Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 1:19AM In Defense of Horror Movies, Even 'Friday the 13th'
I know a guy who hates martial arts films. Discounts them immediately and vocally. I knew a critic for a major American newspaper who refused to see Amelie because, "I don't like French things." The same man also predicted nobody would remember Harry Potter 20 years from now.
The point of all of this is that good movies and bad movies are everywhere. I once had to judge a documentary film festival and despite what people in tweed blazers think of non-fiction film, let me just say picking a winner was easy that year. There is no genre better than any other, as evidenced by the mastery of Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, and even Ridley Scott over several of them. To declare that one type of film is somehow worse than another implies that, by extension, one genre is superior to all others. And if you believe that, you're automatically disqualified from adult discussions.
And yes, there are even good horror movies. A lot of them, as it turns out.
The difference is, because your appetite for gore and shock has to be more desensitized, horror movies have never gotten their due among mainstream critics and anyone currently over 50. The dismissive ones think there's too much blood and the situations could never happen. Well, first of all, they're not really bleeding. You've heard of make believe, right? Secondly, I've seen Heaven Can Wait. Damn thing got Oscar nominations. I'm just sayin'.
These lowest-common-denominator movies usually involve teenagers getting stalked by indestructible killing machines wearing some sort of mask, detractors will say, which is easy to counter through equal oversimplification like, "Don't all Westerns have gunfights and one-dimensional villains," or "Why the hell do people in West Side Story just start singing like that? And how do they know ahead of time it's going to rhyme?" Don't even bother asking about the logistics of an impromptu duet.
I believe there's not enough appreciation for horror movies. Some of the greatest directors today honed their craft by sharpening knives for slashers. A bunch of Oscar nominees and Oscar winners, for that matter, launched their careers with a blood-curdling scream (paging Tom Hanks...).
Ghost stories have been with us as long as any other kind. There's no real difference for the audience between hearing a campfire ghost story and watching one on an 80-foot screen. You're still clutching your seat, hanging onto every detail, hoping not to be scared but knowing it has to come eventually. In a way, an effective horror movie gets more emotional response from a viewer than any other, even the ones people are afraid to watch. Maybe even especially those.
But it's true that the state of contemporary horror is a mixed bag. You have the major studio projects, which are stylized remakes of American and Japanese horror flicks, and those have not been terribly good in the past few years. The Saw series is at least trying to be complex, although it's probably too much thinking for its opening weekend audience. If you look hard enough, though, you can find movies like High Tension or Frailty, or even Shaun of the Dead, movies that play by most of the same rules of traditional horror movies but have found ways to stand out from the crowd, which is what made horror movies popular in the first place.
There's a great article I just read at Film.com that touches on the same subject in general terms, and specifically the railroading of Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train by its distributor, who's throwing it into way too few theaters this weekend. Please check out that story.
Also, we finally have a clean copy of the Comic Con poster for the new Friday the 13th, which is one of those remakes we described above. I wish people would get this stoked over The Strangers.
Reader Comments (38)
If you're anything like normal, seeing real violence will make you feel sick.
While regular action films make violence look stylised and abstract, horror films often try to emulate that sickening feeling of real violence.
Therefore, I am slightly suspicious of anyone who is overly fond of the genre.
Then you must hate war movies, where the body counts are significantly higher, and disaster movies, too, where the world is helpless as thousands upon thousands of people die at once.
What in the hell is a "regular" action film, by the way? For that matter, what does "anything like normal" mean?
Different things really.
Civilian murders and assaults are horrific because they are personal and you can feel the base malice and disregard for human life.
Wars are terrible too, but if properly conducted between regular armed forces they are not personal. They have rules and codes of conduct. It's fairly random at the basic level but with skill and some luck you can survive.
I've been in the army and I've also seen a lot of civilian violence in the course of my current work so I know a little about the difference. Historically, a lot of regular soldiers, especially conscripts, have found killing difficult and sometimes tried to avoid it on a personal level.
It's the murderous malice that makes you feel sick and which is explored and exploited in horror films.
Well, wars are not really well-known for their overall regard for human life. Civilians have been savagely killed in every war man has ever fought. Plenty of villages have been pillaged, and women raped in the name of property and ideology. Tell the families of those victims it's not personal, but rather part of a coordinated effort conducted properly. I'm sure that'll be a big help. You've heard of the Holocaust, right?
There's malice in every murder. That's what separates it from manslaughter. If you were to make a movie about Jack the Ripper - who, incidentally, never saw a slasher flick - how can you avoid the grisly facts? Read Shakespeare or, hell, history, and there's plenty of brutal murder on which the wheels of history turn. Read the account of the plot to assassinate Rasputin. That'll make you think twice about dining with the Russian aristocracy.
You seem to have a bias against the actions depicted in horror movies, which are far less likely to occur in real life than similar violence you can see in a Martin Scorsese movie. I say that because you call anyone who doesn't see it the way you see it not normal.
But it doesn't bother me because I know it's titillation, a marketing gimmick, used in much the same way as the slogan "zero money down, no interest until 2011." It's a hook, a device, just like the red LED meter attached to a bomb in a spy movie. And in 90 minutes, the haunted house is over, and hopefully, you've got something to talk about over coffee.
Hi,
I would just like to say that I don’t think a horror movie has to necessarily be extremely violent.
I’m a bit sensitive about seeing violence, I don’t like at all, yet there are horror movies I think are terrific (The Ring, for one). The same way there are action movies with too much explicit violence. I couldn’t agree more Colin, we shouldn’t stereotype a genre.
I absolutely loved Shaun of the Dead, but I don’t think it’s aiming to be a horror movie. It has its moments, but I think it’s mostly a dark comedy, isn’t it?
Cheers
It is a dark comedy, but it's bloody as hell. And the story has the same structure as a zombie movie not going for laughs.
Scorcese does violence in a way I can stomach. It's a bit more realistic than most but his films are never about gratuitous violence. Rather, they show someone for who they really are. If we watch films by other directors we might think that goodfellas are good fellows, which most of them aren't. Scorcese reminds us of that, which is a good thing.
Personally, I was rather upset by the knifing by the lake in Zodiac, as an example, because it resembles a real life murder. Bullets and grenades cause worse injuries but generally, in a combat situation they are not deliberate. Most people who blows someone away in a combat situation would rather not do it to someone in the park.
There is criminal scum in wars too but as we have seen in Germany, Bosnia and Iraq, they will get prosecuted for it.
Shaun of the Dead worked for me because it kept signalling to the viewer that it wasn't real and shouldn't be taken seriously.
Very well written article, Colin. I agree that it's important never to feel above any genre but in the same token, I feel like in the grand scheme of things, horror films get far more press than the genres of art-house/independent and foreign films put together and to me, that's the real tragedy.
While, as another reader pointed out, some truly excellent scary movies have been made, I'm never been a big fan of horror flicks myself. However, I think that there's something to be said for having a willingness to explore every genre and evaluating each film individually as opposed to just dismissing an entire genre. I mean, some horror films are allegorical just like some westerns weren't really about cowboys like High Noon was covertly about the Hollywood blacklist.
Similarly—and this is a general wish and not a Colin dig as he is a respectful and intelligent writer-- I wish more critics would stop dismissing films as <shudders> "chick flicks” or perhaps as an experiment, avoid labeling works altogether. Perhaps, instead of ridiculing what they feel is only fodder for females (although there are plenty of us who dislike the anti-feminist Pretty Woman), maybe-- like that critic who dislikes French things-- it’d be cool to try going into a film without pigeonholing it into a genre and just analyzing it as an individual work. I’m definitely trying to take this approach to horror films and going with the fundamental critiques on content and execution as much a way to better experience it as a viewer as to avoid any preconceived stereotypes that go along with the loaded label of “horror” or “slasher” film that I carry around as someone who dislikes too much blood and guts.
On a different note—it’s always great to see a film noir shout-out. However, an I say this with affection as someone who considers Laura to be one of the all-time greatest film noirs but man, I never thought Gene Tierney could act her way out of a paper bag in that film. Now, the rest of the cast on the other hand-- wow!