Rumor Control
I find it funny how surprising it was this fall to some that horror movies have been so popular lately. The Halloween remake this year wasn’t predicted to do too well at the box office by the pundits, yet so far it’s gone onto make more than $150 million in the US alone. And last year It brought in more than $700 million in ticket sales. Let’s not forget franchises like The Conjuring movies that have earned more than $1.5 billion and Paranormal Activity that brought in nearly $900 million — so it’s not like successful horror movies are something new. There’s been successful horror movies forever.
Those numbers are impressive and it seems like ever year some new horror thing comes along and tops expectations and brings loads and loads of people to the theaters, yet equally every year those films are seen as aberrations.
The biggest problem with horror right now is that it isn’t “cool” and the critics want to see and write about what they see as important movies created by important people that talk about important things. And a movie like Halloween ain’t ever gonna be one of those movies. So horror movies tend to be ghettoized much like superhero movies used to be.
I also think there’s a perception among a lot of people that those who go to horror movies, especially slasher ones like Halloween, that there’s something wrong with them. Society says we’re not supposed to like movies with blood and gore and if we do like them then there’s something wrong with us. It doesn’t help matters that horror movies, even the bad ones, makes us uncomfortable, forcing us to confront our fears about morality and our mortality.
Equally problematic is that while there are some really good horror flicks, there’s also a lot of really bad ones too. For every A Quiet Place or Get Out, bet’cha didn’t think of those movies as horror but they are, there’s loads and loads of Sharknados and sequels to Lake Placid too. And the critics seem to focus on the later. But the same holds true for every other genera of movie too, from romance to superhero to sci-fi. For every good one of those, there’s a ton of bad ones as well. Yet Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t get dinged because it was released the same year as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was, but the same doesn’t hold true for horror movies. For them, the bad ones somehow taint the good.
Then again I suppose it’s no different then when the original Halloween or The Exorcist went onto make a ton of money at the box office in the 1970s. Those movies were seen as aberrations and outside the norm. Something that couldn’t easily be repeated. But time and time again scary movies came along and found success that wasn’t expected.
It was just a few years ago that the superhero movie was seen at best as entertaining and at worst something to be openly derided. It wasn’t until recently that the mainstream critics began taking them a bit more seriously until now they’re seen as an important art form.
And hopefully, horror movies will be seen that way one day too.
What To Watch This Week
Tuesday
So far only available on the CBS All Access streaming service, Star Trek: Discovery gets a Blu-ray/DVD release today.
Friday
The second Fantastic Beasts film and Harry Potter spin-off, this one entitled Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, hits theaters today.
What was originally set to be a series, then cut down to movie-length western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by Joel Coen Ethan Coen is available on Netflix today.
Also available on Netflix is the fourth season of the Narcos series, this one Narcos: Mexico.
Sunday
Insomniac Theater: Very early Sunday morning the classic sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and dare I say a better film, 2010 airs on TCM.
The Reading & Watch List
Cool TV Poster of the Week
