Finding Decent Horror Left and Right... What's Your Problem?

The refrain that I hear from people all the time is "Why aren't there any good horror films anymore?" "There are too many remakes!" and "There are too many sequels!" run a close tie for second in reasons why people get out of the horror genre, at least in my encounters with those who persist in maintaining they are horror fans.

When I hear such statements (and the second and third ones are valid arguments), I take it to mean one thing: The questioners really aren't looking around very hard. It could also mean they are only paying lip service to being a horror fan, but I usually feel like the average person doesn't try really hard in considering such things in the first place. There are scores of horror films released each and every year, as have been for ages, and the bulk of the lot are not remakes or sequels. Yes, the quality varies greatly, like in any movie genre, as do the sizes of their budgets. And like any other type of movie, high budget doesn't necessarily equal high quality, and vice versa. What might be the biggest killer for fans of the genre are the obvious ripoffs of bigger, possibly better, and/or more popular films.

Here's the real catch for me with that "Why aren't there any good horror films anymore?" question. Every so often, I find myself thinking the same thing, especially if I have taken an extended break from my usual movie-watching crunch (for the last few years, I have averaged over two films a day). More than any other type of film, my first thoughts when returning to the fold is "I need to find a good horror film."

And I, like many of my fellow horror fans, find them all the time. We usually don't have to look too far to find something to give the junkie their fix. But we would prefer that it were quality junk. I think, for many of us, our souls get crushed a little every time Michael Bay announces he has purchased the rights to remake something with his mindless style. Or every time some fake "found footage" series puts out its umpteenth film in the cycle. (This is not to discount the fact that I have actually enjoyed some of the films in these examples, against my better judgment or over my usual objections.)

I thought that I would look at Flickchart the other day to see what horror films I had ranked the highest over the past few years. I have ranked over 11,600 films to date on that platform, and have really enjoyed using their Charts feature to find films that I still need to watch in various genres or, to use my recent postings about Christopher Lee as a big example, finding out which films from a particular actor, actress or director I am delinquent in seeing. [If you want to play along at home, you can check out my Flickchart profile here: http://www.flickchart.com/Cinema4Pylon.]

My Top 15 Horror Films for this decade are:

1. The Babadook (2014) Dir: Jennifer Kent
2. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) Dir: Eli Craig
3. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) Dir: Ana Lily Amirpour
4. Attack the Block (2011) Dir: Joe Cornish
5. The Cabin in the Woods (2012) Dir: Drew Goddard
6. Witching & Bitching [Las brujas de Zugarramurdi] (2013) Dir: Álex de la Iglesia
7. Berberian Sound Studio (2012) Dir: Peter Strickland
8. Spring (2014) Dir: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
9. It Follows (2014) Dir: David Robert Mitchell
10. You're Next (2011) Dir: Adam Wingard
11. What We Do in the Shadows (2014) Dir: Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi
12. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) Dir: Jim Jarmusch
13. White God [Fehér isten] (2014) Dir: Kornél Mundruczó
14. The Editor (2014) Dir: Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy 
15. The Final Girls (2015) Dir: Todd Strauss Schulson [Note: review posting here tomorrow.]

No good horror-related films in recent years, you still say? I beg to differ. I feel that this is a truly solid list for just over half a decade, and there are some others in that time frame that came really close to my Top 15. As you can see, no remakes or sequels are in the bunch, though I am not opposed to some being in here. I just didn't like any that have come out thus far this decade as much as I like the films here. 

The American remake of Let the Right One In, Let Me In, which I thought would be a groundbreaking film if only that superior original version didn't already exist (and so loudly and recently too, is in my #24 slot for the 2010s. If you study the numbers of the chart in relation to my full list of films, it is actually not that many degrees away being in the Top 15. The thing about Flickchart when you use it is that you rank all of the films in your full list (or in smaller lists against each other), so the rankings can be very fluid if you do it a lot. (Man, that sounded kind of dirty...) One day, I might decide that I like Let Me In a lot more than other films just above it, and then my whole list changes dramatically.

Another trend worth noticing is that there are no repeated directors in the Top 15. It's almost like creating a top-notch horror film has become a one-and-done deal. Are we long past the days when the genre's mainstream was ruled by a few true Masters of Horror? I don't think so. I think Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, a filmmaking duo, have some promise in going even further beyond what I have liked from them so far. There are always going to be people who want to be known as a Master of Horror (Ben Wheatley seems to be making a run at it; Eli Roth has the talent but squanders it on fratboy excess), but to return us to the halcyon days, or so we perceive it, of Romero, Carpenter, Landis, Dante, Hooper, etc.? It remains to be seen.

For comparison, since we are dealing in double the years, here is my Top 30 list for the first decade of the 21st century, 2000-2009:

1. Shaun of the Dead (2004) Dir: Edgar Wright
2. Let the Right One In (2008) Dir: Tomas Alfredson
3. The Descent (2005) Dir: Neil Marshall
4. Death Proof (2007) Dir: Quentin Tarantino
5. 28 Days Later (2002) Dir: Danny Boyle
6. Grindhouse (2007) Dir: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
7. Thirst (2009) Dir: Chan-wook Park
8. The Devil's Backbone (2001) Dir: Guillermo del Toro
9. Bubba Ho-tep (2002) Dir: Don Coscarelli
10. Trick 'r Treat (2008) Dir: Michael Dougherty
11. Splinter (2008) Dir: Toby Wilkins
12. Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) Dir: Takashi Shimizu
13. The Orphanage (2007) Dir: Juan Antonio Bayona
14. May (2002) Dir: Lucky McKee
15. Frailty (2002) Dir: Bill Paxton
16. Pulse (2001) Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
17. The Devil's Rejects (2005) Dir: Rob Zombie
18. Antichrist (2009) Dir: Lars von Trier
19. Three... Extremes (2004) Dir: Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, and Chan-wook Park
20. The Loved Ones (2009) Dir: Sean Byrne
21. Ginger Snaps (2000) Dir: John Fawcett
22. Slither (2006) Dir: James Gunn
23. Black Sheep (2007) Dir: Jonathan King
24. Cloverfield (2008) Dir: Matt Reeves
25. The Host (2006) Dir: Joon-ho Bong
26. High Tension [Haute Tension] (2003) Dir: Alexandre Aja
27. One Missed Call (2003) Dir: Takashi Miike
28. Splice (2009) Dir: Vincenzo Natali
29. The Mist (2007) Dir: Frank Darabont
30. Dawn of the Dead (2004) Dir: Zack Snyder

This time, because the list is twice the length, one big remake is in the #30 slot on the list, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, which has lost a lot of steam with me since it first came out, though I still like it a lot. For horror purists who don't like their horror-comedies mixed in with what they would consider true horror, I'm sorry, but I don't play that way. I prefer use the term "horror-related" to cover my bets. I prefer to keep the range more open, though I did skip one film on my Flickchart list (Bela Tarr's stunning The Werckmeister Harmonies) off of my final accounting because, while it has horrific, hypnotic moments, it is not generally considered to be a horror film). 

One is at the mercy on Flickchart at the genres its small staff have decided to use, and sometimes a film you might generally consider to be horror might actually be sitting somewhere else. In making these two lists, I did not research it deeply enough to combine other subgenres -- such as "monster film," "ghost film" or "haunted house" -- to see if everything was caught. Perhaps I will do so in the near future and amend these lists.

Once again, there is not a lot of repeat business on this second list for directing names. Except in one major case. There are some who might grouse seeing that both Death Proof and the double-feature program of which it served as the second half, Grindhouse, are on here. I thought about leaving Grindhouse off for exactly the reason that it looked like I am doubling down. My reason for keeping it is that the solo Death Proof is a longer cut of the same film, while the Grindhouse program contains other items, such as the delicious set of fake horror movie trailers in the center, that make it a totally separate experience. even if I don't like the Robert Rodriguez half of the production enough for it to make this list on its own.

There are my lists, for better or worse, and I stand by them. For now. Because we are talking about Flickchart here, and the thing about Flickchart is that things can change fast on there. All you have to do is keep ranking. Just today, I saw the new Del Toro epic, Crimson Peak, and while I am still organizing my thoughts and notes on it, I did greatly enjoy the film and I am fairly certain that once a short period of ranking has occurred, that it will probably rest comfortably in my Top 15 for the 2010s.

And since I don't directly recommend films for people anymore, unless they fall into a very small group of about six people (none of them my wife), then you will have to use these lists as guidance if you are looking for me to help you find one of those decent horror films that don't seem to come out anymore. 

Just don't whine about it to me later, because I accept no responsibility for your lack of taste.

Rating Systems and That Darned Third Rule

I'm taking some time out of my busy Kong schedule to conclude the year, and my first three months of blogging, with a couple of features that I promised to post, but have thus far failed to fulfill. This would be the explanation of my #9 Ratings System, and the grand unveiling of the third of my Movie Attendance Mottos.

THE #9 RATINGS SYSTEM

I find that 4-and-5 numbered ratings systems, however starred, ticketed, monkeyed, breasted or whatever gimmick you might wish to employ to display it, are too truncated for my purposes. Too tight. I need room to spread out. The other standby is the #10 system, but I find that slightly too, too long. Roger Ebert goes with a #2 system on his show, thumbs up or thumbs down, but in his column he resorts to a 4 star system, which is actually a #7 system once you count his 1/2 ratings. I chose to roll with a system based on 9, with the list broken into three sections:

9: Classic

8: Excellent

7: Very Good

6: Good (Above Average)

5: Average

4: Bad (Below Average)

3: Very Bad

2: Bordering on Nauseating

1: Excruciatingly Awful

The center of this list is just that: it centers everything that goes on in the system. My assumption is that the bulk of films that are released are not actually good or even bad, but simply average. Average films for a populace that accepts mediocrity as a critical vanguard. It is where Chris Columbus films go to die, it is where 18-kid family movies can rest in pieces, and it is where the bulk of Julia Roberts' and Sandra Bullock's careers can gather dust for all eternity. (I say "the bulk" of their careers, for they do have good films on their resumes.) The worst place that a film can land on this list is not at #1, "Excruciatingly Awful" No, it is its being relegated to the middle of this list, the merely "Average" slot, for my next assumption is that if a film is actually bad, then there must be a certain level of interest in it. Not so with the average films; to me, the worst cinematic crime that a filmmaker can perpetrate on his audience is lulling them into numbing acceptance of subpar material. Hey, Hamlet, are you drilling for oil? No? Then why don't you stop boring?

That leaves 4 slots up, and 4 slots down; up for excellence, down for putrescence. On the low end of the scale, it might shock you to find out that a certain renowned "Bad Film" does not reside at the bottom of my ratings well. The truth of the matter is that Plan 9 From Outer Space is not the Worst Film of All Time. There are films of far greater incompetence out there, and despite what you may have been lead to believe over the years, Ed Wood did possess a certain rebel ingenuity in producing his pictures. They may seem haphazardly made, and they were, often on the fly, and it is the sheer gall and chutzpah that he used which comprise the reasons why I actually admire him. More filmmakers should be possessed of the sheer drive that he had to complete his poverty row affairs. So, Plan 9 does not get a 1 on my list; I actually rate it about a 3. It is a very bad film, but it is quite endearing in its naïveté, and there are far worse films to have to endure. (Manos: Hands of Fate is certainly one of them. I fully agree with MST3K's and EW's assessments.)

As for the good ratings slots, they are easy to figure out, but I must say that I have an awfully hard time letting a film make the jump to "Classic" status. Even films generally considered to be classics will often get short shrift at my hands, and even many films that I number amongst my favorites do not end up in that hallowed category.

I am still working out some of the details of the list, and am still undergoing a slow and monotonous renovation of my ratings on IMDB to fit its parameters. Anytime I see a picture anew, I reevaluate my rating to make sure that it is properly placed, and as I continue to list films on my sporadically posted Recently Rated Movies feature, all of the detailed films will have been changed or added to IMDB prior to posting (you may access my IMDB ratings but clicking on the link on the side of this page).

THE MOVIE ATTENDANCE MOTTOS

I had previously announced two of my Movie Attendance Mottos in a post over two months ago, and mentioned them only at that time because they pertained to the subject at hand. The third had not come into play with that subject. It is now time that I laid out all three together:

1. I Will See Any Movie At Least Once.2. I Will See Any Movie at Any Time (Barring Previous Engagement or Deathly Illness).3. I Must See A Film First Before Critiquing It.

Pretty basic summation of what keeps my movie-watching engine running. The first movie mainly makes me watch any movie that I am confronted with, whether buddies want to check out the latest action flick, or a niece wants me to watch a Hilary Duff movie with her. Rather than barring my eyes from different genres, styles, and actors (whether I actually have an interest in their work or not), it keeps things fresh and keeps me up on new trends in the cinema. It also means that I am more apt to check out that most likely crappy film that I pass on Sci-Fi or USA, but the truth is, you never know what you will discover until you actually check something out. Especially things off of your well-beaten path.

The second rule means that I won't sneak out of showings of films at odd times when my friends are going, even if I don't really want to see a certain film. It's the "Well, why the hell not?" rule. I take a certain measure of pride in following through on this rule, and I have to be truly in pain to not go. (Sometimes, in the case of the first time I saw the modern version of The Mummy, I was in intense pain but jammed a bunch of prescribed painkillers down my throat and went anyway. When I saw the picture again a couple months later, I realized that I had been lucky to have slept through most of it the first time, and longed to have some of those painkillers back in my pocket.)

The third and last rule stemmed from a life spent ragging on my co-workers' choices of reading material: Danielle Steel, Harlequin romances, Harold Robbins, Nora Roberts, The Destroyer and Executioner serials, Patrick MacManus' outdoors larf-fests, and V.C. Andrews' (or rather, her ghostwriters') inexplicably popular incest novels. I read examples, sometimes more than one, of all these series or writers in a quest to ascertain exactly why they were all so popular, and especially with people that I had to deal with on a daily basis. A little research helped me understand the earthlings a little better, and supplied me with ample ammunition for future attacks on character and taste (if needed). (For the record, Nora Roberts is a pretty damn good writer, MacManus is intermittently amusing, and the Destroyer novels were more fun than I like to admit to having had reading them. The rest can suck it.) I eventually found my attacking the filmic choices of others to run counter to what I applied to literature, so I simply adapted that rule and added it to my list.

And there you have it...

Recently Rated Movies #5 (Halloween Weekend Edition, Day 2)

OK, by the time that I got around to seeing Vampire Bats on CBS Sunday night, I had been up since five that morning, and so I knew it was going to be rough going staying awake for the duration of this Lucy Lawless-starrer (a sort of sequel to Locusts, which appeared earlier this year on the same network, and to which I will admit I did not see). Jen wanted to see Craig Ferguson's cameo as "Fisherman #1" (which he has joked about incessantly on his show), and once he appeared (amusing as expected) and was dispatched by the bloodthirsty, titular villains, she was fast asleep. I made it halfway through and then was out for the evening. (At least, I was until four this morning. More on that below.) Judging from the first half, I didn't miss much in the second. (Though there is a rating below, I did not actually vote for it on IMDb. I don't vote for a film unless I have seen the entire thing. The rating below is merely for reference.)

It is now almost 7:30 a.m. and I have to go to work, but I have already seen three films this morning, so I will get to my office without feeling that I am totally missing out on my favorite day. Here are the Day 2 ratings:

Bedlam (1946) (DVD) - 7
The Ghost Breakers (1940) (TCM) - 6
It Came From Outer Space (1953) (TCM) - 7
The Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) (DVD) - 4
The Mad Monster (1942) (DVD) - 3
Vampire Bats (2005) (CBS) (first hour only) - 4.

Recently Rated Movies #1

Someday, I will discuss my ratings system to a greater degree. For the moment, let me state that I rate on a scale from 1 to 9, not so much to piss on the IMDb 10-ratings system, but actually to piss on the 4 or 5 star systems so prevalent in review culture instead, which make no sense to my head whatsoever. Somehow, mathematically, the 9-system does make sense to me.

Every few days on this site, I am planning to post a list of the latest films that I have seen either in theatres, on TV or video, and the subsequent ratings that I have given them. (This is mainly to give me a quick-hit item to throw up on the blog on days when I don't have the time to devote to a larger post.)

And so, without further delays, the first of those lists:

Tongan Ninja (2002, DVD) - 5
A History of Violence (2005) - 8
Saw (2004, DVD) - 6
Chikyu Boeigun [The Mysterians] (1957, DVD) - 6
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) - 8