I'm going to start this post by writing that this is completely my own personal opinion. You probably don't share it or agree with my views, so this is just a warning that you may not like what you read. Now let's get down to business.
I love horror films. Oddly, I'm someone that can scare easily. I'm not a fan of gore and blood. I cringe at certain scenarios in horror or thriller films. Yet I love watching scary movies and horror-orientated television shows. It's strange and I can't find a logical explanation for it.
Whenever I watch a horror film, most of the time, I'm watching an old one. By old, I mean one that was released in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s. Why do I watch old ones? Because of the quality of today's horror films aren't up to their standards. When I look back at horror films released in the last ten years or so, I honestly think of only a handful that reach the standard of classic horror.
Whenever I see a horror film, it's as if the filmmakers are trying too hard. Almost every horror movie I've seen that has been released in the last few years is filled with gore and shock scares. It doesn't work. It's just annoying. Most of the time, there's no proper character development and/or plots. For me, that's what makes a horror movie work.
I think a part of that is because of the Saw movies. The first one came out in 2004 and they've exploded onto the movie scene since then. The Hostel films soon followed. The torture porn films are too much. In Scream 4, they poked fun at this when one character said that she likes the Saw movies because Jigsaw kills people very creatively. And the other character's response is that you don't give a shit who dies because there's no proper character development. I completely agree with this. I think filmmakers are now trying to scare audiences with the visuals instead of scaring them with the actual story and what happens to these characters.
The Exorcist, the film that's considered the scariest and one of the best horror films ever made by many critics, is an example of a horror movie that used plot and characters to frighten the audience. The Exorcist, while visually frightening with their special effects and makeup, also concentrated on character and plot. We had a concerned and frightened mother, a priest questioning his faith and Regan undergoing tests and the aftermath of being exorcized. These are just some examples of how just watching what you're character is going through emotionally and psychologically adds to the scares. Again, this is just my point of view. I think The Exorcist is a perfect example of a film that used character, plot and visuals to scare the audience.
Another thing that really cranks my gears are the remakes of classic horror movies. Psycho, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, House of Wax, Halloween are some of the classics that were remade and not so well I might add. Whenever I hear a cult favourite is going to be remade, I honestly wonder if writers can't come up with anything original and exciting, so they desperately go through the films that people know and love and decide to up do the original. Most reviews I've read of the remakes of Psycho, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween pretty say the same thing "you can't beat the original". There are some movies that shouldn't be remade and Psycho, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween are some of those movies. It's been announced a remake of the 1976 horror classic Carrie (based on the novel by Stephen King) is to be remade. I think I know what'll happen, but we just have to wait and see.
For several years, there was an obsession with remaking movies from Japan. It started off with The Ring, released in 2002. The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse and several others soon followed. Most of them are decent but I personally believe The Ring is still the better Japanese remake.
Another aspect of current horror movies I hate is the repetitiveness of stories in current releases. Here are a few examples.
Demonic possession has been a popular trend and the majority of them fail. Almost every year, a new movie about people being possessed is released. And it's pretty much the same story like the other one. Some of them worked and some of them didn't.
This is just a small detail, but another thing that drives me is when horror movies label it "based on true events". I don't know if they think it will add a sense of fear in the audience to make them think everything actually happened or if they think their audience is just really naive. Whenever I read "based on true events" or "inspired by a true story", I always think yeah right. And of course when you google it, there's no response.
Another repetitive pattern is the mockumentary genre. The Blair Witch Project used it in 1999 and quite well I might add. It was a scary movie and actually had people believing it was real. Now, they use it too much. They used it with The Last Exorcism, the Paranormal Activity movies and The Devil Inside to name a few. For some it worked and some it just failed miserably. And the fact that the mockumentary films come out every year just makes it more annoying to me.
When I look at these three specific examples, they didn't recur as much compared to films released in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s. I will say there were some horror films that were inspired by actual events, but now every year there's at least one scary movie with the tagline "inspired by actual events". It's getting old.
My rant is over. This is just the perspective of someone who is a fan of the genre and thinks that it's really gone downhill in the last several years.
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