I've been rather down on horror as a film genre since the 1980s. Just not much being made that appeals to me. Found footage is overused. Zombies are way overused. Slasher movies aren't my thing (though I like the original John Carpenter Halloween). Vampires stopped being scary a while ago even in books (save for David Wellington's Laura Caxton series which had very nasty, scary vamps). Ditto werewolves (which have never been my thing anyway).
I've always been fond of the some of the low budget fifties and sixties stuff. The original Night of the Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, the 1963 version of The Haunting.
I have no desire to see any "horror" movie that's PG-13. What a waste. There are some decent horror movies out there but none by big name studios or producers. They're just after money.
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. Socrates THE EXORCIST (1973) Still the scariest movie i have every seen and the crucifix masturbation scene is still disturbing to me. ( how did they get away with that? lol) Wish i knew how to link movies clips and pics in here. CG effects have hindered the Horror genre iimo, even computer breath looks cheesy and lame.
John Carpenter's "The Thing" in the early 80's was a pretty good horror movie.
Also miss the lost art of stop motion animation in films ala Ray Harryhausen.
I would guess that lowering the rating is a lame way to get more bums in seats. Make it less violent, remove the language and then parents with kids in that age bracket would be taken along. Just a thought..
I used to love horror films and still like the classics like Friday the 13th, or Freddy Kreuger. I love the Scream movies very good stories, but the horror films here lately have sucked or I have no interest in seeing them. I seen House at the end of the Street and it wasn't scary at all it was more stupid than anything. I did love Jennifer Lawerence.
its missing a storyline and the suspense... maybe its time for some lushie's to put together a sexual horror.
If you want quality horror, you’d do well to move away from the American mainstream and head to foreign climes. In the last ten to fifteen years, the vast majority of decent horror has come from the Far East. Japanese films such as Audition, Ring (before the US remake), Dark Water (before the US remake) Ju-On (before the US remake – are we spotting a theme?), and A Tale of Two Sisters from South Korea, are fantastic examples of psychological horror.
The scares in these films don’t come from overblown set pieces with moronic, scantily clad teens pursued by a psychopath wielding the contents of Home Depot’s hardware section. Instead, they tend to build the tension slowly, and for the most part contain believable characters that find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. The Orphanage from Spain also fits well into this category.
However, I believe one American movie of the last few years does deserve a mention – Drag Me to Hell. Okay, so it wasn’t terrifying, but being from Sam Raimi, it did go some way toward finding that mix of horror and tongue in cheek humour that he brought to The Evil Dead movies.
I think I see at least three problems with horror movies today, at least for me:
- Gimmicks. Whether it's torture porn, bad twist endings, or found footage, I find that every time someone comes up with a successful new gimmick, it comes to dominate the genre.
There's nothing innately wrong with any of these gimmicks per se and they can work in the hands of a suitably talented, imaginative director. However, when viewers are focussing more on the gimmick than the horror, you haven't made a horror movie IMHO.
- Tired tropes. Slashers stalking teens, the world being overrun with flesh-eating zombies, vampires as evil, bloodsucking aristocrats, and so on. Overused, overexposed, and no longer scary except in rare cases where a director with some real talent puts a new spin on one of them.
That's not to say that you can't make movies with classic tropes and ideas. You just need to do something different with them. Back in the eighties, Kathryn Bigelow made a great little vampire movie called Near Dark. The vampires were a pack that wandered the South and Southwestern US in a camper grabbing "food" in the backcountry. Still evil bloodsuckers, still allergic to sun, but with a spin on how they managed to live in the modern world that set them nicely apart. The ending didn't work for me, but the rest of the film shows that you can go back to an old trope and refresh it.
- Gratuituous gore and violence (and sex). Look, horror is ultimately about death and horrible ways to die or undie so violence and gore are a part of it. But when the whole point of the movie is simply to throw more and more gross-out makeup and effects at the screen, then I lose interest. Give me some suspense, give me some understanding of the characters so I can sympathise with their plight, give me a reason for the violence, and then I'll watch. Ditto on sex. Don't toss in a scene with the hero fucking the heroine just because you have a quota for T&A. Use it to advance either the plot or the characters. If I want to stroke to a movie, I wouldn't be watching horror, I'd be watching porn.
For me, a true horror film has to contain a scenario or a story which is plausible, shocking and indeed - horrifying.
The last flick which contained those criteria and raised goosebumps - was 2005's Hostel.
1999's 8mm was another one which almost made me ill to watch it, plenty of shock within it - and I don't think either one of those were 'horror movies', but they both horrified me.
The same GQP demanding we move on from January 6th, 2021 is still doing audits of the November 3rd, 2020 election.
Oddly enough I never got around to watching hostel. I've seen bits and pieces adding up to most of it but never actually in order lol.
It only reinforced what I already suspected of backpacking in foreign countries just like wolfcreek which was loosely based on a real back-packer killer, to torture-y like it belongs on the news
I'm more of a midnight meat train guy hahaha, now that's a good movie
I find horror movies boring. Last couple of decades it has been the following recipie
1) Introduce a bunch of people(usually teens) within the first 20 minutes or so.
2) Make them do something bad or end up in a place they don't want to be
3) Make the audience understand there's a bad guy
4) Start killing them off one by one, maybe with chase scenes or other scenes were the suspense is built up and you rely on shock effect.
5) Kill off the bad guy or at least make the survivors in the movie believe that they killed him off.
There's no real feeling of uncomfortable or anything like that, it's all suddenly he pops up with a big knife and there's a loud noise. It becomes utterly boring, simply because the only way to make the movie interesting is if you watch it with someone else and make bets on who's going to die first and second and so forth. They bore me. Sure, I've jumped a few times, but it doesn't entertain me at all. If I wanted to be scared I'd sit in a dark room and have someone poke me every now and then.
I saw a movie a couple of years ago, remake of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Think it was from 92. It left me with a real feeling of being increadibly uncomfortable and kinda freaked out. Getting goosebumps. There was no shock or anything, but you suddenly felt it was more likely that there could be someone outside your window. In that manner it was brilliant as a horror movie, because you were continously "scared" through the entire movie.
But best horror experience; A game called Amnesia The Dark Decent. It had the same kind of feeling of being icky creepy, so if you have a computer, turn the lights off, make sure the room is dark and play it on your comp, preferably with a headset. You'll be in for a treat.
