Quote:
Originally Posted by NewKidOnTheBlock
I'm exactly the same! i started watching horror when i was 8 ish and im in my late teens now. I am also desperate to be scared! So, ive set out to write some stuff. ive been asking around a bit for some suggestions as to what scares them, but, with no response, i cant really write a script that will scare the bejesus out of you all.
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I've given my original post a lot of thought since I wrote it, and I feel like I have some more insight and thoughts.
See, I'm a writer who's OBSESSED with finding something
truly scary, and I can't. It seems like there's nothing in the world that would scare adults anymore. Really scaring an
adult would be like... losing your job... finding out you have cancer... not being able to pay your credit card debts. You can't really make a horror MOVIE out of these things, lol.
The closest I can think of (as far as scaring adults) is "The Exorcist", a movie that made my grandfather so terrified, he had to walk out of the theater... and could barely sleep for a month. He was in his THIRTIES when it came out!!
The problem is, since that came out in the late 70's... thirty years ago... the Horror genre has evolved into gross-out nonsense. It's all about blood, gore, beheadings, and quite honestly, horror isn't really HORROR anymore, it's just sick in-your-face stuff. You usually have your standard group of teens who get killed off one by one by some serial killer, and the appearance of the killer varies (hockey mask, red and green sweater, a doll that comes to life, guy with a chainsaw)... and it's usually just an hour and a half of screaming girls running in the woods, running in the house, running to their car, etc.
I don't think scary movies focus on being
scary anymore... they focus on "how much can we gross out an audience?" --- See Hostel, which is closer to PORN than horror, in my honest opinion. Instead of it being sex-porn, it's gore-porn... people must apparently get off on that (since the success spawned a sequel).
It also seems like the bridge between Horror, Action, and Comedy has been crossed, so we have movies like:
Shaun of the Dead
Hatchet
Cabin Fever
Dawn on the Dead (remake)
Seed of Chucky
Severance
Resident Evil
28 Days/Weeks Later
... where scary movies
aren't really just-plain-scary anymore, but some are actually
funny at times, or some have action shoot-outs, car chases, and explosions. This really takes away a realistic element, where you're too busy laughing, or too busy being impressed by the car flipping over.
That's not what horror was supposed to be, in my opinion.
So, I think in order to have a movie scare the living shit out of people our age, some director has to start from Square One, really investigate the nature of horror, and ignore all films that have come out recently. I think you have to remove blood, guts, sex, boobs, car chases, and teens smoking weed.... and you have to
really look at horror from a realistic standpoint.
What scares us? What's something truly horrific?
In my opinion, you could touch subjects that are not exactly PC:
- School shootings
- Being kidnapped
- Terrorism
- Rape
- Child abuse
- Getting lost
These aren't really subjects that we talk about. We always "stay away" from this stuff. Why? If the message of horror is that "Don't do these things or the Boogeyman will get you!!"... How can that affect us on a deep level if the "big, bad, boogeyman" is Freddy Krueger, a character who's been reduced to action figures, dolls, comic books, and cartoons??? THAT'S NOT SCARY!
I mean, although these films didn't "scare" me, I thought the subject matter was unique and
on the right track:
Open Water
Bug
Se7en
The Mothman Prophecies
I mean, these films actually challenged you to THINK, and it wasn't all about tits and guts.
In closing (lol), I'm eagerly awaiting a movie to go outside the box and really tackle a concept that scares the shit out of our age-group. I don't know what it will be... but I feel like we DESPERATELY need an "Exorcist" for this generation. I haven't seen anything close to it yet. Maybe someday it will come.