By Kevin Kaumans, Entertainment Editor
Do you ever feel like horror movies nowadays have lost their charm? Don’t get me wrong, there are some good modern-day films every now and then. But the problem with a lot of horror movies now is how they present themselves.
And when I say that, I don’t necessarily mean that the writing is bad or that the actors are terrible (though that is true with most of them). No, my friends, I’m referring to how a lot of them rely solely on jump scares and gore in a sad attempt to scare their audience.
Sure, it can make you jump out of your seat when a ghost or demon-like figure comes out of nowhere and screams at the screen at the same decibel as a starving infant. But two seconds later, you’re no longer scared, are you?
No, it’s much more likely that you are now annoyed and glaring at the screen. You want to know why that is? Because, no matter how you phrase it, you weren’t frightened out of your seat because the scene before you was actually scary; instead, it was due to having a loud noise shoved into your face.
It is like sneaking up behind your friend with two cymbals in your hand and slamming them together as loud as you can. While you might think it was a clever way of getting a reaction out of them, your friend knows that what you did was nothing more than a cheap way of scaring someone. So there you are, looking like a talentless hack with your friend looking like they want to break your shins with those cymbals in your hand.
Now there’s the subject of gore. It is no secret that movies these days are ten times more violent than they were a hundred years ago. To be fair, this statement does not only apply to horror movies. A lot of action movies, for instance, seem to be unable to go fifteen minutes without someone somewhere raining gunfire everywhere.
So trust me when I say that I am not solely blaming horror movies for the spike in violence we see in the media.
However, what I am criticizing is the overabundance of blood and torture within these movies. Take “Terrifier”, for example. Can anyone even remember the so-called plot of that movie, or can they only remember the scenes where Art the Clown was cutting people up and slicing their faces off?
Just to be clear, I’m not saying those movies from the 1900s never had any blood, people getting cut or people having their head blown off.
But you can’t sit here and tell me that it hasn’t gotten worse over the years. I swear, with every new horror movie coming out, it feels like that the directors are forgoing plot in exchange for guts and shock value.
And here’s the thing: I do not care that movies today are more violent. Afterall, I love movies like “Nobody” and “Saw”. I have always prided myself in being a supporter of the First Amendment.
I truly believe that no one should be allowed to tell another person what they can or can’t make.
However, the problem is that a lot of horror films use jump scares, gore and nothing else.
Maybe I’m just being a prude. Maybe I’m just a boomer trapped in a gen-z’s body.
Fine, let people say that about me. I know that I’m right, and honestly that is all that matters to me.