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Don't they make scary movies anymore???

I just saw the Texas Chainsaw remake and alas, not scary. This brought me to a conclusion, either I have somehow become immune to the horror movie genre OR filmmakers just don't know what it takes to tap into the stuff that makes me quake anymore.

Well the first conclusion really bothered me. The desensitization of myself really bothered me a LOT. I mean I'm the guy who tears up during It's a Wonderful Life and most other sappy films. As far as fear goes though, I can be a tough nut to crack. So I thought I'd watch a few movies that have cause me sleepless nights such as Psycho (I still won't watch the original TCM after seeing it ONE TIME in high school) and to my surprise Psycho is still a extremely scary movie with very very little blood!!! I was clenching my hands and really felt the anxiety that comes along with feeling genuine fear!

I felt relieved that I could without a doubt feel fear in the setting of a film and I wasn't immune.

Now my second conclusion is far easier to prove. I just watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. The one film that I won't watch to this very day's modern remake!! It should be bigger, scarier, badder than the first that had very little blood and gore!!! So I thought this would be the ideal film to test my hypotenuse (Yeah I know, it is a joke at work)

Well after nearly 2 hours of yeah, bigger and badder it wasn't scary. I think I have figured it out though!!!

Somehow filmmakers lost their way!! They equate gore, blood, and snazzy special effects for fear!!!

Then I started to think about the last modern horror movie that actually was scary. I couldn't think of ONE! I asked a few of the filmmaking group and for the most part came up with the same results! No one has seen a recent movie that was actually scared them!!! I put forth my hypotenuse and they all seemed to agree, yes films today showed more gore (sort of, Dawn and Day of the Dead were both gory and in some cases gorier than modern films) had bigger baddies, and for the most part fell flat on their big bad scary faces!!!!

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Matt Stone

I suppose that all depends on yor definition of scary. I'm not sure I've been actually scared by anything since I was much littler (like 10-12~ish). I still get pretty disturbed when watching Last House on the Left, Halloween, and TCM...but it's mainly just remembering how scared I was when I watched them for the first time.

I suppose I'm drawn to horror now more as entertainment than for scares. Gore may not always provide fear, but I still love watching the Friday flicks, etc.

Edit: Forgot to mention...have you checked out Lucky McKee's film May? It wasn't exactly scary, but it was certainly disturbing and haunting.

Beau

Nothing really scares me anymore and havent since I was like 11 or 12, most horror movies scared me when I was little, but nothing really did anything to me for years. I guess I just seen too much of everything and got desensitizated. I suppose the closest thing to really *scare* me recently was the nighttime cornfeild scenes in Signs(cornfeilds are scary:b). I really hope that something can come along that's actually "scary" again.

Neil M

In my case, I'm immune. Nothing scares me anymore. Not even the classics. I think I stopped being scared when I was 10 to be honest. That was the first time I saw The Exorcist and it didn't phase me at all. I really don't know why this is the case but I still enjoy good horror movies.

I think that maybe the reason might be that I'm older and realize that whatever happens on the screen is not real. When you're younger, you tend to forget that.

Pete-D

Yes and no, I guess.

Most filmmakers don't know how to properly build tension these days and are more interested in reusing the 1980s conventions of getting an audience to jump.

I think M. Night... as "loop-holey" as Signs was, is one of the few filmmakers that can scare people in an audience setting (I find his films don't work as well on the small screen, but that's just me). He knows how to build tension, use sound effects, camera angles, etc. to scare you.

Other thing is yes I do think people have built a sensitivity. It's hard to scare me... I didn't find The Blair Witch Project or The Ring to be scary at all for instance. Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't scary either.

Robert Todd

I tend to agree with the assessment that the recent crop of
horror films are not up to the standards of many earlier efforts. Most of them are formulaic, geared to a teen demographic, and have all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the head with none of the impact. Maybe the genre no longer attracts quality writers and directors; perhaps they are afraid of being associated with a genre which has little respect in Hollywood. You mention Psycho, c'mon, Hitchcock was truly "the master of suspense". There just isn't anyone out there with his talent for manipulating an audience.
Ridley Scott had just moved from directing advertizements
when he started work on "Alien", yet he understood that showing too much of "the monster" was a mistake, leaving nothing to the imagination. He also did a good job with the atmospherics in conveying the utter isolation and vulnerability of the characters, yet these characters were
one-dimensional. I could go on, but this film was well conceptualized, and directed by someone who recognized the essential elements in a successful "scary movie". One of the more recent films that I personally think WAS well written and directed, although it doesn't pigeonhole exactly into the horror genre is "Signs". You never really get a clear, unambiguous look at the aliens, and the
suspense elements are successfully implemented. The director again, effectively isolates the characters, making them seem more vulnerable. The protagonists in this film are NOT cut-outs, but this is an exception, and I think it is primarily a question of quality writing and direction.

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Justin_S

Not many films have ever scared me, but I don't have to be scared to love a horror film. Still, the scariest film I have ever seen is The Blair Witch Project. Perfect use of the fear and terror of the unknown. Anyways, they do still make scary films today. Just because some films don't scare you or me doesn't mean that other people aren't scared by them, and its all a matter of what works for a certain person.

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Ernest Rister

One of the stations in LA was running a Twilight Zone marathon back in 1994 or so. I fell asleep watching the one with the tiny robots from space - I awoke at three in the morning, and right in front of me was a vintage episode, looking like it was shot on video, of a woman in a patient's gown walking down the silent hallways of a hospital. She came to a door with a window, and suddenly saw the face of a Nurse, as the music kicked in, a creepy sustained single note by some violins or a theramin or early synthesizer.

Scared me to death. Maybe it was that early "just woke up" state, or the silence of an apartment at 3:00 in the morning, but I was seriously freaked out.

Another bit of film that scared me silly was the ending of Looking For Mr. Goodbar - just comes out of nowhere (won't spoil it)...that scared me worse than any splatter film I've seen since Halloween.

Red Dragon had a few good moments, and The Ring had an eerie surrealism...but let's face it, the older you get, in our pampered society, the concept of Evil as a primal force in the world is diminished day by day. You look at some old silent films -- those guys had a firm grasp on Evil as an elemental force, a force of nature. Today, Evil is an aberration, a perversion, a twisted side of humanity that we can understand. Evil in the old silent films like Nosferatu or Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was implaccable, unrelenting - there was no arguing, no rationale, Evil and Death had come. Creeping slowly up the stairs.

That is scarier than the attack...the creak of the stair, the apprehension, the understanding that death and evil exist and you are weak in their grasp.

A crazy man chasing you with a chainsaw or Freddy Krueger dropping puns and one-liners just isn't the same thing. Today, we have MTV horror films, full of shock cuts and gross images.

On New Years Day, I screened Salem's Lot for a group of middle-school girls, and they went freaking crazy during the scene where the two men are driving a big heavy crate back to town. In the rear view window, you can see the crate scooting closer...and closer...and closer to them as they speak. That scared them. The little boys scratching at the windows, asking you to let them in. That scared them.

One of the girls was a huge Vampire fan, (being a middle-school girl, this meant she liked all the "romantic" Vampire movies and books, like Dracula 2000 and The Vampire Lestat). She was *hyperventilating* with fear after the "prison" scene, where Count Barlow paid a silent visit on a prisoner. She was gasping for air she was so scared.

All this for a movie made for television in the late 70's by a man who knew how to scare you. Granted, the girls were 12 and 13 years old, but it was a hoot to see this old 3-hr. movie play them like a fiddle.

Anyway...of recent films, only the Shelob scene in Return of the King ranks as "scary" in my book.

Mike~Sileck

I agree with the Signs comment, and I've gotta confess that The Ring got to me as well. (As well as ... Joy Ride .. yes, but take into consideration I watched it first time on HBO in a motel at 3 am (no joke)) I think part of a movie's effect on you is based on your preparation going into the film. If you walk into it telling yourself its just a movie, you won't get absorbed into it, and won't be scared. That's why I prefer watching movies at home, where I can control the environment. No silly teenagers screaming to take my concentration from the film, or sticky floors or anything. I can take out all light (cept for damn dvd player lights!), and make it seem that I'm part of the movie, with nothing to bring me out of it (distractions). Once you reach this point, I feel it is a lot easier to get scared.

Oh and to all the Texas Chainsaw haters .. .. I sure know it would scare the hell out of me!


Just my 2 cents...

Mike

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Ernest Rister

I didn't like Signs. Two reasons -- 1) I've seen too many movies, and so, everything including the ending was telegraphed by the first hour. And 2) Mel Gibson did not regain his faith, as the movie suggests. Faith is belief without proof. In Signs, Gibson is a priest who never humbled himself before God, blamed God for a tragedy, and came to believe God did not exist. By film's end, because of the events of the last act, he decides to put on his robes again. On the one, he's a pretty lousy priest. On the other, you saw this coming from a mile away. You start a movie with a main character who has lost his faith (see The Exorcist, Seventh Sign, hell even Peter Vincent in Fright Night), you better believe that odds are, by the end of the film, the character is going to find faith. Signs (for me) is more like a mathematical equation than a movie, an exercise in storytelling. It bored me, cause I knew everything that was going to happen. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable tremendously. Unbreakable tricked me, Sixth Sense didn't. Signs didn't. I liked the characters in Sixth Sense, and was surprised by their stories. Didn't like Gibson's character in Signs. I respect the movie, but didn't enjoy it.

Though that video sequence of the birthday party in Mexico was sure fun. Audience went nuts.

RobertR

It's very difficult for me as an educated adult to be genuinely scared merely by depictions of the supernatural, because I know it's not real. With regard to non-supernatural horror/suspense films, I think today's filmmakers show essentially no creative ability to create a sense of genuine fear and dread. It's just FX-based gore, loud noises, and such.