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The Decline of Horror Films
Something is clearly wrong when all a horror movie has going for it is effects. It’s not horror and it’s not suspense. It’s shock treatment for a jaded and numbed audience who has forgotten about the horror movies of old.
My last hope for the horror film industry was completely smothered when I walked out of the theater concluding my viewing of The Mist. I’m never too optimistic of short story adaptations, however I felt this film was going to be different. First of all, Stephen King-perhaps the king of horror novels and short stories, wrote the short story. Second, the director of the film was Frank Darabont, director of the 1994 Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman classic, The Shawshank Redemption. After anticipating The Mist for months by stalking the website, setting the movie poster as my desktop wallpaper, and watching the trailer over and over again, the poor excuse for a horror film contained specials effects belonging in the 90s and as much suspense as can be seen in Troma’s famous The Toxic Avenger. I’m not bad-mouthing Toxie. The difference between the two films is that The Toxic Avenger was very self aware of its grotesque and crude nature while The Mist, on the other hand, tried so hard to be more than a horror flick that it fell face first into its own muck. And for me, that was the last straw.
In a horror industry now defined by lame torture movies such as Hostel and Saw, I had hoped that Darabont’s film might possess some elements of good old fashioned fright films: creepy music, cacophonous sound effects that makes you want to cover your ears, exciting monsters, and edge-of-your-seat suspense. Yet it failed and now we find ourselves on the edge of our seats only when someone’s eye is about to be gouged out or waiting for intestines to spill all over. Don’t get me wrong-I admire special effects and make-up artists such as Howard Berger and Gregory Nicotero incredibly, but something is clearly wrong when all a horror movie has going for it is effects. It’s not horror and it’s not suspense; it’s shock treatment for a jaded and numbed audience who has forgotten about the horror movies of old.
The kings of horror and suspense such as John Carpenter, Dario Argento, Wes Craven and David Cronenberg knew hot to please an audience yearning for fear without having to resort to tacky and overtly grotesque scenes. Films such as Suspiria, Opera, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing, The Frighteners, Carrie, and the original The Wicker Man stand out in horror history. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre puts the remake to shame while Rob Zombie should be shunned for unmasking Michael Myers, perhaps the most infamous psychopath in horror movie history because of his mystical and mysterious nature. Even The Amityville Horror, though mediocre, is a landslide better than the remake. The 70s and 80s breathed life into horror movies and they thrived. The Exorcist, The Omen, Poltergeist, The Shining, Manhunter, Night of the Living Dead, and Rosemary’s Baby are more films to add to the list of greats.
And now, what are we left with? If you scroll through a list of horror films produced over the past few years, you will come across The Ring, The Grudge, Dead Silence, The Fog, Ghost Ship, House of 100 Corpses, House on Haunted Hill, 30 Days of Night along with other disappointments. With the exception of a few quality scares such as The Descent, Feast, Behind the Mask, and Slither, the horror industry has taken a deep plunge into a pit and it may not return anytime soon. Attempts to spark the flame under horror lovers bottoms such as the “8 Films to Die For” and the Emmy nominated Series, “Masters of Horror” have succeeded to a degree, yet they don’t get as much publicity as the weaker, higher budget horrors. I know that there are plenty of independent films worthy of recognition, but they will never be released in theaters and they will never be recognized so long as Hollywood keeps producing rubbish year after year. The problem is that directors and producers feel as if they have to show more in order to get more from the audience. What happened to keeping the audience in suspense by waiting until the finale to reveal the monster or the breathtaking big murder scene? These new horror flicks are producing a chain reaction. The more creatures and blood and guts that films show, the more the audience will want to see in the future.
I don’t know what the solution to this problem is or how to go about finding one. Yet the quality of horror movies is plummeting. Hollywood is sacrificing substance for shock treatment. So my advice is to go rent one of the old classics, watch it, and think about everything it contains that contemporary horror movies don’t. Learn to appreciate old school techniques of horror more than graphic and unnecessary disembowelments and hope that someone in Hollywood gets the picture.
21 Comments
Very true. These days horror movies are nothing more than gore. That may have been scary 20, even 10 years ago, but nowadays we’re pretty desensatized to it. True horror comes from a combination of immersion and psychology.
Personally I’ve given up on horror in movies. I do however have three recommendations for you if you enjoy a good scare, all videogames, all VERY immersive and scary: F.E.A.R, a first person shooter with extreme overtones of horror, and Call of Cthulhu, dark corners of the earth, a stealth/investigation based FPS which stays very faithful to the setting and style of H P Lovecraft.
American Horror is dead. It only consists of crappy remakes of GREAT Asian horror. Watch the originals.
agreed, accept in the recent movie The Strangers. i was on the edge of my seat throughout and there was relatively little gore.just pure psychological thriller. highly recommended.
I agree totally. The only real chill-to-the-bone scare I got from a movie in the past 10 years was when the girl climbed out of the well in the ring. That, to me, was pretty damn creepy with zero blood. Ok that and 2 scenes in the Grudge. (The elevator scene and when the ghost came down the stairs at the end.)
But those are [remakes of] Japanese movies. American movies don’t scare me at all. Sure movies like Freddy Vs Jason are fun with a 6 pack. But I’m hard pressed to find any recent American movie that scared the crap out of me.
You’re gonna have to go back at least 20 years to find a truly scary American horror movie. Such as…
An American Werewolf In London
Ghost Story
Magic (starring Anthony Hopkins)
And finally the obligatory reference to the original Dawn Of The Dead
Sadly I have to agree that most “horror” Hollywood produces now is @#$%^!!!
Have to disagree on the pan of Stephen Kings,”The Mist” remake (although I will agree totally that the computer effects were overdone). Two computer effects scenes that stick out in my memory, is in the begining of the film when Thomas Jane is watching the storm roll in through a window (I automatically thought BLUE SCREEN!) and when one of the stockboys is dragged out of the store by computer animated tentacles that visibly clash with the computer animated fog.
That said the film was true to the short story (liked the darker ending on the DVD). And I thought Thomas Jane did a good job. I liked him in the Punisher 2004 remake as well which puts the Dolph Lungreen version to shame.
So… you hate that horror movies overuse special effects so as an example you name four directors who rely heavily on special effects, two of which (Dario Argentino and David Cronenberg) who rely almost entirely on gore effects.
Also, Michael Myers was unmasked toward the climax of the original Halloween.
Darabont’s The Mist was a very good social commentary about how without civilization human beings go insane and ultimately try and kill each other, that and the ending was brilliant.
Ultimately I would have to agree with this assessment. I have long railed against the over-use of special effects and lack of proper mood lighting to build tension. The more you show, the more it blows, I say. (I recall thinking this when the 3rd Nightmare on Elm St. movie came out)
That said, I think there are modern movies which did a good job and I think will bear out their relevance. The Ring, Pulse, White Noise, Gothika, Stir of Echoes, The Sixth Sense, The Machinist, and The Jacket come to mind pretty readily. I’ve not been a fan of slasher horror in a long time, but certainly Scream took a pretty fresh approach when it came out. And while it’s true they are not all big-budget crap like “No, Seriously, I Know What You Did The Summer Before Last” I do think there have been some diamonds among the rough.
I don’t know how you change the people, though. Most kids today seem to rely on the over-use of stimulation and eye-candy to get their jollies to the point that I don’t think what SHOULD scare them DOES. These are the same kinds of people who would rather wait for the movie than read the book, who’ve never picked up a book by Lovecraft or Matheson or Campbell or even the classic works of King and Straub.
Great article, horror movies have been sucking for a LONG time now. As a whole though, every so often something brilliant comes out. I stick to the 70’s and 80’s trash and horror films, you know what you are getting at least. The new movies are horrid, i think the last one i liked was Wrong Turn. You could also lump Bubba Hotep and Shaun of the Dead and maybe even Fido in there too.
Kristen, give me a break. Stephen King himself said he liked the movie ending better than what he wrote, he even said he wished he’d thought of it. I think he might know a little more about horror than you do.
Try Switch-blade Romance for a wild ride!
It’s pretty funny that you cite “Slither” and “Feast” as quality scares, when those two are far from original or scary for that matter.
The original Wicker Man? You have to be joking. I had to stop watching after all the singing and crap. It was laughable. Otherwise you’re spot on.
I disagree. The problem with looking into the past is we tend to look with nostalgia-tinted glasses. There was just as much crap being shoveled out back then as their is now…it’s just that the best of the genre are the films still remembered now and the terrible ones are often forgotten.
It’s the same deal today; there are plenty of horror gems out there along with the crap. In about twenty years I wouldn’t be surprised to see an article like this cropping up praising THIS era.
someone hasn’t seen 1408
I agree in as much as todays horror movies are too full of gore, where directors and writers confuse torture and dismemberment with quality.
Movies such as Hostle and The Hills Have Eyes are only scary if you’re eating while watching and just had your carpet cleaned.
That said, I enjoyed Ghost Ship.
What horror are you missing? Open up the newspaper, talk to anyone who’s been laid off, lost their job, is barely surviving on pay from companies that are going downhill, or is among the millions of people seeing their way of life going up in smoke, and then find the true horror your looking for. The movie industry is as dead and washed up as anything else that we’ve known up to now. The stories have been told over and over. I mean, what kind of sucker is actually looking forward to spending more and more money on crap that just isn’t worth it? Like a glutton for punishment.
The new form of entertainment is what will eventually follow our economic collapse; total immersion. Actually living out the horror and violence for entertainments sake. It’s the natural progression.
As a reader/writer/watcher of all things horror – I agree to a point. A few nice little nasties have recently emerged from the UK – one in particular – Mum and Dad – a particularly fine example of your not-so-typical dysfunctional family. I was actually quite narked that I hadn’t thought of the storyline myself – so closely does it mirror my own style of writing!! I have all but given up on everything US – except the cults – and am now taking an interest in Japanese/Korean horrors – good, informative post by the way.
Startling an audience with sudden loud noises or sudden actions is not horror. If you fire a pistol behind someones head, he will jump with sudden shock and fear but this is not horror. It is cheap gimmickry. To have true horror you must have: 1. A sense of involvement with the protagonists. If you don’t care about them, through lack of plot developent, you are not affected by what happens to them. 2. Adequate buildup of tension. If the mayhem starts without being set within a framework that the viewer can identify with, it’s more like a slam bang cartoon than a frightening journey. 3. A balance between the horror content and some comic relief. Continuous horror without letup becomes tedious. The viewer starts to feel antagonistic to the producers, directors and Hollywood in general.
I have to agree with your assessment. But I’d go further and suggest that horror novels have followed much the same way. I like the work of writers such as Brian Keene and Jack Killborn, but I just don’t feel as strong a connection with their characters as I did with those of Stephen King or Dean Koontz twenty years ago. And even King and Koontz are quite as strong as they used to be. Are there just no more ideas for horror? I don’t think so, but these things come in cycles. Horror will come back around again.
And as for the more modern movies you mentioned, I felt The Ring and Ghost Ship had their moments, but overall they fell short. Where have the classics gone? Oh, John Carpenter, we need you back in your heydey again.
I’m late to the party I see, but ‘The Mist’ is a great horror film! Are you kidding me? Did you see that brass balls ending?? No Happy-Hollywood crap. Did NOT see that ending coming!
And after sophisticated, intellectually glib vampires, I’m shocked you dissed ‘30 Days of Night’ too. Unbelievable.
Horror sucks now, thanks to Platinum Dunes the ‘re-make company’ and PG-13 child suspense films pretending it’s horror, but you need to take another look at ‘The Mist’.
I\\\’m late to the party I see, but \\\’The Mist\\\’ is a great horror film! Are you kidding me? Did you see that brass balls ending?? No Happy-Hollywood crap. Did NOT see that ending coming!
And after sophisticated, intellectually glib vampires, I\\\’m shocked you dissed \\\’30 Days of Night\\\’ too. Unbelievable.
Horror sucks now, thanks to Platinum Dunes the \\\’re-make company\\\’ and PG-13 child suspense films pretending it\\\’s horror, but you need to take another look at \\\’The Mist\\\’.