Back in 2014, when I was still a lowly high school student, I went to the local Cinema Center and purchased one student discount ticket for “Ouija.” Produced by Hasbro (the makers of the overpriced Ouija boards you can find in the back of Barnes & Noble), the movie stars a bunch of clueless teens who accidentally open a portal to Hell and summon a demon. Typical Tuesday, you know?
Needless to say, the film was an absolute waste of money. I got more entertainment out of picking popcorn kernels out from between my teeth. “Ouija” became the movie, the one that convinced me that modern commercial horror movies were, for the most part, not at all worth my money.
Take a look at the timelessness of the early “Friday the 13th” installments, or the campy horror of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise. And how many of you wouldn’t recognize the Chucky dolls glowering down from shelves at Spencer’s? These older horror films didn’t have the budgets that their modern remakes do, and didn’t have Hasbro funnelling money into uninspired PG-13 cash grabs.
YouTube film critic Ralph Sepe Jr., known otherwise by his screen name “RalphTheMovieMaker,” celebrated Halloween 2018 with a comprehensive review of every film in the “Friday the 13th” franchise. As he ran through the movies chronologically by release, he found the scores fell the further he went. The 2009 remake of the original earned only a 3/10 (two points for nudity, one for kills, and zero for entertainment). His reasoning reflects my exact reasoning for why modern horror movies just aren’t doing it for me:
“It’s a modern day studio version of ‘Friday the 13th,’ and that’s why it’s boring,” Sepe said. “It’s got jumpscares, it looks fine, everything’s dark and brown and yellow. It’s fine, I guess, it’s competent. But there’s no style to it; it’s not entertaining.”
For me, the beauty of older horror movies comes from the graininess of the camera, the grit of the practical effects, the old and somewhat scratchy music that accompanies scenes of intense terror. Modern horror flicks rely on jumpscare tactics. Even “Unfriended,” which uses Skype video conversations to simulate the experience of being trapped on the computer in a deadly game, uses iMovie stingers at key moments of horror. It ruins the immersion and ultimately cheapens the experience.
Recently, I went to a free screening of “Truth or Dare,” a movie so similar to “Ouija” that were it not for the ridiculous Snapchat filter after-effects used to make characters, er, “creepy,” I would be mixing the two films up. “Truth or Dare” is just as lifeless as “Ouija,” but worsens the blow by incorporating a gay character whose sole purpose is to spend every scene explaining to us that he’s gay. What’s with the sudden need to politicize horror? We already live in a political hellscape, let me see people getting chopped with a machete. I deserve a little fun, don’t I?
Older horror films don’t worry themselves with any agenda besides killing characters and scaring the audience. There’s nothing I love more than a good death scene; all the added drama and cringe-tastic romance padding out the story just make it boring.
That’s not to say all contemporary horror movies are bad. “Raw” is a French-Belgian film that uses hyper-stylized settings and buckets upon buckets of (fake) blood to tell a thrilling and chilling tale of a vegetarian who develops an addiction to eating raw flesh of animals and humans. The drama interspersed with the horror never overstays its welcome, and always manages to tie back into the overarching horror plot.
Commercial horror movies are far too focused on making money to actually be scary. Every stinger, every pan of the camera to reveal someone lurking over the protagonist’s shoulder (usually just a friend), every knife to the chest or axe to the head just feels lifeless.
That’s enough complaining for now. I’m going back to my coffin. Don’t wake me up until horror movies are scary again, alright?