Why has the great horror genre collapsed like the Roman Empire? Why is it acceptable that a film in this genre generating more than fifty million dollars is considered successful?
We’ve completely destroyed what used to be the powerhouse of cinema. Movies like Childs Play, It, The Exorcist and Poltergeist are all examples of movies that put fear in us as we watched. Fear at what was lurking around the corner, not fear of what amount of gore was going to be produced from the body cavity of an eighteen-year-old cheerleader on holidays.
Pretty bad when your house is a puzzle.
What sucks is that the genre seems to have turned itself completely around in a disturbing direction, one that seems insistent that it contain at least one random sex scene, lots of unnecessary gore and what is being labeled appropriately as torture porn. Like you wouldn’t put Backdoor Sluts 9 in a Cineplex, it’s no different than putting Hostel on the big screen. They are movies that show people being tortured and that’s all. A line of plot so thin it rivals Clay Aiken’s genitalia keeps everything from being completely dismissed but does that make it right?
There are movies that are doing it right. I was so happy to see films like Insidious and The Woman in Black; movies that for the first time took care of the audience with loud noises, deafening music and images that haunt you long after you leave the theater. Cabin in the Woods is the most recent, and what makes me so happy with it was it took a genre that has been depleted of creativity and gave it an adrenaline shot. It didn’t try to be fancy, it didn’t stray too long after the plot was finished, it showed you what it wanted to show you and quit, which is what horror movies need to do. It is made to make you think about what could be in a dark corridor or in your basement when you’re alone at 2am in nothing but your underpants and a drool stained pillow. If you haven’t seen the movie, see it. If you have, you know what I’m talking about when I say creativity flows through this like narcissism in Nicki Minaj.
The Wayne
Editor
