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Why do we love Horror movies? What is it about them we find so
consistently fascinating? Is it the childlike thrill of the dark? A secret love
for things that jump out and go "Boo!"? Or is it something deeper - a
catharsis, say, a way of facing our fears head on, only to emerge, two hours
later with a silly grin on our faces, into the light? The fact is, most of us
like to be scared on one level or another. It's the adrenaline you feel, that
thumping in your chest when you're forced to step outside your comfort zone.
This is true whether you're jumping from a plane, climbing a rock face, or
riding a roller coaster - you get addicted to it, like a drug. Horror films affect
us in much the same way.
Even so, Horror movies tend to illicit different reactions from
the people watching them. It's hard to feel threatened by Dracula, for
instance, if you don't find vampires particularly frightful or menacing. The
shark scenes in Jaws may turn your
basic aquaphobe to a quivering mess on the floor, but the effect will be
decidedly different for anyone who's spent a great deal of time out on the
ocean. From the silent Expressionist films of the 20s (The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu)
to Universal's classic monsters of the 30s and 40s (Frankenstein, The Wolf Man)
to the slasher flicks of the 70s and 80s (The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween
and their countless clones) and finally to the J-Horror and "torture
porn" films of the Noughties (Ju-On:
The Grudge, Hostel), the genre
has been fractured and splintered into so many subcategories that there's
practically something for everyone. The question becomes: What kind of Horror
fiend are you?
Writing the post on plagiarism was fun, not just because it
distracted me from the business of Disney or comic books or strange coincidences between films, but because it reminded me of something I hadn't
thought about in quite some time: the films of M. Night Shyamalan. No doubt you
recognize the name; there was a time not long ago, in fact, when audiences
could barely bring themselves to think about anyone else. From The Sixth Sense (1999) to Unbreakable (2000) to Signs (2002) and, yes, even The Village (2004), the man could do no
wrong, at least in the eyes of box office pundits. Then came the accusations of
ripping off other people's work, the big-screen debacle that was Lady In The Water (2006), and worse, The Happening (2008), and suddenly, the
one-time wunderkind was reduced to a fake and a fraud, a Hollywood hack whose
luck - not to mention his talent - had definitely run out. (And don't get me
started on After Earth or The Last Airbender, big-budget studio
extravaganzas which clearly showed Shyamalan out of his element.)
Still, for a while there, Shyamalan was rightly regarded as one
of the defining voices of the 90s/early Noughties. Like Tarantino, Fincher,
Anderson (Wes or P.T.) or Jonze, you went to see a Shyamalan movie to
experience the shock of the new, for the mood he created, and for the many ways
he toyed with the language of film. Everyone remembers the twist to The Sixth Sense (and to a lesser extent,
Unbreakable and The Village), yet there is so much more to his earlier films than
initially meets the eye. His long, languishing camera takes, for one - as
opposed to the staccato style of editing so common to the contemporaries of his
day (here's looking at you, Michael Bay). Or the way he used specific colors to
key us in on important plot points. By the time he was 32, people were calling
him "the next Spielberg," or, better still, "the next
Hitchcock." With praise like that, it's no wonder all the acclaim and
attention seemed to go to his head.
