Horror Films Have Lost Their Charm
Clever, Psychological Thrills Have Given Way To Senseless Gore
One need look no farther then horror veteran Sam Raimi's latest offering, Drag Me to Hell, which can favourably be described as a harmless distraction. A less charitable take on the film would be: brash, moronic, needlessly revolting, corny and self-indulgent.
Yet, box office revenues are healthy. Critically, the film has done well. As one reviewer noted, perhaps Raimi's goal wasn't to make a particularly good horror film, but rather a campy, outlandish fairy tale complete with split-second scares and visual weirdness. Nothing too heavy, man. Just something to laugh nervously at on Friday night at the movies.
No matter how you look at it, the film entertains. There will be not a whiff of ennuie in any cinema where this film plays. Still, there must be some critics out there, besides this reviewer, who pines for the days where the scariest part of the movie wasn't what you saw, but what you didn't see.
Drag Me to Hell may be fun, but it breaks the golden rule of film: always assume that your audience is smarter than you think. Allow them to relate to the film through their own experiences. If you really want to scare the pants off of them, set the stage, dump the bag of tricks, and allow their imaginations to run rampant.
The original The Omen produced within a few frames, and with virtually no special effects, a terrifying narrative based on a glaring child, a tricycle and the lovably decent persona of Gregory Peck, horrified at the advent of Satan.
The Shining, a horror masterpiece, makes do with three cast members and a well-lit hotel (and Jack Nicholson's eyebrows). The real terror is the slow descent into insanity.
Even Poltergeist, which was by no means shy in the blood and guts department, offered up more guttural fears for the masochistic horror fans of the day. The mechanism of the film relied not on corpses, but on our central fear: the uncertain transition from life to death, and all that can go wrong in between.
The Exorcist, Alien and the more recent The Mist all relied on our primal instincts to make us shudder. Too few scary movies try to go for the gold these days.
Raimi's latest effort dumbed it down and made it fun. That apprears to be his forté. The problem is, just as one can't build a house on sand, embalming fluid and sudden, loud noises can never surpass a film that understands what really makes us scared.
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