Modern Horror Movies

[Notthe7]

There's few things I love more in life than horror movies (big dick being one of them, you got me, you got me); But I must whole-heartedly confess that the recent strain of horror movies has been more than disappointing.

I recently saw Rob Zombie's Halloween.

I invested a lot of emotional attachment into the coming of this film! Halloween (only second to Texas Chainsaw massacre [the 1974 Hooper version] in my book ) was an amazing film for Zombie to redo; He had so much room to develop the character of Michael Myers and really make it his (vulgar, explicit, and gory).

None of these happened of course.

Enough of my ramblings for the moment..
​

QUESTION IS THIS:
​

For those of you that enjoy horror movies, what is your opinion on the recent strain of horror movies?

Also: list your favorite!​

 

[simcha]

The recent "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was wonderfully done. It was faithful to the original and was frightening.

For me, the "Saw" series and "The Ring" series are just fantastic horror flicks. I love this genre of film. It helps me to embrace my dark side...

 

[prince_will]

hmmm..

well, i would definetly have to go with Zach Snyder's recent remake of Dawn of the Dead. i thought it was pretty fantastic. i'm blanking on the rest though! gah! i hate when that happens.

Also, the Saw series is pretty good even though it should have ended at two.

for this one i hope i don't get attacked but,
I really liked the recent remake, The Invasion. i thought it was good, but not great.

 

[lafever]

The 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead is cool, also i can`t wait for Resident Evil part 3 to come out in theaters.


lafever

 

[Willy_the_Wonka]

I'm a little more old school in my taste for horror movies. Well, not as old as Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman, but I love a good creepout that leaves me disturbed and questioning things. David Lynch's movies, while not horror, have the ability at moments to reeeeealllly get under my skin and hit me on a subconscious level. Sometimes his stuff is flat-out frightening. He juxtaposes complete and angelic innocence in his movies with the darkest, vilest things imaginable....

Not too much into gore, because it gets abused, especially lately (last several years). A lot of what's out now is just sadism and torture. That said, there are some great scary AND gory movies, among them the movies of Dario Argento....especially Suspiria and Deep Red (Profundo Rosso). I really liked Zach Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead as well, the Romero Zombie movies (and the subsequent remakes of NIGHT and DAWN) are excellent. I have not seen Land of the Dead, though, and I suspect it would be a disappointment.

I know a lot of people hate Signs, but there are moments in that movie as well that are flat-out scary, including the birthday party video where an alien is seen, the alien in the pantry, and the alien standing on the barn roof.

And, the first 3 Alien movies are near and dear. :biggrin1:

I love John Carpenter. Halloween is what I would have to call the "perfect" horror movie. And the best thing about it....NO GORE. It's all suspense and (ultimately) terrifying payoff. So simple, but so powerful. It's NEVER been equalled. Ever. Not by its sequels, its ripoffs, its remake....and it probably never will be. His movies are beautiful to look at, the scores he composes himself are hypnotic, and he's able also to cast an atmosphere that draws you in, even though some of his movies are a disappointment.

The Friday the 13th movies and the Freddy movies do absolutely nothing for me. Jason movies are straight up low-rent crud, and the Craven movies slightly better, but gimmicky...a word I would definitely use for the Chucky movies. (Self parody would be a better word.)

Suggestive frights go so much further than showing you everything. Brutality doesn't scare. It just numbs.

As for OLD school, Alfred Hitchcock has some great thrillers that stand among the best movies of all time.

 

[SexyFront]

If you ask me, I hate "modern" horror, it's absolute shit. There is potential in documentary-style horror, but that's all. Other than that, we have gotten inflicted with horror movies that have a scientific explanation to them, 28 Days and Resident Evil, or horror movies that try to take a person's "free will" away, as in the Saw series and its spawn of generic ones. Rob Zombie is a shitty director. Halloween was all about gore, nothing more. Curiously, it was mentioned earlier how horror can get done, perhaps correctly, without gore, yet we have someone who relies solely on it, pathetic.

 

[SexyFront]

Additionally, espeically in this decade, we have seen the extinction of the "monster." I can relate to the other post about having an affiliation for "old school" stuff. Where the fuck are the monsters, at least the ones that have no scientific explanations?

 

[Dorian_Gray]

personally I think maybe one or two "modern" films cut it for me... I have to say my favorite is Mimic (not the cheap #3,4,5,...89, etc. But the first one) And like sexy front was saying, Mimic has monster(S)

 

[Willy_the_Wonka]

I grew up LOVING monster movies. Hey, I was a little geek, what can I say.

And yes, I dug all the Frankenstein/Dracula/Mummy/Wolfman/Black Lagoon stuff, as well as the big monsters.....I still love Japanese Kaiju (giant monsters), but even those have varying degrees of success. The original Gojira was a dark and somber movie before American distributors got hold of it and edited Raymond Burr in, and War of the Gargantuas was pretty damn freaky! In FACT...there is a GREAT Japanese movie from 1963, directed by Ishiro Honda, the director responsible for most Toho scifi and horror before 1974. It's called Matango, but American distributors ruined it and renamed it Attack of the Mushroom People. Very dark, brooding, atmospheric, eerie movie, about some castawyas trying to survive and giving in to the temptation of eating the islands only food source, a weird mushroom that consumes body, mind and soul. Sounds ridiculous, but it's fascinating.

And J.J. Abrams, the guy responsible for LOST and Alias, is coming out with a monster movie on...January 18, 2008? Here is the trailer, and it is intriguing. His reasoning for doing this movie, apart from a love of monster movies, is that the US needs a good iconic kickass monster, like Japan's Godzilla. What's strange is its marketing. Just this hand-held video trailer, at a party in NYC, and everything goes to hell in a heartbeat. There are sites all over the internet speculating about this movie, which has not even been named yet.

Some say it's another American Godzilla movie, but it is not. Roland Emmerich ruined any potential for an American Godzilla with that ridiculous piece of crap ten years ago.

Oh....I would still love to see H.P. Lovecraft's brandf of eerieness made flesh. If at all possible. The idea of Cthulhu, for some reason, has a great, primally terrifying mystique to it.

One other thing...Ghost Stories. There's a severe lack of good ghost stories, the ones that make your skin crawl from the suspense and creepiness. I get a similar charge from the UFO genre, but again, you can count the number of good scary UFO movies on one hand. These two seemingly different genres have in similar this: they both, if done right, happen in our everyday world and challenge our notions of reality and our belief structure. Again, though...rare.

Mimic was GREAT! Made by the same directer of Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro.

 

[eli22]

Notthe7, date me?

 

[Willy_the_Wonka]

:dot:







:banghead2:

 

[B_New End]

I don't watch them often, because they suck so bad.....


...but Rob Zombies "Devils Rejects" was the shit. It was a good, horrible story, and that made it an awesome horror movie.

I didn't know teh new Halloween was his, perhaps I will check it out. I guess I need ot see house of a thousand corpses too.

 

[monstro]

I find contemporary horror movies pretty disappointing. I love 60's, 70's, and 80's drive-in and exploitation films, and I'd much rather watch the originals than some remake. I also really like European horror movies, Fulci and Argento and Rollin, all those cats. I guess my favorite of all time is Suspiria,

 

[Osiris]

Saw was the best one I've seen in years. I still laugh watching Nightmare on Elm Street. I completely agree that it should have ended at II. We have gotten so visual though. Part of what made Saw so good was not the blatant show of gore and violence. Sure it had it, but often times it is better to let the viewer create his own vision of what just happened (Think Hitchcock, Psycho, and the famous shower scene).

hmmm..

well, i would definetly have to go with Zach Snyder's recent remake of Dawn of the Dead. i thought it was pretty fantastic. i'm blanking on the rest though! gah! i hate when that happens.

Also, the Saw series is pretty good even though it should have ended at two.

for this one i hope i don't get attacked but,
I really liked the recent remake, The Invasion. i thought it was good, but not great.

 

[Pecker]

No, Lady! Please don't open that door!

Stephen King said that if he couldn't scare you, he'd go for the gross out. Unfortunately, most of today's movies skip the scare and go straight for the gross out.

Suspense makes for great horror but we have no Hitchcockian suspensemeisters around at the moment so we're stuck with remakes and sequels.

Psycho still rules.

 

[ital8]

I still want to see Room 1408. I heard that was a great psychological thriller. But other than a few decent modern movie flicks (The Ring, 28 Days Later/Weeks Later, and Saw) not too many modern movies seem to carry the same feeling of horror like the majority of the horror movies from the '70s. Maybe that is because many of those movies (The Exorcist, The Omen, Carrie) dealt with the subject matter of witchcraft or the supernatural. To me those movies scare me more than your typical psycho path chasing an innocent victim. Even so, movies like the original Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were cleverly done which goes against my previous statement. Additionally, horror movies of today seem to rely too much on CGI. Previously to CGI the viewer didn't know how many of these special effects were created, hence the sense of bewilderment captured the imagination. It's sort of like watching a magic trick without knowing the trick...you're amazed at first. Once you've learned the trick, you say "big deal that wasn't as spectacular as I thought." Maybe that's not the greatest analogy, but I believe for a top rated horror movie to be released today it needs to be original and use less special effects, and rely on the audience to use their imagination. Less is more in this case. I also think there needs to be more character development as well. Once something horrific happens to that character the audience members will sympathize more with him/her generating more fear when they ultimately place themselves in their predicament.

In answer to the other question, my favorite horror movie is The Exorcist.

 

[SpeedoGuy]

"The Blair Witch Project" was controversial. Viewers either seemed to love it or hate. I was one of those who thought it was brilliant.

I really liked the "Aliens" series. Good story, suspense and action.

The first "Jaws" was top notch. Great acting. The story, cinematography, characters and suspense kept me riveted.

I sure didn't care much for the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the 14th" series. Too teenage for me.

The films in the "Hannibal Lecter" series provided utter suspense.

There are others....

 

[Notthe7]

I agree.
Halloween [the original] was so brilliant because it played on all of our worse fears; Not only the 'boogey man' concept, which we learn to fear almost as soon as we can suck on a tit, but the premise of being stalked and turned into prey without knowing why.

One could definitely make a strong case that Halloween is one of the most plausible, real to life horror movies made.

With that said, Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre is my favorite for almost the entirely opposite reason. The primal and sadistic tone of that move is just gut-wrenching. You can't beat the cinematography/ or the lack there of.. the grimy 35 MM film adds this great documentary feel.

The problem with modern horror movies is a few things:

One: No matter how bad the movie, it's going to make money at the BO. (The hills have eyes TWO.. ring a bell?) So where's the motivation?

Two: As stated earlier, the focus on grossing out the audience is number one priority. Basic premises, character development, and the scripts are completely shot. It's hard to be engrossed with a movie that lacks any sort of story-line, let alone characters you could feel semi-sympathetic towards.

 

[SyddyKitty]

Does Hostel (the first) count as horror, or just sick gore? XD

I personally favor Zombie "horror" movies. They've been getting better and better over the years. <3

Movies like Hostel and Saw make me feel strange. I enjoy the gore, due to an unhealthy amount of hatred i harbor. However, I'm left feeling depressed after these movies, which isn't something I like. :x

 

[Principessa]

QUESTION IS THIS:

For those of you that enjoy horror movies, what is your opinion on the recent strain of horror movies? Also: list your favorite!​

I don't like the modern slasher/horror movies. I much prefer Vincent Price in Tomb of Ligea or The Bat and lest we forget his outstanding work in the original of The Fly. Now that was entertainment.