Is it just me or is everyone else sick and tired of these people who write horror movies completely and utterly lacking imagination? Every horror movie ever is almost always predictable down to every single event. And when they aren't, the deviations are usually actually worse. I can think of only one notable deviation from my hatred of horror, and that is 'The Woman in Black'. It actually was atmospheric, creepy even when nothing was happening. And there was only one jump scare (which was done ludicrously well). All good things that other horror movies should try and do.
Note to directors, gore stopped being scary fifteen years ago when the effects got good enough to be realistic. Now, every nine year old has seen so much blood and death that it doesn't really matter. Get something new.
Also, why is it that everyone in every horror movie ever is a complete idiot, and also generally a person who makes bad or immoral decisions? Example: in Treehouse there is a curfew because some kids have gone missing, which apparently happens fairly often in this town. First of all, why is there no huge scale investigation into this string of disappearances? Secondly, why would the otherwise smart main characters flaunt this curfew to go into the middle of the woods, at night, OUTSIDE CELL RANGE, for fireworks and possible sex? Are most teenage males this idiotic in real life, or is it only horror movie ones?
I would also like to point out the stupidity of the female character in the opening scene. Not only is she dumb enough to investigate strange noises in her house rather than immediately calling the police, she then searches a couple of rooms BEFORE grabbing her shotgun. Then this girl, who is now barefoot AND diabetic, runs into the woods assuming that she can 1. catch the bad guys who took her brother and 2. actually do anything to stop them. And she does both of these things without informing anyone else, much less the cops. And guess what? She gets glass in her feet and is hobbled, then has a seizure or something, and is otherwise completely useless.
Oh and another fun fact. The girl leaves her shotgun behind rather than going back for it, and none of the idiot teens who came into the middle of the woods thought to bring so much as a knife.
Now, all of these are excusable. I mean, the reason everyone in horror movies is an idiot, helplessly unarmed, and not smart enough to call the police is because everyone who IS smart, armed and calls the cops wouldn't BE in a horror movie. They would be safe and warm at home, or the bad guy would have multiple holes through his torso. The exception to this rule is supernatural horror, where you either can't hurt the thing or no one believes you. But again, the reason this IS inexcusable is because of what I have been building up to, the awful, horrible, idiotic subgenre that this film belongs to.
That subgenre would be, the Hillbilly antagonist genre. Really? Hillbillies? As presented in this genre, the 'killer hillbillies' are always stupid, sometimes inbred, and almost never use guns. They aren't stronger than anyone else, unless they're inbred to the point of mutation, in which case they are so stupid it makes up the difference. They aren't faster than normal people either, so not hard to outrun. Oh, and if you hit them in the head with a rock? They die. Stab them with a knife? They die. Shoot them? Dead. They're just PEOPLE! But of course, no one has a gun when they run into hillbillies.
I mean ghosts? Yeah, that sucks because you can't really stop them, usually don't know what they want, and trying to get rid of them tends to be hit and miss. Monsters? Can be fast, strong, nigh unkillable, etc. But people? No.
Good horror movies are made when the main character does everything right, tries everything they can, and either makes a mistake or is simply outwitted, or there is no escape. Or when they actually do survive. I did like the ending of Treehouse since they fought back and killed them all. You know, what would actually happen if anyone with half a brain got caught in this situation. (although the idiots were in a house with a kitchen and didn't grab a KNIFE, idiots). It just took way too long for this to happen, especially considering all these kids live in a small town. NONE of them were armed? Are you kidding?
This whole subgenre is filled entirely with idiotic, pointless movies where intelligence (which evolution shows us trumps strength and speed every time) is defeated by low level animal cunning and a little bit of enhanced strength. Wrong Turn, Texas Chainsaw, Treehouse (duh), The Hills Have Eyes, etc. Not a one has anything truly scary about it, as anyone who had been properly prepared would survive. What is worse when these movies try and show you how helpless it is by having 'trained' professionals, such as cops and soldiers, taken out by the hillbillies. It's LAUGHABLE that this level of bad guy would even stand a chance against organized retaliation. The soldiers or cops who die are always inevitably the same level of stupid as the normal people.
I'm just saying, any horror movie that would be solved immediately by one slightly different action, particularly one that the characters SHOULD have made, is a fail. If the girl had kept her shotgun? problem solved. If both brothers had gone together back to the bike with the girl? They would at least have stood a chance. If soldiers actually act like soldiers instead of being incredibly easy to ambush and allowing completely untrained idiots kill them without resistance? End of story. If a horror movie would never have happened if one character was armed? Not scary, because anyone can be armed, and it is simple misfortune that an unarmed victim was selected.
So yeah. If that was TLDR: hillbilly horror movies are stupid because hillbillies are dumb, average speed, average strength, and easily killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment