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Cinema Sins: 10 Ways to Fix the Horror Genre
Topic Started: Jan 11 2015, 01:07 PM (181 Views)
Kevin R.
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Jersey boy for life!
Found this Cinema Sins video courtesy of Cracked.com: How to Fix the Horror Movie Genre in 10 Steps. Looking it up on YouTube, apparently it was made back in July, but it's the first time I've seen it.

What do you guys think of it? On the nose, misguided, or some mixture of both? I liked the criticism of jump scares (especially with the brick joke at the end), especially the comparison he used, calling them the fart jokes of horror -- they get a reaction, but a lazy one. Also agree with the recommendation that Alien and The Shining be mandatory viewing for anybody making a horror movie. The criticism of torture porn and gore is outdated, though -- these days it's mostly ghosts and demon possessions in mainstream horror, and outside The Walking Dead (the one example he brings up) you don't find a lot of gore in horror these days. The last point (stop making horror movies for a decade) is one that I'd like to enforce on some companies (<cough>Platinum Dunes<cough>), but would be a waste otherwise.
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mikebourkefan
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ttt


Damon: im bad Andie i do things i kill people

Andie: why do you kill people

Damon: because i like it- Damon Salvatore talking to Andie Star from season 2 of the Vampire Diaries
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Forget about the bloody gods and lsiten to what I'm telling you
1. Nothing is wrong with the occasional jumpscare done well. They are overrelied on, but they are far from one of my biggest issues in horror and most films that do overuse them have drastically bigger problems in the first place. For example, the ANOES remake ODed on them, but it had far bigger issues with atmosphere, character development, acting, creativity, and a lack of overall effort. The jumpscares didn't help, but they certainly are not the reason it failed either. And you certainly don't need to get rid of them all.

2. Torture's been dead for years

3. Are you fucking kidding me? Lack of boobs is not killing horror

4&5. The issue is not that horror makers are not watching classics. It's that they don't understand why said classics work, leading to said creators trying to copy and paste what said classic did in order to recreate it's success. It doesn't work. I guarantee you, the people who remade ANOES saw the original, they just didn't know what it is that made the original a good movie, so we got a piece of trash as the result because they just lazily copied the formula. In other cases, like Rob Zombie's Halloween, he saw the original and, while he wasn't lazy, he also failed to understand what made it enjoyable so we got.... Something very different than we wanted. So no, not watching classics isn't the issue.

6. I can't think of the last major monster movie I saw besides Godzilla. That's one. Ghosts are bigger, but supernatural and monster horror in general are not what's causing this supposed decline in quality (which, honestly, not really seeing in the first place, but okay) Humans are fine too, but not inherently better than ghosts or monsters (or would someone like to argue that Wrong Turn 6 and its human killers are better than Sinister?) Plus, the torture genre he hates was basically built on human killers, so. There really isn't a lack of them.

7. .... Is this a troll video? Eat me? Okay then.

8. Blood and gore don't equal horror, but I genuinely haven't seen horror movies cashing in on gore=horror since Saw 3D. Gore isn't a staple of supernatural horror. Also, this is basically a go-to attack on horror to the point it's as cliche as the horror movies it's supposedly attacking, and it's really never used correctly. And just saying it to say it while we're on a gore-free supernatural high is especially retarded.

9. I've seriously never seen this happen in my life. And if we should stop using spooky sounds the audience can hear, that means Halloween should've never had it's iconic score. I also don't see anything wrong with finding inspiration anywhere, so if they get it from creepy sounds, they get it from creepy sounds. The source of the inspiration does not guarantee a shit product. And... I really don't even understand what this complaint is about or any sort of example of it.

10. What a self-absorbed cinema snob. Not making horror movie won't improve someone's ability to create a horror movie because, guess what, they're not doing anything related to horror. And while people like to act as though the 70s and 80s never featured bad horror films, for every classic, there were 5x as many average-or-worse horrors to go with it. But seriously, the logic of "You get better at making horror by not making horror makes no sense," and neither does the drug comparison. This isn't a case of an addiction, it's probably a case of lack of talent, creativity, caring, etc. And the best way to remedy lack of talent is by trying, taking in criticism, and improving on it. You don't tell someone who sucks at math to stop doing math for a decade and try again. You explain what they did wrong, have them go back, and have them try again with the newfound info and understanding. Same goes for making a movie.

Of course, if you don't care about quality, yeah. Stopping is good, but that goes for film in general. Platinum Dunes' action movies like Transformers are even worse than their horror movies.

As you can see, I have nothing nice to say about the video, it's supposed feedback, and especially not the egotistical creator who probably has little exposure to the genre outside the horror movies everyone knows about. The list actually reads more like someone just googled for generic horror critiques and combined them into a video with zero thought to show how much they know a genre they don't watch.
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