(Mild Spoilers) re: the money shot

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 1999)

So I've been reading horror by Joyce Carol Oates recently, and I've been astonished and refreshed by how she writes without any moneyshots. A "moneyshot" is a term from the porn industry: the close-up of the male climax is apparently the high point of most straight male porn flicks, and in the industry they call it the moneyshot. I got to thinking how most horror, book and film, uses moneyshots: the teacher turns into a multi-tentacled alien, the vampire appears in full glory and starts killing folks off, the demon is summoned and holds the severed virgin's head in its hand. Whatever. Oates deliberately avoids moneyshots in her fiction, leaves the reader a little bit frustrated, never resolves the tension she builds -- and the horror is all the greater.
Seems to me that that's what the BWP is trying to accomplish, and that's a major reason why a lot of folks don't like it. There's barely any moneyshots in the movie. The tension builds, but the directors never let you release the tension. There's never an appropriate moment to scream, so the screams stay on the inside.
Some folks have criticized the characters in the film for acting unrealistically. I wonder how many of these critics have gone camping with cityfolk? In unfamiliar environments where they're incompetent, folks can get crazy real quick.
The camerawork functioned very well. The characters were off-kilter, frantic, crazy; the camerawork prevented us from gaining our balance once we got sucked into the story. And Josh's brilliant minispeech about Heather's use of the camera --"Now I see why you like this thing: it filters reality, lets you believe it's not real" -- neatly reversed itself, suggesting that we ourselves were filtering reality and best remove the filter.
The twiggy props were terrifying. It's hard to believe that a sane mind would think of building them, and then could create them so well that in the latter half of the movie the whole woods looked like one massive malevolent twiggy prop. Anything more polished would have shouted, "Hollywood! Hollywood!" and allowed us to distance ourselves from the movie.
I'm grateful for the audience with which I saw the film. I would've wanted to kill anyone sniggering in the theater. However, when the movie ended, the entire audience was stone cold silent as we filed out the exits, stunned. My girlfriend clutched my hand bloodless and kept telling me, "I'm *never* going camping again. I'm *never* going camping again. I'm *never..."
I hope more horror fiction will learn its lesson and leave out the moneyshots.