Is Horror Dead?

[Kitsune Hunter]

A couple of years ago, I came to realise that horror films nowadays just aren't scary as they used to be, at best only making me me jump (but that rarely happens now). The last film that ever truly scared me was Paranormal Activity, but then after they decided to milk the film for every penny by making sequels that aren't only crap and adds more questions to the plot than it answers, but it just uses the same tactics as the first in terms of scare tactics were it just becomes boring, predictable and as a result I don't find the first film scary at all anymore. So my fellow escapists, here's the question, is horror as a genre dead/becoming a dying breed or is it still living strong in another form such as with the rise of horror indie games like SCP or both Slender games.

Discuss

 

[Angie7F]

I was disappointed after the ring and paranormal activities because over done.
Nothing is really scary anymore, and it always has wet soggy people painted in white .

 

[Thaluikhain]

There's always been lots of crap to camouflage the good stuff. Now, you could argue that the bad stuff is rising up to smother the good, but that's nothing new, just going under a wave of crap for a bit.

 

[krazykidd]

For me . Anything that is horror is dead . Horror games . Horror movies . Horror books . Horror halloween . For someone reason , people think gore = horror . Gore does not equall horror , but it can help it , though it's not necessary . The problem in my opinion is in the overuse of tropes and terrible writting . For some reason , i think writters ( for movies and videogames at leaset , i don't read books ) have a lot of trouble not being predictable and unoriginal . Everything is so forseeable . Twists , are no longer surprising . Endings are longer remarkable . Everything is recycled from A-Z . Every once in a while a movie or game will came out that delivers an experience that impresses , but those are few an far between .

Horror specifically , is know for having low bugets , but low budgets does not mean it has to be bad . And i have no problem with tropes , just mix it up a bit . Put your own little twist on it . That's how movies/games get remembered . The last horror movie that i liked was Cabin in the woods . Because it was a parody . And a damn good one at that . Nothing was predictable in that movie . And that's what i will remember that movie for . Being different .

 

[Rylot]

Eh, I think that's just Hollywood. There are plenty of really scary foreign films that have come out in the last few years. Youtube has some pretty good running series and shorts. And as you pointed out there is other mediums like video games and written stories. With smaller more creative projects becoming easier and easier to make and distribute there are plenty of sources for good horror.

 

[purplecactus]

I can't remember the last time I was scared by a horror film, which is disappointing. In the past couple of years I've been hard pressed to find anything new that I've genuinely enjoyed as well. No one seems willing to change the formula a little and find something new and exciting, everyone's just sticking with rehashing the same tired old clichés and all that does is make things predictable.

Games... I don't know. I need to get my hands on a few proper horror games and see what happens there.

With books it depends, I've never come across one that scares me, but for me horror writing is less about scaring me as the reader and more about making me fear for the characters. So I'd say things are ok with the written word as far as horror goes.

As a whole, I think it's the aforementioned problem that somehow people have progressed to thinking that gore is horror, therefore the more blood and guts the better. Not so, or at least, not essentially true. I don't know, I kind of think we've become quite desensitised to a lot of what used to be considered scary. And that brings it back around to finding new things, new ways to bring back the fear.

So, really I don't think it's dead, I think it just needs a little refreshing.

 

[Mr. Q]

horror goes in waves and we are just in a down turn for the most part at the moment, plus the net tends to leak every spoiler, etc before people see them doesnt help either

I agree with the first part of your comment. Plus we need to understand that horror, like any genre, is not dead... merely mishandled by people who have failed to learn from what made classic horror movies successful.

A quick example is looking at the parody genre. In order to understand why the classics (Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, Young Frankenstein, Hot Shots, etc.) are of higher quality when compared to their piss-poor modern variations (Epic Movie, the Scary Movie franchise, Disaster Movie, A Haunted House, Meet the Spartans, and so on) is due to many subtle details Hollywood has overlooked. Upon close examination, we learn that the classics had proper story structure, they spoofed a certain aspect of a genre and not what is popular this week, their jokes were set up, planned, and executed properly without overstaying its welcome. Even the actors in those roles tended to play it more straight-faced. Take a look at Leslie Nielsen's performance in Airplane. Nielsen was mostly a serious actor before he began working full time in comedies. His performance as Dr. Rumack was portrayed as if he was in a serious movie without realizing it was actually a spoof, as opposed to the modern POS spoofs that have the actors constantly winking at the camera. Plus some spoofs tended to offer some social commentary wrapped in a comedic form. A good example is Blazing Saddles, where it deconstructs the romanticized wild west made by Hollywood by inserting a black sheriff as its main protagonist.

As with any genre, we must understand what makes a great horror movie. For a better understanding about horror, I recommend watching these videos from the web series, Extra Credits. On multiple occasions, they offered some commentary about horror in games but what they covered applies to horror movies as well.

 

[Daft Time]

I'm not surprised the quality of the entries in the "horror" genre is waning. It never made sense to me to use horror as anything more than a tool in a narrative rather than the entire purpose of the narrative. It's fine to make it your primary tool. In fact, it makes a worthy theme for discussion. Execution horror just to freak somebody out for a bit without any meaningful discussion on the nature of it?

Boring.

 

[Edguy]

I despise horror films, they don't go well with my logic fixated brain. The only "horror film" I have ever really enjoyed, was Cabin in the Woods, simply because it mocks the entire genre.

 

[Gatx]

No I don't think so, as far as I can remember mainstream Hollywood movies have always been about jump scares and gore. If you want something more sophisticated and subtle you'd have to read books though more and more games are pretty good at pulling it off nowadays too.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I think it's the HD age we live in (of high production values), as well as Eli Roth's fault. See, many of our favorite horror films were kind of ass relative to their Hollywood peers in terms of special effects, acting, and script. That was the magic of it, and what made them so endearing. These days, that shit wouldn't get past the radar and end up in theaters. There's a certain "crispness" and "cleanness" that's expected that doesn't work with the horror movies we love best. Paranormal Activity was finally a compromise in this regard until they milked it and made it shit. Survival horror in video games are suffering from the same issues in the console space. No publisher is going to consider tank controls okay, and they expect HD graphics with "crispness". It just makes horror feel wrong. I'm sure if you rendered Silent Hill Homecoming or Downpour on the PS2 and used fog effects to hide the draw distance, they would end up twice as scary and no fucks would be given about the graphical fidelity.

Also, the second part of my argument is public perception. These days, horror=torture/gore porn, and that shouldn't entirely be the case. Hostel was a major part of this shift, and why I blamed Eli Roth. The first Saw was somewhat smart, offering poetic justice to Jigsaw's victims and offering cerebral elements outside of the torture porn. Again, once we saw annual Halloween appearances is became all about thinking up different ways to torture and dismember people in the most realistic and high-fidelity way possible.

Like the answers to most of these problems, there's the indie scene. Penumbra/Amnesia probably wouldn't have been made through a traditional publisher, and it did most things right. We're starting to see a resurgence of the genre in video games, mainly through indie developers and kickstarters. Hell, even Resident Evil: Revelations decided to do a lot of things right (totally picking that up for the Wii U).

On the movie front, I don't know. Even the reboot of Evil Dead was pretty much high fidelity torture porn, and the solution to what makes horror right has been this "found footage/fake camcorder" bullshit. I'm not really much of a movie guy though, so there might be more going on than I know about. I'm sure there's plenty of low-budget quality horror films on the independent circuit, but by nature those are hard to find and become aware of.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

No. Just no. You mention Paranormal Activity as a 'scary' film OP but that film wasn't scary at all. All you're experiencing is desensitisation - nothing more. You say "Discuss"? I say man up and move on.

 

[GAunderrated]

AAA horror is dead but the indie scene has made some good horror games that I love (lone survivor and Amnesia: the dark descent) that can still give me that horror thrill.

 

[Zuljeet]

You can only jump out and scream "Boo!" so many times before people stop reacting. It isn't horrifying; it's just funhouse silliness.

 

[Frotality]

i dont think horror was ever alive. silent hill 2... amnesia.... eternal darkness... cant think of any movies that were more than just jump scares and actually horrifying. the only things actually scary that come out of the horror genre of entertainment are few and far between and highly subjective. maybe im just a fearless exemplar of manliness, but i really, really doubt that.

 

[2fish]

Horror for me is only fun when there is a constant threat, it could be a lack of trust in the group, who is the monster/killer can work, but you need the suspense. The current thing of gallons of gore and blood plus characters we don't care about makes the horror movies weak. If I fail to care about the people, or they seem to be horror movie stereotypes then I am no longer invested in the film.

The problem with the current cheap thrills style of horror is that it wears out much faster than other styles.

Spoiler: one of my favorite horror moments The Thing

You see that one of the likeable characters is dead and while he is a minor character it upsets the crew. Also if you think about how he died your imagination can mess with you. Ok it seems he is not so dead.

Also The Thing looks better than most of the recent fake gore movies I have seen. probably because it feels alien.

 

[Reaper195]

American Horror has always been pretty shit. Almost all of the time, it's copious amounts of blood and gore and tits, the other half is long sessions of nothingness before a jump scare. Japan, England, Spain, etc...they all make great horror movies. The difference between their horror and American horror is that American horror has to make you scared while watching the film and nothing else. 'Foreign' horror is somewhat unsettling while watching it, and then leaves you with a fair few sleepless nights afterwards. REC 2 had me keeping the lights on at night for a full two weeks. And I was about twenty one when that came out. The last horror film to come from the US which scared me was...

I genuinely cannot remember.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

There definitely seems to be a much heavier focus on gore and shock horror rather than creepy psychological horror in films coming out these days, but I wouldn't say psychological horror is 'dead' exactly. Insidious [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1591095/] for example did psychological horror really well.

I watched the original The Evil Dead for the first time about a month ago and then the new remake of it a couple of weeks later. While I found the original to be actually genuinely creepy and frightening, the remake couldn't even make me flinch from the jump scenes, but had a lot of gore.

Its easy to become desensitized to gore and shock horror, but true psychological horror? Not so much. Its a shame that today's horror industry seems to focus so much on the former.