The Current State of Horror

Good topic and one I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

It's funny because the main things horror fans bitch about when they get together and discuss horror is that there seems to be precious few "fun" horror films these days. Where are the new EVIL DEAD's or RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD's DEAD ALIVE's? You'd think that with that many fans wanting seemingly the same thing, we'd see a return to the less "real" and gritty films of the 80's. But then DRAG ME TO HELL comes out and doesn't do well. So there we are.

DTV is definitely where the future of horror lies. The remake trend has largely burned out, so original ideas will come back, but they won't be big studio ticket items.

Don't want to sound like an asshole, but reading this makes me picture one day archeologists finding new cuneiform tablets in what once was Sumeria, with someone asking if he had already heard all the Stories With Things That Scared Me.

Of course original horror can succeed, because horror has been in cycles since its formalization as a "genre" couple centuries ago and all you need to know about "can horror succeed" is that at some point somebody drawn to the genre will make a movie that will make us go "oh fuck" and generate a shitload of "see, it can be done" posts. Because it can. And there's nothing saying it can't. Thing is, usually, great horror films happen when studios have gotten to a ohfuckwehavetriedanything state that lets them think "ok, let's give that crazy looking guy some money". The problem with horror is that it has a built in audience that in many ways, like b-movie action fans, don't expect that much and the financial calculations in deciding to invest in a movie usually boil down to satisfying those people. But horror, as a genre, has a lot of elements that resonate with people and has tools to explore certain aspects of "the human condition" or whatever you wanna call it that other genres or forms of expression can't, so certain kind of people will always be drawn to them and will always be capable of making great things. It's just a matter of "stars aligning", so to speak, or some filmmaker making it its own life's purpose to get that one movie he thought made, somehow.

Places like Italy, Japan, Korea have made great horror in the past few decades by exploiting the fact that people want original stuff and that since, as film industries or specific companies, they have next to nothing to lose by going bananas insane (because after all, perhaps bananas insanity will get them enough notoriety in other places to make the movie viable in the first place) that suddenly they give the Miike-style wackos budgets to do original stuff. Of course, eventually those become profitable, and Japan starts having online "extra bananas Frankeinstein girl" stuff, and Korea has the same fucking ghost stories and Italy is soulfucking the giallo and so on, but make no mistake, at some point, there'll be a new someone and something.

Audiences haven't gotten tired of horror, like comedy, it's a genre that's always in. The thing I've noticed these is that there are currently no strong voices in the genre right now. The old guard has either moved on or fizzled out, and it's basically been nothing but movements that reveal themselves to fads and quickly disintegrate as fads are wont to do.

There's good stuff every now and again, but it's rarely the stuff that's moving tickets.

I just don't understand how that "old guard" sunk so low. Hooper, Romero, Craven, and even Carpenter (I'm an apologist, but still) have fallen mightily in the last decade (or two) from being towering, creative figures to rehashing the same old tropes with hackneyed scripts and poor direction. I've often wondered how this lot managed to "lose it" like they did. Were these filmmakers that were only good at crafting films in a certain environment - at a certain time?

 

That's not to say there isn't good horror being made. There are a number of great horror films that have come out in the last ten years. I'd say at least have of the great ones have come from outside of America, of course, which is a great thing to see. Horror is (and always has been, really) globally a really great genre. There were legitimately great horror films in the last few years from Sweden, America, Spain, England, France, and South Korea (I'm sure there are others). And I think that's fantastic.

 

 

 

They excelled in a big way due to being in the right place at the right time. Romero's directorial vision was always tied to his subtext; like even the most lauded filmmakers of his generation (hi, Clint Eastwood), his sensibilities went out of fashion and he appeared to become unsubtle.

 

And that's just the aesthetic shift. Most of these guys will tell you it simply got harder to get a movie made, and the ones people were writing checks for weren't the films these guys necessarily wanted to be making anymore. For me, Hooper seemed to break his brain after Texas Chain Saw, and you could easily fool just about any critic in the world into believing the rest of his films were directed by someone else. As such, you can't lump him in with these guys.

 

The other thing to consider is that these "classic" horror films, give or take an Exorcist, were not seen as such upon release. In fact, many of them racked up a ton of terrible reviews, and played back halves of double bills in shitty drive-ins as their theatrical run. They cultivated a cult through a very specific series of circumstances (home video, the early days of cable, Patton Oswalt's famously-mourned 80s fandom), circumstances impossible to repeat today. That being what it is, there's no way to know what horror film of today will be remembered as a groundbreaker in 20 or 30 years.

I can definitely get with that interpretation of events. What always gets me, is that Craven was probably the one with the most vision out of that set - and, for my money, he failed to deliver on it. He was so self-important with his pictures, and was always convinced he was creating great art even when the product was Shocker. I don't know that the rest of them had these expectations for themselves. Craven was definitely the most financially successful of them, of course.

Agreed. The horror genre is not going to go away. It's just dormant right now. The old guard just doesn't have anything original and entertaining to share to both horror fans and general public alike. Currently, horror films that are being released in the theaters are the "safest bets" (vampires, zombies) and sequels ("Saw," "Resident Evil," "Final Destination").

Like Sebastian said, DTV appears to be where the future of the genre is headed. I've watched a handful of DTV horror films and they were all surprisingly good and well-done. Most of the films are also very low-budget that practically all of the scenes occur in one location. Here are just a few samples:

Beacon 77 - It's about 2 friends who get locked inside a penthouse with a group of computer hackers trying to hack into the Vatican's secret archives. The whole film is ambitious (and sometimes gets pretentious and self-righteous), but it is the characters that make you want to invest your time in the film. They're all likable and the plot itself (though somewhat ludicrous) is exciting and engaging. But at its core, this is a bonafide horror film.

The Final - Part of the "After Dark" films. Lesson gleaned from this: think twice before you bully horror film geek fans in high school... Again, most of the film occurs in one location: inside a cabin. This is actually a great horror film. There are a few homages to other horror films, even Miike's Audition (though that scene somewhat overstayed its welcome, it's a minor complaint). Also, it didn't go for the cheap morality tale that horror fans are prone to end up becoming violent people; instead, we see glimpses into the lives of these teenagers.

Exam - Think of Cube except the players are just in one room. This is more than a thriller than horror, but the horror part comes from the characters themselves. 8 talented candidates need to answer 1 very simple question that they need to answer in 80 minutes. But there are rules: they can't talk to the the instructor who's watching behind a one-way glass or the lone guard in the room, they cannot damage their exam paper, and they cannot leave the room for any reason... And speaking of crossovers, if you have a Nintendo DS, one of the best horror games for it (I'm not kidding) is called 999 - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It's also surprisingly well-written (though it gets goofy in some parts, but it's part of its Japanese charm).

Again, these are horror movies that just don't have that "theatrical" appeal to them as they're all very low budget. But as you're wondering about the state of horror films, they're out there. You just have to search for them. True, there are more duds than not, but as a horror fan, you must actively seek them out.

But if we're talking about recent horror, Black Swan is a mainstream flick that has definitely embraced the horror genre. If I'm going to summarize it...
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
I guess I should post that in the Black Swan thread but I just recently saw it and I'm still thinking about it...