Poll: Twilight honored among "Exorcist" and "The Shining" at Academy Awards

[Lim3]

And how do you get horror~romance?

WARNING: this post will scare you.

Horror, and vampires in particular have always been about romance. Dracula was always portrayed as a charismatic, well-spoken man, he didn't force people into his castle, he lured and charmed them in. He even killed his victims in an embrace that looks and feels exactly like a bit of passionate necking until you feel the fangs sink in and then it's too late. If you want to see the inspiration for Twilight's vampires, look to the source. Twilight's vision of what a vampire is, is actually a lot closer in spirit to Bram Stoker's book than almost every other recent vampire film made, most of which take amazingly brazen liberties with the "vampire" formula (space vampires, zombie vampires, vampire werewolves, etc). A bitter pill for people here to swallow, no doubt, but Twilight succeeded while so many other vampire films disappeared into the land of 'meh' because Twilight actually mostly got vampires right[/i].

Grief counselling is available via PM for distraught horror fans (as this thread will be locked soon no doubt).

Well, maybe vampires for horror~romance, but not horror in general. How would you get romance out of an actual horror based werewolf movie?

Also, I thought the main vampire in Twilight didn't want to bight the main character, wouldn't that kind of mess things up? Or am I just wrong and he's toying with her?

Well, is that not where the appeal lies? The man is willing to (attempt to) exercise control the natural urges for the sake of her? This type of moral quandary also appears in Bram Stoker's book and several early vampire film incarnations and gave those early protagonists a bit of extra depth.

A werewolf is a man when he's not a wolf. In traditional werewolf literature, the werewolf only become a wolf during the full moon. Usually, once again, the werewolf in film "as man" is a romantic person with a love interest, who then has the torment of trying to hide his true nature and explain his awkward monthly absences to the girl he cares about. A constant battle between primal instinct and romantic ideals, once again, not unlike Twilight.

When did Dracula not want to feed? He only exercised control because it is socially uncouth to jump out and yell "Bleagh!" and start sucking.

As for the Werewolf one, then it becomes a romance movie instead of horror because the focus has shifted to love instead of constant stalking.

Well, yes, yes it does. Most werewolf films aren't just 90 minutes of a wolf chowing down. That would be boring (and most newer werewolf films that are nothing but this ARE very boring as a result). The classic werewolf films are all romance tales gone wrong.

Dracula always wanted to feed, but he had too much style and poise to go around just knocking off randoms. He knew the classiest way to feed on subjects of his required standard was to seduce his prey and let them come to him. He had the mansion, the bling and so forth, he knew what girls of the day liked. But there was always a little bit inside of him that had to try hard not to actually fall in love with the victims... hence the female character who always gets to stay in the house that little bit longer than her peers...

Well alright, fair enough. I still don't think horror and romance are intrinsic to each other, but it's there enough.

But the slight romance undercurrent in Dracula is different from the Twilight romance. His romance was a deepening feature to make him appear more human and that he was trying to turn himself into a true monster. But the Twilight vampire that has already given up and accepted romance is now nothing more then a super strong jumping jack. Part of why the Dracula romance is part of the horror is that he's still hunting people despite his lingering humanity. But Twilight vampire isn't actively hunting characters. He could be replaced with Superman and it would still work. That's all romance with the only horror coming from outside characters attacking.

For the record I've read the original Dracula and its nothing like that. In fact it's really very boring. Dracula comes to London. Dracula feeds on two pretty girls after hypnotizing them (and they don't remember). Then Jonathan Harker and co. (include Dr Van Helsing) hunt Dracula down in England. Then they hunt him down in Transylvania.

If your referring to a specific movie (ie Dracula 2000) then I apologize. Oh and i don't know which Dracula movie it is, but the one where he turns out to be Judas is such a cool twist. And for all you smart arses who say you saw it coming, well i was very young at the time.

If you did read the book and not the wiki entry, then either you skimmed it or... well I wont be rude. But the entire novel was Stoker's thinly veiled attack against pornography (according to most Oxford Dons) and hundreds if not thousands of literary minds have written whole dissertations on the sexual overtones and undertones of Stoker's Dracula. Did you ever wonder why Lucy was killed in just a few days before becoming a revenant, but the Count decides to kidnap the much more chaste and pure Mina Harker around the world? Read deeper, my friend.

I assure you i read it cover to cover, and did not skim it. As i said i found it boring. The fact of the matter is the entire book was written in past tense, via journal entries and letters, so you know the character must have survived to write them. Admittedly from the get go when reading i found it boring. Another factor that may have made it boring, is due to popular culture I already knew the manner of creature of Dracula, as well as his weaknesses, so every time a new power or weakness was revealed it was hardly earth shattering.

Also before you criticize my ability to discern themes and read between the lines, did you recognize an attack on pornography within the text, or did you first read a discussion regarding the text, and are parroting what it's said? Or worse yet, did you read the book in English and the education board had your teacher spoon feed your entire class summaries and themes?

Apologies, if that came across harsh, but i cannot stand the way the board of studies teaches English here (in Australia).

Obviously the text was written a fair while ago, and without knowing the context of the society it was written it is nigh on impossible to fully comprehend the supposed genius of the author.

Also Lucy wasn't killed in a few short days. There are numerous visits by the count. There is time for Van Hellsing to first of all make the trip and them make several visits. I cannot be bothered to review the dates on the letters to check the volume of time passed over which Lucy was sucked dry.

Also I assumed that Lucy was a target of the Count due to her association with Jonathan Harker, who the count no doubt enjoyed terrorizing.

I actually found the entire book full of plot holes regarding the count's rather 2 dimensional character. If you had the abilities of him, as well as the minions, and the power to make those minions would you have sat back and allowed 5 or so punny humans hunt you down?

No, i stand by my initial statement of a simplistic and boring plot. I cannot see any genius in the writing, especially compared to Charles Dickens who was writing only decades before Bram Stoker. I do however acknowledge that I'm writing from the year 2010, so i cannot review the book and it's writing in it's proper context.[/quote]

 

[LiquidXlr8]

If you did read the book and not the wiki entry, then either you skimmed it or... well I wont be rude. But the entire novel was Stoker's thinly veiled attack against pornography (according to most Oxford Dons) and hundreds if not thousands of literary minds have written whole dissertations on the sexual overtones and undertones of Stoker's Dracula. Did you ever wonder why Lucy was killed in just a few days before becoming a revenant, but the Count decides to kidnap the much more chaste and pure Mina Harker around the world? Read deeper, my friend.

I assure you i read it cover to cover, and did not skim it. As i said i found it boring. The fact of the matter is the entire book was written in past tense, via journal entries and letters, so you know the character must have survived to write them. Admittedly from the get go when reading i found it boring. Another factor that may have made it boring, is due to popular culture I already knew the manner of creature of Dracula, as well as his weaknesses, so every time a new power or weakness was revealed it was hardly earth shattering.

Also before you criticize my ability to discern themes and read between the lines, did you recognize an attack on pornography within the text, or did you first read a discussion regarding the text, and are parroting what it's said? Or worse yet, did you read the book in English and the education board had your teacher spoon feed your entire class summaries and themes?

Apologies, if that came across harsh, but i cannot stand the way the board of studies teaches English here (in Australia).

Obviously the text was written a fair while ago, and without knowing the context of the society it was written it is nigh on impossible to fully comprehend the supposed genius of the author.

Also Lucy wasn't killed in a few short days. There are numerous visits by the count. There is time for Van Hellsing to first of all make the trip and them make several visits. I cannot be bothered to review the dates on the letters to check the volume of time passed over which Lucy was sucked dry.

Also I assumed that Lucy was a target of the Count due to her association with Jonathan Harker, who the count no doubt enjoyed terrorizing.

I actually found the entire book full of plot holes regarding the count's rather 2 dimensional character. If you had the abilities of him, as well as the minions, and the power to make those minions would you have sat back and allowed 5 or so punny humans hunt you down?

No, i stand by my initial statement of a simplistic and boring plot. I cannot see any genius in the writing, especially compared to Charles Dickens who was writing only decades before Bram Stoker. I do however acknowledge that I'm writing from the year 2010, so i cannot review the book and it's writing in it's proper context.[/quote]
As a point of fact, I wrote a dissertation on Dracula. The Lighthouse Publishing House student editons of Dracula features the essays written by students from my university. While your own saturation of the plot is irrelevant because the book has and will sell better and have more of an impact on culture than either of us ever will, I defer to my colleague ZydrateDealer in saying "so feck this noise I'm going to the pub".
Goodnight and Godspeed.

 

[Vern]

To compare Twilight to The Shining is a direct dick slap in the face of Stanley Kubrick. That I can't abide. To take the best book to movie translation of a horror novel of the 20th century, and to discount the incredible amount of psychological horror and Freudian themes it explored, and boil it down to the same level as glowing werewolves is sickening. Kubrick knew how to make a movie. The book wasn't that great, but Kubrick took it to a new level, and it's still not one of his best films. I always knew the Oscars were crap, but comparing Twilight to any Stanley Kubrick movie is pure sacrilege. The man made Dr. Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket.

 

[ottenni]

Huh? I thought it was a chick flick? Its not like its scary or anything. I suppose you could argue that Dracula had romance in it, but at least Dracula could be scary.

 

[JakBandit2208]

First they screw over The Dark Knight and now this I've lost faith in the Academy....

 

[Thy-Art-Is-Awesome]

depends on what your view on horror is.
if horrific is "horrible beyond belief, bad to the point of scary or i can't watch" kinda scary
and there's the good kind

 

[kotorfan04]

I think Twilight is a pretty cool guy. eh ruins movies and literature and doesnt afraid of anything.

Sorry about dead meme, but really I am just so very depressed right now. Horror as a genre sucks enough as is (Exorcist, Evil Dead 2, Aliens, Terminator*, and Night of the Living Dead get a pass though.) without this drabble (Twilight) being included in the list, not to mention FUCKING PRAISED. (If you include it in a montage of horror films with some of those other films then it is praise) Now forgetting for a moment that Twilight is probably Osama Bin Laden's follow up to 9/11 and will most likely lead to the destruction of the earth if aliens ever catch it floating in space. (They will, and when they do we will all die or be forced to suffer for our crimes) Forgetting that and the myriad of other things that are so brokenly wrong with it. Forgetting that, then it still is in no way a horror film.

Yes it has vampires in it, but vampires do not automatically make a movie a horror film. I am having trouble phrasing this so bear with me. Any work of horror must have these things: A protagonist: Not great but serviceable.
An evil force superior to the protagonist in some way that actively desires to harm the protagonist and others: Absent.
Suspense: Definitely absent.
An element of dread: Not at all.

So the elements of horror appear in the story and these elements are lacking in Twilight. Now vampires do not exist and they definitely are supernatural so instead of being a standard romance where guy meets girl -> guy falls in love with girl -> girl falls in love with guy -> guy loses girl -> guy gets girl back plot it becomes a fantasy romance (Wow that works on two levels) where the word guy is replaced with girl and the word girl is replaced with vampire. Structurally it is identical to a romance. The presence of a vampire does not change this core point, it merely adds a few bells and whistles to the plot. Finally when Twilight was first marketed it was marketed as a romance. Not a fantasy novel, certainly not a horror novel, just a plain old romance novel. The fact these two were confused is both saddening and typical. I apologize for the syntax errors that might be in this post, I tried to make it coherent but my mind exploded when I read Twilight was considered to be an exemplary example of a genre it did not fit into. The saddest thing about this is that it shows how low the horror genre has sunk. I am going to go cry myself to sleep now.

 

[kingcom]

I don't see that as a problem. It's still a far, far less butchered interpretation of "vampirism" than just about all the modern variants I've seen. Besides, millions of people love it, so who am I to argue?

Who are you to argue? You're a logical, thinking, singular human being. You argue because you see something that has become popular, despite there being virtually no redeeming quality to it, and question this reality.

Something that a lot of people have a hard time understanding, especially on internet forums where everyone is trying to be too cool for school, is this:

If entertainment objects do not entertain, they do not get popular.

Read that again. And again. Then think about it. Let it sink in. No, really think about it. Think about all those movies, music, art etc that you hate that gets popular.

I work in a part of the (for want of a better word) "entertainment industry". If something is completely crap, it cannot be sold. People do not buy it. They will not experience it, it doesn't matter how much marketing and promotion you throw at it, they WILL NOT BUY. I've seen people go bankrupt by funneling too much of their own money into a project that they honestly believed was great, but it was not. When people didn't buy it, the people making it just said "oh, people are stupid, they don't know what good music is". Horseshit. People might not know everything about music, but they know what they like.

There's a story about a guy here in Sydney, Australia (name escapes me) many years ago whose Dad ran into a large amount of money, a gigantic sum, more than enough to launch any artist's career. The Dad, clearly figuring that most popstars were talentless anyway and got by only on promotion and marketing, decided to use all this money make a rockstar dream come true for his son, despite the fact that his son couldn't really sing or play or write songs very well. He put ads everywhere (including, most notoriously, in the back of taxicabs), harassed TV and radio stations constantly, and after a few months of this EVERYONE in Sydney knew the guy's name. No-one bought his stuff though, because it was shit. Okay, a few did, just to laugh at it. Eventually the son lost interest and knew that it was never going to happen for him.

My point being, that if Twilight really was the bucket of shit that so many people claim, it would not have become such an entertainment phenomenon. Something that is shit just cannot get that level of success. It obviously touches a chord deep within a lot of people. You may personally hate it, that's fine, but to say that it objectively "has no redeeming features" is so much nonsense.

Do you understand the difference between effective and good entertainment? Good is well, good, quality. Effective uses the techniques to rope in a large number of audiances. Heres a video which talks about how avatar did it so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

I think I get it now... Twilight is the biggest troll since Ka

Yo Aby, Imma let you finish, but Twilight was the scariest movie of all time!

nye... It explains everything!

This feels like the Academy trying to be the "cool dad," being "down" with the kids and their "jiggy" lingo. It's kind of embarrassing.

I highly approve of this post.

OT: Twilight? Horror? Meh.

 

[BonsaiK]

I don't see that as a problem. It's still a far, far less butchered interpretation of "vampirism" than just about all the modern variants I've seen. Besides, millions of people love it, so who am I to argue?

Who are you to argue? You're a logical, thinking, singular human being. You argue because you see something that has become popular, despite there being virtually no redeeming quality to it, and question this reality.

Something that a lot of people have a hard time understanding, especially on internet forums where everyone is trying to be too cool for school, is this:

If entertainment objects do not entertain, they do not get popular.

Read that again. And again. Then think about it. Let it sink in. No, really think about it. Think about all those movies, music, art etc that you hate that gets popular.

I work in a part of the (for want of a better word) "entertainment industry". If something is completely crap, it cannot be sold. People do not buy it. They will not experience it, it doesn't matter how much marketing and promotion you throw at it, they WILL NOT BUY. I've seen people go bankrupt by funneling too much of their own money into a project that they honestly believed was great, but it was not. When people didn't buy it, the people making it just said "oh, people are stupid, they don't know what good music is". Horseshit. People might not know everything about music, but they know what they like.

There's a story about a guy here in Sydney, Australia (name escapes me) many years ago whose Dad ran into a large amount of money, a gigantic sum, more than enough to launch any artist's career. The Dad, clearly figuring that most popstars were talentless anyway and got by only on promotion and marketing, decided to use all this money make a rockstar dream come true for his son, despite the fact that his son couldn't really sing or play or write songs very well. He put ads everywhere (including, most notoriously, in the back of taxicabs), harassed TV and radio stations constantly, and after a few months of this EVERYONE in Sydney knew the guy's name. No-one bought his stuff though, because it was shit. Okay, a few did, just to laugh at it. Eventually the son lost interest and knew that it was never going to happen for him.

My point being, that if Twilight really was the bucket of shit that so many people claim, it would not have become such an entertainment phenomenon. Something that is shit just cannot get that level of success. It obviously touches a chord deep within a lot of people. You may personally hate it, that's fine, but to say that it objectively "has no redeeming features" is so much nonsense.

Do you understand the difference between effective and good entertainment? Good is well, good, quality. Effective uses the techniques to rope in a large number of audiances. Heres a video which talks about how avatar did it so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA

I'm not watching that video because I haven't seen Avatar yet.

Please try and explain this difference without using examples from a film I haven't seen, because I'm not convinced that it exists.

 

[Racistman3d]

Wow, I hope whoever made that was just trolling people and didn't believe that twilight was a horror movie, or else I've lost what little respect I had for the Oscars.

 

[TheBigJadowski]

This just in, Harry Potter has been honored among "Patton", "Platoon" and "Saving Private Ryan". More details to follow.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

well, the academy obviously never WATCHED those awful movies. That tripe isn't even close to horror and I would like to see what horror creators would think

 

[Double A]

its so bad its scary?

While this is almost certainly true, it's not the usual method that horror films use to scare the audience.

Well then it's not really the film itself, it's more like the legion of undead preteen girls who you just wanna punch in the face but can't since someone is watching.

(more) OT: Wait are they serious though, like they actually mean they were scared by a sparkly gay guy and a horny teenage girl?

 

[Nazulu]

WOW that is a slap in the face, and it hurts too.

I didn't find The Exorcist or The Shining scary at all but they had all the elements at least. Twilight just made me laugh the whole through because of how bad it was.

 

[hebdomad]

Of course its a horror film, just look at the die hard fans, they are terrifying!

But honestly, it needs some kind of award. The film has created such a love/hate reaction that it is too big to ignore.

 

[rewood4]

>You now realize that award shows are like any other tv show, and will do anything for ratings.

 

[Premonition]

Eh ... oeh ... ah ... wha ... ho ... wh .... hé? What is this, I don't even ...