Palash Volvoikar

Horror has always been a very exciting genre, and more so when it comes to films. The film medium has succeeded in doing justice to the horror stories we have all read and heard of, because when it comes to this particular genre, seeing is better than reading. While horror films have successfully spooked the public for years, the genre isn’t doing so well anymore. Now, you could disagree with me on this by putting forth a few points that I am sure you’re thinking about, but I am talking about the ability of a film to scare you in a way that will stick to you. How many of us can really say that we have been that scared by a film which came out in the last fifteen years? Not many, I suppose. It seems like there are a couple of reasons which are responsible for the steady decline in the quality of horror in films.
Even after accounting for the fact that genres often tend to overlap, I still can’t think of many movies in the recent years that scared me as much as the classics like The Exorcist. The last good horror movie of this millennium was The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which came out in 2005, over a decade ago. The 2014 psychological horror, The Babadook, was really terrifying as well, but I am counting that as a bit of an exception to the fact that recent years haven’t done much for the horror genre.
Definitely, the problem isn’t with the number of horror films that have been coming out, either. Horror is a sensationalist genre, and we all know how well sensationalism sells. If anything, the recent years have seen more horror films hit the screens than before, and with them being surrounded with a lot of hype too. The sad truth is, over-marketing is one of the reasons for the decline in quality. Recent horror films have been over-marketed to their capacity, and one of the worst mistakes the producers are making is giving away the best bits of the movie in the trailer. Trailers are supposed to create hype, no doubt, but if you’re presenting the best of your work in a short clip intended to create hype, and leaving not much of a surprise to the audience, it’s obvious that the public will walk out disappointed.
Surprises bring me to the next big pitfall of the horror genre: jump scares. If you pay attention, the jump scares used in modern horror movies tend to be more and more reliant on making a really loud noise, rather than the horror being portrayed in the actual scene taking place on the screen. Jump scares don’t scare the audiences anymore, they just startle them. Now, one can argue that jump scares in general, are quite played out, but that still doesn’t negate the fact that just loud noises aren’t what we watch horror films for. Good jump scares can still be achieved, but their overuse just defuses the public’s suspense, and results in the film not building up to an end that is scary enough to make an impact.
There are a lot of ways to argue with the logic that I am putting forward here. For one, horror movies rack up a lot of cash at the box office, so what really gives me the right to say that they are not good enough? Well, that’s just the curse of sensationalism again. Film industries are constantly chasing projects which will sell, rather than those which will be received well. We are seeing absolutely tasteless remakes of classics, in Hollywood. Money is trumping quality.
One can also argue that a few recent films like, The Conjuring, weren’t too bad. I personally enjoyed the first installment and the second one too, albeit to a lesser extent, but there was a noticeable decline in the quality. The second film relied too much on jump scares, and despite the fact that both the films were well made, the second one had a lot less impact than the first one did.
In all fairness, I can’t really put the blame on the filmmakers and producers. We, the audience have to accept that we are partly at fault for the ongoing downfall of horror. We love the jump scares, we fall for the marketing, and we pay to watch films that we hardly ever end up liking. It seems like all of these factors have come together to change the definition of horror in the recent times. It’s a shame, because the decline in quality has led the genre to be perceived as a not so serious one.
So what can we do? We can maybe revisit the old time classic horror films, and roll ourselves back to the actual definition of horror. Good cinema is all around, so we know that this is a genre specific issue, so maybe we can rise above the sensationalism and not let one of the best genres of film die out.