Horrible Horrors

Back to horror movies (a favorite subject):

What I want to do is think back to the primal and the viscerally terrifying within the cinema. That’s what modern Japanese horror movies have done. They're fresh. They draw upon the same instincts that make the older horror movies so scary: primal fear. Everything else is a copy or it’s gimmicky. Saw is cool, but it’s not based in primal fear: it's mind gimmicry. What makes The Exorcist so scary (like so many other successful horror movies, in my mind) is that it taps a most basic fear in many people: assault from the unknown and, even more, the unpredictable and unexplainable. Same with Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a movie about dreams: something we can’t totally explain or defend ourselves from. Technology and Science have made so many things much more controlled and predictable. Ghosts and demons are still scary, but they seem to have lost the edge. Buffy and The X-Files made those things more accessible while still leaving them scary, but familiarity drained the mystique. Same with cars breaking down in extra-rural America (i.e., out of cell phone range) where there are murderous hillbillies or truckers. Part of Stephen King’s success comes from his ability to mine something that so many people have thought about at one time or another: what if I get attacked by a vicious dog, what if my other pets decide to become uncontrollable animals and turn on me, what if that funny looking clown is actually evil, what if a super-sickness wipes out all of civilization, what if someone could predict exactly how & when other people are going to die? And so on and further.

Recently, there have been a couple of new things in horror movies, mainly from across the Pacific. Sure, a videotape that kills people is a rather silly and kitschy concept, but it was new, and the execution was spectacular. It tapped into the primal fear of something strange and deadly, just like other Japanese films have done with basic concepts such as curses or angry spirits. I’d like to find something that is contemporary but still retains that sense of the primal unknown/unpredictable that yanks the basic fear right out of your guts. The slap of cold water to your face that makes your innards grind before you feel the ice on your feet. All my boredom-numb blasted mind can come up with at the moment is something evil lurking on the Internet, but that won’t work. Fear Dot Com had the chance to do internet horror and failed convincingly. The idea of a malevolent website won’t work now. But maybe something that goes back to the wilderness, the primal, while still having to do with modern technology (not something Terminator-esque) will do. Maybe that's the ticket to contemporary horror, but maybe not. With all the re-makes going on, society is begging for something else.

In case you're interested, there's previous musings on horror movies here. What can I say? I love 'em.

Oh, and here's an example of a really good horror movie that works well with the primally and viscerally terrifying.

By the way, Dee Snider will be hosting "Fangoria Radio" on Sirius satellite radio channel 120 starting June 25. I'll be interested to hear that, though Dee will have to prove his horror knowledge. Here's hoping.

UPDATE: I listened to Fangoria radio and I liked. Dee's got his work cut out for him, but so far, so good. It airs Friday nights at 10PM ET on Sirius 102.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The "response" to this post was almost better than the original post itself. See below. I left in a really long post from another anonymous douchebag that you don't have to read; just skip to my comment immediately after. I'm glad that this post was my most trafficked one, and I still don't know why this particular post would seem to be a great place to post links. Maybe there's more people online looking for good horror movies than I thought.