Starting off small. Horror Movies.

My gripe for today is a small one. At least on the grand scale of things at least. I will post about more important matters later on, but I will try to offend as few people as possible to begin with. I think my take on religion may shock a few and inspire a few others, but we are not ready for that just yet. So let’s talk about movies, horror movies to be exact.

I think that the genre has become watered down. Horror is the best film genre because if it is done right the movies can invoke more of an emotional reaction than any other. Sure a good love story can make you cry, a great drama can inspire you to think, and a good comedy can make you wet yourself a bit, but a good horror can stop you from showering alone for a very long time. Of course I am talking about the effects of one of the greatest horror films of all time, "Psycho". Alfred Hitchcock scared the life out of all of us, and he never even showed the knife going into Janet Leigh and yet we were all terrified the first time. Now every film maker thinks bloodier equals better. Sure blood has its place in horror movies, but too much blood and you have your self a slasher film like Friday the Thirteenth. A good movie in its own right, but not a horror film. There is a thin line between the two, but it is a line never the less. I think slasher films scare you by what they show and horror films scare you by what they don’t. Slasher films try to make you jump by quick images and loud noises, where a good horror movie will make you lean in close to hear a whisper in the dark. Good horror writers know that it is fear of the unknown that scares us most. Sure I am sure that some people out there are afraid to watch films like "Scream" in the dark, but why? Because you are afraid some killer wearing a ridicules mask is going to leap from your closet and hack you to bits. But try watching movies like "The Changeling" all alone in a dark house. You will find that a killer is the least of your worries. You will start wondering if that noise you heard was the furnace or the fingers of a long since dead child clawing at the walls in your basement. That my friend is scary. But we don’t see that anymore. We see bad remakes of scary Japanese movies instead. "The Ring" and "The Grudge" to be exact. Now I will be the very first to admit that "The Ring" had a few elements that made it a fairly scary movie, but everyone could see them coming. You knew that they were going to use every trick in the book to scare you, and they did. Which made it predictable and somewhat disappointing. Where as "The Grudge" just sucked. At least in "The Ring" she was trying to save her and her son’s lives. Now I am not going to over look a huge horror franchise that has popped up recently in "Saw" and its sequels. Here is something that we have been missing for some time. A smart killer. We saw the smartest of killers in "The Silence of the Lambs" and after that the idea has faded away. Sure Michael Myers is scary, but he’s stupid. You can out smart him. Try pulling the wool over the eyes of Hannibal Lecter and he might just eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Every word he spoke was brilliant and terrifying. He could get into your head and he did not have to do it with the aid of a butcher knife.

Not that all new horror movies are bad. Take "The Others" for example. This is a slow moving edge of your seat type of horror movie. You watch it and wonder why these things are happening and you hope to see something at the same time you hope not to. Then it ends with a great twist and wonderful directing. The replay value of this movie is kind of low, but what good horror movie really isn’t. The point I am trying to make is that you do not need a truck full of special effects to scare an audience. You need a good story and a little imagination. And for God sake don’t ruin another good scary movie by making the house come alive like in "The House on Haunted Hill". In that movie the ghostly doctor was scary, but they did not use him enough. If you are going to scare us by showing him, then at least let him be the antagonist.

Movies to see:
The Others
The Changeling
Poltergeist
The Amityville Horror (the original)
The Lady In White
Pet Semetary

Movies not to see:
The Amityville Horror (the remake)
The Grudge
Stay Alive
The Hills Have Eyes (remake)

Okay so there are thousands more you should not see, but these are a few I really have a problem with. I’d love to know what you enjoyed, and of course, what you didn’t.

Thanks for reading,
DK