Forget about the Final Destination franchise, which may leave you wishing you did suffer from actual memory loss. What I crave for in horror flicks of the 21st century is genuine terror and trepidation. I’m fed up of seeing a stereotypical group of 20-somethings drinking to excess around a campfire in the Middle of Nowhere™. Never do they consider what would happen if a wolf or bear or hockey mask adorned living corpse were to attack their sanctuary of unsafe sex. And amongst their frolics and fun, you can just about hear the rumble of Alfred Hitchcock spinning in his grave.
Of course, there are some exceptions to this inexhaustible rule. One of my favourite films of 2008 was the Swedish horror tale, Let The Right One In. With shots as chilling as blood in the snow, director Tomas Alfredson trialled his visual style in a film about the friendship between two young misfits, before having it universally confirmed by his recent Tinker Tailor Solider Spy. He brought a crafted artfulness to the creepy atmospherics, in a very dissimilar style to Pascal Laugier’s equally as exceptional Martyrs, released the same year. Controversial upon its release in France, Martyrs begins like torture porn – albeit stylishly done – before heading in a very, very different direction. It’s one of those films by a true visionary; it’s an arresting meditation on pain and the purpose of suffering, which certainly outshined the gory and popular reappraisals of the Saw series. Yet at the box office Saw beat any film that even managed to stumble into the ring. When it hit the screens back in 2004, no one expected it to turn into a seven film franchise, especially not me, but the sledgehammer ending ensured that the sadistic Jigsaw and his puppet pal would live to kill another day. And another. And… you see where I’m going.
It’s fair to say the best horror films are those that innovate and thus reinvent the genre. For instance, taking account of a few anomalies (see 28 Days Later), zombies just aren’t scary anymore. If you want to find out why, look no further than Shaun of the Dead. The only time when they do appear remotely threatening is when there are hundreds of them swarming you. But, then again, a hundred of ANYTHING is scary. A hundred muskrats, a hundred librarians, really, you name it, if there is over a hundred of something, I’m probably going to be scared of it. (Exception: grains of rice). And yet in the twelve years of this sorry century, we’ve seen so many ‘[insert time of day] of the Dead’ films as to ensure that the subgenre resembles nothing other than the last refuge of the talentless.
That’s why it’s such a shame that the few underrated classics, as I’ve mentioned, continue to fall through the cracks (usually to make room for Friday the 13th Part 22: Jason Is Still a Dick). Now I know Hollywood isn’t really to blame – they’re an industry that only responds to a demand and so forth. But directors, please, once in a while, take a leaf out of Hitchcock’s book: forget your pantomime villains and your silicone-filled victims. I’d rather see you aim for the skies than for the jugular.
