The Horror!

I love movies, especially comedies, sci-fi, noir, and to a lesser extent horror. The reason for my kind of love/hate relationship with horror is that there has been a few trends in the past few years (arguably even longer than that) in horror that is bad for the genre as a whole. Here is a list of a few of the most bothersome ones.

Jump Scares: This is the laziest way to make people scared ever. So our heroes are searching through a haunted house because they heard a noise (and of course they can't just leave that shit alone), when something jumps out and attacks them suddenly with no warning that may or may not be a horrifying axe murderer. No one is not going to jump at this; it is an instinctual reaction. These happen super often in movies today, and that is the problem, the fear that it brings us is temporary and if overused tends to disengage the audience. If the director/writer builds up the oppressive atmosphere of the dread one feels when they don't know if a person is going to die or survive, then uses an artfully crafted jump scare at just the right time to create a climax to the scene. Eshi gave me this, so I feel that he needs credit: It is the money shot to a horror movie. One, maybe two, as punctuation in a movie is good but more then that and they have less punch and just kind of make a mess of things.

Bad Writing: I should not be one to judge on this since I am new to the whole writing thing, but holy shit is the writing in horror movies bad. Admittedly, I will have some points that apply to other genres as well since this is not necessarily a specific problem to horror, but horror is especially bad. Clumsy exposition to show relationships between people (has anyone called their brother "bro" or sister "sis" before in real life, and not in an ironic way?) or to foreshadow scary events. The later is what I like to call "Chekhov's news report",
and it shows up in movies about serial killers escaping or zombies to poke at the audience and say "ah, ah, might be zombies". This has been effective in the past, but has become the standard thing to do when you can't think of another way to explain things in a script, so rather than use a combination of decent dialog and directing the actors to treat each other in a way that normal people behave, the directors and writers just have people yell out how they relate to events. This is the type of hamfisted writing that makes a lot of horror unwatchable to me. This always takes me out of the movie. I can understand that sometimes time restraints require that a movie gloss over some aspects, but if the information is important enough to have to leave in, it has to be more organic than a couple idiot characters grunting out relevant information.

Pulling Punches: This is something that makes pisses me off. When I am watching a movie and the story has been dark and is going in a direction that shows that people's preconceived notions of morality and truth are questioned, and instead of driving the point home and finishing strong, they chicken out and force a "safe" ending. Spoilers ahead, since this point is easily made by pointing at specific examples. Splice was a movie that was on a path to show how human beings could be monsters towards things that they do not understand and/or something that is innocent in a series of fucked up events (in Splice's case the innocent was a "monster"), but in the third act did a complete 180* and made the monster turn evil. The humans are still evil in this section of the movie, so no one is really redeemable at the end, and it kinda falls flat on its face. I am legend (I know its not really horror, but it has monsters so it is close enough :p) was an ok summer blockbuster type movie that did the same thing: the theatrical release had an ending that was classic action movie fluff and climaxes with an explosion, but there is another ending that showed that the monsters tried to kill him because he was abducting them, not because they are "Evil" and ends with him coming to an understanding with them.
Both of these changes point to the studios thinking that people as a whole are too soft-headed to appreciate a poignant narrative. This type of cop out pisses me off. If you want to make a point with a film, make it. If a film company tries to bully you into making changes by holding the film hostage (by shit-canning it or by threatening to turn it over to other people) find another way to fund it. Explain your situation on kickstarter or other crowd funding sites, I know that people would be willing to help a good horror movie get made. and that way you could make it in a way that you want.

Found footage films: These are popping up all over the place, and some of them, like Paranormal activity 1 & 2 and Afflicted are good (especially Afflicted, seriously watch that shit right now. This is text, finish it later), but a lot of them are bad. These movies are easy and cheap to shoot, so they can be made for a fraction of the cost, so they get made more and more. This is a double edged sword though since sometimes the cameras make sense, like in the above mentioned films. However, in most other cases carting a camera around with you and keeping the necessary plot points in frame is fucking stupid. In Paranormal Activity the cameras make sense. In the first movie the camera is set up to find evidence of demons so they would have it running all the time. And in the second film the security cameras are installed to see most of the house and the handheld camera is used to film the baby which are both things that cameras are used for in real life. They just also happen to catch the spooky stuff. In Afflicted the camera comes into play because they main characters are vloggers and the camera is attached to them. These cameras catching the action makes sense. The perfect example of this not working is in Cloverfield, where the main characters keep a camera rolling all the time even though dropping it would have given them more of a chance for survival. This kind of thing kills immersion in found footage films, and makes them hard to watch without focusing on wondering why they kept the camera rolling. If you have to do a found footage film try to at least make the camera have a reason to be on all the time.

I have spent a lot of time focusing on what goes bad with horror movies and I feel like I ought to sneak in some constructive suggestions. The best horror (and really all narrative forms) creates an atmosphere that draws you in, and makes you feel a sense of catharsis when the situation resolves. Instead of just using jump scares all the time, build to them. Use sound and light to create a sense of claustrophobia and dread that builds (David Lynch and Martin Scorsese do a great job of building atmosphere). I love it when horror movies make people wonder if there was a monster or if they just built up all that tension in their own heads (the innkeepers is a good example of this). I also enjoy when movies build the tension by depriving us of the monster until a critical moment and then hooking us with the reveal. Basically, horror movies are at their best when they tap the primal fear and doubt that comes from the unknown and unavoidable, it makes the pay off that much more worthy and enthralls us in the world. If you can pull people in like that, you will succeed.