Horror Movies That End Up Being Not Scary At All

Very true. There are also different kinds of scary. Most horror movies rely on the crazy-fucking-monster-jumping-out-at-you-while-a-violin-shrieks tactic. Those types of scares are fine when used sparingly, but they're cheap and ephemeral.


I also like Drag Me to Hell.

 

Good point sotrix. Another thing that I've noticed is that with a really scary movie, people go in with this attitude of a challenge... like "I won't let this movie scare me". That kind of a mindset also hampers the enjoyment of the movie.

 

About 98% of American and European horror movies are horrible.

Asian horror flicks, on the other hand, know how to fuck with your brain.

Hence why the American horror industry has been attempting to remake all the breakout successes from Japan.

 

And failed.

 

If you didn't watch the whole film, then you probably should reserve judgement, right? There are plenty of films that would seem silly if you miss the second act, The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, and Vertigo to name three popular examples. The tension leading to the climax must be earned by the events the audience had witnessed heretofore.

I would argue that films like The Blair Witch Project and The Village all use techniques found in earlier horror and thriller films, leading all the way back to Nosferatu, M, and The Lodger. These are primarily aural (building, crashing, silence) and visual cues (bleak lighting, odd composition/angles, shifty eyes, awkward gait). Perhaps these techniques don't work so well in modern films because these techniques are not subtley revealed, the plot is so paper-thin, and the performances are infused with a robotic cadence.

 

^ LPA's residential film buff.

I would love to learn a lot from you XD.

 

Oh I eventually sat and and watched, don't get me wrong, but the so-called shock factor had worn off. There really isn't much in between The Blair Witch Project that made it all the more interesting. Of course for Fight Club, The Usual Suspects and Vertigo the second and third acts are important, but that's also an unfair comparison of three films with intricate plot twists, character development and fine tuned scripts against a pseudo documentary about kids in dark woods.

The Village easily borrows elements from M, but The Blair Witch Project takes a good thing and fails to deliver. Nosferatu is German expressionism and outside the shadow engulfed woods, (which, lets be honest, is a natural trait for dark woods in poorly lit areas) I don't think it's a very appropriate comparison. M was a movie shot with sound in mind, being Lang's first sound film, and the genre of the movie called for an enclosed, dark and moody atmosphere that could blend seamlessly with the audio. I can see how The Blair Witch can relate to that, but M didn't rely on these elements alone. While we're kept away from the killer for a good portion of the movie, Lang does reveal him and, thus, satisfies the audience with arguably one of the best dramatic climaxes in film history. The Blair Witch Project fails to do any of the latter and these kids might as well have been running from their own camera. The tail ending doesn't do it any favors.

 

I wasn't listing those films as comparisons to Blair Witch, per se, rather to illustrate that you mustsee the entire film (or at least the majority of it) in order to understand the finale. Case in point: I slept through Se7en the first time I saw it (I was very tired that day!), and so when I woke up to see Mills toting his gun at John Doe, it left no impression on me. Only when I revisted the film, and explored the the events that lead up to the climax was I left riveted with the conclusion. Otherwise, it would appear seemingly banal. The horror/thriller films I listed were to show that they that do, in fact, make them like they used to. There are seldom new techniques to scare audiences, just novel ways of employing those techniques.

And then, of course, there's 3D.

Also, you say that the comparison is unfair because of the intricacy of these stories (I'm including character development as intricacy -- as well as "fine-tuned" writing. After all, if you have a fine-tuned script, it's likely to be intricate and chocked-full of character development, anyways). But the thing is, a great film need not have these things. In fact, I'll argue that, when it comes to scaring people, mis en scene (esp. concerning visual and aural cues) carries much more weight than the screenplay itself.

If I recall correctly (and I may not, it's been a while), Alien does not have an especially intricate plot, and yet is is one of the most beloved horror movies, if you'll permit me to call it one. Same with Night of the Living Dead (a low-budget film, a la Blair Witch), and The Birds -- another Hitchcock classic. I won't cite Jaws or Psycho because these films, while working on our instictive fear of the unknown, ultimately utilize more complicated story structures.

Nonetheless, I'm still going to disagree with you on Blair Witch. Your focus seems to be more on the "tail end," mine is on everything that happened before it. By witnessing these foolhardy kids embark on a drunken quest to discover the witch -- which we will never see -- the audience is forced to interact and bring to the film what's missing. As Shyamalan once said, I'm not going to show you what I think is scary, because 99% of the time, it's wrong. Unfortunately, he didn't quite follow that advice in the tail end of The Village, but like Blair Witch, that film becomes less a literal display of horror and more a psychological menagerie.

There are seldom new techniques to frighten, only new ways of utilizing those techniques. I believe The Blair Witch Project does that in spades by providing us a first-hand view of the situation. The unsettling testismony of that old lady in town-- to this day -- can give me the creeps. Were it not staged, we'd all have been a lot more scared.

 

Understood, but my opinion still stands. The Blair Witch hardly has anything notable in is meat to justify making it any better. It's funny you mention "acts" in that particular film, since one of the biggest criticisms is that its transition from second to third act is somewhat indeterminable. I'm not sure if I agree with that one, but I'm certainly not left with any climactic tension in the movie-- Which honestly I find just overrated garbage that some really pretentious critics and fans call "art."

Ouch. We don't need to mention 3D. I have a whole tirade about that.

I'll agree with a lot of this, especially the mise en scene in Alien. H.R. Giger's almost pornographic designs were beautiful. But like I mentioned with M, Alien delivers more than powerful set pieces. Ridley Scott seized the opportunity to show us the menace, no matter how little, and gave us enough of an idea of what was going on instead of flimsy clues-- If you can call them "clues." Even that insinuates a conclusion the audience can potentially put together. And for the record, I would put Jaws up there as a horror great right next to Alien. Packed story or not.

If you're not going to show us what you think it's scary, my reply would be make it scary. I don't find a shark nearly as terrifying as Jaws made them out to be. I can't say I believe in Aliens, but Alien kept my light on at night for a long while. John Carpenter's The Thing was so horrific, I think I became a hypochondriac. And I will very much go ahead and mention The Birds. None of these movies had to be terrifying, but the directors knew how to create a world where tension existed around these creatures and characters we liked were pitted against them. I can agree that these foolhardy kids embarked on a drunken quest, but beyond that there isn't anything there. Literally.

I really don't want to use the "show, don't tell" cliche, but it's all I could think about during the scene with the old lady. Yes, there are seldom new ways to scare people, and I'll give Blair Witch points for utilizing given tools in a different way. But it just didn't work.

 

I just realized... holy fucking third-world country raptor orphaned barbequed Jesus H. Christ on a stick, it's Omar!

 

Gman: for the sake of readability (and any other poor souls who happen upon this thread), I'll refrain from quoting any further.

Suffice it to say that we'll have to agree to disagree. I think what those kids did under such tight monetary constraints was remarkable. You mentioned the production design is Alien as being superb (rightly so), but they didn't have that kind of muscle at their disposal. If they had tried to make it a traditional horror film, it would have failed outright. I think they "showed" quite a bit of unsettling material to give you the willies (the strange arrangement of stones, the noises at night, the pushing against the tent, etc.). Because it was meant to look realistic, anything more would have negated the film's tone. What do you think they could have done to improve the story?

My original statement still stands, I think. Today's horror/thriller films still borrow heavily from their original counterparts:
http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0710/360_25horror_nosferatu.jpg
http://popularsymbolism.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/the-village-monster.jpg

I admire Blair Witch for daring to be different, even if some didn't find it a successful venture.

 

My boss at Paramount had a very interesting thing to say about movies that didn't have the budget to pull off things it needed to be great. "If you can't do it, wait until you can. There's no sense in spoiling a great idea." We can dissect those words all day and night long, but I don't think the kids behind The Blair Witch even let that cross their minds. The arranging of the stones, the sounds...etc... It felt more like a cheap, monster hunt, TV series episode on late night Discovery Channel where surrounding crew members throw a rock in a pond to emulate a mysterious creature's presence. What could they have done to improve the story? Outside of a snarky reply, "what story?" I guess I'll say they should have waited until they had something. Perhaps then I wouldn't find the film's place in the genre to be completely irrelevant.