Fall of the Horror Genre

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

Since Halloween is upon us, I'll might as well make thread regarding the Horror genre. It seems like it has taken a huge fall during the 2000s. For one, most of them are slasher films starring psychotic killers instead of real monsters like mummies, werewolves, and eldritch abominations. The biggest offender are the remakes, and sequels to a certain extent, although they've been doing this since the early days of cinema, due to people's constant demands for pure original films, mostly from the internet community. What other problems do you find about today's horror films?

 

[Continent Turtle]

There's too little tension. Everything is predictable. There are almost no moments where they succeed in frightening anyone. Most movies where I was frightened for a moment were not even horror movies. And everything has gone to gore. Really, they have seven Saw movies. SEVEN!!! Seriously, when you like that you've got no taste. It's just cutting limbs and stuff...

 

[GatoRage]

Lowest common-denominators.

To appease the stupid, tasteless masses.

 

[Still Probably Modio]

COUGHCOUGHCOUGHwolfman,waroftheworlds,humancentipede,sexandthecity,twilightCOUGHCOUGH

 

[Oswin]

There always the same nowadays, full of silly amounts of unneeded blood and gore.

 

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

There always the same nowadays, full of silly amounts of unneeded blood and gore.

That's been a common thing since the 70s and 80s though; it depends on how well executed it is. We've got films that are criticized for little to no gore and films that are criticized for too much gore.

 

[Space Opera]

Olympic-class sprinting zombies.

That's the main thing.

 

[Kyumorph]

More eldritch abominations.
They are needed.

 

[garrison-san]

Not to criticise you, Ghetsis-Dennis, but may I ask why you've identified the 2000s onward as being the time of downfall for the horror genre, when you yourself also point out that most of the problems you've cited were happening in their droves way before that period? The Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises, after all, were beating the same, maggot-infested dead horses all throughout the 1980s and into the 90s.

 

[Proxima Centauri B]

The problem for me with horror movies now is they are simply too predictable to be scary. Also they are so over the top with themes and excess blood and gore that it makes it look too fake, and therefore laughable instead of actually frightening.

 

[boop]

Let The Right One In, [REC], The Descent... good horror still exists. And honestly, horror out of the Hollywood system has always been what it is today. The only difference being CGI taking over costumes and man-made special effects. There is a charm about the latter, but we've still seen essentially the same horror movie over and over again from Hollywood for the last 40 years.

 

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

Not to criticise you, Ghetsis-Dennis, but may I ask why you've identified the 2000s onward as being the time of downfall for the horror genre, when you yourself also point out that most of the problems you've cited were happening in their droves way before that period? The Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises, after all, were beating the same, maggot-infested dead horses all throughout the 1980s and into the 90s.

The majority of the horror films in the 2000s were remakes, and they're criticized the most by critics and the online community for being not as scary as the original version, or they're just not original. It gets worse when they use CGI instead of costumes/make-up/animatronics/stop motion, but that's for another thread in the works.

 

[Lord Aizen]

i've watched a lot of the "horror" flims in my life.(Being 14 and saying that defeats the point of saying that.)
And the one ended up scarying me to death.... Was the marble hornets from Youtube.. leading to my complete hate towards the slender man story.

 

[garrison-san]

The majority of the horror films in the 2000s were remakes, and they're criticized the most by critics and the online community for being not as scary as the original version, or they're just not original. It gets worse when they use CGI instead of costumes/make-up/animatronics/stop motion, but that's for another thread in the works.

Well, the majority of the aforementioned 80s/90s horror sequels weren't exactly critical darlings either, and were mostly blasted for being cheap carbon copies of one another. I agree that the total dominance of CGI in the movie industry has had its serious shortcomings, but horror is far from the only genre to be affected by this.

I am curious to know what your opinion on the endless Friday the 13th sequels and their ilk is, if you feel they hold up better than the horror movies of today.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I'm just not a horror movie person to begin with. But like YeOldeJacob siad, it's not like Hollywood mainstream horror hasn't always been total drek like it is now. Have you seen a single horror film made in the '30s? They're all laughable.

I'm not one to judge whether good horror movies still exist, but like Continent Turtle said, the biggest problem with horror these days (and when I say "these days", I mean for the last few decades or so) is that truly disgusting amounts of gore and blood and maiming and severed limbs passes for horror, Saw and its six sequels being a perfect example.

 

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

I am curious to know what your opinion on the endless Friday the 13th sequels and their ilk is, if you feel they hold up better than the horror movies of today.

I haven't seen the sequels myself, but I have seen the reviews by the Movie Preview Critic when he was going over an anthology of the series leading up to the remake, which he marks it a sign of the moviepocalypse, the end of good movies because of the current treatment of the horror films and the severe lack of pure original films.

 

[garrison-san]

I'm not familiar with Movie Preview Critic myself...however, on the subject of "moviepocalypse" I was recently reading The Golden Turkey Awards by Harry and Michael Medved (published in 1980), and I came across this quote, which I find interesting:


"Hollywood appears to be running out of new ideas. In the last few years the number of remakes, sequels and readily-recognizable spin-offs of established winners has easily exceeded the tally of truly original concepts. Every blockbuster success inevitably spawns a host of shabby imitations. The Exorcist begat Abby, The House of Exorcism, Beyond The Door and The Manitou; Jaws begat Tentacles, Tintorera the Tiger Shark, Mako-Jaws of Death, Barracuda and Orca; Star Wars begat Star Crash, Laserblast and Battlestar Galactica."


Keep in mind that the Medveds were describing the state of cinema in the 1970s.

I guess my point is that Hollywood has always been swimming in its huge share of drek, and the horror genre is really no exception to this.

 

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

I'm not familiar with Movie Preview Critic myself...however, on the subject of "moviepocalypse" I was recently reading The Golden Turkey Awards by Harry and Michael Medved (published in 1980), and I came across this quote, which I find interesting:


"Hollywood appears to be running out of new ideas. In the last few years the number of remakes, sequels and readily-recognizable spin-offs of established winners has easily exceeded the tally of truly original concepts. Every blockbuster success inevitably spawns a host of shabby imitations. The Exorcist begat Abby, The House of Exorcism, Beyond The Door and The Manitou; Jaws begat Tentacles, Tintorera the Tiger Shark, Mako-Jaws of Death, Barracuda and Orca; Star Wars begat Star Crash, Laserblast and Battlestar Galactica."


Keep in mind that the Medveds were describing the state of cinema in the 1970s.

I guess my point is that Hollywood has always been swimming in its huge share of drek, and the horror genre is really no exception to this.

Interesting find, and as for critics panning the slasher films in the 80s, how did they manage to become horror icons next to Dracula and Frankenstein's monster?

 

[garrison-san]

Interesting find, and as for critics panning the slasher films in the 80s, how did they manage to become horror icons next to Dracula and Frankenstein's monster?

The original Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street films are considered classics of the genre (the success of Halloween helped to kick-start the popularity of the slasher film in a big way), but their sequels generally adhere to the law of diminishing returns (I say "generally" because at least one Elm Street sequel, Wes Craven's New Nightmare - essentially testing ground for what Craven would later do with the Scream series - wasn't half bad). I'm led to believe that when the original Friday the 13th film was released it was largely panned by critics for being a gruesome Halloween knock-off, though it did bring one fresh thing to the table, and this happened to be the very thing that the sequels dropped - Mrs Voorhees is a fairly atypical slasher movie serial killer, being an ostensibly friendly middle-aged woman, but in subsequent films she was of course replaced by her son Jason, who fits the Michael Myers mould a lot more closely. Still, while critics and many moviegoers may have felt that this never-ending string of slasher movies appealed to the lowest common denominator, they all had their cult followings to keep them afloat, much as more recent horror franchises like Saw and Final Destination do today.

(Many of the older slasher movie villains no doubt also seeped their way firmly into popular culture because they provide such great opportunities for Halloween dress-ups...which does put Final Destination, with its lack of any corporal killer, at a serious disadvantage.)

If there is a particular problem with the horror movies of today, I’d say that it’s the emphasis on CGI-created gore. Modern franchises like Saw and FD by their premises rely heavily upon their characters being butchered in gruesome and imaginative ways, and while many of those older slasher films were just as heavy on the gore and the butchering, the obvious artifice of fake blood and cheesy props arguably had a degree of quirky charm which the cold flatness of most CGI just can’t emulate.

 

[Continent Turtle]

^^ Mwah, i think the Final Destinations are good, way better than Saw. That's really about people cutting their own limbs. In FD it's a mysterious force... MWAAHAAHAA!!!