I’ve watched quite a few horror movies and played more than my share of horror video games over my lifetime, and i have to say that there are just some genres (or flavors?) of horror that just work. Of course there are others that don’t. For one thing i just can’t bring myself to be scared of a human being. Of an average human being, that is. Your Mike Meyers, your “I Know What you Did Last Summer”, etc. They are just people, vulnerable to everything people are vulnerable to. Hit them with cars, throw them off cliffs, and they are damn sure supposed to be dead. Meyers is something of an exception, because i think he survived immolation, being run over, and being tossed off a cliff. He’s a regular Rasputin. About the “I Know…” and “Scream” continuum: I mentioned in my Texas Chainsaw Remake mini-review that i was tired of self-aware horror movies. I really am. As soon as someone says that X (person, action or saying) is “just like something in a horror movie” i want to scream and/or hit someone with a hammer. Look idiots, references to movies should be avoided within movies. They transport the audience back to their seats and let them say “Hey, look! That is just like something from a horror movie because, in fact, this is a horror movie!” Things that interrupt suspension of disbelief are always and forever bad things.
Dark Horse has taken to using “Mankind’s oldest emotion is fear” as the slogan for their horror line. I have to say that it is appropriate. There is one type of fear, however, that really gets me going. That is desperate fear. As a kid (6 or so) i used to have one of the archtypical nightmares. My persistant one was that everyone i know was just gone. In there place were strange things that wanted nothing more than to devour me whole. There was nowhere i could go for help, but at the same time i had to leave the house, see my family was transformed as well.
This kind of desperate terror has stuck with me, and is the foundation for my favorite kind of horror movie: Zombie flicks. See, you can keep your Jasons and your Leatherfaces if i can have zombies anyday. The fact that the walking dead are completely stupid and almost immobile doesn’t matter, they are unstoppable, and like the ocean they wear down any survivor until you are out of ammo and supplies. Then you have to make a desperate run for anything you can find to help you. And you can run. You can run circles around the undead, but if you make one mistake, if you stumble or try to pick something up then BAM! they are on you and there’s nothing that can make them let go. You wriggle free of one and there’s three more on your other side. That is what i loved about the original Resident Evil. Nothing complicated, just tons and tons of zombies all around you. Then the Hunters and Lickers and Nemesi showed up and you were faced with more of an action movie than a study in terror. This is what makes Fatal Frame so effective in evoking fear. Not only are you surrounded by implacable enemies, but half of the time you can’t even see them until they want to kill you. Silent Hill 2 had this, and was admittedly a study in “the terror that can be found in silence.” SH3 didn’t so much, but it was a study as well, one in the horror inherant in action/violence.
I’ve never been a gore for gore’s sake fan.
One last thing. I dislike picking nits but there is something about the “new” flavour of zombies that i just can’t stomach. The “28 Days Later” (enjoyable movie, despite my GF’s dislike of it) and the upcoming “Dawn of the Dead” (BLASPHEMY) ones. They are quick and agile, and nothing like good, slow, remorseless undead. The 28DL ones atleast had an excuse, they were still alive. If the DotD ones are dead and fast, even more heads will roll.
Who needs to remake a classic anyway? I mean might as well remake the friggin’ “Exorcist” and just put the nail in the coffin. I blame the remake of “Psycho” for all of this, by the way.
What brought this on? Well, i said i’d be talking about more than what i just bought/watched and here it is. I did just buy the second issue of Kirkman and Moore’s “The Walking Dead” and it is in every way the perfect zombie comic. Slow shambling undead creatures, a world undone by their relentless predation, people on the edge of survival. And a Southern policeman portrayed as something other than a walking vessel for racism and chawin’ terbacky. As i am from and living in South Carolina, i have to appreaciate that. I really get tired of the way men, especially white Southern men, are portrayed in the media. But
that is a post for another day.
Speaking of horror movies, i knew i forgot something last weekend.
Fuck! Bubba Ho-Tep was in Atlanta! Why didn’t anyone call me?
