A Brief Reflection on Horror Movies Today
Rarely does a horror film come along that truly and genuinely frightens me. So far, the tally is around five or so, though a few should be exempt, such as Sleepaway Camp, as I was, like, seven when I saw both, and seeing Angela standing there stark naked holding a decapitated head is not exactly ideal viewing material for a kid who hasn’t been through puberty yet.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIDM6wqUiuM]
Nightmare-enducing genitalia aisde, it’s rare for a modern horror movie to frighten me. However, heeding the request of my friend, I checked out Session 9 and watched it. Alone. In a big house that had my parents and lots of lights on. And I was STILL scared shitless. This lead me to believe two things: one, I’m a fucking pussy; and two, this was a genuinely scary horror movie, a concept lost on most, what with the prevalence of hacks like Eli Roth and the collective jerkoffs behind the Saw series.
The remaining films to do so are, in no particular order, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (like Sleepaway Camp I was very, very young when I saw it), Event Horizon, and Session 9, the latter of which has remained my favorite film for over four years, though Oldboy occassionally takes the top spot depending how in the mood I am to see a fucking badass hammer fight.
However, lately it seems there’s been a huge proliferation of horror movies intended to gross out, not frighten, the viewer. The obvious examples are Hostel 1 and 2, and of course the Saw franchise, which has basically emulated the process started by popular slasher films like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and it’s only a matter of time before Jigsaw comes back from the dead as a zombie incapable of being destroyed. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Friday the 13th Part 5 and 6.
While the premise behind all of these movies can be done well (in the case of Hostel see Frontier(s), a brilliant French horror film that could easily fall under the umbrella of torture porn), they all invariably end up being an onslaught of gore for gore’s sake, eschewing any semblance of real plot or character development for a head being crushed in between two gigantic blocks of ice. Yeah, it happened, and it was fucking stupid.
Injecting fear into a film, or the ability to fear, or, fuck, a God damned plot has apparently become too burdensome for writers and directors. They’ve abandoned any sense of dignity they once had all for the sake of the almighty dollar. The Saw franchise consistently brings in the cash, so they keep vomiting out new ones every October, each subsequent one being nothing more than a rehashing of the previous one. Shitty acting, shitty plot, and fucking heavy metal soundtracks replace all the necessary components that go into making a horror film truly frightening, and frankly, I’m getting sick of it.
I guess we can all just blame Hollywood.
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Wow, it seems funny but about time something was said about the lack of competent horror being spooned out. Is it that we can’t put sincerity behind it? Oh well. Agreed on Session 9.
Session 9 was a great movie. I found myself thinking about it weeks after watching it. The whole “I live in the weak and the wounded” thing stuck with me.
– Oh my G-d – what happened to your eyes?
– Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.
Event Horizon is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. Then again, I’m scared of dimensional rifts and portals and all that stuff, i.e. Silent Hill games (but not the movie which sucked).