These are the worst lines uttered by humans in the infamous classic Return of the Jedi. Certain ones are missing – the Chewie Tarzan yell and the Sy Snoodles “uh oh”, for instance – because those are just obviously dumb. These are actual lines of dialogue that were written on the page for humans to speak in order to drive the story forward – yet they became a distraction by their awfulness.
As you may know from yesterday’s review, I absolutely loved the indie shocker PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. As both a horror film and a way to make huge sums of cash, the film cannot be beaten.
The film’s achievement is even more astounding considering the current state of horror films today. Most film producers and directors mistake GORE for HORROR (I’m looking at you, Eli), and horror-hungry audiences snatch it up like a starving Ethiopian on a rotten chicken wing. When the greatest horror film in recent memory is a HOUSE OF WAX remake featuring Paris Hilton, you know the genre is in a sad state.
Thankfully PARANORMAL ACTIVITY revives the great truisms of the horror genre and underlines them for even the dimmest of studio executives. It’s a good idea for all producers and directors to closely examine what makes a film like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY click. HINT: It’s not the shaky cam.
1. Implied Horror: There is very little blood or overt violence in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. This is in keeping with the great horror films of the past. Think about PSYCHO, HALLOWEEN, or THE SHINING, and remember how very little actual violence we saw in those films. Even films like ALIEN or TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE – films with some amount of actual violence – contain surprisingly little blood. This allows the horror to marinate in your mind, an infinitely scarier place than anything conjured onscreen.
2. Horror Films Do Not Need Stars: Lately every horror film seems equipped with a “name” of some kind, as if audiences flock to them to see their favorite star get hacked up. But most of the great horror films contain few stars, or stars who have yet to discover their defining role. And this rule is almost certainly true of “game-changing” horror films – think NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.
3. Horror Films Need A Simple Hook Or Premise: Lately, we have been deluged with post-RING movies that are more convoluted and “twisty” than M. Night Shyamalan on LSD. But the greatest horror films feed off our simplest and most basic fears – showering defenseless, sleeping, being trapped in a cave, or swimming in shark-infested waters. The simpler it is, the easier it is to sell the horror and allow the audience to relate.
4. Horror Films Do Not Need Huge Budgets: Again, some of the greatest horror films of all time sprang from budgets under a million dollars – EVIL DEAD, TEXAS CHAINSAW, LIVING DEAD – but for some reason studio bosses keep ladling on expensive and phony CGI effects. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY demonstrates that a little imagination can trump CGI effects every day of the week.
5. Horror Films Should Build Tension: It’s shocking how often this is overlooked in most recent horror films. It’s the classic gambit – you introduce something … an idea, an object … and then you call back to it as it plays in the story. This causes an audience to begin dreading the outcome. Spielberg did this in JAWS, Hitchcock did it in all of his movies, and it is something that is vital to the genre. Of recent directors, only M. Night Shyamalan seems to have any capacity for it. In PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, director Oren Peli does this with the video surveillance footage, as well as the Oija board. It is a crucial element to building suspense and ratcheting up the scares.
Sadly, Hollywood executives will probably only see the $11,000 price tag and the ludicrous profits, rather than learn these valuable lessons re-taught by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. Films like BLAIR WITCH and PARANORMAL are not flash-in-the-pan video footage successes. They are skillful horror films that call back to the great horror films of the past, and utilize techniques that have been honed over decades.
It’s time for the hacks in Hollywood to go back to horror school, and school is back in session with every showing of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY.
You want to know why there aren’t too many ugly people working in front of the cameras in Hollywood? Because we are forced to see ugly and disgusting people very single day when we go to Wal Mart, stop at a fast food restaurant, or pass in front of a mirror. When we go to the movies, we want to see and identify ourselves with beautiful people and exciting adventures; it ruins the fun if the hero has a bald spot bigger than yours.
And while there are many attractive people in Hollywood, some are too incredibly beautiful to believe. It’s as if God crafted them from a separate pile of dirt than the rest of us … the bastards.
So here is my list of the top ten most beautiful women and men of Hollywood:
On a list of the most financially successful movie comedians of all time, Adam Sandler would probably be fourth behind Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, and Mike Myers. Sandler has two of the top 25 highest grossing movie comedies with BIG DADDY and THE WATERBOY, two of his worst films. Yet, unlike those other three comedians, Sandler is often universally despised and panned by movie critics across the country.
Why? Because he’s just not particularly funny.
So I watched X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE a few days ago and posted my reactions to the rough cut of this upcoming film. Not only was I deluged with pompous, self-righteous comments from angelic beings of pure light, but the site was also targeted by FOX with demands to remove the sneak peek.
