No good horror movies made today.
Can someone name a good scary horror flick made in the last ten years?
All we get are these dumb teen slasher films that are so formulaic and cliche. Where are the classics like the Exorcist and the Omen. You don't even need blood and gore...just something to screw with your head that makes you think again when you go home to a dark house.
Have we all been too de-sensitized by violent scenes and fake makeup that nothing scares us anymore? Or has everything in that genre been done and there's nothing new to add.
All we get are these dumb teen slasher films that are so formulaic and cliche. Where are the classics like the Exorcist and the Omen. You don't even need blood and gore...just something to screw with your head that makes you think again when you go home to a dark house.
Have we all been too de-sensitized by violent scenes and fake makeup that nothing scares us anymore? Or has everything in that genre been done and there's nothing new to add.
Comments
Dog Soldiers!
Scottish soldier guys training in the woods run into werewolves, booya!
If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to get a group of friends, some consumables, and sit around for a very enjoyable night of movie.
okay fine, it's not THAT good, but it's certainly a fun flick to watch.
as far as SCARY, ringu had it's moments, but mainly for the music, there were some chilling soundbytes there.
*shrug* horror movies aren't really my thing, but I had a friend who pretty much every week he'd buy some ridiculous B-movie, or old obscure "classic" and we'd watch them in our dorm, those were good times.
I'd say the visuals in 'the ring' are scarier while the sounds in 'ringu' are scarier.
there are a couple things in 'ringu' that were pretty chilling, like the dream sequence where the little girl grabbed the protagonists arm.
overall I liked 'ringu' better because it made more sense.
Anyway... Lord of Illusions (1995). Ha, there, with two years to spare.
As for 'Event Horizon' (sigh) I wish it had been better than it was because it had a great deal of potential. Unfortunately it deteriorated into a turn-around-Boo!/gorefest/scifi-action-flick train wreck... in short it got dumb fast.
Screed
That's about it for innovative horror.
If you've not seen it already, you should see "Seven" (also listed as "SE7EN"). But it's really more of a thriller.
The problem at the moment is that horror films have started to do little more than camp/reflextivity (e.g. Scream, Scary Movie, Final Destination, etc.), and so they're not really all that scary.
Exorcist III is pretty good, I think. Lost Souls and Stigmata (only with the director's ending) aren't too bad.
But "horror" as a genre is slowly dying.
Cheers
Scott
The Ring was pretty good only because it took most of the movie to see where it was going, but the conclusion was utterly un-scary. Blair Witch was definitely scary in parts, poorly told in others. But the unique film making technique made it interesting throughout at least. Blair Witch II sucked throughout, as most sequals and threequals and fourquals and fiveqauls do... (idiot Hollywood producers).
Most of the others are even worse: they're predictable after the first person dies. And the script-writing / plot from these films almost always blows / have inconsistencies. If the facts and timeline don't make sense, you're only going to scare the biggest idiots in the audience. The rest of us will sit there going "yah but wait... what happened to?" or "I thought he was..." or whatever. Badly told stories distract people from what's supposed to scare them.
You know what made Hitchcock great? He knew how to tell a story on film...! Most horror film directors and producers today positively do not know how to tell a story, on film or with any other medium. Some of Stephen King's early movies were OK in this regard, the more recent ones have blown.
I also attribute much of the "that shit ain't scary" attitude we see today, to the fact that our world itself and the way the media covers it, has numbed us to all things horrific. Very few things scare the average American anymore. We've seen it before, heard it before... and it was on the evening news, not a movie screen. Little kids walking around with big bellies and bloody stumps for arms, Ebola, babies in dumpsters.
How can anything fictitious be scary when we see the above almost nightly?
Silence of the Lambs
Cape Fear
Seven
...Star Wars Episode I scared the hell out of me... it just wasn't intentional on the part of the studio.
Originally posted by giant
Does The Others count?
yeah i thought The Others was very good.
From Hell
two Johnny Depp movies
I might add Edward Scissorhands but that's 1990 and not "horror" in the traditional sense.
Interview with the Vampire is 1994 so it just made it in.
Originally posted by Scott
Sleepy Hollow
From Hell
two Johnny Depp movies
I might add Edward Scissorhands but that's 1990 and not "horror" in the traditional sense.
Interview with the Vampire is 1994 so it just made it in.
From Hell was a damned fine movie. I also think that the Bram Stoker's Dracula was excellent, despite Keanu Reeves presence.
Cheers
Scott
I loved Scream, but it was definitely a genre-killer, kind of like Unforgiven was for the Western.
I also loved The Ring (haven't seen Ringu). One of the dilemmas in a horror movie is whether to kill off the monster. Most of the early horror movies did kill the monster (Frankenstein, Dracula), most of the later ones didn't (Halloween, Friday 13th, etc.), for obvious business reasons. I liked the way The Ring handled it.
The Eye is another Japanese horror film that's about to get a US remake. Scarier than Ringu / The Ring, although there are many similarities in plot and tone.
Uzumaki is a Japanese horror film that probably won't be getting a remake anytime soon...it's a little too strange...but is well worth tracking down if you like a hefty dose of Lynchian surrealism in your horror.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is not technically horror (and it's a few years outside the ten year mark too), but it's certainly one of the most unsettling films I've ever seen.
Man Bites Dog (which just turned ten) is another serial killer film that should be watched in tandem with Henry... It is as unsettling, but can't resist throwing in some very dark humor.
Funny Games. This serial killer film will disturb and upset you. Guaranteed. But it barely has any gore.
Spoorloos (the original and far better Dutch serial killer film that was remade as The Vanishing) is another one that's outside the ten year mark but still worthwhile. The remake was in 1993, so you can pretend you're watching that version if you like.
Nattevagten Remade as Night Watch. Both the original version of this serial killer film and the remake are good...although the original is a little more intense for some reason.
Originally posted by Matt Danger
Resident Evil
Well, it does have Milla kicking major ass...