I can't really tell what the general reaction of this audience is...some look scared, some look jovial, some look like something just suddenly grabbed their feet, and some kind of like all three. When I walk into a theater after paying $9.75, I want my experience to be fun in some kind of regard. If I'm paying for a movie I know will be crappy, I at least want to be entertained by it's sheer stupidity. If I pay for a comedy I want to laugh. If I pay for a drama, I want to be moved. If I pay for a "scary" movie...I want to be scared. This last effect seems to be all but missing from today's horror fests. This article is based primarily on my own opinions, and I'm not trying to put words in other people's mouths. I know that everyone has different feelings towards what scared them.
For me it's been quite some time since I've been scared in a movie. By scared, I do NOT mean jumpy. This is the first point I want to talk about. Way back when, horror filmmakers depended on everything that was happening on screen to scare an audience, and I mean everything. The story had to be frightening, the killer or bad guy had to truly be haunting, and the mood had to be as dark as possible. Jump moments, or jump scenes, were definitely there but were not relied upon to provoke fear. In today's horror movies, that's all been flipped. In most of the horror films we see today, jump scenes are virtually all a scary movie has to terrify it's audience. If you fall victim to these jump moments, ask yourself this: did that really chill me to the very core? Will that moment leave a scar on my brain and make me nervous to fall asleep tonight? Your answer more than likely will be no, but again I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. The answer for me is most certainly a big NO!
When you take jump scenes out of today's freaky flicks, what do you have left? A bunch of stupid teenagers/college kids getting slaughtered one by one and we could care a less about them. This leads me to my second point: there is rarely an original story to today's scary movies. 95% of the time we have this story: a group of twenty somethings go off into seclusion to have a raging party only to quickly learn there is a crazy killer on the loose who is either seeking revenge on one of them or just a crazy killer with no motive. They all get picked off one by one. They are all annoying. There is always one token "ethnic" person (I don't mean this in a bad way, but these film makers always like to have at least one stereotype character), one token "funny guy", a hot big boobed brunette or blond and the hunky sports star who just wants to be a normal guy and the girl he really wants to date but just doesn't have the courage to ask. Is this honestly scary to anyone anymore?
Even today's young audiences can't really be terrified by these things, but they all scream their faces off in these movies. Even though they've seen that type of movie about fifty times already. So why do they scream in the theaters? Most teenagers are with large groups of friends, and most of them are in the movie because it was easy to sneak into. They scream because that's what you are supposed to do in a scary movie right? They also do it to be "cool" and just have fun with their friends. Notice how they all giggle right afterward. Now I know some people do legitimately scream in these scenes, but it's not as common as you may think. My point was that teenagers have become the target audience. You can tell by the pointless and incredibly dim witted storylines that a five year old can follow. You can tell by the countless cliched jump scenes. You can tell by the massive amounts of blood and the kill scenes that are beyond graphic. Is that really what is scary?
There was a good movie last year called
The Strangers. I was a big fan. It teetered on that line of being a slasher movie but also one that messes with your mind because
it played kinda close to home. It was about a couple who were staying in some secluded house for the night after a wedding. Something went wrong between the two of them, but we never know what it is. Out of nowhere mysterious knocks and sounds from outside come about. Mysterious people sneak in the house without the couple even knowing. Then later this couple is terrorized about three random people who all have masks and don't talk. They don't slice and dice them though. They screw with them. They unnerve them. They break into their home and break this couple down mentally. THAT to me is terrifying and I think the filmmakers did a great job at making it almost real. I'll admit after watching it, I felt nervous to be alone at home. But these types of movies are very far and few between, because it is the slasher movie like I said, that dominates today.
These slasher
movie USED to be scary actually. Some of our readers grew up on the classic slasher movies that started it all. I didn't grow up on them, but I still saw them in my younger days. Michael Myers (the original
Halloween 1978) was horrifying. He was silent, he walked at a brisk pace and he just killed. He interrupted a peaceful neighborhood on a normal Halloween night and just terrified audiences across the country. The movie made babysitters nervously peer out their windows when a slight sound was echoed outside. In its time, the movie was extremely original. It scared me as a kid (and I was born 7 years after the movie
was released). Then came Jason Vorhees (
Friday the 13th) in
1980. Although technically it was his mom doing the killing in the first film, but he came about in sequels. He terrified kids at a summer camp, dawning a hockey mask and brandishing a machete. He made teenagers deathly afraid to go to camps after those movies. Let's not forget good old Freddy Kruger (
A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984) and his charred body and metal claws. He killed his victims in their dreams when the slept. I'll be the first to admit, I was none to pleased to go to bed after watching those movies. These are the effects these movies had...today we don't really get that. Well we actually get remakes of these classics. Tons of them. We have two Halloween remakes. One Friday the 13th (more to come I'm sure), and also A Nightmare on Elm Street remake is in the works as we speak. No doubt to cash in on today's teens thirst for gore gore gore.
Gore has taken over the scary cinema as well. Sometimes it actually works in my opinion, when it's done tastefu
lly. When the original Saw movie came out, I loved it. I thought it was highly original, and had some genuine freaky moments. I hadn't seen a movie like that. Most people think the original Saw was a gory movie...but in fact there wasn't much blood at all. There was the one scene where the guy cuts off his foot, and then the pool of blood in the middle of the room, but gory? Not really. Saw II took an original premise and just ran with it...but in a bad direction. The series (soon to be at number six) has become a total gorefest. Mindless torture scenes full of heads being twisted, faces blown off, people on fire, etc. I've only seen the first two. It's kind of tarnished the original I think. These constant sequels have made the original almost forgettable, which is sad because it really is a good movie and had a very twisty ending. Again though, the kids these days are blood thirsty! The movie studios who make these films have to make their movies appealing to their audience. It's all about money in the end anyway. Funny because horror movies are one of the least profitable genres of film in recent years.
There's another side to scary: the supernatural. These are my favorite types of h
orror movie. I love a good ghost tale. Sadly, they don't make 'em very good anymore...or at all really. Ghost movies don't appeal to a large audience these days, so there's no need to make them. They used to be quite popular. I shouldn't even have to mention
Poltergeist 1982, possibly one of the most classic ghost tales ever told! To this day, that movie unnerves me unlike any other scary movie. It was always quiet and you always knew when something was about to happen. They had shots in the movie that just panned over the quiet house of the family sleeping. The TV was on that blasted static channel. Everything seemed OK, but you knew as the audience that it wasn't. Man that movie is true horror at it's very best. If you haven't seen it, my advice is that you do. Watch it in your home with the lights off. Tell me that doesn't scare you!
Or what about movie like
The Changeling 1980(not the Angelia Jolie movie) or
The Shi
ning 1980? These m
ovies prove that silence can be the scariest aspect of a film and in real life. They prove to us that the things we cannot see are what scares us the most. If we can see the monster, yes it's scary, but we at least know where to run. But if you are in some giant mansion and creepy sounds come from all directions and things start flying off shelves and demonic voices come from somewhere in your home...where the hell do you run? Where can you go in your home that you are safe? See now that really is scary to me. Not knowing what on earth is stalking you and messing with you. Not being able to see it or even communicate with it. That to me gives me the heeby jeebies! That's what movies like The Changeling and The Shining do to an audience.
We have had our share of good ghost movies as of late, at least in my opinion. Movies like
The Sixth Sense 1999,
The Others 2001, and
The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
2008 ring a bell. They showed us that we don't have to simply rely on blood and guts. Or constant cliched jump scenes. Or eight stupid characters who we don't give a crap about. These movies shouldn't JUST be about the characters, a big part of it should be what's making these characters squirm. Because we have to relate. The movies listed above do just that. They may be about other worldly things that a lot of us don't experience but still provide us with the "what if?". I want to be chilled to the bone. I want to be afraid to sleep at night. I want to come home and check my house to make sure everything is OK. That's the affect a horror movie SHOULD have on an audience. We shouldn't just see a couple having sex and dying in the middle of it and laughing at it. We shouldn't be fooled by the cat in the closet trick and making us jump. I want some class in my scary movie.
Anyway, this is just how I feel. This is my opinion. I am a huge fan of movies, and I guess I've become somewhat of a movie snob over the years. But you have to admit...I might be a little right on this...right??
Cliched Jump Scenes1. Cat jumps out of an armoir (why the hell is a cat in there to begin with?!?)
2. A bat, bird or mouse jumps out of a closet (Again...why??)
3. Girl looks in mirror, goes down to wash her face, looks back up and...AH KILLER!
4. Character is standing in a room that's empty and then...AH hand on the shoulder! (not the killer)
5. Let's look in the fridge. Hm, nothing. Close the fridge and BOO! Someone is standing right there!
6. Character patrols a room and no one is there. She turns around dramatically and SHRIEK! Her best friend of lover is standing right in front of her (and he's SHOCKED that she got scared! What?!)
7. A light is flickering in a hallway (darkness then light, etc). The light is on, nothing there. Light goes off. Light comes back on...DEAR GOD there's a creepy villain in front of you! Where did you even come from!?
Those are just a few.
Another long post from me...when you have Mike blogging...you usually have a lot of reading to do. Hehe! Until next time.
--Mike--
