The Horror, the Horror -- or -- Torture As Entertainment

Working on a slasher film gets existential. It is difficult not to ask big questions of the universe and your role inside of it when a large crew intelligent adults is devoting its time to getting blood to splatter in a certain way or getting a camera to roll just so like a decapitated head.

There is a new production model, championed by Michael Bay, and that is the $10 - $20 million studio horror film remake, usually helmed by music video directors. These include the two new Texas Chainsaw remakes, the two Hills Have Eyes remakes, the Omen remake, the Hitcher remake, the Amityville Horror remake, et al, ad nauseum. There are also remakes to Friday the 13th, the Changeling, Near Dark, and The Birds planned. And of course all of these remakes will spawn sequels.

It seems there is a new thirst for horror movies that we haven't seen since the 80s. It could be that I'm just noticing more horror movies because I work in the industry now and that I remember the horror movies from the 80s because I was the intended audience that consumed them then. It could be that there have always been gobs of horror movies, all through the 90s, but I really don't remember them if they did exist, except for Scream, which seemed to launch this new thirst for teen horror.

It could be that I'm getting old and crotchety, but it seems that the new horror model is particularly sadistic and I have to object to it. I haven't seen Hostel or any of the Saw films or this new movie Captivity coming out, but the new horror films are particularly mean and usually focus on torture as a device to scare audiences. Torture as entertainment. There was an article in the New Yorker a few months ago, I think, focusing on the show "24" and it's stylish torture sequences.

The stuff we grew up with no doubt horrified our parents (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Happy Birthday to Me, April Fool's Day, Chopping Mall, etc) but seems particularly cartoony and harmless now, especially when juxtaposed with the new Michael Bay model. Even the darkest of dark 80s cinema, the Faces of Death franchise (people getting mauled by bears, fake snuff footage, etc) seems downright quaint when these days any five year old can go on the Internet and watch Saddam Hussein getting brutally hanged.

Will today's teenagers look back on the Hills Have Eyes remakes fondly, like we look back on Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street? Or on April Fool's Day? Will they think about the time they snuck into Saw and got scared shitless?

And what's going to happen 10 years down the road? How will Hollywood movies ratchet up terror to the next level when the next generation is laughing its way through Hostel like a comedy?

Get On That Meat Train and Ride, Choo Choo!

So this is what I'm doing with my life these days. Unexpectedly, I am starting to root for this movie. It will contain buckets of blood, not horrible acting, gorgeously moody cinematography, and quirky J-Horror sensibilities (like a camera attached to an arm as it pummels someone to death). Expectations are so low it could surprise everyone....

Grapefruit Juice

When my brother and I were young men and growing into our 2-meter frames and eating our parents out of house and home, Pops started buying frozen grapefruit juice and keeping it an unmarked plastic pitcher near the back of the fridge. We would pour out glasses of the stuff, thinking it orange juice, or just mouth the pitcher itself and wind up with a blast of sour unexpectedness down the front of our shirts.

Pops discovered that we'd leave the stuff alone..so he cultivated a taste for grapefruit juice so that he could carve out a little corner of the edible world that we wouldn't eat through.

Today the gf (girlfriend, not grapefruit) and I were in Trader Joes. Now I drink grapefruit juice by choice, dammit. I must be a real man. Sour and bitter foods are for adults only.

Then there was the time Pops wrapped some leftover pizza in brown butcher paper and scribbled "Rotten Meat" on the front of it.

Genius, really, and totally effective.

I Hate Movies

Something has happened to me in the last six months. I have begun to hate movies. I thought this would go away but it has not gone away at all. It has worsened. I watched four movies in the new year (all in a theatre, none at home). Tonight I watched Zodiac (for free, at the DGA 3 blox from my house) and thought it underwhelming. Children of Men was a plotless chase scene. Babel was relentlessly humorless. Pan's Labyrinth was okay but all I could think about was reading the Economist. All were way too long. If you can't tell your story in 80 minutes, then what's the point?

In college I could watch Tarkovski and early Wim Wenders and take it like a man, even enjoy it.

The gf says she doesn't know if she can date someone who doesn't appreciate movies. I do appreciate them, I say. I just don't like them. Even the good ones.

And forget about the fact that I'm working on a slasher movie called "Midnight Meat Train" which very well might be the worst of them all....

I do like Team America, however.