What an excellent day for an exorcism.

MovieMaker: Is Horror Dead?

August 2, 2008 ·

An interesting article about horror popped up on MovieMaker.com today: Is Horror Dead?

You can go ahead and read the article here- Page 1 of 2 , but I would like to sum up their points, followed by my response to each. *Disclaimer- At some point both MM and I take the thoughts of the filmmakers slightly out of context, so read both posts with a grain of salt.

They kick it off by bringing up torture porn, then recap the failures of recent horror directors, and the recent entry by Romero. “Torture porn” is probably one of the most inaccurate and misused terms ever coined. Each director is an individual case though, it’s kind of irresponsible to blanket the genre with “death”, based on the low points in the careers of rookie’s, aside from Romero. For Roth, the success of Cabin Fever was lucky, he exploited a relatively original idea with Hostel, and should have turned down Hostel 2 after the U.S. decided it didnt like the first one. The differences in the box office results for each are probably the best examples ever of a director not being able to pull the rug out from under the audience more than once. McLean found minimal success by exploiting a true crime story from his homeland, then based his follow-up on a legend from his homeland(I think) that was much less appealing. I think the connection between the two is that if they want to make worthwhile entries into the genre, they need to come up with something original, of their own, that is’nt based on something else. Whatever happened to creativity and imagination? As for Romero, Land of the Dead was a success only 3 years ago. I have my beliefs that the success of Diary was curbed by mismanagement on the studio’s or distributor’s behalf. It actually has a higher score on IMDB than Land. So, I dont think that Diary should have been brought up, aside from the writer trying to relate the topic to 2008.

Savini says the solution is first-person style movies, because youngsters play video games. I really doubt that the perspective in which the movies are filmed attributed to the success of the film more than the talent that was behind them. Romero, J.J. Abrams. But again, Diary isnt being considered a success.

The director of Midnight Meat Train says that he hopes his movie will breathe some life back into the genre when it opens this weekend. But, I’m sure that was his answer before he found out that Lionsgate is only releasing the film straight to dollar theaters.

Marc Fratto (Who?) says that the new blood in Hollywood is jaded by bad horror movies that they associate the genre with. lol what? He goes on to mention that horror is more mainstream now because studios have more control over them. I think its more like, studios are milking remake material by releasing them as pg-13’s because they know the kids will eat it up like candy.

MM then cites ‘Fear Itself’ as a factor that is “driving major horror talent to television.” Masters of Horror failed. Twice. Masters of Science Fiction didnt even make it past 4 episodes. Fear Itself is failing. Surprise, surprise, look who is behind it. Again, I think this was just thrown into the article to make it seem relevant to today’s horror.

Nick at Chud.com says foreign horror will revive the genre. Not if studios keep remaking them into crap, instead of releasing them in the states as they were originally intended.

MM interviews a professor and he is probably more off than anyone else in the article. When horror is stripped of story and characters, they tend to fail, blah blah blah. Unless he was referring to Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, even the most outlandish gorefest’s are character and story driven. We are still talking about horror in general and not underground exploitation horror, right? Then he compares unsuccessful films about the Iraq War to the genre, posing violence / reality fatigue as a possibility. I think its simply a matter of the best horror has to offer right now being few and far between.

Again, they refer to Diary as if it was a success even though they pointed it out as one of Romero’s failure’s at the beginning of the article.

Then, *sigh*, they mention that the writer/producer of ROTLD3 (lmao) agrees with Savini about the video game theory, in addition to pointing out that horror filmmakers will be trying to relate to the post-9/11 era as much as possible, referring to Cloverfield as the example for both theories about the future of horror.

Finally, they talk to someone (who I will not mention because their movie sucked) who thinks new advances in 3D technology will have a major impact on the genre. Except for the fact that people are even less interested in wearing 3D glasses for an hour+ than watching a first-person film with shaky camera movement.

My theory? That would have to be a very lengthy post on its own. The short version though: I just think whoever is going to amaze audiences with horror, needs to first of all, understand the craft well enough to utilize it to its fullest potential in ways it hasn’t been used, not just rehash all of the techniques that were pioneered by so many filmmakers before them. Then use their creativity to bring something out of the peak of their imaginations that will scare audiences in ways theyve never been scared, to extents they could not have imagined. Sounds easy right? No? Well, I believe that is why horror isnt dead, but that it’s waiting for talent great enough for it to be proud to associate itself with. A Spielberg equivalent on the path of the dark side.

2 Responses to “MovieMaker: Is Horror Dead?”

AtomicPhread Says:
August 31st, 2008 at 3:37 pm
My biggest problem is that the studios just want to cater to the PG-13 market. Horror films are supposed to shock and scare us. With all the remakes and toned down movies these days, even the cheap jump scares don’t work anymore. Too often, I wind up checking my watch and trying to figure out how much longer the film I’m watching has left to go…

At least I can say that I stay to the end of movies. Except for Van Helsing - the CG vampire babies were just too much…
Wes Fierce Says:
September 1st, 2008 at 2:12 am

Well, I think that is due to the fact that the *real* talent isnt in a position of power to do anything right now, so the studios are running things on their own for the time being. *sigh* Which, equates into producing films using proven methods of getting as many ticket sales as possible.

You’ve got Aja, who’s terrible movie just flopped in theaters as a wide release. Yet, Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat has been on the shelf for 3 years and is about to get dumped to DVD after an extremely limited theatrical run. I’m not saying Dougherty is the real talent in horror, but TRT is his directorial debut, so how would we even find out? TRT even had Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. behind it even!

In fact, I just got an idea for a good followup for this article. I’ll type it up and post right now, even….