Attack of the Trendy Horror Films!

                When I was thirteen years old, I watched my first horror movie, a late-night showing of Scream 2 on AMC.  While not a particularly scary movie in itself, this proved a great introduction to the horror genre, as it taught me to keep a sense of humor and remember to just enjoy myself while watching teenagers get chopped to pieces onscreen.  Equipped with a newfound love for the genre, I proceeded to watch as many horror films as I could.  While there are still notable classics I haven’t seen (I really need someone to let me borrow The Exorcist), I take pride in knowing that about twenty percent of the movies I've seen have been horror movies.  This has introduced me to some brilliant and critically acclaimed films (Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Rosemary’s Baby), some horribly underappreciated films (Carnival of Souls, Slither), and some films that I know I should hate but can't help enjoying (Sorority Row remake, Silent Hill, Friday the 13th remake).

                But amidst those great (or at least enjoyable) films, I've also seen a ton that were completely terrible.  That’s not exactly surprising though, is it?  Horror films are traditionally low budget, with easily attainable set locations, no-name actors that may or may not go on to bigger things, and very minimal effects beyond what can be achieved with latex and fake blood.  When you have an entire genre built around what’s essentially a niche audience, the studio’s bound to cut some corners, and it’s not exactly shocking to find that for every Evil Dead that gets made, you also end up with a hundred like Horror of the Zombies and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.

Apparently I'm not the only one trying to forget that film.

                I intentionally mention older horror films for my example, because this explanation doesn't quite apply today.  Sure, there are still tons of horror films with zero budget (I've made a couple), but we also have a new breed to deal with: The Trendy Horror Movie.  This is the sort of movie that everyone goes to see, whether they actually like horror movies or not.  The most notable examples of this are probably the Saw franchise, Paranormal Activity, and The Purge.

Now, before we begin, I'm sure some would like to point out that Paranormal Activity was a small-scale production with minimal budget, and thus should not be discussed alongside big budget Hollywood productions like Saw and The Purge.  However, I would argue that despite having a smaller budget, Paranormal Activity still deserves to be on this list, mainly because I don't believe there are really any problems with these films that can be attributed to lack of funds, apart from making it more difficult to attract competent actors and writers.  What I refer to then, when I talk about The Trendy Horror Movie, is basically a movie with glossy production and no notable technical deficiencies, a strong marketing campaign, usually a large number of spin-offs and sequels, and a level of popularity or notoriety that allows it to become prevalent in the public conscience.

Also, these movies kind of suck.

Seriously, even as someone who willingly watched Halloween: Resurrection twice, I can’t stand these movies.  They’re overrated, pretentious, humorless, poorly written and executed, completely lacking in subtlety or wit, and ultimately far too obsessed with trying to act scary to ever achieve anything akin to an enjoyable viewing experience.  Of all the Trendy Horror Movies I've seen, the only ones I've remotely enjoyed have been the Saw series, and that’s entirely because of Tobin Bell’s portrayal of Jigsaw, which seems too good for those movies.

As a side note, recently there was a rumor going about Facebook that a real life purge was going to happen in my hometown.  It seems like it would be really embarrassing to be that one guy who fell for it and immediately got arrested. 

The thing is though, for the longest time I wasn't really sure why I even hated this sub-genre.  In general, I tend to be awfully forgiving of horror movies, having come to an understanding that there’s simply not enough prestige to be obtained in this genre for its creators to constantly produce masterpieces.  At first, I thought maybe I had a misplaced nostalgia for older horror movies, convincing myself that basically everything made before I was born is awesome and everything new sucks.

This idea went out the window, however, when I watched Mama, a movie that received only moderately positive reviews and seemed overly criticized on most of the review and film database sites I visit.  Personally, I thought that movie was not just good, but actually a truly great horror flick that should serve as a lesson for other filmmakers in the genre.  It had an appealing visual style, an interesting story that played equally well with the “wolf-child” urban legend and the concept of a modern fairy tale, solid performances that gave us characters who were actually relatable, impressively competent child actors, a camera style that didn't depend too heavily on jump scares, and an ending that managed to be both haunting and surprisingly beautiful (as opposed to most horror endings, which are pure sequel-bait).

Believe it or not, on rare occasions this actually isn't the perfect ending everyone thinks it is.

So if I’m willing to fight for a horror movie that most people just called “okay,” why do I hate Trendy Horror Movies so much?  For a long time, the answer eluded me, but now, I think I have it figured out.  And I owe it all to a sudden road trip from Tennessee to Wyoming and a creepy hotel in Iowa.

Several months ago, I learned that my great uncle was in desperate need of transportation from a ranch in Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to my extended family’s home in Raven, Virginia.  After a failed attempt by other relatives to head out and rescue him, it became quickly apparent that I was the best candidate for the trip, given that I owned a fuel-efficient car, wasn't elderly, and didn't have a pesky job to worry about getting fired from.  With that in mind, I quickly packed a suitcase and travel bag and started my 1200 mile journey.

After a relatively slow start, I managed to finally escape the tacky wasteland of Clarksville, TN, heading northwest through the equally disappointing land of Missouri (State Motto: We made St. Louis, what else do you want?).  Around 9 p.m., I decided I should probably stop for the night, only to find all the hotels filled and the exits fifteen miles apart.  Because of this, I ended up traveling an additional fifty miles, pulling off in Iowa where I was supposed to turn anyway.  It was here that I came across an America’s Best Value Inn and Suites, the last hotel on my route until I hit Lincoln, Nebraska, sixty miles later.  It was 10:00, there was fog all around me, and somehow the Wendy’s next door did nothing to ease my feelings of apprehension.  As I pulled up to the lobby, I told myself I just needed to get my room key as fast as possible, then I could lock myself in and barricade the door against potential murderers until morning.

Or I could go in to find the lobby completely empty and most of the lights turned out.

On the bright side, at least they had this photo on the wall to keep me company.

I stared at the bell on the counter, wondering if I should ring it or stand in silence so the killers wouldn't be alerted to my presence.  I strained my eyes as I attempted to look into the darkened backroom, wondering if they could see me in the dim light better than I could see them.  I even asked myself how many minutes I have to wait before it’s legal for me to hop the counter and program my own room key.

As I stood quietly and contemplated the consequences of stealing a room in a haunted hotel, I became suddenly aware of a door closing from within the backroom.  Out of the darkness emerged a man who looked like Stephen King’s slightly demented younger brother.  I asked him if he had a room available, and to my simultaneous relief and dismay, he said yes.  As he helped me through the paperwork, I told him about all the relatives I keep in touch with on a daily basis, how they worry about me if they don’t get a phone call every hour, and how my family’s almost entirely comprised of mafia, priests, ghost hunters, assassins, and one ancient and powerful witch doctor.

At least somebody in the family understands my zombie obsession.

Ten minutes later, I was sitting alone in my room, eating a disappointing last meal as I watched Friday the 13^th on the Sci-Fi channel.  Most of the violence had been censored for TV audiences, but the atmosphere was still creepy enough to remind me that I should check the window for demons every couple of minutes.  Finally, the film was over, and while Part 2 came on right afterwards, I quickly lost interest after realizing that Kirsten Baker had been almost completely censored out of the film.

The next morning, I woke up to find a decidedly less terrifying version of Iowa.  I laughed at how silly I’d been the night before, reminded myself that a 22 year old should probably act more courageous, then hurriedly stuffed all my belongings into my car and put as much distance between myself and that godless torture factory as possible.

I swear it was spookier at night.

 Having narrowly escaped certain death, naturally my thoughts turned to movie analysis, and I had an epiphany.  The reason Trendy Horror Movies don’t work for me is because they don’t appeal to real fears.  You see, being in a seemingly deserted hotel in the middle of nowhere is the kind of thing that actually happens to people, particularly when you’re traveling long distances and are forced to take fairly remote back roads.  Most people recognize the paranoia that comes from being in an unfamiliar, remote, largely unpopulated place, and it’s exactly this fear that works so well in a film like Psycho.  It serves as a reminder that you may have gotten off this time, but those dangers still exist, and next time you might not be so lucky.  Granted, there are other aspects that make Psycho great, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have a solid foundation upon which people can project their own fear and paranoia.

Furthermore, Psycho isn't the only classic horror film that uses this technique.  Rosemary’s Baby may seem creepy because of its use of satanic elements and its dark portrayal of a nefarious secret society, but on a much more basic level, the reason it works is because it builds off the existing fear of a pregnancy going irreversibly wrong.  The conclusion of the film justifies the fear, but it is not the actual source of the terror. The same can be said of The Shining, which builds off of domestic abuse; Alien, which builds off of sexual abuse; and The Bad Seed, which builds off of the fear of raising bad children.  This technique also explains why it made sense for Night of the Living Dead to attribute its zombies to radiation, whereas now most zombie movies prefer pathogens and failed medical experiments.  We’re not particularly afraid of radiation at this point, but thanks to diseases like AIDS, bird flu, and most recently Ebola, we are well-conditioned to be afraid of rampant disease.

Dolls, on the other hand, will never stop being creepy.

Now let’s start with the Saw films, which are probably the best examples of the Trendy Horror Film genre.  What exactly is the primary fear upon which these movies are constructed?  An avid defendant of the franchise might disagree with me, but I would make the obvious assertion that its primarily built on the fear of self-mutilation.  So here’s the big question.  Who is actually afraid of that?

Now, I’m not saying that I wouldn't be scared if I were put in a situation like the ones in Saw.  While you never know what you’re capable of until you’re forced into such a situation, I feel fairly confident that I could never cut off my own foot or gouge out my own eye.  In fact, I think if I were ever kidnapped and forced into some torture chamber, I’d probably die from poisoning or dehydration as I did everything in my power to avoid going through Jigsaw’s tests, eventually dying next to a minuscule hole in the wall from where I tried to tunnel my way out.  When my death was finally confirmed, I imagine the obituary would read, “John Sims-Jones died  in a manner that was not particularly heroic or inspirational.  It is unclear whether he was taught any kind of lesson about the value of life, but he certainly learned a lesson about the impracticality of tunneling through cinderblock using only his fingernails and an eye-gouging scalpel.”

Fortunately, I don’t really have to worry about that.  In fact, I would say I almost never worry about having to chop off my own fingers, or tap dance barefoot on a pile of sea urchins, or even see how much I could eat of my own body before I died of blood loss.  Why?  Because that pretty much never happens to people, and it is entirely reasonable for me to expect that it will never happen to me.  I say this not as an invincible young adult who will probably die at 150, but as someone who understands that statistically there are many things more likely to kill me than something so bizarre, specific, and largely unprovoked.

For the record though, I'm pretty sure I could get through both arms and maybe a foot.

And that is basically the underlying problem with Saw.  The situations portrayed are scary in that it would be frightening to experience them, but the film isn't particularly scary on a personal level.  It’s incredibly difficult to empathize or develop a real personal connection with the characters, because ultimately their problems are extremely different from your own, or even from the problems of other important people in your life.  And even if you argue that the film is really playing off the fear of kidnapping or the fear of death, it still doesn't really work.  The former is still a little too uncommon to be identifiable, particularly since most people are more afraid of their children getting kidnapped than being taken themselves, and the latter is far too vague to be considered a strong underlying premise for a horror movie.

The same can be said for Paranormal Activity.  In this case, I should probably acknowledge that I have not seen any of these films except the first one, but that’s only because the original is one of my top 20 least favorite films of any genre.  I have certainly seen worse films in terms of acting, script, effects, etc., but there aren't many films that have failed so completely to make me react the way the filmmakers intended.  This isn't always my criteria for liking or disliking a film, but in this case, I think it's a significant flaw because there's not much to enjoy beyond the aspects encompassed by the original vision.

And suddenly, I have a strong desire to travel to whatever parallel universe would allow Tommy Wiseau to direct a found-footage horror film.

In the case of Paranormal Activity, the main source of fear seems to simply be a fear of supernatural forces beyond our control.  Again, the main question is who is actually afraid of this?  When it comes down to it, I’m not aware of a ton of people who really believe in ghosts or supernatural beings beyond a religious context, and those religious enough to believe in demons are usually religious enough to also believe in divine protection.  Even the select handful of people I know who claim to be ghost hunters (we all have that one ghost hunter friend, right?) tend not to be very scared of the supernatural.

Now, in at least the first film, there is one other potential phobia: the fear of your partner changing and your relationship falling apart (like The Shining, but instead of Jack Nicholson, you get some talentless nobodies).  That at least is a real concern that people deal with in their everyday lives.  However, even if that’s the case, it doesn't exactly work because the two characters are so bland, whiny, mean-spirited, and thoroughly dislikable that no decent person would ever identify with them.  It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for a couple when you’re pretty sure that God himself sent that ghost to teach them a lesson about not sucking.

"I have received a message from the demons of the Netherworld.  They say you're all terrible roommates."

And finally, we have The Purge, arguably the most problematic of the films in my list.  Unlike the other two franchises, The Purge does seem to rely on two common sources of fear: our fear of humanity’s capacity for violence and our fear of the government.  Both of these are common issues in our daily lives, particularly as our news sources bombard us with scandalous stories about the failings of our government and graphic depictions of violence committed by random strangers.  While impressions vary on how accurately this actually portrays the world around us, it’s at least accurate to say that a large percentage of our population understand these fears well enough to identify with a movie that invokes them.  So in that case, what is it that keeps The Purge from being the shining example for other Trendy Horror Films to follow? 

Unsurprisingly, the problem is at least tangentially connected to Michael Bay.

You know how those Transformers movies completely spat in the face of everything that the franchise originally stood for?  If you're from my generation, maybe not, since my peers and I didn’t exactly grow up on the show.  From what I understand though, most people feel quite strongly that Michael Bay’s films somehow failed to capture the essence of those classic toy commercials, demonstrating that while he liked the franchise enough to make a movie about it, he evidently did not have enough of a personal connection to actually reproduce it accurately.  It’s kind of like rewriting A Series of Unfortunate Events to make it happier, or forming a Weird Al cover band where you only play the polka medleys.

I don't have a joke here.  I just think this is really funny.  This is the reverse jacket for Lemony Snicket's unauthorized biography, to be used immediately whenever you need to disguise the book's true contents.

Likewise, although The Purge does manage to invoke the everyday fears of American citizens, it doesn't necessarily prove that the filmmakers really understand how those fears work.  Let’s start with the fear of humanity’s violent urges.  In the media, we’re often shown the work of extremists and mentally unstable people, but even when seemingly ordinary people commit violent crimes, they tend to be portrayed as outliers from decent society by the time they hit the news.  The result is that while we end up feeling vaguely concerned about “what the world is coming to,” we tend not to think of the people in our own social group as a bunch of mass murderers waiting to happen.  This is one of the key reasons this movie falls short, because by making the purge so widely accepted, it fails to recreate the paranoia that comes from the fear of the unknown.  When you don’t really know your enemy, it’s a horror story, but when everyone’s the enemy, it’s just a war.

On the other side of the equation, we have the fear of the government.  I would argue that this is actually the more prevalent theme of the film, since so much of it seems focused on the propaganda and indoctrination that pervades the characters’ daily lives.  With issues like the NSA's intrusion on privacy, the moral ramifications of our military actions overseas, and controversial cases of police brutality, it’s very clear that we live in an era where many people distrust the government and cast doubt on whether its decisions truly represent the American people’s best interests.  But generally, what people are afraid of is the damage our government and its officials can actively inflict, not necessarily the problems it simply allows other people to cause.  Sure, there are people who are scared of the government legalizing gay marriage, recreational marijuana use, etc., but this has more to do with perceptions of morality than any sense of impending danger.

Well, at least in modern times.

In The Purge, we’re treated to a vision of a surprisingly inactive government, one that seems to spend far more of its resources on propaganda than it does actually enforcing any kind of reign of terror.  Compare that to V for Vendetta, 1984, The Iron Heel, Fahrenheit 451,  The Hunger Games, Divergent, or any other dystopian film or novel, and this vision of the future government seems oddly tame.  In a science fiction story, such a vision would be acceptable, but it doesn't really work when a horror movie tries to frighten us with a safer dystopia than the ones in our young adult novels.

Thus it’s not enough to simply identify a common fear and exploit it.  The filmmakers also need to display some sort of insight and understanding as to why people are afraid of the things they are.  The Purge probably came closest of the Trendy Horror Films, but the final product is still too far removed from most people’s experiences to really work.  And when you compound The Purge’s thematic problems with an absurdly rich family that can’t decide which yacht to buy, a bizarre kid who makes remote-controlled robots out of evil dolls, and a daughter that basically only exists so costuming could work in their slutty schoolgirl outfit, you can understand why the film didn't exactly ring true with audiences.

"Hollywood really needs to start making more films for all us one-yacht households." - Joe Everyman

So if Trendy Horror Films specifically don’t hold up because they’re not relatable, why are they doing so well?  I think part of the problem is that they’re essentially designed for the lowest common denominator rather than fans of the genre who can actually discern the good from the bad.  As I said before, one of the key traits of these movies is that they’re seen by a large audience, including many people who do not consider themselves horror fans.  They’re not going out of love for the cinematic nuances of the genre; they’re going to participate in the latest of a steady stream of event films, which is essentially how these movies are marketed.  There’s a good reason that the Saw series produced a new film each year from 2004 to 2010, that Paranormal Activity will have produced six films in nine years by 2015, and that The Purge: Anarchy came out a year after the original.  It helps to build hype for the movies when going to see them becomes part of your annual routine, particularly for horror films where all they really need to do to pitch the movie is promise a more terrifying and shocking experience than the previous entry.  This works especially well for the Halloween season, during which the Paranormal Activity and Saw films were released, since a lot of people who don’t ordinarily like horror flicks are willing to make exceptions during this time of year.

This is exactly why I don’t expect these films to ever be held in the same regard as our existing horror classics.  We've come to the point where our horror movies are specifically marketed towards people who don’t like horror movies, and while this may help boost ticket sales, it results in a decline in quality and a largely disposable product.  And since these movies tend to take themselves surprisingly seriously, they don’t even achieve the endearing campiness of other declining franchises of the past (like Friday the 13^th, which arguably peaked by its second of twelve entries).  Instead, what you’re left with is a collection of joyless movies that have no value beyond their potential for scaring their viewers, and the movies really only manage to scare on a surface level.

In the end, I think the best way to describe the Trendy Horror Film approach to scaring audiences is to compare it to hammering in a screw.  To a certain extent, it does technically work, but if we're going to give people money to craft a product for us, wouldn't it be nice if they used the right tools?

Introduction

My name's John.

I play in a rock band about zombies called The Resistance House Band.  I'm not much of a blogger, but when I do post things, usually they're posts about what it's like to write music for such an unusual band. When you write music about zombies, there are a lot of challenges that most songwriters never have to deal with.  For people who are as into music as I am, those challenges can be kind of interesting to write and read about.

This blog has nothing to do with that.

A few months ago, I posted a really long status.  It went like this:

So as I was walking back from the munchie mart after getting food to treat a low blood sugar, I noticed that the door to the stairwell was inexplicably closed. For those that don't live on campus and are unfamiliar with our residence halls, this is something that never happens, to the point that I hadn't even realized the stairwell entryway even had a door until then. My initial thought was that a serial killer had trapped me in the basement. I'd try the door, realize it's locked, turn around to see the Commodore Killer standing in the hallway, and my remains would be found the next day in the washers and dryers of Lewis. But I figured I'd try the door anyway, simply as a formality before my imminent death, when I noticed something through the window. There was a couple passionately making out in the stairwell. This didn't necessarily discredit my serial killer theory, but if anyone was getting killed, the rules dictate that the couple making out would go down before I did. I turned around to go to the elevators in order to avoid any awkwardness, when suddenly I realized something. Why should I inconvenience myself by waiting forever for an elevator when I only live on the third floor, while that couple has shown complete disregard for any and all Lewis residents who might have wanted to use those stairs at some point? With that in mind, I abruptly turned around, walked briskly towards the stairwell, and violently whipped open the door. I passed by the couple pretty quickly, but I did have the satisfaction of seeing the look of pure terror and subsequent mood-killing embarrassment on their faces as I headed up the stairs. This might be somewhat sociopathic, but ruining that couple's makeout session and heroically reclaiming that stairwell was probably one of my finest moments at Vanderbilt.


I expected three reactions: (1) People would see how long it was and wouldn't bother to read it. (2) People would find the status somewhat amusing. (3) People would consider my behavior somewhat mean-spirited or inappropriate. Instead, everyone told me I should write more. It turns out that writing is actually kind of time-consuming, so I didn't manage to slam out that 400 page story of the Makeout Murderer I'd been planning on, but I did manage to write a couple of short stories. Some of them are still in the revision stage (I go through a pretty long stage of self-loathing when I write), but I now have at least one that I feel is ready to show people. Hopefully people will like it. Unlike songwriting, which I've been doing for a long time, this is kind of new territory for me, so any comments are appreciated, and I would be especially grateful if people would give me titles for my stories.


- John