Editorials
Why Horror Isn’t Doomed!
What’s happening in the world around us strongly influences what kind of entertainment we consume, especially when it comes to cinema. While the majority soak in multiple screenings of Frozen, we’re sitting on pins and needles for Godzilla to take our minds off every day life. Nearly everyone looks to film as escapism but, as horror fans, we search for escapism in a very different place.
With Lionsgate’s The Quiet Ones bombing at the box office and Oculus not performing as expected, people are once again running around screaming “horror is dead” like the sky is falling. It happens way too often (especially near summer), but it’s such a fallacy that it’s insulting to us who live and die by the genre.
Recently Brad reviewed Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek 2 and noted that McLean understood what kind of horror we want in 2014. Even if that particular film doesn’t float your boat, it displays a conscious decision to move away from what hasn’t been working. Things have changed drastically since 9/11, a time when anger, rage and fear were filling our hearts. There was a time and a place for films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jeepers Creepers, Wrong Turn, Martyrs and Saw – and it’s not now. Nobody wants to spend $8-15 and walk out of a theater feeling like they were in a boxing match. It’s interesting to see this shift not only in the work of a filmmaker (several of them have smartly changed gears), but within a franchise itself. Wolf Creek 2 is, tonally speaking, miles away from the original Wolf Creek.
Generally speaking, regular horror fans and the casually genre viewer don’t want to feel like crap when they see a movie. It’s just a fact. Sure, hardcore vets love a good gut-punch now and then, but ultimately our hearts always stick to films like Dead Alive, Evil Dead 2, Drag Me To Hell and other movies that make us feel good when we return to the well. Admit it, you’re rarely just sitting there tempted to pull Martyrs off the shelf for the 30th time.
Feel-good horror isn’t the same as a horror comedy. Let’s get that straight. The best horror films, in our opinion (though Evan loves horror comedies), are the ones that manage to play it straight and have fun with the viewer. And to land box office gold, there should be a sense of trust between the film and its audience. It may seem like a tired axiom, but you truly do need to “connect.” The Conjuring, Insidious, Mama and most of the Paranormal Activity franchise are all films that connected (as fans of the Evil Dead remake, there’s an argument to be made that it connected as well – though some wound up preferring the trailer to the actual film). They played it straight but implored the audience to give themselves over to a ride. And since they were largely successful in validating that trust, a few of them wound up being pretty damn fun.
It’s always important to ask, “is the film punishing its characters or is it punishing the audience?” There’s a distinct difference between the two. If your desire is to punish the audience, fine. That’s your right as an artist. Just be aware of the choices you are making in this regard (and their potential consequences).
Another question worth asking is, “are we boring the audience to death?” Earlier this week The Wrap published a panicked piece about the state of horror. Especially at the box office. But they’re putting the onus of failure on the genre, ignoring the fact that most of the films they cite either weren’t that great or were commercial disappointments whose downfalls are easy to pinpoint. The Quiet Ones, Oculus, The Marked Ones and Devil’s Due. It gets on our nerves when publications take jabs at our genre, predicting its downfall without understanding what the problem is.
Lets start with The Quiet Ones. It’s not a great movie. Full stop. Even the trailer couldn’t cut around the frayed edges. We would never pay to see the movie they were selling, so how can we expect an audience to pony up? Oculus? Some of us here loved it, some of us didn’t. But it’s a film with a decidedly indie aesthetic. It has no stars and it doesn’t exactly look like a good time either. It’s not actually even doing that poorly, having grossed $27 million on a reported budget of $5 million. Yes, there’s a P&A campaign to pay off, but it has a chance of going into the black eventually. Also, how much did you expect this film to make? It doesn’t have the character work, relatability or mainstream appeal that catapulted The Conjuring to a $318 million global take.
A few of us here liked Devil’s Due but audiences didn’t respond to it. Fair enough. Studio found footage shoots itself in the foot by mandating an overabundance of camera references because they can’t trust that the audience “gets it” by this point. Also, if you shove enough crap like 2012’s The Devil Inside down people’s throats, they’re going to start rejecting similar looking fare (or films marketed in the same manner). Think about it, two years ago millions upon millions of people crowded into theaters to give The Devil Inside – a godawful movie – a massive opening weekend. Then they were all given a URL instead of an ending. This is an especially egregious act of poisoning the well and an argument could me made that studio found footage horror hasn’t been doing as well since.
This extends to the failure of The Marked Ones – universally praised as being among the better Paranormal Activity films – to live up to commercial expectations. The reasoning here is so simple it’s blinding. People hated PA4. It didn’t help that they were confused as to what The Marked Ones even was. A sequel? A spin-off? But it was mainly PA4. Why even bother when the last one was awful? Franchise fatigue is a real thing even before you factor in diminishing creative returns.
It’s not horror that audiences are rejecting, it’s bad movies. Boring studio-made found footage has been run into the ground. Even if you make a good one, the target audience is so sick of being burned they’re going to avoid it. There’s no sense that any of these films are pushing the envelope, which is the most interesting part of the FF aesthetic.
There’s a ton more horror coming this year. On the studio front there’s Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us From Evil in July. There’s also The Purge 2: Anarchy and The Green Inferno hitting this summer. Annabelle comes out in October. New Line has October 3rd pegged for a surprise. On the indie front we have Starry Eyes, The Sacrament, Late Phases, Creep, The Babadook, Faults and all sorts of great films. If all of those flop, then maybe we should freak out.
A studio can spend as much as they want marketing a horror movie but, unless they establish a sense of trust with the audience, the turnout is going to be disappointing. If horror is to thrive once again (and it will), writers, directors, producers and studio execs needs to get their collective heads out of their asses and understand the people they are selling their movies to.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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