simple changes i would give to the horror genre in an attempt to salvage itself from the factory of shit it has become.
2 new ghoulies that are actually scary that the audience does not end up rooting for.
I have to say predator deserves some if not all of the blame here
I feel like I'm over stepping the horror genre by adding in movies like Predator but to be honest horror is a really really bad genre and the theory of a Predator is 100xs scarier than any ghost toddler. Ant-jawed space hunter who kills for sport with advanced technology with no room for reasoning or bargaining with. He's like a pit bull that can turn invisible and laser beam you or gut you via wrist sword. He probably has the shotgun/sword combo too that's like virtually unbeatable. Now compare that to some kid who died on a farm. Not as scary. In fact I feel like any kid ghost could easily defeated.
I'm also at the point now in my life where I don't find the new incarnate of ghosts scary. cold looking children with dethklok makeup in shitty hipstery clothes aren't scary and their recycled use at this point is just overkill. There's only so many times a movie about "evil experiments" before that jetski has run aground.
Ring
Sarah michelle key movie
That movie with the farm house thing
Quarantined
The Others
Orphanage
the movie with Rogue in the darkness thing
Silent Hill
The movie with the kid in the basement and the dentist chair
I hate to give any credit to the shitty Rob Zombie movies but those two hunks of shit and The Strangers had a good concept of "some people are just fucked and evil" Now I say I hate to give Rob Zombie credit because his movies were at best Texas Chainsaw remakes with a awful hot topic twist that did away with tension and replaced it with batshit. But they knew their audience, they gave their audience (teens) the best reasoning for the homicidal rage that the audience experience every day are up against. None. No reason to act the way they do and no reason for them to have the grief put upon them is damaging to think about. Its different when people go into a cave or the woods or an abandoned camp or scenarios you know you'll never be a part of. But in that movie The Strangers it was just people in a house that were killed just because they were there. Now granted that movie sucked shit and there was no real suspense in it because everything was rushed to get to the climax and the climax itself was kind of chilling in a way but still lacked on a great finish. Or it didn't and I'm just a prick. I don't mean to knock the movie but the premise of bored teenagers just killing people because they were home and torturing them could really be terrifying if done well. Which it wasn't.where the fuck am i?
its amaaaaaaaazing.Now the glaring problem with my comparison is that for anyone who wants a monster as scary as the Predator there is the fact that no one on this earth is anti-Predator.
In predator and especially Predator 2 the Predator couldn't kill enough humans. There literally is not enough death to dispense evenly around LA gangs, drug lords, cops with mustaches, people on trains no one was likable and all I wanted was blood. I don't care if my family was on screen I wanted tri-lasers to their faces and arm swords through their miserable carcasses. How dare my friends and family stand in the way of my mandible Christ.
So thats what needs to happen, I'm not helping much by saying this but, you need a new scary monster that gets people to root against him to win. By the time the new Jason and Freddy movies came around I was just going to see them kill people. If possible I would've liked to skip the story all together and just concentrate on the murders.
Most horror films nowadays are incapable of telling a good story and are repetitive and redundant. You're right that it's a bad genre. As a mainstream genre it only exists to try and scare viewers who don't really care much about quality in film. It works for the industry but is utterly transparent to people who are critical of the medium.
ReplyDeleteHorror isn't even supposed to be a genre in the first place, it's supposed to be a desired effect. I hate films like August Underground for just being a string of plotless rape and carnage but I respect them for admitting they'd fuck up any story attached and just try to horrify.
I think the last time a film tried to make a new scary monster it was Cloverfield. Or the Collector. Neither of which I saw because I was already expecting disappointment. All the classic villains have been turned into stupid cartoonish caricatures. Michael Meyers was intimidating once. I think only the Predator has kept its image intact if you forget they made 2 AvP films which isn't difficult.