Horror Movies Don’t Bite Like They Used To

I can’t stand horror movies, not because I hate being scared, but because the vast majority of horror movies produced these days are atrocious—I don’t understand how people continue to see those horrid “Saw” movies.

Why is it that of all the holidays Halloween got last pick at movies?  Valentine’s Day has a monopoly of romantic comedies, and Christmas has a “Christmas Story”—enough said.

My problem with horror movies—well, my biggest problem anyway—is that horror movies only work under the following premise: human beings are idiots.

Did anyone see “The Strangers” over the summer?  Boy, was that awful—nowadays I pray for more effectual killers. 

Fifteen minutes into the film, I was praying that Liv Tyler’s character would die so I could get out of the theater faster.

What good are horror movies if the protagonists are morons?

Oh, did I hear a mysterious noise coming from outside after my friend was murdered?  Why don’t I investigate barefoot, without a flashlight and with no weapon?

Wouldn’t a truly scary movie feature an intelligent protagonist who is foiled at every logical attempt to escape the horror? 

The gratuitous gorefests that are “Silent Hill” and “Hostel” grow weary; sure there are thousands of ways to dismember and otherwise vivisect a body, but they aren’t really scary, just gross.

There aren’t even any good villains anymore.  Where are the mythic Dracula and Frankenstein figures, which tap into primal human urges? 

Where are the nightmare figures of Freddy and Jason?  The freaks like Pinhead, Alien and the Predator?  Even the all-to-real humans like Kathy Bates’s character in “Misery?”

Freddy and Jason have lost their bite and sunk into pathetic burlesques.  The Alien and Predator sequels are big snores. 

Is the scariest fiend we have in cinema a cheap looking puppet?  The Wicked Witch of the West and the eerie acid trip boat ride in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” induced more nightmares.

Someone seriously needs to revamp the horror genre.  The old standby rules of horror are as transparent as the CGI most of these films pathetically employ.

If you have sex, do drugs or are a minority; you die.  If you scream, promise you’ll be “right back” or assume that the killer is dead, you die.  Parents never listen to their children—then they usually die.  If you run—especially if you’re a girl—you will break your ankle. 

And then die.

Subtlety is the key to horror.  We don’t need to see intestines oozing all over the floor—I think directors and writers are confusing nastiness with scariness—the smallest thing will freak a person out.

I remember going to the theater to see “Signs.” There’s the scene where Joaquin Phoenix’s character is watching Mexican footage of an alien—I will never forget this—the alien walks across a narrow section of screen for a second; everyone screamed and jumped out of their chair.

It’s that kind of control that horror films are missing these days. 

The last good horror movies I watched were in Spanish “The Orphanage” directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and “The Devil’s Backbone” directed by Guillermo del Toro (the genius behind “Pan’s Labyrinth’).

I love ghost stories—horror movies that take us someplace other than the corner of Gratuitous Sex Street and Decapitation Avenue.  “The Others,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Eye,” are all pretty fantastic horror films because not only do they horrify us, they touch something in our core, remind us of the human condition. 

That’s what’s wrong with horror movies nowadays—besides the fact they’re all so stale.  I’ve got no one to root for, no one I can empathize with.  The heroes/heroines are usually morons, and Disney has made scarier villains than the schlocky types we have to suffer through. 

When’s the last time you genuinely felt for a character in a scary film, hoping they’d escape their fate?  Or even cheered for the villain to just have at it?

I remember the scene in “Carrie,” the moment after the pig’s blood is dunped all over her—when she’s got that mix of sorrow and psychotic rage—when you know Carrie’s going to let the bitches have it. 

Horror films are so shallow.

I miss that human connection, when the movie really crawls on your skin and wriggles in your blood.

Derrick Austin may be reached at daustin@ut.edu.

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