Chucke is a possesed doll that kills people. In one movie he even tries to impregnate a human woman with his demon child. That's not horror. It's just damn stupid and disgusting. I'm all for everyone has their thing that floats their boat, but that just disgusting.
In a case like this, horror movies commonly walk the line between horror and just plain twisted comedy. Chuckie is one of those series that do indeed try to be scary, but at the same time keep up the morbid gags. Sometimes you really just need to read about a movie before watching it to know what to expect. Fear is a tricky thing to bring about in people so it might be hard to get a movie that really gets to you.
Stuff like Signs, What Lies Beneath, Disturbia, are all good examples of moviess that can instill fear without being completely gross.
movies like the village that's what need to be made more, a big story with alot of happenings with a surprising end nobody saw coming that's
a piece of art.
Yes, Mr. M. Night Shyamalamadingdong does one thing right by actually using mood and the fear of the unknown to really wrap you up in his films. I won't get into my stance that his movies are mostly garbage (especially The Village, and The Happening), but yes, he actually uses a real technique to stimulate fear.
I'm very passionate about this because horror movies are the one genre of movie that never works out. Comedies are usually funny, dramas are dramatic, action movies have lots of action, and horror movies are 99.8% of the time not scary at all. Horror is now more about showing some boobs, having some brutal violence, and making a quick buck at the box office. It isn't even hard to make a great formula for horror. Take these for example.
The Thing - What don't know what it is, we don't know what it's capable of doing, we're stranded with it on an Antarctic base. Isolation always tastes good in the mixing pot, and DOES NOT mean 'The killer is in my house and the phone doesn't work.' When someone can simply open the front door, we spend the movie waiting for it. When they really have no where to go we become more engrossed.
The Exorcist - Deserves all the credit it gets. This film is the perfect example of something being visually scary. With great acting and great direction we have some seriously scary imagery that people don't often forget after seeing. I almost cried when I saw the girl doing the backwards crab walk down the stairs when I was 9 or 10.
May - One of my favorites and most people don't know it exists. In this we see the world through the eyes of the insane. It is not bone chillingly creepy, but it is morbid and still all the while very interesting. When watching it, people should also note that even though the movie is about (not serious spoilers) a girl mutilating victims to make her own Frankenstein, there is minimal gore (at least until the last couple minutes).
There are many other movies with strong techniques like this to bring out fear such as House on Haunted Hill (remake), The Evil Dead, Signs, Alien, The Ring, but the ones I named are the more bold examples.
I won't go in depth with movies with things not to do, but I'll include a couple things.
1. Group of teengers. A good example would be every movie that was supposed to be scary that's come out since the 1960's save for a handful of them. It's old, it's boring, it's honestly retarded. Just because the main audience will be teenagers doesn't mean we need all the 'zomg I fell again', 'wait here, I'll go save her', 'let's split up','hey a bed, lets screw', among other things.
2. Believable terror. Yes, it's easy and cheap to have the big bad guy just be some guy, but really, can't we think a little more? When you know that no matter who the killer will end up being he will still be nothing more than a man, what's the point of sitting through the whole movie?
3. Cliche. I'll wrap this up because I know no one wants to read it. We DO NOT need any more teens in a haunted house, teens in a regular house, teens disrupting a grave, teens in a cabin, killer with a knife, killer with a hook, killer with a gun. SHYAMALAN, YOU ***, QUIT RUINING YOUR GOOD BUILDUPS WITH TERRIBLE TERRIBLE WASTE OF MY LIFE TWISTS!
So to actually answer the topic (why am I always so talkative first thing in the morning), get some good intelligent people, put them somewhere they really can't escape from, and present us with an evil that we can barely wrap our minds around. Don't announce it though, just a taste here and a taste of it there. Let the fear of the cast help accent our fear. Then when the time is right give us enough information that we truly care, but not enough to kill the intrigue (Predator and Predator 2 do this perfectly) and leave us with a satisfying ending, whatever it may be.
And if you thought that rant was long, wait until someone makes a thread about monster movies.
