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Why is the horror genre so completely and utterly shit?

Started by Shoulders?-Stomach!, September 16, 2010, 04:09:23 PM

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Shoulders?-Stomach!

I watched Alien last night and was immediately struck by how different the film is in almost every way to a modern horror film.

One of the key features about its paralysing sense of dread and fear is how quiet the film is. This is in complete contrast to modern horror films which are smothered by bass-heavy film scores, then those incredibly annoying artificial shock noises designed to make you jump, all in the same derivative fashion.

I'm not saying that all modern horror films are rubbish, there are quite a few worth watching, but quite frankly I can't be bothered watching the same uninspired group of kids go somewhere and bad shit happens thing that's already been parodied to no lasting effect or change. Nor do I really want to watch gratuitous gore-fests like Hostel that revel in being as unpleasant as possible- (the best thing about gore is when it's done with comic tastelessness, not when it's fetishised disturbingly).

Have modern horror films forgot or neglected the art of developing tension and suspense, purely going for easy options using cheap shocks and gore? I think so.

I'd love to watch a horror film that had the guts to develop characters that were worth emotionally investing in, and also had the guts to, if appropriate, explain or investigate the threat and justify it rather than rely on indiscriminate insanity as a cop-out.

Surely there can't be nearly as many truly awful films made as there are in this genre.

Johnny Textface

I recommend you check out Drag Me to Hell if you haven't already - might restore some faith in both horror and Raimi.
But yeah, generally the feeling of dread you get from watching Alien or, say, The Shining is largely absent from modern films unfortunately.
The nearest thing I have got to it recently is Dead Space on the 360 - thats some fucked up shit.

Ignatius_S

#2
When Stuart Gordon decided to go into film, he was advised to start off with a horror. The reason was that you're more likely to make your money back with that than any other genre – this is perhaps why there are so many bad horror films. However, I would say there are loads of uninspired, dull films in other genres.

Back to the case in point, the following are a few recentish ones that I've particularly enjoyed

Dagon
Werckmeister Harmoniak
Subject Two
Let the Right One In
Ginger Snaps
The Orphanage


I also like the Masters of Horror anthology – some stinkers, but some very nice ones too.

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 16, 2010, 04:09:23 PM
...Have modern horror films forgot or neglected the art of developing tension and suspense, purely going for easy options using cheap shocks and gore? I think so...
I think a lot of modern films fail in this respect. However, I wouldn't say that this is not unique to more modern films. There were older movies (e.g. in the fifties) that were accused of such things, but which are incredibly tame by today's standards.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I'd say Drag me to Hell is more of an Evil Dead 2 style splatterhouse comedy. The best straight horror film of the last decade that I can think of would be The Descent. It gets plenty gory, but doesn't forget the suspense.

The mention of Dead Space there raises an interesting point. Games have become the best place for getting scared shitless, what with the scares affecting the player more directly than in films. However, games tend to rely on more action than films used to and less on character development, as the player can fill in the blanks to some extent. I wonder if attempting to emulate successful horror games is what has led horror films to become so reliant on non stop gore.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on September 16, 2010, 04:47:11 PM
...The best straight horror film of the last decade that I can think of would be The Descent. It gets plenty gory, but doesn't forget the suspense..
I would certainly a very good one. A friend told me when he saw it in the States:

Spoiler alert
They cut out the last few minutes to give it a more 'upbeat' ending, which confused and annoyed the hell out of the entire audience.[/ spoiler]

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on September 16, 2010, 04:47:11 PM
... I wonder if attempting to emulate successful horror games is what has led horror films to become so reliant on non stop gore.
Personally, I would say no – however, I do think that's a rather interesting proposition and would make a nice discussion.

My own feelings is why this has happened is that this is what sells. I think Rob Zombie, but looking at various forums, user reviews etc., he's giving more than a few people what they want.

Spoiler alert
In The Devil Rejects, there's a bit that a woman after surviving a run-in with a couple of the main characters is forced wear a mask made from the face of her murdered boyfriend – and presumably has been subjected to a night of sexual assault – and ends up running into the road and promptly gets run over. I've read quite a few comments that gave an opinion that the humour of this was greater than Cook, Chaplin and Hancock rolled into one.
[close]

As a genre, over the years – and we're talking decades – film makers have added more explicit material to horror films, so this is a natural progression. Personally, I believe less is more.
[close]

lipsink

The French film 'Inside' is absolutely terrific. I highly recommend it. I loved 'Switchblade Romance' too.

Goldentony

Big Time Horror seems to always be a case of riding someone elses pretty interesting concept and grinding it into the ground beyond recognition. I know over the past ten years it's felt like the Saw franchise was what kicked all of this off. It got lucky by having a pretty interesting concept for the time, and was certainly why I went to see it at the time, not standing there wide eyed under the marquee and thinking "GOOOOORE WHOAAAA". In fact I remember it being marketed and sold as some kind of slightly more horrific version of Seven rather than the subsequent sequels which seemed to rely more on the blood and violence and mechanical shit which is the trap that stuff like Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th ended up relying on too much, the basing a movie around new ways to off twats method.

Anyway, yes, Saw seems to have kicked all this gore stuff off, but it doesn't seem to have lasted that long outside of the Saw franchise and is being overtaken by remake, which seem to have kicked in in a big way around the same time. That Paranormal Activity film looked like it was about to give everyone a boot up the arse and cause found footage or exorscism to be the next thing (again) along with Rec and stuff but that doesn't look like it's caught on.

I'd like to think the OTT gore at least partly came from being fed warm runny shite on a wooden spoon with all those dogshit knobhead in a mask films from Scream onwards, like Valentine and I Know What You Did Last Summer. None of these films were ever terrifying or at least gruesome, just horrible MTV shite. The idea that a bunch of people managed to get their foot in the door to try and be as horrific as possible as a reaction to the way shit was going or had been at the time is pretty funny.

Phil_A

It's hard to think of any decent horror films of the last decade or so that haven't come out of Japan or Korea. I'm sure American studios are well aware of this, which is why they've been so desperate to cash in with mostly bad remakes. Ring, Ju-On, Dark Water, The Eye, etc.

I've just realised the original Ring is twelve years old. Holy shit.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 16, 2010, 04:09:23 PMSurely there can't be nearly as many truly awful films made as there are in this genre.
Erm, off the top of my head...what about the comedy genre?

I actually think that a rubbish horror can be much more entertaining than a rubbish comedy, documentary or drama, to name but a few. Bad horror tends to be the best 'bad', maybe just behind 'bad action', I dunno.

That said, the vast majority of horror is 'rubbish horror', to the extent that The Descent - a perfectly good, tense, claustrophobic genre footnote - is touted as a modern classic. I think that was your point, in fact, Shoulds.

Ignatius_S

Oh, Suburban Nightmare from 2004 is fantastic - a low-budget masterpiece and one I'm glad I knew nothing about before seeing.

Although not perfect, The Barber, which stars Malcolm McDowell is a cracking film - although it's a not a straight horror, it combines a number of genres including horror.

Quote from: Goldentony on September 16, 2010, 06:01:49 PM
Anyway, yes, Saw seems to have kicked all this gore stuff off, but it doesn't seem to have lasted that long outside of the Saw franchise and is being overtaken by remake, which seem to have kicked in in a big way around the same time....

Nah.

Saw was 2004 and although, it did beat films like Hostel or the Devil's Rejects to the box office, I don't think it kickstarted a fashion to have gore in film - it sells. Also, I think Hostel had a much bigger impact and was credited with the 'torture porn' sub-genre. Hostel 2 showed a very clear debt to a certain type of Italian horror.


Quote from: Phil_A on September 16, 2010, 06:42:23 PM
It's hard to think of any decent horror films of the last decade or so that haven't come out of Japan or Korea. I'm sure American studios are well aware of this, which is why they've been so desperate to cash in with mostly bad remakes. Ring, Ju-On, Dark Water, The Eye, etc.

I've just realised the original Ring is twelve years old. Holy shit.
Well, apart from the ones that have already been mentioned - with the ones I said, I was going from 2000 onwards.

Personally, I suspect the real reason Hollywood remake Asian horror films is the one that it remakes most foreign films - that a hell of lot of people won't watch a foreign film, but will watch a remake even if it's inferior.

Is it because nothing on screen scares us anymore?

We're reaching the stage where we may as well release Snuff films in 3D.


Vitalstatistix

Pontypool is a recent US horror which is unusual in that it values suspense, characterisation and ideas over gore, and I would highly recommend it to those disillusioned with modern horror.

Cold Prey is a Norwegian slasher which was pretty scary in an old fashioned sort of way. Thrilling on the big screen. It's spawned a couple of sequels which I haven't seen, fact fans.

The Revenant I was lucky enough to see at a horror marathon last year, and it's easily the most exciting film I've seen from the genre in many, many years. I can't wait to see it again, although I fear it will be massively cut down (the version we saw was hugely, thrillingly sprawling). It's actually more of a strange, satirical dark comedy so not a throwback to classic suspense, but a film I would implore horror fans to catch nonetheless.

Shutter Island was an honourable attempt at serious, intelligent horror, by a properly respected director. Unusual these days, as Shoulders says. Didn't really work for me, but it was nice to see.

I think there's life in the old dog, but it sure ain't the seventies.

Goldentony

Quote from: Ignatius_S on September 16, 2010, 08:57:53 PM

Saw was 2004 and although, it did beat films like Hostel or the Devil's Rejects to the box office, I don't think it kickstarted a fashion to have gore in film - it sells. Also, I think Hostel had a much bigger impact and was credited with the 'torture porn' sub-genre. Hostel 2 showed a very clear debt to a certain type of Italian horror.

Hostel defenitely had more to do with the whole made up 'torture porn' thing but it certainly felt like Saw was the first big horror film of the 00's and was the big kick off for non remake horror and ramped up OTT violence in mainstream horror movies again after the aforementioned rubber mask twattery of shit like Scream and its imitators in the 90's. Not that the blame/praise relies solely on Saw but it certainly seems like the numbers it did probably gave studios and a bit of a kick up the arse and made them realise the most insane shit will sell and probably gave more attention to stuff like Hostel and Wolf Creek and whatever else than they would have gotten without the furore. Though Hostel did have the Tarantino connection, I guess.

Quote from: Goldentony on September 16, 2010, 06:01:49 PM
... and Friday The 13th ended up relying on too much, the basing a movie around new ways to off twats method.

That would be correct for Nightmare on Elm Street (although 3 and New Nightmare genuinely were interesting and unique, what with Craven actually being involved in them). However, you make it sound like Friday The 13th began as something imaginative and new and ended up selling out, whereas I found every single film in that franchise to be absolute unmitigated shite from start to finish - Vorhees and his mum have been knocking off twats from the off.

I once had someone tell me that Saw is steeped in the thematic premise of people learning, through torture, how much value they place on their own lives. I'd agree, but the notion wears then when you make eighty seven million fucking films 'exploring' the same 'idea'.

alan nagsworth

As a quick aside, I really fucking hate how every horror film these days relies on at least one moment in which a character is SCARED SHITLESS OH MY GOD IT'S THE KILLER SO SOON ALREADY oh wait it's just a harmless pheasant poking its head through the cat flap! That drives me insane.

More to the (other) point (of this post), the most interesting horror movie I've seen in recent years is 'The Host'. It's got action, but the heroes are useless and, as a family unit, very dysfunctional. The monster is scary, but it's also a lumbering mutant beast which makes mistakes and acts naturally instinctive, as opposed to 100% calculated and precise. The whole film feels so natural and realistic that the suspense is increased as a result. You find yourself genuinely embroiled in what the characters are doing, and when they make mistakes, you feel like leaping forward in shocked disappointment, gasping 'What ever will they do now?!'

Horror films are so reliant on staple shock values, and directors have tried so hard to take a U-turn on this but all they could do instead was push it a few inches further into its inevitable present day state - "torture porn". Because instead of being an inventive director, it's much easier to be an inventive murderer, and apparently that's good. [nb]And we are almost totally desensitised to anything scary these days, but only the obvious close-up flesh-tearing razor-pissing stuff. Real horror comes from your own brooding imagination, not what is shoved right in your face on the screen. Is it so hard to at least find a middle ground? These modern directors might have directed a whole fucking franchise but they have a hell of a lot to learn.[/nb] It's as if to suggest that the more harrowing and vomit-inducing a scene is, the more of an impact the film will have on you. This is not strictly untrue, but the only lasting impression will be, for example from the film 'The Last House On The Left', "that's the film with the massive nasty rape scene" as opposed to "that's the film that was gripping and scary for a number of different reasons". Films like 'The Host' are daring in that they add a touch of daylit realism to the proceedings and it ends up paying off tenfold for them. I got mad propz for that shit, to be honest.

Another example of a superb horror film is 'Rosemary's Baby', because aside from the dream/sex scene, you don't see anything at all and everything is left to your imagination. In fact, everything you see is from Rosemary's perspective, and you're kept guessing until the very end. That film doesn't rely on any shock tactics whatsoever, but it's absolutely terrifying.

WHEN WILL THESE YOUNG PUNKS LEARN

Jemble Fred

Quote from: alan nagsworth on September 17, 2010, 09:48:02 AM
As a quick aside, I really fucking hate how every horror film these days relies on at least one moment in which a character is SCARED SHITLESS OH MY GOD IT'S THE KILLER SO SOON ALREADY oh wait it's just a harmless pheasant poking its head through the cat flap! That drives me insane.

That's been the case for three or four decades though. You should watch The Cottage, it's packed with these moments.

I'm also continually disappointed with every new horror movie I see, which is why I started that thread about Black Death. But then that film is *only just* horror, when seem from a certain angle – you can obviously say the same thing about The Wicker Man, and it's The Wicker Tree I'm most looking forward to at the moment.

The worst horror film to be released in decades, though, is Paranormal Activity. I can't wait to hate the sequel, but this time I'll make sure to have a few crosswords or something to keep me entertained while it plays.

AsparagusTrevor

Speaking of Saw related to the torture-porn (I hate that stupid false term) sub-genre, I'd say the Saw series didn't even qualify for this until the third one. The first one was more of a psychological horror/thriller with minimalist set-pieces.

Incidentally, if they had to make a sequel to it they should've ended at the third which had the fucking logical conclusion to the whole bastard thing. Although there is still the reliance on grossing the audience out with gorier and more brutal kills and louder noises and faster editing there is still quite an intricate plot ticking away in the background, but the story would've worked so much better as a weekly TV series.

Peru

To be honest I think the proportion of good to bad horror has always been roughly like this - there is good stuff out there at the moment, though the bad stuff is very bad Eli Roth and Rob Zombie barely seem to know which way to point the camera. If it's dread you're looking for, check out Ti West's film House Of The Devil - it fetishises 70s/80s horror but not in a LOLZRANDOM!!1!! way, rather it just feels like a lost film from that era. The level of tension and dread reaches quite remarkable levels at times. Highly recommended.

Shutter Island seconded, and Let The Right One In is a rare example of a horror that really does attain the level of great cinema and great art, like The Shining and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Also, I saw a VERY low-budget film called Soft For Digging a couple of years ago that while not perfect did convey a very uncanny and unsettling atmosphere from the start.

Lee Van Cleef

It's all a bit USP-fixated really.

I don't know.  The most recent horror films I've seen seem to be about finding the most creative way to get a reaction out of people, and that usually comes across in a lot of the trailers I've seen as well.  The Human Centipede is one example, I mean... what the hell is that about?  All it is is a set-piece based around scotch-taping some people together.  Hostel... it's got more of a set-up, but it still all comes down to seeing people die in the most horrific-ly creative way, whilst screaming endlessly.  And these psychological horror films, they all seem geared towards setting up obvious scares to the point that the story seems like an aside rather than the driving force.  Also they always come across as being made with the same cookie-cutter direction.  One of the things that made the horror genre so great in the 70's/80s was the innovations in direction it brought.  Evil Dead with its mental camera angles, Suspiria with its crazy colour manipulation and cameras on ropes.

At least Argento, Raimi and Romero strung together their brilliant death scenes with some semblance of a plot, a unique style of presentation and genuine suspense.  Horror films today seem to revel in the fact that they can spray blood everywhere and show innards in the most graphic detail.

Hell, even the Hammer Horror films despite being cheesy beyond belief, had character and felt like they were lovingly crafted around a story.

Spiteface

Quote from: AsparagusTrevor on September 17, 2010, 10:11:32 AM
Speaking of Saw related to the torture-porn (I hate that stupid false term) sub-genre, I'd say the Saw series didn't even qualify for this until the third one. The first one was more of a psychological horror/thriller with minimalist set-pieces.

I'm a fan of the Saw franchise.  I don't care who knows it.  This statement is completely true.  I'm working my way through the Saw films again, in the run-up to Saw 3D, which will be the final one (Saw VI didn't do so well, which is part of the reason they are bringing it to an end.  Then again, that may change if Saw 3D does really good business).  What struck me about the first one especially, is how lacking in actual gore it truly is compared to the later ones (I'd actually say this started with Saw III).  The only truly gory bits in Saw are Amanda cutting the "dead" guy open to get the key, and Dr Gordon cutting off his foot (thus inspiring the "Dr Gordon is alive and is the new Jigsaw!!!1111" theorists. 
Spoiler alert
He is alive and is in Saw 3D
[close]
).  Then Saw II elaborates a bit more on John Kramer, and why he does what he does - detailing his being diagnosed with cancer, and failed suicide attempt where he discovers his survival instinct, which sets him off on his work.  The key to them was that if the people in these traps truly appreciated life and wanted to get out, they'd do what they had to do to "win". Simple.  The traps were also more realistic, they used mostly "found" materials, and had a real home made feel to them.  Then they went a bit sci-fi, and more explicit with the gore, like with the "rack" in Saw III.  Talking of which...

Quote
Incidentally, if they had to make a sequel to it they should've ended at the third which had the fucking logical conclusion to the whole bastard thing. Although there is still the reliance on grossing the audience out with gorier and more brutal kills and louder noises and faster editing there is still quite an intricate plot ticking away in the background, but the story would've worked so much better as a weekly TV series.

I plan on watching Saw III tomorrow.  I remember at the time, it feeling like a good point to finish the Saw franchise.  Plus, trilogies are cool.  By the end of Saw III, Jigsaw was dead, along with Amanda, his supposed heiress also offed.  Then along comes Lieutenant Mark D. Hoffman in Saw IV.  I like to see the last three as a "new" trilogy, with Saw 3D attempting to round everything off.

I fully intend to start a Saw thread to go into more detail about this, as I go about re-watching them all...

paint

Quote from: alan nagsworth on September 17, 2010, 09:48:02 AM
Another example of a superb horror film is 'Rosemary's Baby', because aside from the dream/sex scene, you don't see anything at all and everything is left to your imagination. In fact, everything you see is from Rosemary's perspective, and you're kept guessing until the very end. That film doesn't rely on any shock tactics whatsoever, but it's absolutely terrifying.

WHEN WILL THESE YOUNG PUNKS LEARN
But most people don't really consider Rosemary's Baby as a horror film.  Perhaps it is not simply the horror genre that is shit, but that genre films are shit, ie. action movies, adventure movies etc.  The problem could be that these films are made to sell by fitting easily into a genre, rather than focussing on the story first, and so end up repeating all these cliches that people have already listed because that is what people want.  If you look at all the best films, it is often hard to fit them into a genre.

Big Jack McBastard

Quote from: Spiteface on September 18, 2010, 01:11:42 AM
I'm a fan of the Saw franchise.  I don't care who knows it.

Seconded , the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

I had more to say but some gremlin has gone and fucked up my post up twice now and I can't be arsed to re-write it at the moment.

Famous Mortimer

I keep wondering how many times Jigsaw is going to set up exceedingly elaborate ways of getting people to see how strong their will to survive is before he finally comes to some sort of conclusion? And, most of the "traps" beyond Saw 1 are impossible to escape anyway. Perhaps, rather than repeated murder, he could write a self-help book, something like that?

AsparagusTrevor

I'm a fan also. I'm just starting to lose patience and wish it would come to some sort of conclusion now. I can't even remember what happened in the last film to be honest, it made so little impact compared to the first three and even the fourth and fifth to some extent. Actually the fourth wasn't too bad and the parallel plot thing was clever.

SavageHedgehog

I enjoy them, but in that on-so-typical hipster-ish "ironic distance" way of admiring how increasingly absurd (and self-important) they become as the series goes along. For sheer mucky nastiness, the pre-titles of Saw IV are pretty admirable; a ridiculously graphic, largely superflous autopsy scene wasn't considered enough, so there is a further five minutes or so involving a trap whose only function seems to be to get two people to slash and dash each other, then a man cuts the stitches on his mouth open, blood dribbles down his chin, cut to title. Phew! I do wonder if the writer's don't take Jigsaw's "message" in these films a bit too seriously too. But in all seriousness, they do deserve a certain amount of credit for maintaining a certain amount of tonal consistency over the series, and also maintaing (now very complicated) continuity.

copylight

Von Trier made this decades best horror with Antichrist. The most atmospheric film I've had the experience of watching. What with all the nob-slashing controversy, the feel of the film is more longer lasting and memorable. He got it just right like Gilliam got Brazil right and whoever the fuck shat out that crap Paraplegic Paranormal activity got it wrong.

Jemble Fred

Would you call that a horror movie? It's an interesting movie, and a very nasty one, but it's never occurred to me that it could be seen as horror until now. It's a slippery old genre, for sure...

BlodwynPig

Just watched The Thing, now the soundtrack for that (Morricone) is superb. It just pulses along...

lipsink

Quote from: Jemble Fred on September 18, 2010, 12:46:54 PM
Would you call that a horror movie? It's an interesting movie, and a very nasty one, but it's never occurred to me that it could be seen as horror until now. It's a slippery old genre, for sure...

Actually, I'd agree, it could well be a horror film. It's certainly got a lot of similarities with Don't Look Now which you could argue is/isn't a horror film.

Is Irreversible a horror film? It's certainly horrific.