The other night, Marissa and I were out for dinner with Harold. As often happens these days, I was pretty much ready for my "comfy pants" by about 9:30. The fact that it was Saturday night didn't make much of a difference, but Harold did come by for a while to watch a movie, so I suppose it was more active than the average week night.
Anyway, one thing that came up in conversation was that horror movies completely suck. Why is that the case? It seems that in every other genre, there's an adherence to a certain yardstick for quality. If a drama features poor performances, a crap script, and generally poor filmmaking, everyone decides it's bad, and no one wants to see it.
The yardstick seems to be totally different in the horror genre though. Most horror films feature raspberry-worthy performances by B-grade actors; cringe-inducing, tin-ear writing (by D-grade writers); and a total disregard for artistic filmmaking. And yet, tons of people enjoy the films anyway, and put good money down to see them. They're getting worse too. The original Halloween or Friday the 13th were not nearly as tragic as the garbage being slung today, like Hostel or the Saw sequels.
I know that a lot of people enjoy horror films because they like being scared, but why the double standard? Is the "jump factor" that important and desirable that the normal standards for movie-making are out the window when assessing a horror film's value? If that's the case, doesn't it mean that horror films are not really the same art form as films of other genres? Maybe they're something more like porn movies, where things like performances, writing, etc., are not the point and nothing more than window dressing. You see a porn movie for the sex, you see a horror movie for the jump factor.
Still that doesn't explain why they can't be held to a higher standard. There are movies out there every now and then that are very scary, but because they're good movies, nobody really thinks of them as "horror." Silence of the Lambs is a good example. Harold and I talked about how we both liked that Nicole Kidman movie The Others that was out six or seven years ago. And I really liked Steven Speilberg's War of the Worlds, which is definitely not considered "horror," but I found to be pretty horrifying in places.
The movie that Harold, Marissa and I watched was called Benny's Video, by German-born director Michael Haneke. Most Americans aren't familiar with Haneke's work. He studied psychology and philosophy before becoming a filmmaker, and his films usually feature short bursts of extreme violence, and long pensive static takes. They often explore the darker psychological undercurrents that are repressed in middle class life... not your typical horror fare, but very terrifying in a completely different way. I first discovered Haneke late at night a few years ago when I couldn't sleep and was flipping through the channels. I stopped on Funny Games, just a few minutes into the movie. My reaction was something like, "Wha...?!!!" and I was riveted. Now I own a DVD set of his earlier stuff, and I'm working my way through it.
The reason I bring this up is that Haneke is remaking the film Funny Games, in English, for an American audience, and it opens tomorrow (Friday, March 14th). From what I can tell in the previews, the film is almost exactly the same only instead of two weird German people playing the married couple at the center of the story, it now features Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, so that's an improvement.
The American versionI'm really excited about seeing this movie, but I may not get the chance for a while. Next week I'll be skiing in Colorado. I expect to write a nice blog post about the trip, from my hospital bed in traction. Probably it will feature some action photos of me destroying a knee. Maybe if someone takes pity on me, they'll wheelchair me into a movie theater and I can watch the movie while I convalesce.
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