Horror Movie Advice: The Market vs. The Entertainment

After reading David White's article on advice for horror movies (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17010215/), I felt like giving some critique. This is not because I feel like putting my two cents into every article that comes my way. This is because I agree and disagree with White point-by-point.

1.) Final Chapters: Stop Making Remakes, Sequels, and Prequels.

Hannibal Raising will probably be the last Hannibal film. It's not that we don't love/fear Hannibal, but rather we've enough. A good example is Jigsaw of the Saw Trilogy. The first was entertaining, although I think it had more potential than it filled out. The second tried to go too far with too little. The third reminded me of the Lord of the Rings, where it has many places it could end, but it just goes on.

Let's think though. White leaves this point as the obvious, as every good idea has gone too far with series. What made Jigsaw so desired by crowds in Saw? Because we hadn't seen someone like him since Se7en. The Descent played off the dark enviroment of Alien, Hostel played off of every torture movie before it. We don't need completely knew, but like my mom likes movies, she watches to learn the character, not because she already knows them.

2.) Kids are Stupid. Let them read "Goosebumps" and 3.) If it's too loud, it's too lame.

Grudge 1 & 2, Boogeyman, Messangers, and whatever else Sarah Michelle Gellar will be in next get on my nerves. The crowd is mostly kids looking for horror movies without an R-rating. I feel like the overgrown child watching a family comedy by myself because of the crowd. A few minutes into it, the sound is completely silent, the screen is a close-up, and in 3-5 seconds, the entire screen will change to the monster pick of the film and it will be so loud, Spiderman playing in the next screen over will turn around and ask "what was that?"

This is where I somewhat disagree. I argue movies are made to balance entertainment (second-by-second keeping your attention, thumps up or down), market ability (bottomline profits), and star rating (oscar winner, a must-see, one of a kind, aim of independent films). The recent series of PG-13 films, mostly from Ghost House Productions under the authority of Sam Raimi, have done this well on the entertainment and markting levels. Nothing great, but they have shown the PG-13 horror films (The Darkness, Dark Water) how to do it so they'd actually make a healthy profit.

I wouldn't watch most of those movies more than once, and I'd use them as the ones to drag my sister to so I can introduce her to horror. They won't be classics, and that's what we need in horror right now. But they're not failures, they're a sub-genre.

4.) Stop with Remakes.

This is playing off of the previous point with the sequels, only with different films. Where Jason will always come back, there's only so many ways you can show The Omen and ...Of the Dead movies. What the movies tend to lose is the star rating (see above) that only the classics can have. Even Psycho, which stayed all too close to the original, couldn't bring back the new generations to see the old one.

White, however, doesn't give an alternative. There's an alternative? Yes, there is. Think back to the original Night of the Living Dead, then original Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. What happened after that? Shaun of the Dead from a different filmmaker and Land of the Dead from Romero, the maker of the originals. He's not playing off of his past successes, but rather trying to make each film stand on its own. This is what remakes lack. Some are good, but that's because they're going off of what we already knew was a good idea because it worked better the first time. Advice: Move on! Zombie films are great, the Romero fans enjoying Land of the Dead say so. Shaun of the Dead respected the genre and made something new standing on the old idea. Listen James Wan of Saw Trilogy, we need them to stand on their own, not make a contribution to the trilogy as a whole. Leave that to Peter Jackson.

5.) Think Fear.

Agreed with White completely with this one. Actually, come to think of it, he says it better than me. Just read it. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17010215/page/2/.

In short, stop the sequels, PG-13 has it's limited place in horror, remakes aren't needed, new makes are, and we need the Fear back in film.