In the "Era of the Desensitized Audience", this Horror Flick Stands Above the Rest

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2011)

First things first, I thought this was one of the better scary movies I have ever seen. Well made and as creepy as I would imagine a movie could be w/o being exploitative in some fashion. However, I was shocked when I left the movie w/ my three friends (all of which loved the movie and, like myself, have seen thousands of horror flicks), I heard a meathead-ish guy behind me being like, "dude, that didn't scare me at all, I thought it was funny."
This reminded me of a few of my other friends that always laughed during scary movies - I was never annoyed by this until I noticed that they laughed harder during movies that I thought were scarier than the average horror flick (e.g. Exorcist, The Shining, etc). Upon further research, I feel quite confident that this type of reaction is disingenuous and, apparently, quite prevalent. Psychologists have examined it for years. Many people, when scared, are able to disassociate from the traumatic situation w/ laughter. This is how they minimize the extent to which they are "scared".
That being said, w/ people like this out there (and likely critics, too), I would imagine it is a VERY tough battle trying to out-do horror classics. Not only are there these disassociate types, but people are generally more desensitized overall, so you are trying to scare an audience that isn't as easily scared.
My point is this - this movie was very well made and very scary/creepy despite some of the comments to the contrary - I'm sure there is merit to some of the criticisms about the acting and such, but I believe very strongly that this movie will eventually get the credit it deserves.