Why is Low Budget Horror So Popular?

[ninjaRiv]

It's kind of like when you hear a band you don't like and you think all their songs sound the same, no matter how different they are. If you were into horror you'd know.

The best low budget horrors are forced to be creative and different in order to stand out and make money. Blair Witch, for example or Evil Dead (more of a comedy, but still) had to use atmosphere over special effects.

How many of the best horror films ever made had huge budgets? There are some that did benefit from these budgets, yeah and one or two can be counted as among the best but the low budget ones tend to be the scariest.

 

[masticina]

Well high budget movies tend to grab the CGI a bit to fast. Low budget horrors can be, can be, quite stuck in a time of using practical effects. Big budgets lead to CGI and eh... yeah not that interesting.

There is something about seeing people work with very limited resources and yet get out quite a nice movie. And sometimes the acting is so horrid that you have to laugh.

The Thing from 1982 was many times better then The Thing from 2011. [and yes I know about the 1951 version]. The Thing from 1982 was just allot more scary. The 2011 version what did we get.. oh it is the monster again in all of its CGI glory.

Now don 't get me wrong. This was much about writing but also again CGI. What is wrong with practical effects?

 

[RJ 17]

I don't like horror

Well there's your problem right there. Obviously there's plenty of people out there who do like horror.

But snarky response aside, it's pretty easy to make a horror film since the plot isn't entirely necessary. All you have to do is come up with a creepy environment, use the sound track to build a creepy atmosphere (the "creepy-rapid violin" for example), throw in a few lame jump scares and boom: you've got yourself a movie. Paranormal Activity really didn't sell that many tickets if you look at the actual numbers. But considering they made it on a budget of like, $5K, the profits it was able to make were astronomical in comparison to the cost of making the movie, as such it's declared "A smash hit!"

And that's the rub of the situation. You can spend a lot of money on a big budget horror movie with a deep plot, great actors, amazing affects, and superb set designs...but in the end people are just going there to get scared. But you really don't need a bunch of money just to scare people, so if you can pull that off by only spending a couple thousand bucks you'll make boatloads of profit.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Low budget horror is where all the creativity is. It's well known that you can take more risks if you've got less financial weight resting on your films shoulders, and horror is a genre which requires creativity more than most.

Look at The Evil Dead series. That started out as the attempt of a bunch of college students to make a horror film. It went on to be one of the defining bits of modern pop culture. Look at The Blair Witch Project. That film redefined audience expectations of horror, by framing the story in such a way that audiences literally had no clue what to expect next.

Horror works best when it creeps up on you, when you don't necessarily see it coming because of how cleverly the director has hidden it. Jump scares are nothing to do with horror. Jurassic Park has jump scares, but it's not a horror film. It's about film-fans enjoying creativity and inventiveness in the films they watch, and low-budget horror on occasion has the ability to bring that.

I think it's one of those things people like to "enjoy ironically".

You think Evil Dead became the phenomenon it did because people enjoyed it ironically?

Yeah. *looks around nervously*

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

You think Evil Dead became the phenomenon it did because people enjoyed it ironically?

Yeah. *looks around nervously*

I only have one reaction to that.

[/quote]

That kinda just cements my opinion.

 

[Mikeyfell]

This is coming off today's (7/21/13) box office report that "The Conjuring" made about $41 mil, the best opening for an R-rated horror beating out "The Purge".

I don't like horror - I hate jump scares, I see absolutely no fun in it, and I can't imagine how any of them are really that different from one another. So why is this becoming the new go-to genre? I know it's really cheap to make, but it's the audiences giving them these massive debuts that I just can't understand.

Any horror junkies care to weigh in?

I'm not a horror junkie but none the less I know the answer to your question.

Low budget horror is so popular because BIG budget horror is bollocks.


There is nothing scarier than your own brain. Because no matter what the monster is, until they show it it's always the thing that's scariest to you.
(That's why in Paranormal Activity, the most effective horror movie I've ever seen, The only thing you see of the monster is footprints.)
When you have a massive budget you feel like you should spend it and if you spend a lot of money making a monster you feel like you should show it. And if you see a monster clearly you know exactly what you have to be afraid of. And the more you see of it the more familiar you get with it. (What's the phrase? Familiarity breeds contempt.)

So you have this big expensive horror monster that was scary the first time you saw it, but now you can picture your self blasting it with a shotgun and everything's peachy.

But in a low budget horror movie they can't afford to make a whole monster so they can't show one. So they'll use editing tricks to show you a shadow, or a posture, or one little part of it like a claw or a shoulder.
So now you're sitting there thinking "Oh god, what was that thing..." Then you hear a noise and suddenly "OH SHIT IT'S RIGHT BEHIND ME!" But you don't turn around because it's too scary.

It's like knowing there's a spider in your room Vs seeing a spider in your room.

Because if you can't see it it's always dangling on a web right behind your left shoulder, but don't look!
But if you see one crawling up your wall you say "Okay get the raid." Or in my case, flee the room and call an exterminator.

 

[Rad Party God]

I like to be scared now and then, so yeah, I like horror films and horror games, as with low budget, well it pretty much applies to games too, the less money you have to work with, the more creative you get to do stuff, with movies, people don't get to see shitty CGI effects (most of the time) and in games, people don't get to see shitty horror games turned into shooting galleries.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm pretty sure that "The Conjuring" wasn't full of jump scares. In fact, it was so dang atmospheric that they couldn't avoid an R rating (they were aiming for PG-13).

Anyways, you watch them for the same reason you play survival horror: Adrenaline rush. Unless you're watching REALLY low-budget stuff, in which case you watch it because it's hilarious.

 

[BurningWyvern90]

Because when you're lower budget you focus less on the CGI and making 'creepy' monster design and more on the atmosphere. You have to be more creative and subtle, which is what actually makes things scary. The more you know about something and/or the more you see of it, the less scary it is.

 

[Gorrath]

A concept that is often mistaken is that scary films and horror films are the same thing. They are not, as horror and fear are not the same response. Being scared is an emotional reaction based on fear, while horror is an emotional response based on empathy. Films like Paranormal Activity play into fear through the use of atmosphere and jump scares, which is fine and can be effective, but is not horror by themselves. Films like Saw and Hostel play into horror by showing you people who are suffering physically and emotionally, but are not really scary.

So with that in mind, why are low budget films of these genres so loved? Well, fear is best cultivated by atmosphere and atmosphere has to come front and center when you've got a low budget to work with. As some have mentioned, polished looking monsters aren't frightening at all. Take a look at movies like Alien and Jaws. Both cultivated atmosphere for effect and had their monsters seen in glimpses. What's more frightening, seeing a growling animal nearby or just hearing one?

The same goes with the horror aspect as well. Low budget movies often spend more screen time developing their characters, as they can't afford tons of flashy effects to fill up the time. This leads to greater empathy and thus greater horror when those characters are harmed or emotionally distraught.

Now none of this is to say that big budget films can't be effective or that low budget films always do those things well, but lower budgets simply tend to lend themselves to a type of movie making that is more likely to be effective. However no film can be effective if the people making it make the usual mistake of misunderstanding why horror and fright are not the same thing and are cultivated in two different ways.