i ain't nuthin' but a gorehound

[alonewiththemoon]

I am not usually a fan of the movie reviews of Stephanie Zacharek, movie critic at Salon, but I love the opening sentence of her review of Dario Argento's new film Mother of Tears:

We've lost something in the culture of horror movies when a good, solid evisceration at the hands of slobbery, bloodthirsty demons has come to seem old-timey and quaint, a comforting relic of drive-in gorefests and '70s-era Times Square double features.

 Yeah, they just don't eviscerate them like they used to...  I'm not even being sarcastic, it's true.  The other big change in horror films, I think, is that good versus evil has really faded away in favor of terror by random psychotics, which in turn means plot has essentially faded away as well.  If your villain has no motive besides being insane, there's really no need for a plot. And thus the horror genre has become stupid.
 

Comments

[kinadancer.livejournal.com]

Makes a lot of sense. I used to be a big fan of horror movies, but can't get into the random slasher movies, or just the violence for it's own sake.

Scariest movie I ever say didn't have a hint of violence.

As a matter of fact, wasn't a movie, It was an old Nightmare Gallery 1/2 hour show, young man (Roddy McDowell) who scared his uncle into an early grave to obtain his inheritance by putting up sequential paintings showing someone's grave (don't remember who) then the grave opening, coffin rising, corpse opening coffin, walkign towards house...

Once the old man was in the grave, the paintings started again, except now they featured the old man's grave...


didn't sleep for weeks after that one.

[julishka.livejournal.com]

the evil that pervades society now is psychological and unpredictable, whereas in the past it was more of an us vs. them (US vs USSR) mentality. so, the change in how horror movies try to scare us matches the shift in the real world. mothers are more afraid of some crazy person lurking in every corner of the outside world randomly snatching their kid rather than a known evil doing something.

[alonewiththemoon]

Then our modern fears have no plot! Nobody understands how to live a fully realized literary life any more.

[julishka.livejournal.com]

exactly!

[couplingchaos.livejournal.com]

*snark*

excellent line.