Will’s Unpopular Opinion – Coming Full Circle – 9-16-16
This weekend, teens and tweens alike will be flocking to theaters to help launch 2016’s Halloween/Horror season, with a return to the woods in, ‘Blair Witch’. (I guess it’s no longer a school project.) Currently, the movie isn’t tracking well, garnering only 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, and generally where fans are even more generous than the critics, the rating caps off at only 47% for the audience score. Again, we see Hollywood dredging up once successful, retired franchises to fill the gap in it’s autumn scream-fest film-fare. And as predictable a practice as this is, what is surprising, is the lack of new IPs to be introduced in the wake of the original movies that helped launch them.
There definitely seems to be a cycle. Modern horror films have become a collective pastiche of their originals, and more and more are relying solely on nostalgia to fill theater seats. ‘The Blair Witch Project’ opened the door to “found footage horror”, and as a result we had 7 straight years of ‘Paranormal Activity’ movies and knock-offs. ‘Paranormal Activity’, which is now on hiatus, has returned the mantel to the OG videographers with 2016’s ‘Blair Witch’, but it’s not the only one. ‘The Ring’ gave birth to a plethora of creepy ghoul-girl flicks for 15 years before it found itself looking down the same well for more of Samara and her wet dreams to haunt movie screens; with the upcoming ‘Rings’ set to hit this October. Ironically, these new movies aren’t brought about by the movies of the same namesake that initially spawned them, but rather the knock-off movies that were formed during the interim; using the more common, newer method of jump-scares and cliche tropes. Meaning, ‘The Ring’ created a slew of movies that helped create a whole new sub-genre of ‘Ring’ knock-offs, and that in turn lead to a new version of ‘The Ring’ that has been completely uprooted from the original. Essentially, these throwback sequels and reboots of once notable horror films are mimicking the movies that mimicked them originally. A copy of a copy of a copy.. etc, etc. You could say that ‘The Ring’ come full circle.
This speaks volumes to
the direction of the industry and the creative bankruptcy that seems to be plaguing scare-cinema as of late. It’s not totally unfathomable though. ‘Saw’ and ‘Paranormal Activity’ came and went, and outside of “possessed doll” movies, there haven’t been a whole lot of well received original horror movies that were able to stand on their own. So, much like a shallow gene pool, they’re left to copy off of earlier forgotten entrees that have already run their course. There have been a few standout hits that have quietly mollified the horror industry from collapsing in on itself though.
Digital/Social induction have altered the playing field slightly, but a new “classic”, creating a new set of rules and tropes has yet to surface. ‘Unfriended’ may be the closest, but it’s still not on the same level of awareness as any of the previously listed films mentioned, and so the mundane reboot machine churns out another set of prepackaged blatant rip-offs to bathe teens in popcorn screams. (‘Lights Out’ being one of the most egregious offenders, and ‘It Follows’ attempting something slightly new.) This does become worrisome though, as one-upmanship becomes the du jour credo of modern film-makers when creating “new” experiences. Movies get gorier, bloodier, and more disgusting, but not necessarily scarier. A template is built and used time and again, until something new comes along and rewrites the template. If you know the formula, movies stop becoming effective, and horror movies above all, become conspicuously lame.
A few weeks ago, ‘Don’t Breathe’ seemed to usher in a breath of fresh air for theatergoers. You can bet that you’ll see movies similar to this for a short while, because reigniting franchises from 20 years ago is just a snooze alarm on a ticking time bomb that’s waiting to go off. Netflix has also slowly become the number one go-to spot for current modern day horror. Although you may not have heard of it, ‘Hush’ takes the same approach as ‘Don’t Breathe’, and tells the story of a person with a physical impairment fighting an outside intruder. In fact, many independent horror films seems to land on Netflix, and this works well for the subscription service, because horror aficionados have always been of a lesser discerning sort, (or possibly more, depending on how you look at it.) You don’t need high-end FX for good scares. This puts Hollywood at a disadvantage. These movies are cheap to make and don’t require any real costumed effects or make-up. Micro-budget films may be back in a big way, and it’s causing movie studios to panic, gambling on whether a girl with wet hair and bad complexion, or a dude staring at a wall, still frightens you.
Where does this lead? Hopefully to the end of an era that has overstayed it’s welcome. Horror movies are starting to haunt themselves with a prolonged lifespan that refuses to expire and move on. Similarly to Zombie films that don’t seem to know how to die, they just keep putzing around and staggering from one iteration to the next. There’s nothing fresh about a new zombie movie. It’s difficult to tell new stories in the scare-genre that need to compete with so little; like the way they’re made for Netflix. Horror itself works best when you see less. Which could mean if indy-horror continues to move ahead, Hollywood based horror could find itself in a similar position to all of the films they keep making: alone in a dark place, searching for something they can’t find, and then eventually screaming for someone to help them before they’re inevitably eaten by the very thing they sought out to begin with… An old haunt.
-Will Valle
