by DireStrike » Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:57 pm
Horror films didn't used to be about slicing people up, and even today they aren't always. Those were slashers. I think real world pain and terror has crept into the very idea of "scary", making it a more concrete thing these days.<br><br>I've long been a horror fan. Perhaps the most read books from my childhood library are the "scary stories" collection gathered by Alvin Schwartz. I don't remember any gore in those, and my favorite stories were one about cats, in which no violence occurs at all, and another about an idea that seems to kill people or cause them to go brain dead. The creepy pictures were cool also.<br><br>My memory seems to tell me that good horror movies had no violence, or only implied it. The Blob - he could "get" you, but... that was it. "It" - there were sharp teeth. "In the Mouth of Madness" - ???? Perhaps I was just sheltered from the gory crap. Wikipedia has an article on horror films, with mentions by decade: <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film#1950s">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film#1950s</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Cheap gore shock and "jump-out" scares always struck me as the hallmark of a crappy movie. And so we come to today, where good movies are incredibly rare.<br><br>Why? Well, I'm a gamer, and it's interesting to hear that the game market is bigger than the movie market. In that light it is easy to see how hollywood, a relatively monolithic industry, can be influenced. But I think a far bigger influence on culture and, thereby, movies, has been the internet. Desensitization has grown as culture became more "mass", if you ask me. Information has been steadily growing more abundant. People had long been overwhelmed by the time the internet came about. And when it did, it just added to the problem. <br><br>Those who want to experience things can no longer waste time with nuance. "Just show me the worst and the best you've got - I'll guess the rest." Have you ever heard of a XX movie? Of course not. There were X movies, and then somebody came up with XXX. Nobody was going to make a movie that wasn't quite as sexy. (Although the internet seems to have finished that, too - you can find absolutely any kind of sex from hard to softcore, and everything in between.)<br><br>And so we just jumped to using the worst possible things in movies. Because you can go to a website and watch a man be beheaded. Hear the - well, I don't want to trigger anybody. But my point is that you can find the absolute bottom rung of humanity online.<br><br>Silent Hill was... not quite a <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>crappy</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> movie... but it wasn't that good either. It was attempted fanservice that failed. Silent Hill the game was FAR better than the movie could have hoped to be. There wasn't that much gore in it really, except at the hospital... where it was sort of appropriate to that sphere of terror. The gore in the movie was, I think, only there because of the idea that "scary movies have gore in them." Perhaps worse was that it was impossible to sympathize with anyone being killed, except<br><br> * spoiler*<br><br><br><br><br>the law enforcement figure.<br><br><br><br><br>*end spoiler*<br><br><br><br><br>I actually laughed once or twice when the others were being killed. The gore is hardly even noticeable anymore. Any type of gore. It was a cheap and dull tool so badly abused by the industry that it doesn't even work anymore. Plus, you can find better stuff on the internet. Stuff that they can't show. Stuff that's Real. If anyone <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>wanted</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> to see every excruciating detail of... anything... they can now. Movies can't compete, try as they might.<br><br><br>Now, Drama... that I can't watch. Who wants to feel that bad? I really dislike movies where bad things happen at just the wrong time to people who really don't deserve it - tragedy, in short, which seems to be the defining characteristic of most dramatic movies. Emotional suffering, even if obstacles are overcome, is just so painful. I can see the value of some of these things as motivational - <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>if they can overcome THAT, surely I can deal with my little problems</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> - but what I don't get is junkies of this genre. Being scared isn't that bad... when you know you're safe. Seeing people dismembered isn't that bad... when you know that those people never existed. But hearing terrible things is always painful. I'd like to get by with a minimum of that. I'd rather go to bed with the light on than cry myself to sleep. <p></p><i></i>
