Horror Movies Are Not Fun

You know what there aren't enough of? Fun horror movies. Not unless you're totally fractured upstairs - and I hold to that qualification. I refuse to budge on it. If your idea of a good time is watching a bunch of fictional people be brutalized and murdered, get help. Don't stop until you find it. You're not right.

Because that's what, oh, say, 99% of horror cinema tends to be: people being killed; sometimes by the ghost of a groundskeeper who was wrong by earlier tenants! But mostly by just anyone. Long ago, the murderous character had some mystery to be found out, which was quite the point of the whole story. The death or threat of, was fuel for the suspense of the story. That part's gone now. We've parried it down to just the killing bits.

Oh but they're very creative killing bits. So, you know, it sort of makes up for it.

No, it doesn't. It shows just how little imagination, kindness, optimism and ambition a story teller has. So there's this guy, see, and, like, he has one minute to saw his own foot off! Cause, ya know, he didn't, uh, value his life, or something. Anyway, One Minute! To Saw that baby Right Off! Yeah, think of that!

Of course Horror is meant to imply some, you know, Horror, and surely that's not as trite a thing as skeletons and goblins going "boo". Threat of the unknown monster, even the unknown monster who is sure to take the life of its victim, is universal matter of human lore - something indelible from our narrative consciousness. The "monster" is part of the collective human psyche.

TURNS IT OFF! TURNS IT OFF!

But do so many of these movies have to be utter burrowings into the most disgusting, awful places and experiences possible, with no hope or chance of returning to the light? What the hell is the point, honestly? Nothing necessary or humane; it's all too exploitive. If any of the things that happen in the average horror movie were to happen to anyone we know, we'd be suitibly horrified of the world for great stretches of time. It would not be exciting or entertaining; it would be the truest of hells.

It might be argued that our more and more "realistic" or "gritty" horror films are some response by the artistic community, some reflection of the real world and how we feel about it, but I don't buy that. I do not buy that the people who made "Captivity" (don't bother looking into it) have something important to say about those horrible matters of innocent captives for sadistic purposes. They prey on warry fascination; they solve nothing of it. They have no need or desire to.

And frankly I'm sick of it. Just before writing this note, I looked into a movie called "The House of The Devil" which I had heard had been a good, suspenseful horror film, light on gore. I read the synopsis on imdb. It is not a fun movie, I'm quite positive, not even if the suspense is really, really good. It dive-bombs directly into ugliness like all the others.

I get that there's some kind of thrill to be had of shock-value, for some. I get how it works. And yet I don't get how anyone can sit through a horror movie these days without feeling sick and dirty for days. It's not that I don't think movies should be able to contain the things they contain; movies should contain whatever they need to. But a film without a real meaning has no right to anything. That's the terrific irony: horror hounds claim their flicks defend substance, when in fact they could not be less interested in it. At this point, neither could I. 


By Dave Beauchene