"The Problem With Today's Horror Films Is..."

The League of Tana Tea Drinkers have invited its members to participate in a unity blog, with the theme being for each blogger to supply their own ending to this sentence: "The problem with today's horror films is..."

This is a topic that lots of fans have an immediate answer to, with plenty of vitriol to share about how horror is a diluted product now - just watered-down thrills made for an undiscriminating audience. Tips for improvement run the whole gamut of: horror movies should be R and not PG-13, there should be less of a focus on teenagers, and more original films instead of remakes and sequels.

But horror fans of every generation have typically made it a point to complain that the horror films of the present are inferior to whatever scare fare they grew up on. I imagine that even some ancient moviegoers who were raised in the silent days must have believed that the advent of sound was the death knell of true horror. Because, you know, movies are only scary when you have to imagine what a creaking door sounds like. And once black and white was replaced by color, I bet some fans never recovered from that because everybody knows that horror movies just don’t work as well unless they’re in black and white. The point being that every era has given horror fans something new to gripe about.

When I was a kid in the early ‘80s, all I ever heard was a lot of hyperventilating about how horror had fallen into a morass of blood and guts and how the slasher genre was destroying horror movies. Now, of course, that time is now thought of as some kind of golden age and films that were dismissed as outright junk like My Bloody Valentine and Happy Birthday to Me (both 1981) are considered (in some quarters, at least) to be classics and now it’s the turn of remakes like Prom Night (2008) to be blamed for ruining horror.

So if anyone ever asks me what’s wrong with horror today, my usual answer is “nothing”.

Sure, I don’t love every horror movie I see. With some films, I just don’t understand how they appeal to anyone. The Saw series baffles me, for instance - not because of the violence, but because of the inanity of the storylines. But what other people like doesn't bother me and every year I always manage to find some movies that I do enjoy. As long as that stays true, I can't say things are all bad.

If I could change anything, it’s that I'd like unrated and NC-17 movies to get wider theatrical releases rather than either going straight to DVD or receiving very limited runs. I was part of the last generation who got to see the unfettered likes of Pieces, The Beyond (aka Seven Doors of Death), and Demons in theaters and I think it's unfortunate that unless someone lives in or near a major market, the most extreme horror movies they'll ever experience on the big screen are R-rated fare. And it's also a shame that quirky independent pictures like Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter and Stuart Gordon's Stuck (among many others) don't have a chance of playing at most fan's local theaters. I'm glad these movies have an outlet to be seen uncompromised on DVD and cable but yet I wish they had greater opportunities for theatrical distribution.

But as far as the movies themselves go, even if much of the new crop is terrible I don’t see that as being any different from any other point in time. Most horror movies have always been poor at best. Even with good films, when they make a lasting impact, it’s usually down to the age that you first watched them. Burnt Offerings (1976) blew my mind because I saw it when I was around seven or eight years old. Had I seen it when I was thirty-five instead, well...that'd be a different story. That’s not to say I wouldn't like to see more horror films strive for greatness, or that it’s always about seeing a film at the right age, just to acknowledge that the movies I grew up with weren’t flawless by any means and yet my movie collection is full of films that critics - and most fans - once thought would be forgotten in a month. A lot of irrational attachments are made when it comes to horror films so it’s not my place to say that today's fans shouldn’t feel as connected to the movies that they’re growing up with as much as anyone else did to the movies of their eras.

Personally, I enjoy seeing how the genre changes each year. I like watching trends come and go. And I like the fact that the horror genre's prosperity is seldom up to the hardcore fans but instead in the hands of a larger mainstream audience who determines what movies become hits (even if it sometimes flies in the face of what horror fans approve of). The horror movies that we see may seldom be the kind that would be made if fans were left to call the shots but I don't see anything wrong with that. Instead I think it keeps things interesting. My feeling is that every age gets the horror films that it needs - although sometimes this is only evident in hindsight.

Ultimately, other people are probably better equipped than I am to tell you what's wrong with today's horror movies. More often than not, I'm happy to roll with whatever's out there. I even liked Mirrors, for crying out loud. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest problem with today's horror films is the same as always - they just don't make enough of 'em.