Don't they make scary movies anymore??? (1 Viewer)

[MatthewLouwrens]

Most of the scenes in Twin Peaks involving residents of the red room scare me, but that one in particular really freaked me out. I had trouble sleeping that night.

 

[Xavier]

He was just the last one that mentioned it so instead of typing everyone else's name I thought I'd cut a corner or two.

I can vouch for "May" as well. A bit on the cheese side at times, but very enjoyable.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Oh boy! a horror movie bitch-session thread. I love these. I'll comment on a few films in no particular order.

The Exorcist. Granted, I first saw this movie on cable when I was 19. Being among the least religious persons you'll ever meet I wasn't the target audience of this film. I found it unscary, but an amazing production with an equally amazing cast. There will likely never be another straight horror film with this much talent in it.

The Ring. Ok, this movie scared the living shit out of me. Until I saw the sequel. Now that the recent scary-movie post traumatic stress disorder has passed I am able to view this movie with a more critical eye. Yes, samara has somehow become an evil superhero with stupid powers (She can make X-ray prints?? ). And the film ignores the subtler (if you can call it subtle) "scared to death" corpses for gooyier "slimey, drowned corpses". The remake did however manage to posses latent creepiness, and the remote island village & horse ranch don't hurt it.

Ringaka "Ringu". Normally I like to watch an original before I see a remake (Rollerball, Texas Chainsaw, et cetera). But finding a Japanese VCD just days before you see a big-budget remake in theaters (Any film costing more than $1million to make is "big budget") is pretty hard in rural NY. This film removes more of the stupid filler of the remake, has the spooky possibility of a half-demon child , and you get creepy "towel-head man" in the cursed video. A winning combination, but rendered unscary because i just saw a remake and knew what was coming.

ALSO: A cursed videotape???? Why did this film just come out now, and not in 1985, in five years I'll have to explain what a VHS tape is to my niece.

Signs. From the tag-lines of "Scariest movie since the 6th Sense", which wasn't a scary movie anyway, this film had trouble all over it. From aliens that react badly to water taking over Earth (Hullo... what part of 80% surface area being ocean with a high moisture content in everything makes us look inviting?) this movie was never going to scare me. Worst of all was the "Mexican birthday party" scene. People were sure to tell me about the scariest part well in advance (Just like they made sure to tell me bruce was already dead...fuckin assholes). And when it arrives, what do I see?? A guy in a green S.C.U.B.A. suit! Well excuse me for not being scared by plastic spiders while your at it.

House of 1000 Corpses. This is the movie the Texas Chainsaw Massacre should have been. gritty and almost surreally violent. Its only downfall was the meaningless "expose" of the killers the intercut the film for no reason. Good looking and well-researched, HO1kC is an excellant testament to the 70's films it aspires to be.

Jeepers Creepers. I don't like teenagers. I don't like whiny teenagers who have perfect hair and clear skin. Go ahead and kill 'em, whatever. In adition to a cast I wished had been eaten sooner the film gives me a monster that A. smells you (the horror!). B. carves wood (gasp!). and C. somehow coats you in plastic and preserves you as a gruesome mural (huh?). At least it isn't another good-looking vampire or CGI werewolf.

The Blair Witch Project. The campers are scared by nothing. Literally "nothing" is ever experienced and the best source of horror is strange noises at night, and a stick figure (made from real sticks!)...... as spooky as a fifth grade camping trip your own backyard (The fact you can see a road while they are "hopelessly lost" isn't helping the film). The all-first person film is original, but so not scary that it made me mad. I got so angry at this film I was physically ill. This remained my most hated film until House of the Dead.

House of the Dead. I hate this film more than anything. yes it has zombies & bullets, thus rendering it in completion of what it promised. But the film is so god-awfully poorly done that I'm shocked and amazed it was ever started. Literally the worst film I have ever seen (And I've seen some bad movies).

Final Destination 1 & 2. These are not scary movies. they are special effect movies that happen to showcase bloody gore. Anyone who tells you hese two movies are scary is obviously a crackhead.

The Eye. I rented this cantonese film on a friends recommendation. Too bad it's The 6th Sense without Bruce Willis's character. Yup... thats it, she sees dead people, the movie ends.

 

[RobertR]

You've managed to make why people are scared by it even more incomprehensible to me. Scared by the voices of small children??

 

[Xavier]

Once again...the voice of children, while your lost in the middle of the woods, in the dead of night,hungry, and there was no sign of life throughout the whole day besides your own and two friends. And add to that the tent actually begins to shake, hey this post seems familiar

Nevermind...point is...I like it. But then again I also like such crap as KillJoy. Yes...the killer clown.

 

[JohnRice]

OK Julie, I rented The Attic Expeditions. We'll see waht I think.

 

[Brian W.]

Oh, yeah... that show used to scare the crap out of me. Sometimes the scariest things are simple little things you saw on those cheesey old supernatural "documentaries." The old "In Search Of" with Leonard Nimoy was particularly good at that.

One of the scariest things I've seen in recent years: A repeat of the Abominable Snowman episode from "In Search Of." They had a recreation of a scene where a mountain climber in the Himalayas had found the large, human-looking footprints all around, and had seen a figure in the distance.

So the sun has just set, the lighting is dim but not dark, and this climber thinks he hears something, and he's looking around, but he can't see anything -- just a snowfield and some big rocks. Then suddenly the nearest rock STANDS UP, about 20 feet away, and it's the Abominable Snowman, and that creepy synthesizer goes "brrreeeewwwbrrreeeewww," and the thing just stares at him for a second and then runs off. My God, I just about jumped out of my skin! Eeesh!

I thought, "I didn't even watch the entire show. Now why haven't I seen any movies in recent years that scared me like that?"

And the scariest piece of film music I have EVER heard was over the end credits of that laughable mid-seventies Sun Classic Pictures film "The Outer Space Connection," narrated by Rod Serling. That's the one about "ancient astronauts." I snagged a used copy of the VHS on Ebay a couple years ago, and I was laughing aloud at some of the narration and conclusions... but when that end credit music came on, I was plugging my ears and shouting, "Turn it off!" It wasn't even really music, it was just like this voice whispering gibberish in an echo chamber, but it was HORRIFYING.

 

[Brian W.]

It's a visceral reaction. You can't explain it any more than you can explain why some people find Jim Carrey hilarious and the rest of us are just kind of sickened by him.

Comedy and horror/suspense are the probably the only genres where the principal goal is simply to get a strong reaction out of the audience. If they don't deliver, we consider them failures, even though they may be wonderful otherwise. Conversely, everything else can be rotten, but if they achieve the simple goals of scaring us or making us laugh, we'll usually forgive the rest.

 

[Justin_S]

There's nothing wrong with liking Blair Witch. I personally think its one of the top 5 greatest horror films ever made. Don't let the haters in this thread make you feel like you need to feel low about it and compare it to something like Killjoy, which while you may like, it is so very better than.

As for why the film scared me, well, I've gone over it in many threads past, but what the hell. The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear in all of horror if you ask me, and Blair Witch utilizes it better than any other film I've seen. I know they are in supposedly haunted woods with a violent past, so when they hear noises coming from all around them in the pitch black darkness, it really gets to me, as I can just imagine the witch out there doing it, or maybe even something else. Also, if I were in a tent with something on the outside hitting it repeatedly, especially with all the occurences of previous nights, I'd freak. I can just imagine being in that situation, and the film terrifies me. The fact that they are being hunted and toyed with by an unseen entity terrifies me. The film just works so well with that idea. It doesn't work for everyone. Fine, but their is some insight into why it works for me.

By the way, another of the few films to ever scare me is the brilliant Black Christmas, which is another of the 5 greatest horror films ever in my eyes. The beyond warped phone calls get to me big time, and never fully seeing the killer adds so much to it as well. The film is fantastic through and through, and is another example of the terror the unknown can bring to some people.

 

[Tino]

The last film that "scared" me I think was The Evil Dead back in 1983.

In my opinion, the recent crop of "horror" films have mostly sucked (MAY, Cabin Fever, the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Blair Witch was O.K., but vastly overrated to me. C'mon, twigs and pebbles are supposed to scare me?.

The new Dawn Of The Dead was great but not really scary. Below and The Devils Backbone have some good scares in them. The films being very good also helps.

The thing is "scares" are as subjective as laughs. It's all a matter of personal
preference which can't really be argued. What's scary to one is laughable to another.

I doubt there is ONE film that everyone can agree is "scary".

 

[RobertR]

The problem for me is that there was no payoff. It turned out to be fear of an unknown nothing. Sticks and noises are nothing. There needs to be an unknown something. I was scared when I first saw the original Alien, because of fear of an unknown entity that was very much objectively real, and not just my imagination. There were plenty of dark recesses, etc., at the start of the film, which set up the feelings of dread, "what's out there", etc., followed up by a Monster that takes up horribly real forms, such as the Face Hugger, which managed to combine the fear of spiders, snakes, being smothered, strangulation, and claustrophobia in a single entity. The horror was magnified by having the monster mutate into still further unknown entities capable of doing even more unknown, horrible things. The unknown was first imagined, then it became horribly real.

 

[Ernest Rister]

For a horror film to succeed, an audience must be faced with a real, primal phobia. Fear of home invasion is the root of many ghost movies and slasher movies (Who is in my house?) Fear of being eaten is at the root of Jaws, and films in that vein. A Nightmare on Elm Street explored the fear of dying while sleeping.

Take any great horror film, and you can pinpoint a primal fear.

Any horror film that does NOT exploit a primal fear is a disaster in my book. Identity received acclaim and yet it is the only film since Nightbreed that I actually wanted to walk out of.

 

[JohnRice]

Justin may just drop dead if he sees me defending the horror genre, but here goes. I have been really enjoying some of the "Horror" movies that have been coming out the last few years and it seems like a lot of people could benefit from expanding their expectations from the genre. I completely disagree with the need for there to have been "someting" to be scared about in the end. If there is a decent amount of dread I think it works. Think of it kind of as a roller coaster ride. Is the best roller coaster ride a failure because at the end it just stops?

I also completely disagree that a "real, primal phobia" is always needed. For most people, the greatest fear is the unknown. What is wrong with it staying unknown? Does everything have to end with all the answers wrapped up in a nice package?

Finally, most of my favorites of what I might call "horror" seem to be movies a lot of people don't even consider horror. David Cronenberg is probably the best at this with movies like eXistenZ and Spider, which are very real, non monster, non supernatural horrors. Well, Spider is anyway. Movies like Requiem for a Dream fit there as well. In the end, those are maybe the greatest horrors since they can and do happen. Something horrific, real and internal is the scariest to me.

 

[RobertR]

If it stopped at the top of the ride after building up the anticipation of the downhill "rush", yes. That's the "nothing" I refer to.

 

[JohnRice]

Not a good analogy. I'm talking about a movie that is actually chilling during the movie, not one that never delivers any chills. If it is actually scary for 90 minutes, what difference does it make in the end what causes the chills? I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, I'm just trying to get you to accept another way of seeing things.

 

[RobertR]

All I'm saying is that I can't be scared by "nothing". If there isn't a scary "something", it won't work for me. It's as if someone is asking me to be scared of the monster in the closet. That might have worked when I was a kid, but not now.

 

[JohnRice]

See Robert, I'm almost exactly the opposite. Monsters just don't scare me. Some guy chasing people with a chainsaw doesn't scare me. To me, what is really scary is stuff like The Sixth Sense or Session 9. Dread, atmosphere, and mostly what you can't see. Both of those pretty much cease to be scary once you know the "answer" but then they just change into more of a fascination.

 

[JohnRice]

A good example just came to me. Brotherhood of the Wolf. I thought it was great until you finally saw the monster. After that, it just became another kind of mundane gore flick.

 

[Justin_S]

Haha John, I miraculously agree completely on what you're saying. A strong feeling of dread and very moody atmosphere always take me deeper into a film, and as I've been saying, the unseen is always the most terrifying thing. Also, Cronenberg is my favorite director, and I consider every film he's done (minus M Butterfly) horror in some way or another, and I consider Requiem, my fav film of all time, a very horrorish film as well.

By the way, I've seen it mentioned that horror sucks these days. I personally think that can't be further from the truth. I have to agree with the ones saying horror isn't dead at all.

 

[Tino]

No, horror isn't dead.

I think there are just enough good horror films (Dawn, Below, Session 9, Devils Backbone etc..) to outweight the crap (May, Cabin Fever, the new TCM etc..).

So as long as there is a balance between great horror and trash posing as horror, the genre will survive thankfully.

And as I have mentioned, it's all subjective anyway. To some, all horror films are great no matter what, while others are much tougher to please.

I think most of us love horror films, and personally despite hating some of the recent films (see above), I have no intention of giving up on them, waiting patiently for the next, true, great one.