Frighteners

I had an interesting conversation with Drey last night. We were talking about movies and Gar walks in, piping something about "I want to see SILENT HILL!". Not a chance, boy. "Okay, I want to see SCARY MOVIE 4!" My boy is an eternal optimist. Drey reiterated "Not a chance, boy."

At this point, I weighed in. What's so scary about a series of films that spoof other films? Point of Information for the culturally uninitiated-- the "Scary Movie" series are some more notable examples of a certain genre of films that parodies popular movies released in the preceding couple of years. The last SCARY MOVIE 3 (which I only caught on cable, thank God) parodied M. Night Shyamalan's SIGNS, Gore Verbinski's THE RING and even generous helpings of Curtis Hanson's 8 MILE. The resulting hodgepodge had some funny bits (it was directed by one of the Zuckers who can still do great things in comedy), but it certainly wasn't what I would call a bona fide scary movie. If it weren't for all the adult themed references that I'm sure that will be thrown in to spice things up, I'd take Gar to a matinee of this one. Drey is adamantly against it, so you know who won that argument, and it wasn't Mr. Nizz.

It got me to thinking, as things usually do. What IS too scary for children? Children are remarkably resilient little critters. One of Garrett's absolutely favorite films of recent vintage was SHAUN OF THE DEAD, a remarkable movie about a slacker and his friends encountering a zombie invasion in the UK. It's not very gory and it IS hugely funny. Gar's watched this one countless times. He did watch George Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD with me, once... you can see that zombies are a favorite of mine, can't you? Surprisingly he found that one disturbing whereas I didn't. Romero films can get gory from time to time but they are mostly message films that lay on the allegory quite heavily. Still, Gar's a 7 year old and I don't anticipate he'd find Land of the Dead to be the same bundle of laughs that Shaun of the Dead is, either. Even though both of them are zombie flicks.

So what is scary any more? I think the focus of horror films have gone from the external to the internal. Horror films used to be about monsters, right? From FRANKENSTEIN to ALIEN to Michael Meyers, the threat was always external, malevolent, unstoppable... the big "IT" that we're all afraid of. Monsters are a manifestation of that creature from the Id that we're all scared of as children... the bogeyman in the closet, the creature hiding under the covers that can only be thwarted by hiding under the sheets. The external monster is rooted in a primal mythology that is part of our race-memory, too. We have always told stories, and monsters go back to the dawn of civilization.. Remember the Gorgons? The Minotaur? The Krakan? The Jackal headed gods of the dead in Egypt? All external "IT" creatures. We are not "IT", we can't identify with "IT" and thus we fear "IT".

Quite naturally, early cinema jumped on "IT" for early box office draw... FRANKENSTEIN. LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. DRACULA. THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.. and it's been a grand ride for the industry, with movie monster retreads coming out every year for decades, right up until the 1980s, or thereabouts. Gradually, the threat shifts from "IT" to something less over and more internalized. David Cronenburg brings us people who can make your heads explode, a rabies infection that can turn the world into zombies, and a video-borne virus that can drive you slowly insane. Tobe Hopper introduces us to the post-apolcolyptic nuclear family, complete with Leatherface.. and of, course, George Romero reminds us that the "IT" was "US" all along.



Today's horror focuses far less on the "IT" and is moving away from the "US"... Visually stylish films introduce the "Bleak" as the buzzword for modern horror. A trend that starts with the movie SEVEN (a groundbreaking film that was unique at the time for its stark portrayal of worn out, morally ambiguous protagonists that seem not to much different from the antagonists). It's in this newer era that I finally find movies that even creep me out, and I've watched hundreds of horror movies in my life.

So to get back to the central premise... what IS scary any more? Horror doesn't work without fear of the unknown... when we KNOW our antagonist, we know we can defeat him. Movies that keep us wondering about the nature of reality keep us afraid... Seven did this.. The Ring did this. Even the ostensibly "IT" film Jeepers Creepers did this. Memento (a movie where the central character suffers from short term memory lapse so badly that he can't remember anything older than 15 minutes old) works equally well as horror as it does action/mystery. Phantasm (a much older film) did this with the surreal world that Dan Coscarelli invented that included so much unexplained terrible stuff. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER did this (a while back) with its unflinching portrait of a monster who kills just because he can get away with it. More recently, THE SAW (first one) really messed with notions of reality, time-sense and morality. The Japanese AUDITION movie by Takashi Miike was frank and unsettling, and delightfully morally ambiguous. "Bleak" is becoming "chic".

Almost all of these movies suffer in sequels, for reasons I've pointed at... if you make a sequel, you have to explain how the bogeyman works, now. And once the audience KNOWS, they can no longer FEAR.

I have very little hope for much of the American horror movies I've seen lately, although some of the movies coming out of Japan and China have been excellent. Directors like Miike and Hideo Nakata seem to understand that for horror to work with today's audiences, it must be part of a grand old storytelling tradition, and challenging to both our perceptions of reality and our own internal morality. I suspect that much of the creativity in the genre will come from the East in the decade to come.