Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Frequent Evil!

Good Evil Hunting

The Airy tree that roots itself in the grounds of a swampy area. Branches spread wide into the surrounding moistness with the hunger to claw into the transparent flesh. Well-cleared settlements abandoned to host the deceased and a bamboozling hood in a parched hut. Five strangers willing to explore the place to become victims of bizarre death-eaters. One survivor or no survivor at all or the killer rules!

A lifeless setting that calls itself horror. Cannibals, urban-legend, serial killer, psychopath, what else?

Hollywood has gone from classic horror-thrillers like the shining, Frankenstein, the exorcist to lifeless movies like wrongturn2, Halloween (remade), The hills have eyes2, Sam’s lake, shrooms, the murder game, botched and many more….What’s common in the yester-era and the present? The theme. 90mintues into the movie you expect blood and the end. 60minutes of gore looks dragging along with 30 minutes of blood. Too little to take! 10minutes of sleaze just happens. 15minutes of monotony and 5minutes of credits! Why credits! Call it ironic or parodic.

One character, one setting, one plot, fear and terror. Movies in the 1920s-60s-70s managed to extract this emotion from the viewer with as little technology as possible. We don’t really need technology, do we?Today’s thrillers don’t even live upto the name! Stereotyped and run of the mill movies are only asking the viewers to stay away.

CGI has made the quality and post-processing creditable. It doesn’t really eclipse the creativity, does it? Mickeymouse or a rat chef, both are super creations. Likewise, Dracula or cannibalism both stand on a pretty creative ground. [Though cannibalism does exist].

A rookie? Take a camera and shoot a low-budget thriller. cakewalk. Or is it?If you are creative enough to make a blair-witch project then hope to take a step forward. If there is any explanation as to why movies on the same theme keep coming then it is this. May be it’s time for some of the pros to create on-screen magic. The sixth-sense or the others or the alien.

Hollywood is in need of ideas.

In need of some Good Evil-Hunting.

[Kudos to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for scritping the movie called 'Good Will Hunting' [@imdb], a thumping script.An Oscar for their first attempt.And the movie is awesome!]


9 comments:

Akshaya said...

Ah! Nice dialogue about management also in there. should watch sometime.

Good work. Watch and Write more

Curls said...

yeah..i truly agree with what you've written......the horror movies truly have lost their charm

Varun Abhiram said...

"Hollywood is in need of ideas" :O Wonder what you must think of the Indian film industry then :P

Come on, they still make good horror flicks. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Thirteen Ghosts, The Ring etc. were all well made weren't they?

shreybomb said...

i agree with varun- what about bollywood movies? but even then its true- hollywood seems to be going on the remake theme a little too much

on the other note- yes good will hunting is brilliat - plus it has matt damon :P tee hee

Sai Vishnubhatla said...

some good fundas ..to me horror(hollywood or otherwise) is no more than a strange concoction of all the elements you mentioned here

Karthik Abhiram said...

Interesting post, man, on a subject that has appeal to me :)

You're right, you have a whole variety of stuff that comes under this banner called "horror", and there are definitely those movies which a friend of mine describes as "cash cow" movies (he mentioned this in reference to "Anacondas: The Search for the Blood Orchid", which I have not seen, but the point is, did we really need that sequel to be made?).

The type of movies that I like, though, are the ones that aren't afraid to try new ideas, or offer an interesting take on what "horror" is.

I think you covered the subgenres within horror quite nicely, though I have a couple to add:

- the horror/comedy combo ("Evil Dead II", the last two entries in the "Child's Play" series), or comedy/horror ("Shaun of the Dead")

- the simply bizarre (most of director David Cronenberg's stuff would come under this - "The Fly", "Videodrome", "Scanners", "eXistenZ")

I was going to say that Hollywood HASN'T run out of ideas just yet, but at this point of time can't think of evidence to back up my case :) considering that the examples I quoted were all from the 80s or 90s!

I think "Saw" was the most recent movie that really impressed me, and apart from that I remembered I was scared by "The Ring" and "The Grudge", and that "Dawn of the Dead" was also very nicely done. But then, those three are all remakes...

So, whether Hollywood has run out of ideas or not, I don't know, but I guess we'll continue to see some indie stuff now and then that really has an impact.

Varun's mention of Bollywood brings two examples to mind, where our guys have actually beaten Hollywood to remakes (heh heh). The trailer for "The Eye" with Jessica Alba was released just today, whereas our people released "Naina" a whole 2 years ago :) Another (non-horror) example is "Oldboy"/"Zinda".

Rajeev Turlapati said...

@karthik:
yesr u r right :) there are some genres i love to watch like the saw(blood n gore) and its sequel.even the bizarre subgenre is wonderful to watch but the movies i have mentioned are no more 'new'. probably i missed out on some that you mentioned :)
we do talk a lot abt tis genre,don't we? :)

Karthik Abhiram said...

Rajeev, even the ones I mentioned are older ones only: "Scanners" is from 1981, "Videodrome" is from 1983, "The Fly" is from 1986. "eXistenZ" from 1999 is the newest :)

Vijayturlapati said...

Hmm, creativity is the foundation to ideas, and ideas are given by creative people...If there is dearth of ideas then it means that there is dearth of creative people...The world is in need of creativity...Let's explore...