June
9
Hostel Issues
I have never seen a Hostel movie. This does not mean that I don't like horror. I'm a pro. I was raised by a movie buff father who took me to see everything, from Kinji Fukasaku's Tora, Tora, Tora! and Hammer Dracula flicks to Audie Murphy westerns. I grew up on action epics and violence. I loved Lawrence of Arabia and The Haunting, which scared me more than any movie I have ever seen since. In other words, I can handle anything.
My approach to horror is the same as my approach to genre fiction. The better the auteur, the more I like it. I want to admire the skill and the craft, from John Carpenter, George Romero, Wes Craven and Brian DePalma to Edgar Wright, Guillermo del Toro, Wes Craven, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. But I try to avoid bad writing. So where do I draw the line? I can handle Dawn of the Dead but I have yet to see a Freddy or Jason movie. I confess. I'm a horror snob.
I keep waiting for the current horror cycle to pass already. When will people get tired of this extreme gore? Still, I will not go to torture porn. Besides, I have seen Scary Movie 4 and Planet Terror. These Saw and Hostel movies are already the butt of parody. Which means they are over. I hope. Charles McGrath confesses his DVD horror addiction in the NYT. The LAT makes a case for a horror slump. Hostel Part II will score, though.. UPDATE: "Hostel II" took in $8.7 million off 2,350, and debuted in sixth place. Not good. It scored a 43 ranking on Metacritic.
Here's Patrick Goldstein's good column on selling Hostel Part II.
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It's amazing how quickly we forget that horror movies were once the low-budget "grind out" a profit picture of the past. In the post Scream world, we expect them all to make $100 million or be a failure. We rapidly forget that Scream was the first horror movie to break that benchmark and that its creator went on to make Dawson's Creek.
Williamson was, and is, first and foremost a creator of "teen" stories. A couple of his films have been based on young adult novels by Lois Duncan http://loisduncan.arquettes.com/Awards2.htm. I Know What You Did Last Summer was a direct adaptation and Teaching Mrs. Tingle bears a lot of similarity to Killing Mr. Griffin.
The problem with the current spat of horror films is, I believe, two-fold. I think Weinstein is right when he says the audience is "oversaturated," but I also think you are right in pointing out that a lot of the films just aren't very good.
Unlike Roger Ebert, I liked the first Hitcher film, but it isn't exactly at the top of my "needed to be remade" list. Even with Sean Bean, this movie has sat in my unwatched Netflix pile for a few weeks. 28 Days Later is a must see, but did it need a sequel? Does the sequel touch the same sociocritical/political philosophy notes? Does it need to?
I would like to point out one more thing, before begging that we actually get to have a "discussion" some day, the reason a film like The Haunting is so powerful is that it is about real "horror," the lingering thoughtful kind. Most modern horror films, though I think there are exceptions, are about tension and worry. We watch the mounting tension of the film as the protagonist experiences higher threat levels, but very little is about creating a sense of lingering fear.
I could talk about this for hours, and this forum isn't the best suited for more than blurb comments.
Posted by: Christian Johnson | June 11, 2007 at 10:41 AM
I'm not a horror buff either, but I'm married to one, so I wind up watching a lot more than I'd ever have expected. I think I'm finally starting to get it -- horror in a way is a more daredevil act than any other genre, either it's freakily good (and "works"), or it's a wipeout. And when it works it tends to do so in trash-dream-poetic ways that can be fascinating.
I haven't caught either of the "Hostel" movies either. But you might enjoy Eli Roth's first movie, "Cabin Fever," which is a pretty slick take on the "teens in the woods get besiedged" genre. And I loved Ronny Yu's "Freddy Vs. Jason," even though I don't think I've ever seen any other Freddy or Jason movies. It's a whacked-out, satirical, over-the-top, set-fire-to-it-all jamboree.
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2003/08/freddy_vs_jason.html
Posted by: Michael Blowhard | June 12, 2007 at 10:49 AM