written by Juan Ayala
It’s finally October, the spookiest month of the year, and
soon networks like AMC, Spike and countless others will start airing all of our
favorite horror movies. While I am a big fan of the horror genre, both the
classics and contemporary movies, we seem to be cursed every couple of years
with remakes of iconic slasher films when studios are trying to make a quick
buck off of a popular franchise. Of course, this goes for nearly every genre,
not just horror, and some studios handle it better than others. James Bond, for
example, has gone through many incarnations since its inception, seen as ‘soft
reboots’ with new a face attached to the famous 007. Other franchises, however,
have not had such success, particularly in the horror genre.
A Nightmare On Elm
Street kept teenagers awake at night, horrified of going to sleep. After
the original film, several sequels were hashed out by the studio that became
less and less scary as each film installment was made. Soon, Wes Craven had to return
for A New Nightmare to reinvigorate
the franchise. The same goes for Friday
the 13th, which made kdis terrified of going to sleep away camp
during the summer. Jason somehow ended up in New York City by the eighth film and by the tenth he was in space hunting down a group of scientists and doctors in the distant future. In 2003, we saw the two iconic slashers meet face to face in
Freddy vs. Jason, which was more of a
comedy/farce of the genre rather than a tribute to the once-successful
franchises. In 2009, the Friday the 13th
franchise was rebooted and after that failure, yet another reboot was announced last year that has yet to move past the development stages. 2010 saw a reboot of A
Nightmare on Elm Street, starring Jackie Earle Haley as the finger-bladed
slasher Freddy Krueger. Despite an adequate new take on the iconic dream demon,
the film was not received well by critics or audiences alike.
There are so many other franchises I could go on about like Child's Play going from a creepy films about a murderer-possessed doll to raunchy comedies with endless one-liners. Even the Hellraiser films went from tales of lust and the terrifying repercussions to endless sequels that lost their initial, blood-chilling stories and performances. The Scream franchise remains one of my favorites as the master of horror Wes Craven knew that he was making films that were just as much an homage to the genre as it was poking fun at it.
The iconic faces of horror: Michael Myers (Halloween),
Freddy Krueger (Nightmare), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th),
Ghostface (Scream), Pinhead (Hellraiser) and Chucky (Child's Play)
The problem with these reboots, and any reboot really,
is that in order to bring something new to the table, in order to break new
ground, filmmakers and writers want to tell a story that has never been told
before, so they go to the beginnings of these on-screen murderers. This often,
however, takes the mystery out of such terrifying characters, humanizes them,
and takes away any terror that was once there. Rob Zombie’s rebooted Halloween
films come to mind. A major plot line of the remake was the origin story for
Michael Myers, which ended up sucking the mystery right out the monstrous
character. The lack of knowledge of why he did what he did made it more
frightening as he was just an evil, mindless killing machine. Guess what? There
is ANOTHER reboot in the works for Halloween,
but it has John Carpenter attached and will star the first Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis, known for her
star turn in 1978’s Halloween and Halloween II, as well as The Fog and Prom Night.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been some great new, original
stories in the genre in recent years like Insidious, Get Out, Don’t Breathe (which some would call a
thriller), and The Conjuring which
has spawned an entire universe of spin-offs like Annabelle as well as upcoming The
Nun and The Crooked Man films.
Again, some have been better than others. Among the newest are Annabelle: Creation and Stephen King’s IT. Director Andy
Muschietti and his writing team for IT
have focused on character development and storytelling over blood and gore and
cheap scares, though there are plenty of jump scares throughout.
I certainly hope that this is a trend for horror films from
here on out as you grow to love and care for the main characters and if and
when something happens to them, you’re actually emotional about it. Other
horror films focus more on the shock value that when characters are picked off,
you don’t really care because all you really felt was ‘aw, he seemed nice. Oh
well. He’s gone now.’ And in most cases, everyone’s dead by the end and there
aren’t many places for the franchise to go unless someone else takes on the
mantle of the killer. I’m looking at you Saw
films. That franchise has had so many endings, when they announce that the next
one is a ‘final chapter’ I don’t believe it for a moment.
If you’ve made it this far in the article, thank you for
reading this much! You’re what makes me want to keep this blog alive and
continuing for as long as I can handle it. :)
What’s your favorite scary movie? Are there any classics,
contemporary or new horror films you’d like me to review? Let’s talk! Leave your
thoughts in the comments below!