sometimes don't want to be a fan of the horror genre. Why, because lets face it, most horror movies suck.
Lots of other genres have their fair share of crap, comedies have a consistently high supply of total crap, and look at all terrible action movies that come out each year. We have the awful romantic comedies, the mind-bogglingly awful dramas, and sci-fi movies that make you consistantly bang your head on the wall. (Though these are nearly as prolific as in the 50s for instance)
But horror movies have overcome the odds and manage to out suck all of these genres, possibly all of them put together. It's flooded with uber-shitty Halloween rip-offs, mostly crap torture movies (like Hostel) and those movies that try to mimic the supposedly great Japanese horror (not really sure since I haven't seen much Japanese horror) but fail at being good. Example, The Grudge. Don't even get me started on The Grudge. Also can't forget the crappy remakes to the good films, and even the crappy remakes of crap films. There are also a number of other horror movies that don't fall into any category I can think of at this time but they are usually pretty crap and star 'Famous Celebrity of the moment'. You know what I'm talking about.
Why is horror in such a crappy state, why has it sunk so low? (Not that it, arguably, was very high to begin with.) The answer is, I believe, that people are, for some reason, willing to accept complete and utter crap in this genre more than any other. The eighties was especially bad with fifty thousand shitty Friday the 13th rip-offs. (Not forgetting the movie was a rip-off itself), complete with no name actors who couldn't act, or maybe they could and it was so hard to tell and the dialogue was so appalling that no-one cared. Who cares if the dialog is good? Who cares if the actors can act? Who cares if the plot makes any sense whatsoever and isn't a rehash that completely contradicts the first movie altogether, the dumbass public will still lap this shit up and we'll rake in the proceeds.
We also get stuff like Hellraiser, which was a really original idea, and a good, if heavily flawed, especially in the special effects department, movie. The studios missed the point and with the exception of Part 2, almost all the sequels sucked. Trust the studios to not get it.
I'll say a small amount on the torture movies. I think the first Saw (Haven't actually seen the sequels) was pretty decent as the scenario was pretty well set up and it had a nice atmosphere throughout. I've seen better but I've seen far far worse. Hostel on the other hand was a complete piece of crap. Eli Roth seemingly wanted to copy the brilliance of Takashi Miike's 'Audition' (There's a movie you should check out). He however completly failed in this task by making the protagonists so annoying that you honestly couldn't care less if they died in the most painful of ways. The movie lacks in so many ways that I won't go into right now because that would take another post. Maybe in the future.
Maybe what horror really needs is the independents. People willing to take a risk. Give us something with some imagination. Don't go over the same old shit time and time again. Maybe what it really needs is for the public to stop accepting the total shit the horror genre is giving us. I wouldn't wait for that to happen anytime soon.
The best horror is actually happening in movies that aren't primarily labled as horror. Maybe those are the movies we should be turning our attention to, maybe they can save us from this dreck.
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3 comments:
Interesting post, and I agree with you on most the points you brought up. I'm not sure exactly what makes most current movies so crap, but a big part of it I believe is the audience's fault, the ones that spend all the money to view these bad films so that they actually make money, so in the marketers eyes they are a success even if they get really bad reviews and are actually terrible. I guess that's one of the problems plaguing a lot of Hollywood movies, they don't see themselves doing anything wrong as long as they make lots of money from the films. Doesn't matter if they are any good or not, or whether they have to misadvertise to get people into the films.
As to some good horror type films of recent years, Saw was pretty good because it had some originality in it (probably because it was from two Australian directors fresh out of film school) and a lot of the zombie movies I've enjoyed, such as 28 Days Later (even though its a remake) and Dawn of the Dead/Land of the Dead were good as well. Land of the Dead I especially enjoyed, having Romero back in the directing helm. Also I don't mind a couple of the Night Shaylaman films, if you can consider them having horror elements.
Another issue I see is how accepting audiences are of the schlock they put into horrors - cheap thrills pretty much, just random acts of violence and killing regardless of character building or anything, and any taboo subjects. It scares most people, but I really thing they have overused the whole slice and dice element. Horror works better when you don't oversee so much things like that, if it is subtle and well developed.
Anyway enough of my rant. I'm not sure exactly what the future holds for the horror, but you may be right it may be up to the independents. Maybe some genre mixing is needed to add something fresh into the blend.
28 Days Later wasn't a remake, though it was highly influenced by previous zombie films. (Though it arguably wasn't a zombie film in itself )
Dawn of the Dead is a remake however.
As for Shaylaman, I don't really consider any of his work to be that great since 'The Sixth Sense'. His twist endings sort of screwed him over.
And you are right, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you don't do a decent job in introducing the characters and making them likeable, then killing them has no impact whatsoever. Something Eli Roth's movies fail so miserably at. How he manages to make his characters suck so much I don't know.
For all my ranting on Eli Roth I'll give the man points on Enthusiasm, he honestly cares a lot about what he creates. If we saw some more of that kind of devotion, maybe from some people that could create decent horror, the genre go somewhere.
Hmm that's weird I always thought that 28 Days Later was a remake, probably because of a comment I read about the film and the similarity of the supermarket scene to another older movie... then I must have got it into my head it was a remake.
Most of the old horror films weren't really that good, but they were enjoyable. I remember seeing quite a few when I was younger, and although they would probably be pretty bad if I saw them again now they really seemed to be well made and creative when I saw them back then. I can't even remember their names, one was about a haunted mansion and the other had some monster using someones head as a basketball.. perhaps they were the same movie.
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