Editorials
What Qualifies as Scary Nowadays?
A complaint heard all too often about modern horror films is that they aren’t very scary. Our own Jess Hicks even wrote a piece on how horror movies don’t have to be scary to be good, which is true but still doesn’t mean that horror films don’t have to at least try to be scary. It got me thinking though: what does scare people nowadays? All too often, we will see a movie like The Babadook or It Follows get touted as “the scariest film you will see this year,” but all too often the majority of viewers find films like that to be the opposite of scary.
Personally, I find It Follows to be absolutely terrifying. The Babadook, not so much. The release of The Witch last weekend brought back familiar feelings, with many audience members having the same reaction to it as they did to The Babadook and It Follows (just look at its C- CinemaScore). Just looking over Facebook and Twitter, I’ve seen a slew of criticisms ranging from “that was boring” to “there was some weird ‘subplot’ about a cup that no one in the audience understood” (seriously, I actually read that somewhere). It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me.
Similar statements are made about any film made before the year 2000. I get nervous showing someone John Carpenter’s Halloween out of fear that they will find it either boring or not scary. Comparatively, Ti West’s The House of the Devil fell victim to the “that was boring” complaint from mainstream audiences, as the entire film was a buildup to the final 15 minutes. How can some people find a film utterly terrifying while others find it boring?
Of course, what people find scary is going to be subjective and completely up to the individual, but it seems that more and more people are desensitized to the horror that is happening on-screen. I should point out that in no way am I qualified to make an educated assessment on the subject of fear (my degrees are in public relations and radio/TV/film), this is merely a jumping-off point to start a discussion. What do you think qualifies as scary nowadays? Let’s look at the four main scare tactics that horror movies use to instill fear. I will provide examples of each them using moments/films that actually scare me.
Jump Scares
Ah, the jump scare. It is probably the scare tactic most maligned by horror enthusiasts but loved by general audiences. When used in moderation, the jump scare can be a powerful way to scare the living crap of viewers. Whether it be by the sudden appearance of a terrifying figure or a loud clash of musical instruments (it’s usually the latter), a jump scare is a great way to get a good jolt out of the audience. Whether it be the loud chainsaw sound effect in John Carpenter’s Halloween or the iconic final moments from Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th, the jump scare will never go out of style
An example of a recent film to have an incredibly effective jump scare would be James Wan’s haunter Insidious. I think you all know the scare I’m referring to:
Then of course there is the famous hallway scene from the completely underated The Exorcist III: Legion:
These are all examples of effective jump scares, but all too often movies rely on them to much, and they become cheap. Think about the overuse of dream sequences. You know what I’m referring to: something jumps out at a character and then the film cuts to that same character suddenly waking up in bed. It was just a nightmare! Look at this years The Forest for plenty of examples of that type of scare. It’s lazy and just included to pad the runtime of whatever movie features it.
How about the mirror/refrigerator scare? This is when a character has either a refrigerator or medicine cabinet open and when they close it either the villain or a totally harmless character is revealed to be there! What about the animal scare? This is when a character is walking around innocuously and then an animal (usually a cat) jumps out at them! This particular scare was made famous in the opening sequence of Friday the 13th Part 2 (which is ironic since the first movie features one of the best jump scares) when a cat jumps through Adrienne King’s open window.
So what do we make of the jump scare? Since it is the one scare tactic featured most prominently in horror films today, it seems to be the litmus test audiences use to determine whether or not a horror film is actually scary. The problem with the jump scare is that it’s too easy to get lazy with them. The Witch features a total of three jump scares, each one of them effective. When used in moderation, the jump scare is scary. When peppered throughout the entirety of a film, it becomes too predictable. That being said, many people seem to disagree with that opinion.
When it comes to jump scares, I always go back to that famous Hitchcock quote:
“There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise,’ and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.
We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!’
In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”
It’s probably clear by now that I prefer suspense to surprise, but what are your thoughts on the subject?
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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