Normally I love horror, but this was just inane

Rating: 1/10 (19 October 2019)

Few films have had a more negative effect on the horror genre than Saw. It's inexplicable success led to the genre being flooded with even worse (which one wouldn't expect to be possible) imitators, creating a period where virtually nothing interesting came out in the genre. The problem with this type of film is simply that it just isn't interesting. It's not scary, it's basically just a long boring catalogue of ways that people can be injured, with no suspense or speak of. Despite the superficial similarities to the slasher genre, the two styles are worlds apart, in that slasher movies build up tension between the deaths, while torture films are flat and unengaging. Also, the whole aesthetic style associated with genre (lots of rust, muddy camerawork, annoying soundtrack) is ugly, I much prefer older horror aesthetics, with their lurid colours and unconvincing effects, which still manage to be more frightening than the tedium of post-Saw horror. We need a return to the style of real horror directors like George Romero and John Carpenter (ideally with exclusively practical effects, none of the CGI rubbish that dominates the industry today; a VHS revival would be nice too) instead of the ridiculous claptrap that gets marketed as horror today (there are a few good directors working now, but my point still stands).