Where Is The Horror ? Five Horror Movies That Were Not Horrifying, At All

Hor­ror movies are noto­ri­ously a crit­i­cally neglected genre. When the aver­age high­brow cinephile thinks of hor­ror, he tends to think of some silly slasher film with no human­ity and not an ounce of respect for its audi­ence. Hor­ror fans–true hor­ror fans–know that this sim­ply isn’t true. There are end­less amounts of great hor­ror films, often obscure and low bud­get. These films are filled with inge­nu­ity and incred­i­ble ideas that put the fear in our hears with­out requir­ing that our brains be removed from our head in order to enjoy them.

Unfor­tu­nately, these low bud­get beau­ties are often over­looked (and as is more and more com­mon) or remade into some­thing that is…well, not much more than a silly hor­ror film with not an ounce of respect for its audi­ence. What is even worse is that often when this happens…the films tend to not even be the least bit fright­en­ing. Here is a list of five clunk­ers who are so scary for being oh so bad and un-scary.

THE WICKER MAN

 

It seemed to have every­thing going for it. “The Wicker Man” was orig­i­nally a bru­tally fright­en­ing and sex­u­al­ized British thriller star­ring Christo­pher Lee from the sev­en­ties. The film was so intense in its depic­tion of sex­ual deviance in a small Island com­mu­nity that much of the film was cen­sored. An odd gem full of strange music and bizarre humor, it remained obscure for years. Thanks to Anchor Bay and DVD, the orig­i­nal film is now read­ily available.

But this is the remake. Star­ring Nico­las Cage and directed by Neil Labute, there was much hope for this film. Labute became famous for his dan­ger­ous and heady movies often revolv­ing around the sex­ual rela­tion­ships of men and women. A tale of an entire island with strange notions of sex­u­al­ity seemed like a good fit for him. And Nicholas Cage…when he is crazy good, he is crazy good. With a hefty bud­get and much tal­ent, it seemed like an event for hor­ror fans. Then they dis­cov­ered the film was rated PG-13 through the pre­vues. Then they saw the film and dis­cov­ered it sucked. How did this hap­pen? Well (as this list will show you) remakes tend to suck as all human­ity has been sucked out of it. Also, Nic Cage was crazy, but crazy bad. As for Labute, he seemed sim­ply off his game. Per­haps it was the rat­ing that lim­ited him or per­haps he just didn’t have a good grasp on the mate­r­ial. “The Wicker Man” was an odd mis­fire. Hardly enjoy­able, and com­pletely lack­ing in horror.

 

Planet of the Apes

 

This was the begin­ning of the end for Tim Bur­ton. While some have liked his strange Johnny Depp in make up revi­sions of such clas­sic prop­er­ties as “Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­tory” and “Alice in Won­der­land,” they are far from the clas­sics they orig­i­nally were. And this, his first remake of a clas­sic is per­haps his worst. First of all, we all know the deal. The shock of the orig­i­nal has all been but spoiled for future gen­er­a­tions. But how shock­ing upon the orig­i­nal release of the orig­i­nal film to dis­cover that the Planet of the Apes was, in fact, Earth. But now that shock is gone, and the movie really had noth­ing to offer except a lame alter­na­tive to the end­ing that couldn’t pos­si­bly be bested. Also lack­ing is the deep nihilism that was promi­nent in the entire series. What peo­ple often for­get about the “Apes” films is just how damn dark they were. That’s what made them scary. That’s what made them fright­en­ing. And some of them were even rated “G.” This PG-13 ver­sion, alas, is not.

 

BLACK CHRISTMAS

This film is so bad; it is hardly worth talk­ing about. So I’ll make it brief. One: It is a remake of a clas­sic hor­ror film (are we sens­ing a trend here?). Two: It was pro­duced by Michael Bay, who, through his pro­duc­tion com­pany Plat­inum Dunes seems to be man­ag­ing to sin­gle hand­edly take qual­ity hor­ror prop­er­ties and remake them into the most god-awful and for­get­table films. Sim­ply put, based upon the films made, Bay just doesn’t under­stand hor­ror. He under­stands gore and spec­ta­cle, and the geek show. But he doesn’t know what makes us afraid. Unless it’s a seven hour “Trans­form­ers” film. Three: See­ing as Bay doesn’t under­stand any­thing, he com­pletely omit­ted what made the orig­i­nal freaky in the first place, which was, namely, that we don’t know who the bad­die is…just who is that breath­ing heav­ily in the attic, dammit? Four: So, in place of the hor­ror, he puts dis­gust­ing, point­less nas­ti­ness such as a scene of odd incest, which tar­nishes the whole entire film. So, in summation.this film sucks and see the clas­sic orig­i­nal from Bob Clark, direc­tor of “A Christ­mas Story!”

THE VILLAGE

Man, these movies are get­ting bad! What are you doing to me, requir­ing this list of me for your sim­ple amuse­ment? Oh, it is get­ting so bad I don’t know what to do. Why would you need any more awful films? Why would you need “The Vil­lage?” A huge bud­get film from a film­maker in his prime after mak­ing hit after hit? The only fear in this movie came from M. Night who decided he was scared of tak­ing a chance and not hav­ing a twist at the end of his films. This twist is non­sense. The hor­ror is nonex­is­tent. And the film is non­sense? Did I say that? Why would any of these char­ac­ters act this way? They wouldn’t. But, for­get that. See the movie. Dis­cover the twist end­ing. Then play back the scene where the mon­ster (actu­ally actor Adrien Brody in cos­tume) chases a char­ac­ter. Notice the ani­mal­is­tic sound effect? Who made that sound? The sound effects depart­ment, but of course, since it is totally illog­i­cal and has no source ori­gin on screen. But hey, at least it isn’t a remake. I’m done with this one.

AVP

 

What do you get when you take two of the most fright­en­ing and hor­ri­fy­ing crea­tures from the series of sci­ence fic­tion and hor­ror cin­ema and pit them against each other in a PG-13 action epic helmed by Paul W.S. Ander­son (who directed the great “Event Hori­zon” and a lot of crap)? You get crap. Big bud­get crap with no thought and a total waste of pro­duc­tion value, fan loy­alty, and qual­ity monsters.

Now go watch some good hor­ror movies. I find it hor­ri­fy­ing you are still read­ing this.

Tagged as: horror movie