News
‘Videogames Make Better Horror Than Hollywood’, What Do YOU Think?
So, it’s a little past it’s prime, Wired posted this article about a year ago, but hey, why not post about it and see what everyone thinks. Wired’s Clive Thompson seems to think that video games nowadays are a lot more scary than movies. I’m inclined to agree with him. I find myself getting a lot more freaked out when I shut the lights off and play a horror game than a horror movie. Maybe I’m watching the wrong movies. We’ll read his article and let me know what you think!
“Gore Is Less: Videogames Make Better Horror Than Hollywood
By Clive Thompson Email 08.28.07
I’d only been playing BioShock for 15 minutes, and already I was trembling like a little girl.
It’s hard to disentangle what precisely was scaring the crap out of me. Maybe it was hearing the rumbling moans of a nearby Big Daddy, and realizing it was hunting for me. Maybe it was the way those filthy, genetically modified humans would pop out of nowhere, dressed, improbably, in Victorian clothes and creepy Eyes Wide Shut clown masks. Or maybe it was their weirdly garbled dialogue — how they’d shriek, “Get away from me!” while slashing at me with lead pipes. The fact is, I like to be scared out of my wits. I’m one of those wimps who is easily spooked yet generally enjoys the sensation. So ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved good horror movies — I’d turn out the lights freak myself out with classics like Halloween, Friday the 13th or The Exorcist.
Yet here’s the thing: For several years now, I’ve found that my favorite horror experiences aren’t coming from movies any more. They’re coming from games.
Why? Partly it’s because films have become much less artistically interesting. With a choice few exceptions — like the superb The Ring — I’ve found that modern horror movies have been offering less and less suspense, and more and more gore. Maybe it’s due to the rampaging success of Saw, which gave birth to the current trend toward torture-chic and metric tonnage of blood in scary movies.
In contrast, the best scary-game designers have quietly perfected the interplay of tension and release that makes for a truly cardiac horror experience. They have, in a sense, become even more faithful interpreters of the horror tradition movies than Hollywood directors.
In BioShock, for example, the audio editors are masterful at generating free-floating anxiety. As you wander through the game’s ruined city, whispering voices pan in and out of your skull. Often it’s the semilucid/semicrazy patter of the gibbering “splicer” humans, but either way, it makes you feel as nuts as they are.
Even worse is the sound of the ultra-Freudian evil-girl Little Sisters. Every time I’d stumble into a dark room and hear one of them say “What’s that sound, Mr. Bubbles?” in her chirpy, gargling-on-blood voice, the hair on my neck stood up. It was partly because, well, evil little girls are scary, and partly because I knew I was about to get my ass handed to me.
Indeed, the endless potential for ass-handing is why games may actually be a superior medium to films for scaring the bejesus out of you. The horror flicks of the ’80s always tried to generate a sort of proto-interactivity: all those terrified viewers, screaming “Don’t go in there!” at the screen, wishing they could somehow reach out and personally guide the Final Girl to safety.
In a game, of course, the fourth wall is obliterated, and you actually do have the choice about whether to go into The Bad Room or to run screaming. If you’re a total coward (like me) this ability to control your fate induces considerably more suspense, because I head-game myself into a frenzy. I’ll start down a corridor, hear something freaky up ahead, then freeze in panic. Maybe if I stay quiet the monster will go away? Shit, maybe it’s already headed this way, and I should move! But if I move the monster will hear me … so maybe I should stay quiet … gaaaaah!
Games already seem like dream states. You’re wandering around a strange new world, where you simultaneously are and aren’t yourself. This is already an inherently uncanny experience. That’s why a well-made horror game feels so claustrophobically like being locked inside a really bad — by which I mean a really good — nightmare.
Still, there are some interesting limitations on the form. I find that scary games almost always lose their scariness after about three hours. This is due to the inherent repetitiveness of games: After you’ve fought your 200th “splicer” in BioShock, you’re pretty accustomed to their gurgly ramblings, their patterns of attack, the boo-yah outta-nowhere teleportations. I was still tense, but no longer, you know, wetting myself.
The only way a game can continue to frighten you is if it constantly subjects you to new scary things, keeping you eternally off balance. But few publishers are willing to spend money on enough designer hours to churn out 40 hours of genuinely new content. Instead, they inevitably wind up recycling the same opponents, the same animations, and perhaps worst of all, the same audio cues. (The quickest way to ruin a scary mood is to have the monsters endlessly repeat the same two or three catchphrases over and over again; it begins to feel like telemarketing.) The best horror games — I’d include some of the Silent Hill and Resident Evil titles in this category — have come the closest to keeping things fresh as you play.
Still, I’m not complaining too much. BioShock was plenty freaky enough; I wrote this column with the lights on.”
News
Spring 2024 Horror Preview: 12 Horror Movies You Don’t Want to Miss
We are now one full month into Spring 2024, which kicked off on Tuesday, March 19 and comes to an end with the start of Summer on Thursday, June 20. This year’s summer movie season has a whole bunch of exciting horror highlights, including A Quiet Place: Day One, MaXXXine, and Alien: Romulus, but let’s hold that particular thought until June rolls around.
We’re here today to talk about Spring 2024 and the many horrors we still have left before the weather gets warmer and we find ourselves in the heat of one hell of a spooky summer.
Here are 12 horror movies you don’t want to miss in Spring 2024!
STING – April 12
Two words: SPIDER HORROR. Writer/Director Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood) hopes to induce eight-legged terror with his brand new horror movie Sting, only in theaters April 12.
Of particular note, Sting features practical spider effects from 5-time Academy Award Winner Weta Workshop, with the spider in this one inspired by H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph!
In Sting, “One cold, stormy night in New York City, a mysterious object falls from the sky and smashes through the window of a rundown apartment building. It is an egg, and from this egg emerges a strange little spider. The creature is discovered by Charlotte, a rebellious 12-year-old girl obsessed with comic books. Keeping it as a secret pet, she names it Sting.
“But as Charlotte’s fascination with Sting increases, so does its size. Growing at a monstrous rate, Sting’s appetite for blood becomes insatiable.”
BLACKOUT – APRIL 12
Indie darling Larry Fessenden is back with new horror movie Blackout this Spring, Fessenden’s third movie – following Habit and Depraved – to put his own spin on classic monsters.
While Habit was centered on vampires and Depraved was a fresh take on Frankenstein’s Monster, Larry Fessenden’s Blackout is the filmmaker’s contribution to werewolf cinema.
The film follows Charley, an artist whose drinking binges blur with his sneaking suspicion that he might be a werewolf. He distances himself from those he loves and sinks deeper into solitude, his flashes of memory of his nighttime grisly acts manifested through his artwork.
ARCADIAN – APRIL 12
If Nicolas Cage is covered in blood, you better believe we’re going to be watching. Cage gets his own A Quiet Place with Arcadian, a new creature feature coming to theaters April 12.
In Arcadian, which also comes to Shudder later this year, “After a catastrophic event depopulates the world, a father (Nicolas Cage) and his two sons must survive their dystopian environment while being threatened by mysterious creatures that emerge at night.”
Jaeden Martell (IT 2017) also stars in the post apocalyptic monster movie.
ABIGAIL – APRIL 19
If you’re bummed about Melissa Barrera being fired from the Scream franchise, you’ll definitely want to get out to your local theater this month to support Abigail, the new VAMPIRE BALLERINA horror movie from Scream and Scream VI directors Radio Silence.
Barrera stars alongside fellow horror favorite Kathryn Newton (Freaky) in Abigail, which is actually the latest horror movie in Universal’s relaunched Universal Monsters Universe.
In the film, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL – APRIL 19
One of the most talked about horror movies of Spring 2024 has been the Halloween 1977-set Late Night With the Devil, which has been playing in theaters since its premiere on March 22.
Late Night with the Devil will begin streaming at home on April 19, 2024, less than one month after arriving in theaters. Shudder will be the exclusive streaming home of the movie.
David Dastmalchian (Dune, The Suicide Squad) stars as the host of a late-night talk show that descends into a nightmare in Late Night with the Devil, set on Halloween 1977.
In the found footage-style film that captures a period aesthetic, “A live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation’s living rooms.”
INFESTED – APRIL 26
Spring 2024 is all about SPIDERS – sorry, arachnophobes! – with the previously mentioned Sting being followed by the French creature feature Infested (Vermines) later this month.
What’s particularly exciting about Infested is that its director, Sébastien Vaniček, has been hired to direct the next installment in the Evil Dead film franchise, so this will be our first taste of what Vaniček is capable of within the genre. And the buzz for this one is strong.
In his review out of Fantastic Fest last year, for starters, Bloody Disgusting’s own critic Trace Thurman raved that Infested is “one of the best spider attack movies in years.”
In the upcoming horror film, “Fascinated by exotic animals, Kaleb finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the spider to escape and reproduce, turning the whole building into a dreadful web trap.”
HUMANE – APRIL 26
The daughter of horror master David Cronenberg, Caitlin Cronenberg is making her own mark in the genre filmmaking space with IFC Films’ Humane, coming to theaters this month.
The film is described as “a dystopian satire taking place over a single day, months after a global ecological collapse has forced world leaders to reduce the earth’s population.”
The wild premise? 20% of the world’s population must VOLUNTEER TO DIE!
“In a wealthy enclave, a recently retired newsman has invited his grown children to dinner to announce his intentions to enlist in the nation’s new euthanasia program. But when the father’s plan goes horribly awry, tensions flare and chaos erupts among his children.”
I SAW THE TV GLOW – MAY 3
Fresh off the haunting and singularly creepy indie We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Jane Schoenbrun is back with A24‘s I Saw the TV Glow, releasing only in theaters this May.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her Sundance review for BD, “I Saw the TV Glow offers a layered and authentic portrait of identity, wrapped in ’90s nostalgia and surreal imagery that embeds itself deep into your psyche.” Meagan continues, “Schoenbrun delivers a singular vision of arthouse horror that entrances for its fevered dream style and insanely cool imagery.”
In A24’s latest, “Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.”
TAROT – MAY 3
Originally titled Horrorscope, a much better title if you’re asking me, Screen Gems returns to the big screen with studio horror movie Tarot this Spring, a Tarot-card themed spookshow.
When a group of friends recklessly violates the sacred rule of Tarot readings – never use someone else’s deck – they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards in the upcoming Screen Gems horror movie Tarot. One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death to escape the future foretold in their readings.
The hook for this one? Artist Trevor Henderson designed the film’s eight monsters!
THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 – MAY 17
Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion classic The Strangers spawns a brand new reboot trilogy this year, with first film The Strangers: Chapter 1 kicking things off in theaters on May 17.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 is expected to follow in Fall 2024.
Madelaine Petsch is the lead of the new reboot trilogy, playing a character who drives cross-country with her longtime boyfriend to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest.
When their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon, they’re forced to spend the night in a secluded Airbnb, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers.
IN A VIOLENT NATURE – MAY 31
Slasher fans who have been hungry for a new Friday the 13th movie won’t want to miss In a Violent Nature, which plays out like a Friday movie… entirely from Jason’s perspective!
IFC Films will release In a Violent Nature exclusively in theaters on May 31.
In the film, “When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. The undead golem hones in on the group of vacationing teens responsible for the theft and proceeds to methodically slaughter them one by one in his mission to get it back – along with anyone in his way.”
Meagan Navarro wrote in her Sundance review for Bloody Disgusting, “In a Violent Nature may offer slasher thrills and a delightfully gory rampage across the wilderness, but the approach captures the carnage through ambient realism. It results in a fascinating arthouse horror experiment that plays more like a minimalist slice-of-life feature with a grim twist.”
THE WATCHERS – JUNE 14
M. Night Shyamalan returns with the new thriller Trap this coming August, but the road to that film’s release will be paved by the feature debut of his daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan.
Ishana Night directed The Watchers, in theaters from WB/New Line on June 14.
The film follows Mina, a 28-year-old artist, who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.
Which Spring 2024 horror movies are YOU most looking forward to?
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