The further adventures of HURDADURDALUR
Aug. 26th, 2010 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieI do not think I'm ever gonna understand why the hell people think 'gorn' horror movies are in any way innovative and subversive.
Look, u guise (by this I mean the very vocal barge houndy hipsteroo fans who think everyone but them is a plebe), I know you like to think you are so very avant-garde and edgycool and shit, and you put on this 'greater horror film connoiseur than thou' act, but the truth is you all are squeeing at the IMHO substandard revival of a genre that had its birth FORTY YEARS AGO.
No, really. The most artsy splattery film I can think of off the top of my head, Suspiria, came out in 1977. There's more about it here, and it's listed on that 'scariest movie moments and scenes' site as well. Yes, this is the movie mentioned in Juno.
I quote Richie of Crimitism from there in re: this type of horror flick: "To grossly oversimplify, the whole nature of horror itself changed around the mid 1970s, when the focus shifted from conceptual, psychological fears like possession and isolation to the physical, visceral fear that your body is just a lump of meat that can be cut up, infected and fall apart without too much trouble."
Honestly. Consider this. Most of the slasheriffic stuff people think is so edgeriffic now has been DONE. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out in 1974. Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984. Halloween, 1978. Friday the 13th, 1980. If you want a turn for the weird, Hellraiser came out in 1987. If you wanna go INTO SPAAAACE, Alien was 1979 and its sequel came out in 1986 (and the alien queen really grodily bisects a guy - I found that scene a lot more quease inducing than anything I've seen now). THIS STUFF IS NOT NEVER-BEEN-DONE-BEFORE. I'll give Saw cred for reviving the 'let's see how many weirdass ways we can kasplat everybody!' stuff that the Giallo film genre was big on, but I only give props to the first movie; by the time the second came out everyone was on the bandwagon and it was kind of like the situation after the first slasher flick revival precipitated by Scream, which also wasn't too shabby. I respect Se7en (lord that makes the 1337 part of my brain screech to a halt, that stylization for putting the psychological element in and for having some of the sexiest typography pr0n in its opening I have EVER SEEN (can we tell I am an art student :B).
I'm glad we're out of the wave of subpar remakes, I really am - 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, House of Wax, Psycho, The Wicker Man - all of the originals were BETTER and fuckity hell there is NO comparison between the original Wicker Man and the shitfail OMG TEH SCARY WOMENZPOWAR BAW stupidassery that was the remake. My close friend P (who loves zombie films like burning and who's the reason I even saw Night of the Living Dead) cites that film as proof that Nicholas Cage is the opposite of an actor.
And I am DAMN annoyed that they remade Psycho at all. *snooty purist alert ERNT ERNT* So, SO many of these films were innovative as hell when they came out - they used weird film tricks (13 Ghosts), batty processing (Suspiria and its Technicolour wackout), pushed the edge of what was acceptable (which the current splat-splat genre doesn't even have to do, and doesn't do as a result - yeah, you can go gorier and gorier, but we're used to it now, there's really not a lot of innovation that I can see) - hell, people were up in ARMS about Psycho, and while by today's standards the violence level is nothing...it's genuinely fucking creepy.
So yeah. Count how many of these originate in the 1960s-1980s range.
I'm not sure what this rut is exactly. I mean, the remake festivus was just - ridonkulous, and a vast majority of the redos were hugely inferior to the originals. This goes especially for the J-horror! the Rng wasn't bad, but Ringu is SO much fucking scarier to me. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that J-horror has no qualms about building tension FOR FUCKING EVER and faking out the big scare several times to put the audience in a state of 'ha ha crying wolf' (or if you're me 'OH GODDAMN IT GET IT OVER WIIIITH') before Sadako is abruptly and DEFINITELY in your face. There's also the fact that Japanese supernatural elements don't tend to be as discerning as Western ones. Western ghosts and things seem to either go after the corrupt, the very innocent, the person who wronged them (revenge ghosts FTW) or the people looking for them - either to debunk their existence or prove it or something.
Onryou like Yamamura Sadako and Saeki Kayako do not care who you are or what you do or don't do or what you want, they are just there to make you die. And your death will pass on the malice and cause more deaths. Oh yeah, and good luck fighting back when you're piss-your-pants frozen. Yeah. Japanese ghosts are just MEANER and there is really no point of 'okay, it's satisfied and will leave' like a lot of Western stuff has.
I don't think that kind of mostly hopeless downbeat ending flies really well over here XD; like - Kairo, which was remade over here as Pulse, is relentlessly pessimistic. People vanish into shadowy smudges, kill themselves out of nowhere, and the afterworld is spilling ghosts out into reality because it seems to have run out of space... I'm iffy on that last detail, I haven't actually SEEN Kairo and frankly I'm scared to XD; The alienation/loneliness thematic exploration would mangle my head.
That brings me to my next point - the effect of current events and zeitgeist on the impact/successfulness of a horror movie. It's interesting to me that the genesis of the slasher/splattery horror genre in the west falls within the duration of the Vietnam War, which has been dubbed 'the first televised war'. The images that came back from that disturbed the motherfuck out of people and I wouldn't be surprised if maybe this had some influence on the birth of the SPLAAAAAT horror film genre. And Kairo came out in 2001, when we really really started to feel the effect of the interpipe and technology on social life. 2001 wasn't the BEGINNING of this noticing of course but I remember 2001 as being the year I met a lot of people I still talk to online and the year when I got an LJ and so on... For better or worse technology has changed the way we communicate, and Kairo gets into that as well as dealing with the Japaese brand of the sort of profound social alienation that can lead to hikikomori-ing and so on.
Not every genre has to do with current events or the spirit of the times, but those two factors can have a big impact on how well a film does. And hell yes, one can shamelessly exploit this factor for all kinds of ends.
I'm not trying to say that all movies that are coming out now suck. Like, Sturgeon's Law applies to everything and there are some deeply stupidass horror flicks to be found in any era. And some deeply BAD J-horror films, my god. XD I mean, I adored Zombieland. ADORED. It is to zombie/splat horror what Gurren lagann is to mecha anime - a simultaneous mock-festivus and joyful fansquee explosion. And then there's Grindhouse which is the same thing, a big explosion of mock/squee and machine guns and deathmobiles and grody zombie nads. I sigh and eyeroll over some of Tarantino's hipstering and I really don't like his really noisy defensive fans, they're as bad as Whedon's fans for that. However...Tarantino admits himself that he is a giant fanboy and he isn't trying to make deep and srs films, and I know hes said that he aims for 'so bad it's good' for dialogue. What you see is what you get. I think Kill Bill isn't as good as the films that it fanboys and I think the point of Battle Royale was kind of lost on the big Q-man, but they're well-done films and they are fun to watch and they are shamelessly dorky cheerful examples of the revenge-SPLAT genre. They are what they set out to be.
They lose some things in context (the eyeball stuff in particular - Asian horror and popular culture has this THING about eyeballs, whether it be cornea transplants in the video-game Parasite Eve or in The Eye, or Hakkai's eyeball self-splorkification in Saiyuki which isn't even in the horror genre at all, or the AAUUUGHH in Takashi Miike's Audition (I'm not going into it, google it yourself but don't say I didn't warn you, you WILL WINCE LIKE HELL and possibly flail) but that doesn't make them unsuccessful, and their intent is very likely to get people to watch the source material.
Anyhow, yeah. The old ultra-violence ain't new, droogs. (And again - note the zeitgeist in the 'behavioural therapy' omgwtfbbq there.) A lot has been done, and if you're going to make with a do-over, you need to do it WELL. If you don't it becomes meaningless. I find the endless over-the-top SPLAT demises of Leon Kennedy in RE4 a lot more disconcerting than I do the faux guts in gorn. This is probably because I'm emotionally connected to Leon via me being the player and him being my proxy or something. There's not much to identify with in a lot of gorn stuff these days, and I suspect that's purposeful. I mean, Hostel is apparently not like that, your heroes are just everyday dudes (echoes of Deliverance, maybe?) - I don't know for sure, I have not seen it. But a lot of the time, there's just...nothing. There's a lot of annoying 'punishment' of beautiful bitchy women, which annoys my ass right off. I look at the synopses of horror stuff coming out in the theatre in the near future and I jsut go, "...and?" Honestly, any mad scientist I encounter in theatre isn't ever going to be able to top Hojo, and that's my problem, but if you really can't top a little polygon guy with goofy gesticulation tendencies, then you shouldn't proclaim yourself awesome.
Seriously. The man's creepy. I'm leaving out Dirge of Cerberus in discussing his shenanigans because I haven't seen all of it, but there's still plenty of material. If you are looking for a scientist just doing things because he can, you have that in the prof. If you're looking for an egotistical weirdo who considers himself an artiste, yep. If you're after body horror and transformation squick, bingo and bingo. Hojo not only makes other people into weird mutants, he does that to himself. And because you are Cloud for all intents and purposes in the game, you're sort of interacting with this complete nutbar on a personal level. That factor, and the power of one's brain to convert dorky polygons onto the mind's eye as something way more realistic and flail-inducing, make Hojo turbofreaky. He's like the horrible son of Dr. Moreau and General Zaroff (of The Most Dangerous Game and a few other bastards. I see stuff with ZOMG MAD SCIENTIST in it now and I go, "fmeh." Damn you, Squeeox, you ruined it for meeee.
Anyhow. I can't, as usual, think of a sensib;e way to wrap this up. I'll finish by saying I dont think the state of cinema is hopeless or that all Western movies suck or whatever. But I do think we'e in a rut and that we need to stop aping the original splatterfilms without really considering why they WORKED so well. Turning up the gore is easy, and all it does in the end is make people queasy without having a lasting impact. If this is the intent, fine, but I really think horror should linger. Creep in shadows, make you jump at the phone ringing, make you fear the shower. The sign of successful horror for me is how long its ghost kicks around in my mind. The current crop of splatterama films is just there and gone, whereas the stuff that parodies it (yay Zombieland) sticks around. Hell, one of my friends LOVES the Saw franchise and she's told me that everything after 2 is pointless and dumb. Elf's said the same about the Hellraiser series. The first and second rock, the third is meh. I don't kow if that's the novelty wearing off or the flmmakers being lazy or going "I know, we'll make it the same ONLY WITH MORE PANCREAS STOMPING" or what, but sequellitis is a Thing.
I think we'll eventually let the shambling undead cadaver of the splatter genre go and die peacefully for a while before performing a hopefully-better feat of hideous necromancy and encouraging it to run aorund eating theatres again. Things move in cycles. The stupid backlash we're dealing with now too will die, mark my words. XD We WILL have awesome horror again, but we need to stop with the fucking remakes and lazy cha-cha-cha. I mean the current wave of 3D movies is SORT OF like the crazy experimentation in the classic splattery horror films, but...it's a really watered-down version of that. Even the superimposition of Normal Bates's face is to me more innovative than what's going on now. We're really in a rut, horror-wise.
We'll get out of it eventually! I know that splatgorn sells, but I also know that the people I know who like it don't see the movies because they're really good. XD (Yes, I know 'good' is relative and you can define it many ways, but I'm talking with regard to 'is it really scary at all and does it stick with you'.) It's like, you don't go see Mortal Kombat if you're after a serious, moving martial arts epic. XD
Blah blah blah I am a crabby old lady and way too much of an artsy fart for my own good XD But I'm in good company with fun people who also nerd about horror films and debate what zombies are the most awesome.
As usual if I've erred feel free to go 'hey Yukie, your wiki-fu is shaky' or something.
This rant brought to you by the fact that Yukie heard of, in passing, the title of a soon-to-be-released horror film that really sounded like it would be this unholy lovechild of Hellraiser and The Fly but turned out upon further research be just one more stupid grossout horror thing. *fail horns.*
Look, u guise (by this I mean the very vocal barge houndy hipsteroo fans who think everyone but them is a plebe), I know you like to think you are so very avant-garde and edgycool and shit, and you put on this 'greater horror film connoiseur than thou' act, but the truth is you all are squeeing at the IMHO substandard revival of a genre that had its birth FORTY YEARS AGO.
No, really. The most artsy splattery film I can think of off the top of my head, Suspiria, came out in 1977. There's more about it here, and it's listed on that 'scariest movie moments and scenes' site as well. Yes, this is the movie mentioned in Juno.
I quote Richie of Crimitism from there in re: this type of horror flick: "To grossly oversimplify, the whole nature of horror itself changed around the mid 1970s, when the focus shifted from conceptual, psychological fears like possession and isolation to the physical, visceral fear that your body is just a lump of meat that can be cut up, infected and fall apart without too much trouble."
Honestly. Consider this. Most of the slasheriffic stuff people think is so edgeriffic now has been DONE. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out in 1974. Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984. Halloween, 1978. Friday the 13th, 1980. If you want a turn for the weird, Hellraiser came out in 1987. If you wanna go INTO SPAAAACE, Alien was 1979 and its sequel came out in 1986 (and the alien queen really grodily bisects a guy - I found that scene a lot more quease inducing than anything I've seen now). THIS STUFF IS NOT NEVER-BEEN-DONE-BEFORE. I'll give Saw cred for reviving the 'let's see how many weirdass ways we can kasplat everybody!' stuff that the Giallo film genre was big on, but I only give props to the first movie; by the time the second came out everyone was on the bandwagon and it was kind of like the situation after the first slasher flick revival precipitated by Scream, which also wasn't too shabby. I respect Se7en (lord that makes the 1337 part of my brain screech to a halt, that stylization for putting the psychological element in and for having some of the sexiest typography pr0n in its opening I have EVER SEEN (can we tell I am an art student :B).
I'm glad we're out of the wave of subpar remakes, I really am - 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, House of Wax, Psycho, The Wicker Man - all of the originals were BETTER and fuckity hell there is NO comparison between the original Wicker Man and the shitfail OMG TEH SCARY WOMENZPOWAR BAW stupidassery that was the remake. My close friend P (who loves zombie films like burning and who's the reason I even saw Night of the Living Dead) cites that film as proof that Nicholas Cage is the opposite of an actor.
And I am DAMN annoyed that they remade Psycho at all. *snooty purist alert ERNT ERNT* So, SO many of these films were innovative as hell when they came out - they used weird film tricks (13 Ghosts), batty processing (Suspiria and its Technicolour wackout), pushed the edge of what was acceptable (which the current splat-splat genre doesn't even have to do, and doesn't do as a result - yeah, you can go gorier and gorier, but we're used to it now, there's really not a lot of innovation that I can see) - hell, people were up in ARMS about Psycho, and while by today's standards the violence level is nothing...it's genuinely fucking creepy.
So yeah. Count how many of these originate in the 1960s-1980s range.
I'm not sure what this rut is exactly. I mean, the remake festivus was just - ridonkulous, and a vast majority of the redos were hugely inferior to the originals. This goes especially for the J-horror! the Rng wasn't bad, but Ringu is SO much fucking scarier to me. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that J-horror has no qualms about building tension FOR FUCKING EVER and faking out the big scare several times to put the audience in a state of 'ha ha crying wolf' (or if you're me 'OH GODDAMN IT GET IT OVER WIIIITH') before Sadako is abruptly and DEFINITELY in your face. There's also the fact that Japanese supernatural elements don't tend to be as discerning as Western ones. Western ghosts and things seem to either go after the corrupt, the very innocent, the person who wronged them (revenge ghosts FTW) or the people looking for them - either to debunk their existence or prove it or something.
Onryou like Yamamura Sadako and Saeki Kayako do not care who you are or what you do or don't do or what you want, they are just there to make you die. And your death will pass on the malice and cause more deaths. Oh yeah, and good luck fighting back when you're piss-your-pants frozen. Yeah. Japanese ghosts are just MEANER and there is really no point of 'okay, it's satisfied and will leave' like a lot of Western stuff has.
I don't think that kind of mostly hopeless downbeat ending flies really well over here XD; like - Kairo, which was remade over here as Pulse, is relentlessly pessimistic. People vanish into shadowy smudges, kill themselves out of nowhere, and the afterworld is spilling ghosts out into reality because it seems to have run out of space... I'm iffy on that last detail, I haven't actually SEEN Kairo and frankly I'm scared to XD; The alienation/loneliness thematic exploration would mangle my head.
That brings me to my next point - the effect of current events and zeitgeist on the impact/successfulness of a horror movie. It's interesting to me that the genesis of the slasher/splattery horror genre in the west falls within the duration of the Vietnam War, which has been dubbed 'the first televised war'. The images that came back from that disturbed the motherfuck out of people and I wouldn't be surprised if maybe this had some influence on the birth of the SPLAAAAAT horror film genre. And Kairo came out in 2001, when we really really started to feel the effect of the interpipe and technology on social life. 2001 wasn't the BEGINNING of this noticing of course but I remember 2001 as being the year I met a lot of people I still talk to online and the year when I got an LJ and so on... For better or worse technology has changed the way we communicate, and Kairo gets into that as well as dealing with the Japaese brand of the sort of profound social alienation that can lead to hikikomori-ing and so on.
Not every genre has to do with current events or the spirit of the times, but those two factors can have a big impact on how well a film does. And hell yes, one can shamelessly exploit this factor for all kinds of ends.
I'm not trying to say that all movies that are coming out now suck. Like, Sturgeon's Law applies to everything and there are some deeply stupidass horror flicks to be found in any era. And some deeply BAD J-horror films, my god. XD I mean, I adored Zombieland. ADORED. It is to zombie/splat horror what Gurren lagann is to mecha anime - a simultaneous mock-festivus and joyful fansquee explosion. And then there's Grindhouse which is the same thing, a big explosion of mock/squee and machine guns and deathmobiles and grody zombie nads. I sigh and eyeroll over some of Tarantino's hipstering and I really don't like his really noisy defensive fans, they're as bad as Whedon's fans for that. However...Tarantino admits himself that he is a giant fanboy and he isn't trying to make deep and srs films, and I know hes said that he aims for 'so bad it's good' for dialogue. What you see is what you get. I think Kill Bill isn't as good as the films that it fanboys and I think the point of Battle Royale was kind of lost on the big Q-man, but they're well-done films and they are fun to watch and they are shamelessly dorky cheerful examples of the revenge-SPLAT genre. They are what they set out to be.
They lose some things in context (the eyeball stuff in particular - Asian horror and popular culture has this THING about eyeballs, whether it be cornea transplants in the video-game Parasite Eve or in The Eye, or Hakkai's eyeball self-splorkification in Saiyuki which isn't even in the horror genre at all, or the AAUUUGHH in Takashi Miike's Audition (I'm not going into it, google it yourself but don't say I didn't warn you, you WILL WINCE LIKE HELL and possibly flail) but that doesn't make them unsuccessful, and their intent is very likely to get people to watch the source material.
Anyhow, yeah. The old ultra-violence ain't new, droogs. (And again - note the zeitgeist in the 'behavioural therapy' omgwtfbbq there.) A lot has been done, and if you're going to make with a do-over, you need to do it WELL. If you don't it becomes meaningless. I find the endless over-the-top SPLAT demises of Leon Kennedy in RE4 a lot more disconcerting than I do the faux guts in gorn. This is probably because I'm emotionally connected to Leon via me being the player and him being my proxy or something. There's not much to identify with in a lot of gorn stuff these days, and I suspect that's purposeful. I mean, Hostel is apparently not like that, your heroes are just everyday dudes (echoes of Deliverance, maybe?) - I don't know for sure, I have not seen it. But a lot of the time, there's just...nothing. There's a lot of annoying 'punishment' of beautiful bitchy women, which annoys my ass right off. I look at the synopses of horror stuff coming out in the theatre in the near future and I jsut go, "...and?" Honestly, any mad scientist I encounter in theatre isn't ever going to be able to top Hojo, and that's my problem, but if you really can't top a little polygon guy with goofy gesticulation tendencies, then you shouldn't proclaim yourself awesome.
Seriously. The man's creepy. I'm leaving out Dirge of Cerberus in discussing his shenanigans because I haven't seen all of it, but there's still plenty of material. If you are looking for a scientist just doing things because he can, you have that in the prof. If you're looking for an egotistical weirdo who considers himself an artiste, yep. If you're after body horror and transformation squick, bingo and bingo. Hojo not only makes other people into weird mutants, he does that to himself. And because you are Cloud for all intents and purposes in the game, you're sort of interacting with this complete nutbar on a personal level. That factor, and the power of one's brain to convert dorky polygons onto the mind's eye as something way more realistic and flail-inducing, make Hojo turbofreaky. He's like the horrible son of Dr. Moreau and General Zaroff (of The Most Dangerous Game and a few other bastards. I see stuff with ZOMG MAD SCIENTIST in it now and I go, "fmeh." Damn you, Squeeox, you ruined it for meeee.
Anyhow. I can't, as usual, think of a sensib;e way to wrap this up. I'll finish by saying I dont think the state of cinema is hopeless or that all Western movies suck or whatever. But I do think we'e in a rut and that we need to stop aping the original splatterfilms without really considering why they WORKED so well. Turning up the gore is easy, and all it does in the end is make people queasy without having a lasting impact. If this is the intent, fine, but I really think horror should linger. Creep in shadows, make you jump at the phone ringing, make you fear the shower. The sign of successful horror for me is how long its ghost kicks around in my mind. The current crop of splatterama films is just there and gone, whereas the stuff that parodies it (yay Zombieland) sticks around. Hell, one of my friends LOVES the Saw franchise and she's told me that everything after 2 is pointless and dumb. Elf's said the same about the Hellraiser series. The first and second rock, the third is meh. I don't kow if that's the novelty wearing off or the flmmakers being lazy or going "I know, we'll make it the same ONLY WITH MORE PANCREAS STOMPING" or what, but sequellitis is a Thing.
I think we'll eventually let the shambling undead cadaver of the splatter genre go and die peacefully for a while before performing a hopefully-better feat of hideous necromancy and encouraging it to run aorund eating theatres again. Things move in cycles. The stupid backlash we're dealing with now too will die, mark my words. XD We WILL have awesome horror again, but we need to stop with the fucking remakes and lazy cha-cha-cha. I mean the current wave of 3D movies is SORT OF like the crazy experimentation in the classic splattery horror films, but...it's a really watered-down version of that. Even the superimposition of Normal Bates's face is to me more innovative than what's going on now. We're really in a rut, horror-wise.
We'll get out of it eventually! I know that splatgorn sells, but I also know that the people I know who like it don't see the movies because they're really good. XD (Yes, I know 'good' is relative and you can define it many ways, but I'm talking with regard to 'is it really scary at all and does it stick with you'.) It's like, you don't go see Mortal Kombat if you're after a serious, moving martial arts epic. XD
Blah blah blah I am a crabby old lady and way too much of an artsy fart for my own good XD But I'm in good company with fun people who also nerd about horror films and debate what zombies are the most awesome.
As usual if I've erred feel free to go 'hey Yukie, your wiki-fu is shaky' or something.
This rant brought to you by the fact that Yukie heard of, in passing, the title of a soon-to-be-released horror film that really sounded like it would be this unholy lovechild of Hellraiser and The Fly but turned out upon further research be just one more stupid grossout horror thing. *fail horns.*
no subject
Date: 2010-08-27 06:40 am (UTC)As a final thing the original Wicker Man is still one of the scariest movies I have ever seen, and I have NEVER understood why Pagans fanboy it so hard. As cult classic cinema, yes, as creepy weird awesome kitsch yes, but FFS people we're not the good guys in that. As colossal a douchebag as Howie was, as much as I have Serious Issues With the Church, watching the sheer terror in his eyes while he's begging for his life, watching the fire, and screaming scriptures in a desperate attempt to stay sane WHILE HE'S BEING MURDERED is some of the most disturbing shit I have ever seen in my life. Also, talk about Misaimed Fandom, the entire fucking message of the movie was that Pagans and Christians were just two sides of the same coin. The islanders only followed Paganism because it was an easy way for Summerisle's forebears to cynically herd them like sheep, and it was heavily implied he himself didn't even believe in it (note the look on his face when Howie rightfully predicted by Summerisle's logic, he'd be getting sacrificed when the next harvest inevitably failed). Marx would have loved that shit.
(Incidentally that is one of the many, many, MANY ways the Cage laughfest totally Does It Wrong, because by the end of that movie you are totally cheering for him to get roasted. Don't get me started on that shit, or Neil LaBute in general.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-27 01:29 pm (UTC)I'm constantly afraid of talking out of my butt when it comes to this kind of a thing. Like, I am not a hardcore horror fan; most of my knowledge comes from friends who ARE and from the REALLY BAD flicks I saw when I was younger. But the genre as a huge whole fascinates me because of the willingness of directors and producers in the 'golden age' to try out weirdass filming and processing techniques and dig their elbows into the sides of what was 'acceptable' to show.
Now, it's completely acceptable to show gut splatterin' violence...provided the portrayer is American in origin. Don't get me started on the stricter standards that imported material is usually held up to. Just - I can seriously go on for ages. BUT ANYWAY it's become quite acceptable to show epic violence and gore everywhere in cinema. it's no longer shocking and the directors who think that the best way to be revolutionary is to HAVE MAOR SPLAT have forgotten the spirit of the age that made the initial splatsplatSPLAT as effective as it was. NOW for example we know to keep cameras the hell off the battlefield if we want our lunch to stay down. It's a lot easier to keep on telling the old lie (dulce et decorum est...) if you don't see the pro patria mori part. And there is a lot of mori.
The other thing is there seems to be this reluctance to have a major identification character now. Which - godDAMN people can't your brain? Argh - it's kind of important to have that kinda thing. What do you think made Blair Witch so damn successful? The fact that you could to easily put yourself in the characters' shoes, that you knew nothing more than they did. There was also some great playing on ingrained human fears/kid fears: SOMETHING BIG IN THE DARK IS COMING TO EAT YOU. (This is why the Destiny Island sequence of KH scares the dickens out of me still - that and the Shadows look a lot like weird little cricket critters I dreamed of when I was very small.) Back in the early days of kersplat, physical violence with guts was NEW. Nowadays - come on, we have those IRL Surgery Dude kinda shows on cable networks. We have CSI's TMI Cam, which showed up first in Three Kings (a Gulf War movie that made an effort, at least, at depicting 'their side' as also people). There's none of the novelty. We can see guts if we want to, and I find the TMI Cam worse than anything in current horror XD; That's again my relationship to medical shit talking.
(That, and the fact that I can no longer see TMI Cam stuff without remembering walking up the stairs while the TV was still in mom and dad's living room and I was still living at home - dad was watching one of the CSI series, and as I reach the top of the stairs, I hear my dad say cheerfully to the cat, "Look, Harley! Colonoscopy!" I almost fell back down the stairs.)
Blaaagh I dunno XD; I think the Silent Hill series (up to a point) and Resident Evil series (same) are a hell of a lot more successful than most horror stuff coming out in the mainstream now because of the HUGE identification factor. Also you can do more in a vidya gaem than in live action cinema, often. (And here is where I sigh over the Silent Hill movie missing just what it was that makes Pyramid Head so fucking scary - it's that he is inevitable. If you run away flailing, James will have a stamina clunk, get tired, and slow down...and good old PH just keeps plodding doggedly after James, knowing that he WILL catch up. He doesn't rush because he doesn't NEED TO. What he represents to James makes this even worse. /wanky) I dunno XD; most mainstream horror stuff now is bereft of something and the fact that everyone apparently thinks MAOR GUTZ is the solution to that is annoying.
ROFLMAO LONG COMMENT IS LONG! Back on topic - I'd always heard that Wicker Man was about that kinda thing, like - fanaticism of any kind usually ends in things and people becoming set on fire.
Man. Clips from the remake just - I hear P in my head muttering "This guy is the opposite of a good actor. He's the opposite of an ACTOR. SHUT UP NICHOLAS CAGE. Get off of my screeeeeeen." Because I am thinking the same thing.
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Date: 2010-08-27 08:45 pm (UTC)...
KILLING ME WON'T BRING BACK YOUR GODDAMN HONEY
(oh god now I have to watch the Rifftrax again. lololol)
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Date: 2010-08-27 05:34 pm (UTC)I think there have been some good horror movies in the last ten years but the very best are aware of the genre, and not just remaking something that's been done better before.
Also, yes, early exposure to certain really creepy mad scientists really sets a high bar for the character archetype.
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Date: 2010-08-27 10:26 pm (UTC)...*cough* Yeah, I didn't want poeple going "UT BAW YOU JUDGE TOO SOON!"
Yes, I judge soon. Wanna know why? Because seriously, I have been hearing OMG scaaaAAaAaaaAaaAaAaaaAAAaary stories to that effect since summer camp. Only in the case of the guys in cabin 15, they were making up shit about mutant twins born with one's head up the other's butt. Or one had a butt for a head. Or a head on his butt. SOMETHING LIKE THAT. Head + butt = funny when you're a twelve year old. And don't get me started on the medical failure, just don't; my genetic hiccup deals extensively with my digestive system so I learnt early on so the pinheads demanding my 'credentials' can sniff a litterbox XD I know what's left of what people eat by the time it hits the bottom (da dum tisch) and it's really nothing of VALUE unless you want fertilizer.
Sigh.
Hojo ruined me for mad science.
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Date: 2010-08-29 11:05 pm (UTC)I think I must've somehow repressed this fact because I didn't know that there was a remake, but holy shit, isn't that basically trespassing on holy ground? I already don't like that there's a colorized version out there (I believe it is far more effective in the original black and white), but a freaking remake?
As for the Ring remake, I don't really think it was as effective as the original movie. I watched the American remake first, then watched the original and the second made much more of an impact on me. I freaking love Sadako for some bizarre reason. Okay, I like Japanese ghosts better than Western ones period, I think.
There are Western horror that's good, it's just not in English or American made. Of course, if it's made in a foreign language and gets rather known over here, there seems to be a law that it needs to be remade in America! That's what is happening with Let the Right One In, which is a freaking awesome Swedish vampire film which addresses things like gender and uh, it's really creepy on a subtle level. I mean, there's some gore, but it's not the main focus. But hey, in the American remake, let's take out all the gender issues that the original mentions!
Anyways, yeah, I keep meaning to see Zombieland, but I'm not sure if I want to watch it yet (I can watch it via Netflix instant play, but haven't gotten around to it). Dunno why I'm being so hesitant on watching it, but maybe it's because I fear I won't enjoy it because humor isn't much my thing or something.
Your rambling on about Hojo kinda amuses me a bit because for some reason Hojo from FFVII is kinda mixed up with Professor Tomoe from Sailor Moon in my head. I mean, this is to the point where I confuse their names with each other. I have to remind myself that Tomoe is the one with the canon provided personal name. I think they get confused in my head mostly because I discovered their characters within a few years of each other (Tomoe first, then Hojo) and both are on crack. Tomoe is more like the hilarious on crack though and Hojo is the disturbing one. x.x And actually, Hojo creeped the fuck out of me for a while when I first played the game. Tomoe just amused me and he still kinda amuses me. I don't think Hojo really creeps me out as much anymore because he's kinda landed in the "amusing" category now.
Then again, I spend too much time reading about bad shit that's happened in history (hai there Roberts Graves and your book Good Bye to All That) that I have formed some kind of bizarre sense of humor when it comes to morbid type things. It's not that I'm desensitized in any way, it's just a way to deal with the fact that shit like this has happened and probably will happen some more because I have pretty much no faith in humanity's ability to deal with each other in a "civilized" manner, though one could argue that civilization is just as brutal as supposed "uncivilized" ways are.
And sorry about late comment. Brain has been eaten and I've kept meaning on reading this, but I never found the time to give this the proper attention.