Movies that won't spook

[Ctrl Alt Del]

Remote village/town stops communicating to outside world, police sent to investigate... Suddenly no contact, so you then the army send in special forces; you follow these guys. Village/Town empty except for a few random body parts and lots of blood... The special forces team are slowly picked off one by one, just leaving blood and gore behind... The last one is left, makes a last stand and is killed by something, and the film ends. You never see the monster, but then maybe thats just me...

 

Replace the town for a jungle and there you have it; Predator, the first one. How I used to love this movie.

[igyman]

The last movie that managed to scare me was Darkness. The movie has no explicit killing and doesn't feature slashing, torture and the like, but it has a whole bunch of chilling moments that manage to creep you out. The story is fairly interesting and presented well enough for you to keep watching to the very end.

 

@Ctrl Alt Del: Yeah, the Predator was awesome, but I don't really attribute scary to it. Entertaining, hell yeah.

 

It's been a long while since a movie has scared me. Disgusted, yes (I'm looking at you, Serbian Film. Didn't waste my time finishing that one.).

 

Heh, yeah, have to agree with you there. That particular film isn't very popular here in Serbia either. I myself have only heard of what it's about and decided not to bother watching it.

 

I too don't understand the whole "torture enjoyment" thing. I've seen the last half hour or so of the first Saw and admittedly I did like that one (well, the part I watched anyway), but mostly because of that revelation at the end of the movie. Didn't bother watching any of the sequels though. I also watched The Hills have Eyes and a part of one of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and I simply laughed at the idiocy of each of those films. They weren't even remotely scary, but they were plenty of disgusting.

[jonathan7]

J7, I think you might be on to something there with your horror film premise...

 

Lets add to that: They come into the town and find a small child alive in the town. This way you can build on the idea of suspicion. Is the child somehow involved? Never give it away, but leave vague clues that she might(even if she isn't). Add in some eerie sounds, very little music(or none) that keeps the audience drawn in to listening for the "big bad" rather than looking. Let their minds figure it out. The deaths all need to happen at night, during a blackout. Have at least one person die while they are in camp and everyone is awake.

 

Example scene:

Sgt. Buke: <explicative> coffee is runnin through me.

<snipped for brevity>

 

Hehe, sounds good, I did think about your latter point, but possibly hadn't expressed it well enough, hadn't thought about the small child, but its a good idea... Maybe we should make a Lucas Forums horror film!

 

@JediMaster12, I'd certainly agree generally with your overall point, but I think your point about the Joker, the Joker just wants to watch the world burn, I don't think he does have a logical argument.

 

Well, Predator has certain similarities, but it needs nighttime to be scarier I think, and does a jungle provide a claustrophobic enough atmosphere?

[JediMaster12]

Well j7 I think there is some sort of logic albeit a bit on the twisted side of the force. The "social experiment" he did was a sick version of the prisoner scenario that we are all familiar with in kotor with the computer on Kashyyk.

[Tommycat]

Predator has some pretty good ideas, but it had too many good action movie tropes to be an effective horror movie. Lots of good one liners. Plus, it's too far removed from people's daily lives to have people identify with it. All of the characters were too over the top to be easily identified with by your average person.

 

I'd think a better setting would be something like a forest. But that's been done. Blair Witch Project used that setting. And again, it was too localized. You couldn't get people worried about the place they live in.

[Darth Avlectus]

I don't think movies are scary anymore. Part of it is of course desensitization, but a larger part is the exponentially rising expectations have reached a point of bizarrely unreal as technology has improved for movie making. Happens when American and other countries put such emphasis on entertainment.

 

In all fairness, what spooks me the most is a combination of the plausible (not a far stretch from what is actual), mixed with suspense. This is probably true for most people.

 

Unfortunately we're in about the same slump as the latter of recent decades where there is nothing new aka "re-run festival". This isn't restricted to just movies and television of course, look at all the crappy games.

 

The last time I remember jumping in surprise to a movie was jurrasic park as a kid--the scene where Lex's leg was hanging over the ceiling opening and moved it just in time as the Veloco-Raptor jumped up and snapped. I jumped a little, and that was about it. Strangely I got over being scared of movies after that.

 

On the other hand the first time I saw a tesla coil in elementary school with a van de graaf, that scared me because I did not understand, nor had ever seen, indigo colored electrical arcs flying wildly through the air. It was something different and completely unexpected. Now I love electricity.

 

Alfred Hitchcock for his time was excellent. Though it isn't scary anymore, it was a completely different time in his day. And the production value of his works IMO was much much greater than most of what you see anymore.

 

The more effective horror flicks today are a combination of that designed to invoke dread disgust; this is a minority as most horror flicks today (IMO for the past 20 years+) have been corny and cheesy. However these don't scare you so much as make you want to puke. Or go out and maim people. B movies aren't too bad but usually are in the same vein. Just kinda mediocre. Though I do like the idea of gigantic vicious rats rampaging the streets. Or mind bogglingly huge flocks of birds. Or insect swarms that eat lare animals down to the bone--in fact MacGyver sort of emulated this in one episode IIRC.

 

The exception to non-suck b movies, is call of cthulu. This was a disturbing movie, but it still sucked. I seriously think whoever wrote that film has some issues and obsessions with incest and tentacle rape. After seeing that flick I wanted to go out find predatory sea creatures and the writers of the film, beat the $%@# out of them and throw them all into a concrete mixer to thank them for a waste of my time.

 

The only reason horror flicks inspire violence is for either sucking so badly (rightfully so), or because some idiot wants to "be like Mike" (Myers). I'm convinced. This sort of gave a cool image to the anti-hero, I think. Bringing me to my next point:

 

Then of course you have franchises with cult followings all about mayhem and destruction: Friday the 13th, Nighmare on elm street, Chucky, Haloween, Hellraiser, Candyman, and of course Leatherface/Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These are more of dark humor IMO than meant to actually be scary. The victims are all so stupid except for the one or two people who end up killing the terror character. You are just wishing and rooting for the bad guy to cause havoc and kill the victims the whole time. I'm convinced the terror character is the main character of these type of films. These may have sucky production, but it is a suckyness that deserves a category all its own because it goes above and beyond other films. It actually takes things to a level to be truly proud of. The identity of some huge undead regenerating deformed guy wearing a hockey mask and welding suits or something while weilding a machette is now a powerful identity.

 

So, Kane, you're a good actor and all but you're going to need to make more films if you hope to transition from pro wrestler in WWE to horror film legend.

 

Part of me wonders if horror flicks were ever scary to some people.

 

On a lighter note: Anyone in the states who has lived around Reno NV at any point in the past 15-20 years or so probably knows about the TV show "Zombo's scaaaaaary movies". It's probably still on. Zombo is the alter ego of some car salesman or something who lives in Reno. Basically it's taking old horror films and showing them with the main host inserting random joking, doing mock commentary, and comedic mimicking along with skits and interludes. This guy has cornered the market in taking the absurdity, corniness, or mess ups of something and making it funny.