Why does the horror genre continue to disappoint me?

Rating: Null/10 (9 November 2004)

Let me preface this rant with the fact that I'm no Horror film buff - And that my viewing of Horror films is limited to the occasional "mainstream" title. But I AM a film buff - and enjoy watching them... and occasionally making them, immensely. If there's anyone in Hollywood that desperately deserves some sort of award, it should be the Trailer editors. A good trailer alone can make it seem worthwhile to drop down your 9 bucks and sit through just about anything. So it was the case with "SAW" for myself. The trailer looked raw, provocative... veiled in mystery... Sadly, the film did not live up to the trailer. Now, my intent is not to bash this film, because I found the premise to the film so very interesting. Of its obvious flaws - the horrible acting of Cary Elwes and his bathroom sidekick were devastating to its legitimacy - as the film's climax was reduced to an awkward "who done it" comedy routine. But as I left the theater, what I really felt was disappointment. That this film, with such promise, failed to deliver. Which brings me to my subject... modern Horror Films. Is there anything "scary" anymore. I'll say - the one moment in Saw that I actually felt that twinge in my heart, was the sequence where "Adam" is going through his apartment using his flash... looking for an intruder. For me, it was the subtlety of the scene that made it "scary." No unrealistic gore... No slick special effect... Like the trailer, it was veiled. The anticipation and the restraint of the director to let me fill in the gaps in my head made my heart beat just a bit faster. And I think that buried in that feeling is the essence of what made us all cry in the night, as children -an absolute fear of the unknown. What what was a stuffed animal by day to us could seem like a lurking beast at night, cast in shadowy moonlight. Any of the Horror movies I see today are over the top, cliché ridden spectacles. Even the "shocking ending" has gotten a bit old with M. Night's tired yarns. Modern Horror lacks the subtlety that allows our minds to fill in the details from our own bag of nightmares. Show me some sort of creature in all its Hollywood glory and my mind quickly looks for features that reveal it as being fake... my mind rationalizes that this is some fictitious entity put before me on display... now... only show me a few aspects of this creature or perhaps only sound... a whisper.. a hint of what is to come... and that I will touch on something. I can only remember once in my adult life that I felt my heart absolutely skip a beat in the movie theater - and that was at the climax of the Blair Witch project. I actually found the middle of the film boring - except when the tent was rattled but for much the same reasons... but that final shot... a blurred, dark POV of the man in the corner.. and then black... There was no cheesy monster, no over the top effects, no canned acting... girl in distress... no menace chasing a bunch of teens... it was simple, and yet it shook me up - because it played before me like my own nightmares... laced in that "fear of the unknown," in that darkness.. (and not purely in the literary sense). I think H-wood, or any serious horror film producers need turn the dial back a bit and bring subtlety back to their craft... because I've anything you show me outright - I'm not going to buy. Which, brings me back to Saw - though part seemed to be some derivative of se7en - the idea of waking up in a bathroom with another man.. a hacksaw.. etc.. is nightmarish... MAKE IT A NIGHTMARE for me... Let me know what you think...