Horror Films

I love zombie movies because they’re the only type of horror movies that really scare me and that I find interesting.

The basic idea of a horror film, once you strip it down to its basic elements is Man vs. ___ where blank is some type of evil thing that wants to kill you.

Now we move up a bit, and that ____ becomes usually one of two things. Either it’s a supernatural monster (vampire, demon, werewolf, mummy and so on) or it’s a human (the dude from Scream, the dude from I know what you did last summer, the guy from the hitcher) or some weird mix of a supernatural entity, but is ultimately human (chucky, the mutants from the hills have eyes, the guy with a chainsaw in texas chainsaw massacre) and for the most part these movies never really take with me.

Now if you’re fighting a supernatural monster, that can’t be killed, then well it was nice knowing you, here’s hoping you either don’t die in a really bad way or at die first so you don’t have to suffer through the last hour and a half of a bad movie. Movies like The grudge and the Jason movies are like this. They can’t ever really die, and in the end the movie should just be called “hey man, watch these 8 people die, its really boring”

If the monster CAN be killed, well that’s a start on the right track, and this really has the best potential to be a good horror flick. It all then boils down to the monster itself and how it can die. A vampire for example, is a pretty good monster to fight. Its really powerful with all these weird abilities, but in the end all you need is holy water, something pointy or business hours to kill it. This is why most vampires you see prey on hookers in the night or drunk/stoned club hoppers because its an easy kill. Set a vampire against someone with half a brain and their whole leather pant wearing world is turned upside down. Unfortunately this usually leads to the introduction of the super vampire, which is of a pure bloodline and yada yada yada…basically its super Dracula who can only be killed by a werewolf with silver teeth and those have been extinct for 1000 years…UNTIL NOW.

Lastly you have the human killer. These guys are people with problems and a knife who are hell bent on killing you and your 8 buddies. Now, I’m no soldier, and I don’t really believe in guns or anything but damn people, its not that hard to stop one guy when there’s like 4 of you fighting him. Even if this guy does turn out to be some kind of ex-marine who could kick your ass and kill you 5 times with his bare hands, you can always just leave. If you can win a horror film by just leaving the area, then why the hell didn’t you do that when the first member of the cast died?

This is why zombie films are so good in my opinion. The monster is easy to kill when there’s just one of them, but there usually is not just one, there’s at least a small town’s worth. You can’t really just leave the area and live because in your typical zombie flick the crisis is all over the place, you can only go to some place that is safer then where you are now. Then there are other issues you have to deal with as well, like survival. If you can’t go to the grocery store because there are several hundred zombies between you and it, how are you going to eat in a week? If they start to get into the place you’re taking shelter in, where will you go? Then there’s always the issue of what to do with those who get bitten. In a typical zombie film, when someone is bitten by a zombie its only a matter of time before they themselves turn into one, so what do you do about that?

Land of the dead dealt with this pretty well I thought. There is this part where one of the main characters gets bitten, so he knows he’s going to die and become a zombie and his friend just asks him: Do you want me to shoot you? To which he responds “nah, I think I’ll see how the other side lives” and the friend just says his goodbyes and leaves, because honestly, what else can you do?

If you where bitten by a zombie, what would you want to do? Would you want to be shot in the head before you turn into one? What about for those few seconds after you die but before you turn? Or would you just want to be sent outside the walls of wherever you’re staying and become one of them? What would you do if it was someone you loved who was bitten?

Basically I think that if you want a horror film to be good, you need to have a clear chance of victory in the film, but it should also be really hard. This is why I enjoyed the first Saw movie as well. It was scary, because these people still died horrible deaths and everything, but they clearly had a chance to win. I still need to see the next two, but if they’re anything like the first it should be really good.