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I just finished watching The Grudge, again. Bought it previewed. And you know what?
((List of movies minorly spoiled: The Blair Witch Project, Boogeyman, Darkness Falls, The Grudge, The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, Jaws, Jeepers Creepers, Jurassic Park, Psycho, Scream, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense. Several others mentioned.))
I have seen scarier movies. I have seen movies that affected me horribly for days or even weeks on end. I have seen movies that made me jump higher, clutch harder, and sit up in bed late at night staring wide-eyed down the dark hallway after a day of thinking I'm not afraid at all. The Grudge did none of those things to any really noticeable degree.
But I still hold that it is one of the best horror films out there.
The premise is so frightening, the organization of the movie so well-done, and the very IDEA so out of the norm for American horror, that it stays with you, like the very first campfire story that kept you up all night, shaking in your sleeping bag. It comes back not as a horror in the dark, but rather as a persistent, niggling dread of that which we do not understand, of our inescapable fates, should we wander into something beyond our faculties to control.
The unique aspects of the movie can be attributed not only to fabulously talented directing, but also to the fact that The Grudge is actually the American counterpart to a movie called Ju-On, which came out earlier in Japan.
I have been feeling rather morose concerning horror lately, because much of what comes out of Hollywood is not scary, or is just a total rehash of an overdone theme, or just... not in the spirit of true horror. There were a slew of American horror films that came out a few years ago wherein the first ten minutes of each was the scariest damn thing to ever hit the screen. But then the movie tanked in it's last four fifths. I think a great example of this is Darkness Falls. I was quaking after that opening sequence. Quaking. All I could think was, what have I gotten myself into? Alas, I was slated for disappointment, as the movie toppled into what is fast becoming a terrible horror movie plague: it showed too much of the monster.
Cases in point:
The Haunting, new version.
House on Haunted Hill, new version.
Boogeyman.
Jeepers Creepers (or so I hear; I have not seen the whole thing).
There seems to be this idea that the scarier the monster looks, the more you reveal of it, the more terrified the audience will be. Now, in cases like Jaws, this theory worked, but only because Steven Spielberg is a master -- a master -- of suspenseful editing. (I shall not go into Jurassic Park at this time, but anyone who is now scared of the word "raptor" knows exactly what I mean.) But the thing is, horror is not about what you can see. It's often about what you CAN'T see. I can still remember the scariest part of Scream for me: towards the end, when Sydney escapes from the news van where she just watched the cameraman take a knife through the back. She gets halfway up the front walkway of the house, then stops abruptly, turns around... and realizes she has lost track of where the murderer is. That was fucking SCARY. When you can't see what's chasing you... that's when the horror kicks in.
There are many theories about what is scary, and I daresay that for everyone, it is different. First off, the theory concerning remakes. Psycho, The Haunting, and The House on Haunted Hill were all botched remakes of old, supremely successful horror movies. It seems that some people think we have to go back to the oldies to get the goodies. Possibly true; those movies packed a punch. But we need not be faithless to what actually MADE them scary in the first place: the surprises of Psycho (completely done away with by the word-for-word copy of the old script), the unseen of The Haunting (absolutely killed at the end when the ghost actually comes down the stairs in all its glory), and the jumps and intriguing side plots of HoHH (nearly retained, but ultimately ruined by the ending sequence). There are still original scary ideas out there. They just have to be sought out.
(And let's just give the remake of Dawn of the Dead its own category, shall we? Category is: remakes that failed to capture the original point, but have a point all of their own to make, regardless. The remake of Night of the Living Dead is the better remake of the two, I say, as it retains the horror of its predecessor in a slightly different package. But if you REALLY want good horror... SEE THE GEORGE ROMERO ORIGINALS.)
Another theory is the one about violence equaling horror. Now, this one is much more successful than the first in many respects. The entire American subgenre of slasher movies is based upon it. And no one can say that all slasher movies sucked. Scream certainly did not suck. Neither did Friday the 13th, nor Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. Texas Chainsaw Massacre did not suck. I Know What You Did Last Summer would have been good, if only it hadn't become the butt of so many jokes so quickly. There is a new entry into this category from France (High Tension) which I have not yet seen, but from the look of things, it's a humdinger. Cherry Falls was less successful, I think, and Urban Legend was okay for slasher fare, as slasher fare goes. But violence does not always make with the scary. You've got to be pretty creative nowadays to hit the audience with violence that is actually scary and not just... well, violent. And even the best slasher films don't flip out and go overboard, believe it or not.
Then there's the suspense subgenre. Movies like The Others, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, and What Lies Beneath capitalized on this aspect of horror, and were quite successful. And please, please do not comment trying to convince me of how stupid you thought the Blair Witch Project was because I do not agree AT ALL. I think it was a wonderfully clever exploration of the point of all these horror films: what we do to ourselves to make ourselves scared. It's fear at its most raw, and it works.
Like all of these movies, The Grudge falls more into the suspense category than any other. And like all of these movies, The Grudge is a ghost story. Coincidence? Hmmm. Not sure. But there is definitely something to be said for the effect of the restless dead on the human psyche. It's a pure trip into the supernatural, into a realm that we have NO CONTROL over. None. The Grudge is the essence of what a ghost is: ghosts are often thought to relive their lives (and deaths) over and over again, sometimes oblivious to the living people around them (The Sixth Sense: "They only see what they want to see."). Their world intersects with ours on so many different levels, temporal as well as physical. They are often portrayed as seeking revenge for wrongs done to them in life. And perhaps the most important...
They look like us. But they are not like us.
I'm going to mention the darling Doctor Freud here, and his theory of the "unheimlich," or that which is mostly recognizable, but which has been twisted or changed in some way as to make it unrecognizable. Hence, the demonic child, or the evil Santa Claus, or even something as basic as a vampire or werewolf. We see what it is and everything tells us it should be safe... yet it is not. It's a cute child, but it's actually Linda Blair. Or... it's a pale man with charm, but he's actually Lestat de Lioncourt. The Grudge works on much the same principle, and even though we are allowed to see quite a bit of the "monster," it is even scarier because of what the monster is and is not.
The Grudge frightens me because of how well it builds, how the mystery is compounded bit by bit, how the story is so simple and so, so, SO spine-tingling that it not only rejuvenates the ghost story; it also rewrites it, to an extent. This is not a win-lose situation, like much American horror-fodder. This is an unstoppable force that is so far beyond the control of the mortal realm that just the IDEA is terrifying, and coming into contact with it is much, much worse.
Did you know that there were almost no special effects in that movie? Yeah, that lady was a contortionist. Yeah, that kid is that good of an actor.
The thing is, with horror nowadays, you almost have to go to non-American films to get at something that genuinely frightens. The Japanese concept of what is scary is so different from the American concept. Other things play into it: cultural differences, directing styles, acting styles... This is not to say that American horror blows because it DOES NOT. Some of my favorite horror films are American in origin. But while Hollywood may have the tightest grip on the movie market, it does not often give us fresh, new horror... things that scare us because we have never encountered them before. Movies like The Grudge/Ju-On, Audition (Japanese), 28 Days Later (British), Perfect Blue (Japanese anime), Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loup, French), and The Ring (Ringu, Japanese) have elements that don't pop up much in American movies. This is of course partly due to the individual directors, but also to the cultural backgrounds that produced the movies.
As you can see, I lean somewhat toward the supernatural element for my horror. But that is not to say that movies require a ghost to be horror. Something older, like Frankenstein, comes to mind: a severe critique on science and its pitfalls. Also, one of the newer waves of suspense-horror: the "real life" horror film. By this I mean movies that deal mostly in the human element. Silence of the Lambs is probably the most well-known of these, but Se7en, and recently, Saw, have banked on this aspect of what is scary. I have a friend who can watch ghost movies and barely bat an eyelash. But give her Hannibal Lector or Kevin Spacey interpreting the Bible, and she is up all night.
*looks back* Wow. This started as a comment on The Grudge being eerily frightening, and turned into a treatise on the failure and success of modern horror. I hope you got this far into it; this is a subject I care a great deal about, mostly because the horror genre, like the fantasy genre, is often overlooked or dismissed as being "silly, melodramatic, or unrealistic." Oddly, I have found both of these storytelling mediums to be the absolute BEST at societal commentary.
Hmmm. Horror haters, take note. I suggest you start with the American movies of the 50s, where you can practially taste the apprehension about where the world was headed. (Them, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, etc.)
What are your thoughts?
((List of movies minorly spoiled: The Blair Witch Project, Boogeyman, Darkness Falls, The Grudge, The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, Jaws, Jeepers Creepers, Jurassic Park, Psycho, Scream, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense. Several others mentioned.))
I have seen scarier movies. I have seen movies that affected me horribly for days or even weeks on end. I have seen movies that made me jump higher, clutch harder, and sit up in bed late at night staring wide-eyed down the dark hallway after a day of thinking I'm not afraid at all. The Grudge did none of those things to any really noticeable degree.
But I still hold that it is one of the best horror films out there.
The premise is so frightening, the organization of the movie so well-done, and the very IDEA so out of the norm for American horror, that it stays with you, like the very first campfire story that kept you up all night, shaking in your sleeping bag. It comes back not as a horror in the dark, but rather as a persistent, niggling dread of that which we do not understand, of our inescapable fates, should we wander into something beyond our faculties to control.
The unique aspects of the movie can be attributed not only to fabulously talented directing, but also to the fact that The Grudge is actually the American counterpart to a movie called Ju-On, which came out earlier in Japan.
I have been feeling rather morose concerning horror lately, because much of what comes out of Hollywood is not scary, or is just a total rehash of an overdone theme, or just... not in the spirit of true horror. There were a slew of American horror films that came out a few years ago wherein the first ten minutes of each was the scariest damn thing to ever hit the screen. But then the movie tanked in it's last four fifths. I think a great example of this is Darkness Falls. I was quaking after that opening sequence. Quaking. All I could think was, what have I gotten myself into? Alas, I was slated for disappointment, as the movie toppled into what is fast becoming a terrible horror movie plague: it showed too much of the monster.
Cases in point:
The Haunting, new version.
House on Haunted Hill, new version.
Boogeyman.
Jeepers Creepers (or so I hear; I have not seen the whole thing).
There seems to be this idea that the scarier the monster looks, the more you reveal of it, the more terrified the audience will be. Now, in cases like Jaws, this theory worked, but only because Steven Spielberg is a master -- a master -- of suspenseful editing. (I shall not go into Jurassic Park at this time, but anyone who is now scared of the word "raptor" knows exactly what I mean.) But the thing is, horror is not about what you can see. It's often about what you CAN'T see. I can still remember the scariest part of Scream for me: towards the end, when Sydney escapes from the news van where she just watched the cameraman take a knife through the back. She gets halfway up the front walkway of the house, then stops abruptly, turns around... and realizes she has lost track of where the murderer is. That was fucking SCARY. When you can't see what's chasing you... that's when the horror kicks in.
There are many theories about what is scary, and I daresay that for everyone, it is different. First off, the theory concerning remakes. Psycho, The Haunting, and The House on Haunted Hill were all botched remakes of old, supremely successful horror movies. It seems that some people think we have to go back to the oldies to get the goodies. Possibly true; those movies packed a punch. But we need not be faithless to what actually MADE them scary in the first place: the surprises of Psycho (completely done away with by the word-for-word copy of the old script), the unseen of The Haunting (absolutely killed at the end when the ghost actually comes down the stairs in all its glory), and the jumps and intriguing side plots of HoHH (nearly retained, but ultimately ruined by the ending sequence). There are still original scary ideas out there. They just have to be sought out.
(And let's just give the remake of Dawn of the Dead its own category, shall we? Category is: remakes that failed to capture the original point, but have a point all of their own to make, regardless. The remake of Night of the Living Dead is the better remake of the two, I say, as it retains the horror of its predecessor in a slightly different package. But if you REALLY want good horror... SEE THE GEORGE ROMERO ORIGINALS.)
Another theory is the one about violence equaling horror. Now, this one is much more successful than the first in many respects. The entire American subgenre of slasher movies is based upon it. And no one can say that all slasher movies sucked. Scream certainly did not suck. Neither did Friday the 13th, nor Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. Texas Chainsaw Massacre did not suck. I Know What You Did Last Summer would have been good, if only it hadn't become the butt of so many jokes so quickly. There is a new entry into this category from France (High Tension) which I have not yet seen, but from the look of things, it's a humdinger. Cherry Falls was less successful, I think, and Urban Legend was okay for slasher fare, as slasher fare goes. But violence does not always make with the scary. You've got to be pretty creative nowadays to hit the audience with violence that is actually scary and not just... well, violent. And even the best slasher films don't flip out and go overboard, believe it or not.
Then there's the suspense subgenre. Movies like The Others, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, and What Lies Beneath capitalized on this aspect of horror, and were quite successful. And please, please do not comment trying to convince me of how stupid you thought the Blair Witch Project was because I do not agree AT ALL. I think it was a wonderfully clever exploration of the point of all these horror films: what we do to ourselves to make ourselves scared. It's fear at its most raw, and it works.
Like all of these movies, The Grudge falls more into the suspense category than any other. And like all of these movies, The Grudge is a ghost story. Coincidence? Hmmm. Not sure. But there is definitely something to be said for the effect of the restless dead on the human psyche. It's a pure trip into the supernatural, into a realm that we have NO CONTROL over. None. The Grudge is the essence of what a ghost is: ghosts are often thought to relive their lives (and deaths) over and over again, sometimes oblivious to the living people around them (The Sixth Sense: "They only see what they want to see."). Their world intersects with ours on so many different levels, temporal as well as physical. They are often portrayed as seeking revenge for wrongs done to them in life. And perhaps the most important...
They look like us. But they are not like us.
I'm going to mention the darling Doctor Freud here, and his theory of the "unheimlich," or that which is mostly recognizable, but which has been twisted or changed in some way as to make it unrecognizable. Hence, the demonic child, or the evil Santa Claus, or even something as basic as a vampire or werewolf. We see what it is and everything tells us it should be safe... yet it is not. It's a cute child, but it's actually Linda Blair. Or... it's a pale man with charm, but he's actually Lestat de Lioncourt. The Grudge works on much the same principle, and even though we are allowed to see quite a bit of the "monster," it is even scarier because of what the monster is and is not.
The Grudge frightens me because of how well it builds, how the mystery is compounded bit by bit, how the story is so simple and so, so, SO spine-tingling that it not only rejuvenates the ghost story; it also rewrites it, to an extent. This is not a win-lose situation, like much American horror-fodder. This is an unstoppable force that is so far beyond the control of the mortal realm that just the IDEA is terrifying, and coming into contact with it is much, much worse.
Did you know that there were almost no special effects in that movie? Yeah, that lady was a contortionist. Yeah, that kid is that good of an actor.
The thing is, with horror nowadays, you almost have to go to non-American films to get at something that genuinely frightens. The Japanese concept of what is scary is so different from the American concept. Other things play into it: cultural differences, directing styles, acting styles... This is not to say that American horror blows because it DOES NOT. Some of my favorite horror films are American in origin. But while Hollywood may have the tightest grip on the movie market, it does not often give us fresh, new horror... things that scare us because we have never encountered them before. Movies like The Grudge/Ju-On, Audition (Japanese), 28 Days Later (British), Perfect Blue (Japanese anime), Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loup, French), and The Ring (Ringu, Japanese) have elements that don't pop up much in American movies. This is of course partly due to the individual directors, but also to the cultural backgrounds that produced the movies.
As you can see, I lean somewhat toward the supernatural element for my horror. But that is not to say that movies require a ghost to be horror. Something older, like Frankenstein, comes to mind: a severe critique on science and its pitfalls. Also, one of the newer waves of suspense-horror: the "real life" horror film. By this I mean movies that deal mostly in the human element. Silence of the Lambs is probably the most well-known of these, but Se7en, and recently, Saw, have banked on this aspect of what is scary. I have a friend who can watch ghost movies and barely bat an eyelash. But give her Hannibal Lector or Kevin Spacey interpreting the Bible, and she is up all night.
*looks back* Wow. This started as a comment on The Grudge being eerily frightening, and turned into a treatise on the failure and success of modern horror. I hope you got this far into it; this is a subject I care a great deal about, mostly because the horror genre, like the fantasy genre, is often overlooked or dismissed as being "silly, melodramatic, or unrealistic." Oddly, I have found both of these storytelling mediums to be the absolute BEST at societal commentary.
Hmmm. Horror haters, take note. I suggest you start with the American movies of the 50s, where you can practially taste the apprehension about where the world was headed. (Them, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, etc.)
What are your thoughts?
