Quote:
Originally posted by 42ndStreetFreak
There was so much time wasted that could have been used to build up some real suspense, peppered with a couple of killings, but instead was spent on the 'National Lampoon' antics of boring characters.
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The best way to build suspense is to develope characters so that you have an emotional involvement with them, so that you actually fear FOR them and care if they live or not.
Unfortunately there are few directors/writers in the horror genre that understand this, and even if they do they are too inept to handle such subtleties and pull it off correctly.
It's either done in a hamfisted manner, or not at all.
The Burning was more the Ham Fisted approach i guess.
Most of the Fri 13 movies don't bother. Just a bunch of teenage machette fodder.
Or you can go 180% and serve up Franklin from the origional TCM and give you a character that you pray will be killed.
Seriously - character developement is the hardest thing to do in cinema. A drama will give you 120 minutes to do it but in horror you have about 20 before the typical audience wants to bail.
Generally not known to be a patient demographic.