Where’s the new TALES FROM THE HOOD?
February 13, 2015 2:41 PM Subscribe
I seem to remember that Tales from the Hood was not all that great, and kind of moralistic and obvious, but yeah, this is a problem. Is it a problem exclusive to horror, though? Or is it just symptomatic of the larger problem of black filmmakers in Hollywood in general?
Also, it's interesting to compare and contrast with Latino filmmakers, who seem to have had much greater success both in Hollywood in general and in the horror genre specifically (in the US and internationally).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:00 PM on February 13, 2015
Also, it's interesting to compare and contrast with Latino filmmakers, who seem to have had much greater success both in Hollywood in general and in the horror genre specifically (in the US and internationally).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:00 PM on February 13, 2015
Oh, you'll get the shit. You'll be knee deep in the shit!
posted by starscream at 3:11 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by starscream at 3:11 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it's a problem. Look at their example of Ernest Dickerson, for real. Ernest Dickerson directed Demon Knight, which is a fucking wonderful low budget horror action-comedy. This movie is twenty years old! Why has Dickerson's subsequent career been TV, and why -- why -- is Demon Knight, which again was made twenty years ago, still the first horror film by a black director most horror fans would point to? Something is wrong.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:12 PM on February 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:12 PM on February 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
Speaking internationally, this popped up all over the place a couple of days ago, and looks kind of interesting: Ethiopia's first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:13 PM on February 13, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:13 PM on February 13, 2015 [7 favorites]
RELATED: Why We Need Diversity Incentives for Film and Television By Richard Guay
"History has shown that the force of government is often required to step in and correct issues of civil rights disparities and that is the case here. The system of incentives already exists and has satisfied its original purpose of creating jobs and economic growth. A few small tweaks to these existing programs would allow tax incentives to become part of the solution to the industry's institutional bias.posted by Fizz at 3:14 PM on February 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
What might this look like? The simple addition of a 5% Diversity Incentive could reward film and television shows that have women, people of color and LBGT individuals in major roles in front of and behind the camera. This is an easy investment for states to make in creating a more balanced on-screen world. The Diversity Incentive would be over and above the existing program. What’s in it for the states? First, a better representation of their voter’s in the mass media; second, a richer cultural understanding for all of their residents; and finally, an economic boost for a portion of their population that has been traditionally under-served."
Man, this is a good article. It makes me think of a number of things, the first of which is a theory (from Cracked After Hours - this is apparently where I get most of my story theory now) that basically says that American horror doesn't work in cities, that there's just something in our shared culture that makes an urban environment unsuited to the iconography necessary for uncanny horror to really find root.
In America, the concept goes, we tie our deep-seated horror to the woods, the frontier, with After Hours going so far as to say that this is because we lost our humanity out there, with slavery and the subjugation of the Native Americans and so forth. By contrast, British horror works in the cities, because London lost its humanity during the Industrial Age.
Now, a few things here: first of all, "shared culture" is a loaded-as-all-hell concept here, as what is "shared" is going to have a pretty white bias, in all likelihood. Additionally, fear of "the other" works as uncanny in horror in a lot of crypto-racist ways, allowing for Voodoo and Shamanism/Animalism and other practices to have dramatically plausible agency simply because they're not a part of white American history, except from glimpses of them from outside.
Also, it's not like the African-American experience is today or ever has been exclusively urban, but the rural African-American story is extremely dense with specific ghosts of the past and thus carries that baggage with it like crazy. The Walking Dead might avoid making this context explicit, but we can only suspend disbelief so far that a zombie apocalypse would make race relations all hunky-dory in the deep south. And so the place of fear sits differently for African-Americans and white Americans. If you've never seen The Skeleton Key, it's a horror movie about a lynching and Voodoo, but seen through the perspective of Kate Hudson because such ghosts and majicks are tailor-made for a white audience.
Which points me to the first movie I thought of when thinking of horror as directed by African-Americans - From Hell, directed by the Hughes Brothers. They were known before this point for "hood" movies, of course, and were here directing a Victorian England comic-book horror. And it totally works, I think, because their themes that they made so passionately clear in their previous movies are still all in place. It takes place in the ghetto, awash with crime and drugs and danger, but alive with people just making their way through it, with a morality that isn't fixed to legality. That underclass is largely ignored by the power structure or else preyed on by them actively. There is casually racist profiling (in this case, of Jews) and long-shot dreams of just hitting the right score for the right money to buy a ticket out of there.
And there is also, and I adore this, a very effective use of the empowered as "the other," maybe more effective than I've seen anywhere else. The horrors are almost all undigestible crimes committed by the upper-crust elite on the helpless - aside from the Ripper himself, we get lobotomies, assorted Victorian medical freakshows (with the emphasis less on the terror of the freaks than on how the elite can display them for amusement without any fear of them) and arcane institutional rituals. The effect, in total, is to make powerful white people a genuinely horrifying "other" wo what was likely going to be a predominantly white audience.
I'm mostly just rambling now, but when the movie first came out, there was mostly talk about what a departure it was for the Hughes Brothers. Looking at it now, it seems very clear to me that they found the perfect story to make their themes work with the tone they desired and the audience they had.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:19 PM on February 13, 2015 [15 favorites]
In America, the concept goes, we tie our deep-seated horror to the woods, the frontier, with After Hours going so far as to say that this is because we lost our humanity out there, with slavery and the subjugation of the Native Americans and so forth. By contrast, British horror works in the cities, because London lost its humanity during the Industrial Age.
Now, a few things here: first of all, "shared culture" is a loaded-as-all-hell concept here, as what is "shared" is going to have a pretty white bias, in all likelihood. Additionally, fear of "the other" works as uncanny in horror in a lot of crypto-racist ways, allowing for Voodoo and Shamanism/Animalism and other practices to have dramatically plausible agency simply because they're not a part of white American history, except from glimpses of them from outside.
Also, it's not like the African-American experience is today or ever has been exclusively urban, but the rural African-American story is extremely dense with specific ghosts of the past and thus carries that baggage with it like crazy. The Walking Dead might avoid making this context explicit, but we can only suspend disbelief so far that a zombie apocalypse would make race relations all hunky-dory in the deep south. And so the place of fear sits differently for African-Americans and white Americans. If you've never seen The Skeleton Key, it's a horror movie about a lynching and Voodoo, but seen through the perspective of Kate Hudson because such ghosts and majicks are tailor-made for a white audience.
Which points me to the first movie I thought of when thinking of horror as directed by African-Americans - From Hell, directed by the Hughes Brothers. They were known before this point for "hood" movies, of course, and were here directing a Victorian England comic-book horror. And it totally works, I think, because their themes that they made so passionately clear in their previous movies are still all in place. It takes place in the ghetto, awash with crime and drugs and danger, but alive with people just making their way through it, with a morality that isn't fixed to legality. That underclass is largely ignored by the power structure or else preyed on by them actively. There is casually racist profiling (in this case, of Jews) and long-shot dreams of just hitting the right score for the right money to buy a ticket out of there.
And there is also, and I adore this, a very effective use of the empowered as "the other," maybe more effective than I've seen anywhere else. The horrors are almost all undigestible crimes committed by the upper-crust elite on the helpless - aside from the Ripper himself, we get lobotomies, assorted Victorian medical freakshows (with the emphasis less on the terror of the freaks than on how the elite can display them for amusement without any fear of them) and arcane institutional rituals. The effect, in total, is to make powerful white people a genuinely horrifying "other" wo what was likely going to be a predominantly white audience.
I'm mostly just rambling now, but when the movie first came out, there was mostly talk about what a departure it was for the Hughes Brothers. Looking at it now, it seems very clear to me that they found the perfect story to make their themes work with the tone they desired and the audience they had.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:19 PM on February 13, 2015 [15 favorites]
Horror's scariest trend is the nonexistent good horror movie.
The Babadook was the best one from last year, but it really only had a couple jumps for me. The Conjuring started out so promising, then faceplanted halfway through when it tried to do some reveals. Cabin in the Woods was pure genius, but more in a meta-ironic-comedy way.
Triangle, Stakeland, Honeymoon, Lake Mungo, Absentia ... the list goes on and on.
Seriously, I have to go back to The Descent for the last time a horror flick really blew me away, and that's soon to turn ten. I don't care what color skin the director has, I just want to be scared g'dimmit.
posted by mannequito at 4:22 PM on February 13, 2015
The Babadook was the best one from last year, but it really only had a couple jumps for me. The Conjuring started out so promising, then faceplanted halfway through when it tried to do some reveals. Cabin in the Woods was pure genius, but more in a meta-ironic-comedy way.
Triangle, Stakeland, Honeymoon, Lake Mungo, Absentia ... the list goes on and on.
Seriously, I have to go back to The Descent for the last time a horror flick really blew me away, and that's soon to turn ten. I don't care what color skin the director has, I just want to be scared g'dimmit.
posted by mannequito at 4:22 PM on February 13, 2015
Seems like a good place to link to this site.
Christ, is that diversity incentives thing a parody?
posted by batfish at 4:28 PM on February 13, 2015
Christ, is that diversity incentives thing a parody?
posted by batfish at 4:28 PM on February 13, 2015
Additionally, fear of "the other" works as uncanny in horror in a lot of crypto-racist ways, allowing for Voodoo and Shamanism/Animalism and other practices to have dramatically plausible agency simply because they're not a part of white American history, except from glimpses of them from outside.
See Candyman.
posted by Fizz at 4:32 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
See Candyman.
posted by Fizz at 4:32 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
batfish,
As far as I can tell, it is a genuine article. Why is the idea of incentives in this regard so shocking to you?
From the article:
As far as I can tell, it is a genuine article. Why is the idea of incentives in this regard so shocking to you?
From the article:
"Precedent for legislation that aims to correct civil rights disparities is well documented for other institutions (education, housing, transportation, etc.) and there is even a precedent within existing film tax credit programs. The Illinois Film Tax Credit requires that diversity statistics be recorded and even threatens the credit may be denied without a "good faith effort" to create a diverse behind the scenes environment. Yet government intervention need not be punitive. Positive reinforcement with an emphasis on the top creative jobs in the field is what's required to bring about meaningful and lasting change."posted by Fizz at 5:05 PM on February 13, 2015
Yeah diversity incentives are no strange thing in entertainment, writers' rooms require at least one woman or minority hire IIRC, and for a lot of shows I think they end up only meeting and not exceeding that requirement.
Joakim Ziegler: Speaking internationally, this popped up all over the place a couple of days ago, and looks kind of interesting: Ethiopia's first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.
That looks good, but it's directed by a white Frenchman.
mannequito:Horror's scariest trend is the nonexistent good horror movie.
No love for Adam Wingard or Ti West's stuff? Or Let the Right One In, [REC], The Orphanage, Drag Me to Hell, even the horror/sci-fi hybrid Under the Skin?
posted by JauntyFedora at 5:44 PM on February 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Joakim Ziegler: Speaking internationally, this popped up all over the place a couple of days ago, and looks kind of interesting: Ethiopia's first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.
That looks good, but it's directed by a white Frenchman.
mannequito:Horror's scariest trend is the nonexistent good horror movie.
No love for Adam Wingard or Ti West's stuff? Or Let the Right One In, [REC], The Orphanage, Drag Me to Hell, even the horror/sci-fi hybrid Under the Skin?
posted by JauntyFedora at 5:44 PM on February 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
I enjoyed the hell out of Wingard's You're Next.
posted by brundlefly at 6:07 PM on February 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by brundlefly at 6:07 PM on February 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Horror is a really subjective experience, and what scares one person may not do a lot for another, and vice versa. And not all scares are the same. I like The Descent, but it's a very conventional horror film; I jumped a number of times, but it's not a movie that speaks to me on a deep level. The Babadook is, and it's a movie I find a lot scarier, but I think the fears it touches are headier than the very primal, basic fears of a rollercoaster-ride horror film. But if you're looking for something that's more of a thrill machine, it might not work for you. And that's okay! And what's more, I don't think that good necessarily = scary when it comes to horror; there are plenty of horror films I think are just great movies that don't really scare me very much, if at all. I'm not especially scared of Let the Right One In, but I love it.
I think this is sideways to the real subject, though....
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:13 PM on February 13, 2015
I think this is sideways to the real subject, though....
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:13 PM on February 13, 2015
Speaking internationally, this popped up all over the place a couple of days ago, and looks kind of interesting: Ethiopia's first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.
It isn't - they posted this on facebook:
"We would like to clarify, strictly out of courtesy to fellow filmmakers, that despite what is being said in the world wide web, Crumbs is actually not the first Ethiopian sci-fi film. We don't even know if it's the second or the third one but hopefully it is not the last one either, it might be the first Ethiopian post-apocalypse surreal science fiction film but we are not sure about this and don't really care, we just hope it is the coolest sci-fi film you will ever see!"
That said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for posting about this film. I love sci-fi, and horror mixed with sci-fi like The Thing, and I'm tired of seeing the same old same old, so I am seriously excited at seeing Crumbs.
posted by cashman at 6:14 PM on February 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
It isn't - they posted this on facebook:
"We would like to clarify, strictly out of courtesy to fellow filmmakers, that despite what is being said in the world wide web, Crumbs is actually not the first Ethiopian sci-fi film. We don't even know if it's the second or the third one but hopefully it is not the last one either, it might be the first Ethiopian post-apocalypse surreal science fiction film but we are not sure about this and don't really care, we just hope it is the coolest sci-fi film you will ever see!"
That said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for posting about this film. I love sci-fi, and horror mixed with sci-fi like The Thing, and I'm tired of seeing the same old same old, so I am seriously excited at seeing Crumbs.
posted by cashman at 6:14 PM on February 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
JauntyFedora: "That looks good, but it's directed by a white Frenchman."
Ah, shit, I had no idea. Looking more closely, it looks like the director is Catalan, but living in Addis Ababa. That makes it less interesting, I guess, although it's still a genre movie with black African leads, so that's something.
No love for Adam Wingard or Ti West's stuff? Or Let the Right One In, [REC], The Orphanage, Drag Me to Hell, even the horror/sci-fi hybrid Under the Skin?"
I find Adam Wingard and Ti West hugely boring and derivative, and if their slavish devotion to 70s-80s slasher movies is what's supposed to revitalize the genre, we're pretty lost. Most of the other movies you mention are not American, so while that means horror as a genre is alive and well, it might be less so in the US.
I'm curious about It Follows, though.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:20 PM on February 13, 2015
Ah, shit, I had no idea. Looking more closely, it looks like the director is Catalan, but living in Addis Ababa. That makes it less interesting, I guess, although it's still a genre movie with black African leads, so that's something.
No love for Adam Wingard or Ti West's stuff? Or Let the Right One In, [REC], The Orphanage, Drag Me to Hell, even the horror/sci-fi hybrid Under the Skin?"
I find Adam Wingard and Ti West hugely boring and derivative, and if their slavish devotion to 70s-80s slasher movies is what's supposed to revitalize the genre, we're pretty lost. Most of the other movies you mention are not American, so while that means horror as a genre is alive and well, it might be less so in the US.
I'm curious about It Follows, though.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:20 PM on February 13, 2015
kittens for breakfast: "The Babadook is, and it's a movie I find a lot scarier, but I think the fears it touches are headier than the very primal, basic fears of a rollercoaster-ride horror film."
I liked The Babadook a lot, it's genuinely creepy and works well. If there's anything I'd complain about, it's that it's a bit of a cliché that horror movies about women/mothers tend to go to exactly that particular thing (trying to stay spoiler-free here) as the ultimate in horror, and it feels like stereotyping women as mothers/nurturing/inoffensive, and any action that plays against that has to be demonic possession or whatever. It's not a complaint principally about The Babadook, though, more about the limited roles and characters available for women in horror in general.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:25 PM on February 13, 2015
I liked The Babadook a lot, it's genuinely creepy and works well. If there's anything I'd complain about, it's that it's a bit of a cliché that horror movies about women/mothers tend to go to exactly that particular thing (trying to stay spoiler-free here) as the ultimate in horror, and it feels like stereotyping women as mothers/nurturing/inoffensive, and any action that plays against that has to be demonic possession or whatever. It's not a complaint principally about The Babadook, though, more about the limited roles and characters available for women in horror in general.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:25 PM on February 13, 2015
JauntyFedora: "No love for Adam Wingard or Ti West's stuff? Or Let the Right One In, [REC], The Orphanage, Drag Me to Hell, even the horror/sci-fi hybrid Under the Skin?"
I've seen a bunch of those and they still all fall into the 'decent' category for me (exception being Under The Skin, which, while not straight horror, had one of the most disturbing scenes ever with the baby on the beach). I'd amend my previous comment that there's plenty of good, but no great horror movies in the past decade that I've personally come across.
Definitely agree that it's subjective - along with comedy, probably the most subjective genres.
posted by mannequito at 6:56 PM on February 13, 2015
I've seen a bunch of those and they still all fall into the 'decent' category for me (exception being Under The Skin, which, while not straight horror, had one of the most disturbing scenes ever with the baby on the beach). I'd amend my previous comment that there's plenty of good, but no great horror movies in the past decade that I've personally come across.
Definitely agree that it's subjective - along with comedy, probably the most subjective genres.
posted by mannequito at 6:56 PM on February 13, 2015
Fizz, I did follow the link and read it over. I think constructing the phenomenon as a "civil rights disparity" is hyperbole, and that anyway this kind of fine-grained cultural fashioning is neither a competence of nor in the legitimate scope of the state. I'll take on face value that there's a problem, I guess, but it's less troubling to me than the thought of the ministry of culture interceding to create "a more balanced on-screen world," where audiences are ensured of seeing "themselves as well as 'the others' represented in stories." That is, to my mind, a fairly sinister proposal on its face, and, at minimum, I want to see somebody making it treading very fucking carefully indeed, which this barely copyedited piece does not do.
...
I tried in vain to find a nice thing I had read about the special enthusiasm of black audiences for Willard in the '70s, but this thing hits some similar and interesting notes--horror as a form of inverted minstrelsy, etc...
posted by batfish at 7:20 PM on February 13, 2015
...
I tried in vain to find a nice thing I had read about the special enthusiasm of black audiences for Willard in the '70s, but this thing hits some similar and interesting notes--horror as a form of inverted minstrelsy, etc...
posted by batfish at 7:20 PM on February 13, 2015
Interesting people bring up Wingard and West, since, as a horror buff, I dropped in to say I have seen just about nothing good out of American mainstream horror for the longest time. Not being a hipster, but only the US indie stuff has been any good lately, and even that's been uneven.
So, I am going to postulate that this is a slice of a larger problem - American mainstream horror (written and filmed) is crap, by and large, and the dearth of filmmakers of color is largely due to the fact they don't want to be a part of said crapfest.
posted by Samizdata at 7:28 PM on February 13, 2015
So, I am going to postulate that this is a slice of a larger problem - American mainstream horror (written and filmed) is crap, by and large, and the dearth of filmmakers of color is largely due to the fact they don't want to be a part of said crapfest.
posted by Samizdata at 7:28 PM on February 13, 2015
Samizdata: "So, I am going to postulate that this is a slice of a larger problem - American mainstream horror (written and filmed) is crap, by and large, and the dearth of filmmakers of color is largely due to the fact they don't want to be a part of said crapfest."
That seems dismissive, almost to the extent of saying "You black people should be happy you don't have to take part in this, although it's a billion dollar industry and one of the United States' primary cultural exports. Look how bad it is! It's below you, really!"
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:32 PM on February 13, 2015
That seems dismissive, almost to the extent of saying "You black people should be happy you don't have to take part in this, although it's a billion dollar industry and one of the United States' primary cultural exports. Look how bad it is! It's below you, really!"
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:32 PM on February 13, 2015
I'll take on face value that there's a problem, I guess, but it's less troubling to me than the thought of the ministry of culture interceding to create "a more balanced on-screen world," where audiences are ensured of seeing "themselves as well as 'the others' represented in stories."
It's not to me, if what it means to achieve that balance is clearly defined and reasonable. This isn't a board policing content (although boards that police the content of TV and movies do already exist, for good or ill). It's a hiring policy. It's an affirmative action concept. Is affirmative action needed? I mean, I don't see any evidence that it's not needed, or that its prior institution has led to some Orwellian nightmare or whatever.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:41 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's not to me, if what it means to achieve that balance is clearly defined and reasonable. This isn't a board policing content (although boards that police the content of TV and movies do already exist, for good or ill). It's a hiring policy. It's an affirmative action concept. Is affirmative action needed? I mean, I don't see any evidence that it's not needed, or that its prior institution has led to some Orwellian nightmare or whatever.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:41 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
I will say Demon Knight was pretty mediocre and underwhelming. This guy clearly has the chops to direct, I mean he made Juice, but a lot of what he made since in terms of movies were simply not good. He followed up Demon Knight witha Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler buddy cop comedy, and we wonder why his star fell?
posted by Hoopo at 7:58 PM on February 13, 2015
posted by Hoopo at 7:58 PM on February 13, 2015
Well, it didn't, really. He's directed episodes of The Walking Dead, Dexter, The Wire...he's done pretty well for himself in television. The question is why the film industry didn't seem to be there for him.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:52 PM on February 13, 2015
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:52 PM on February 13, 2015
I'm a pretty big ghost / horror story reader and my personal opinion is that the best ones are about the horror within. They tend to come from or be inspired by closeknit, often traditional, superstitious, religious communities originally. Vampires, changelings, ghost stories etc are stories about families at heart. The monstrous family is often superimposed on the victims family story. Dracula was in love with Nina, he wanted to steal her and make her part of his family. The Cihuateteo try to steal other women's children. The adze turns you into a witch. Silkies break your heart forever. They're cautionary tales about wanting too much or leaving your family a lot of the time.
Most modern American horror (and some Japanese that I've seen) in contrast is an external threat: kids get lost in woods, meet ax murderer who wants to kill them. Or aliens or something. Well done, it's scary but I'm not sure it's a story that appeals to artists outside the demographic of suburban Americans? Or not enough to pursue telling it.
Really disturbing horror, to me, subverts the victim instead of just offing them and there is often buy in from the community to let it happen. A lot of Grimms fairy tales have that kind of element. A lot of foreign made horror and horror-ish movies have that vibe. I suppose one American example would be The Lottery? The Others and Sixth Sense did too. The Shining, obviously, is in this tradition too.
I enjoy a good jump scare movie as much as anyone but Halloween or Scream don't really stick with you like Frankenstein's poor sad monster does.
posted by fshgrl at 10:17 PM on February 13, 2015 [5 favorites]
Most modern American horror (and some Japanese that I've seen) in contrast is an external threat: kids get lost in woods, meet ax murderer who wants to kill them. Or aliens or something. Well done, it's scary but I'm not sure it's a story that appeals to artists outside the demographic of suburban Americans? Or not enough to pursue telling it.
Really disturbing horror, to me, subverts the victim instead of just offing them and there is often buy in from the community to let it happen. A lot of Grimms fairy tales have that kind of element. A lot of foreign made horror and horror-ish movies have that vibe. I suppose one American example would be The Lottery? The Others and Sixth Sense did too. The Shining, obviously, is in this tradition too.
I enjoy a good jump scare movie as much as anyone but Halloween or Scream don't really stick with you like Frankenstein's poor sad monster does.
posted by fshgrl at 10:17 PM on February 13, 2015 [5 favorites]
Being in the camp that considers The Shining at least arguably the scariest movie ever made (on a psychological level) I have to look at the detail of the man in the bear suit, doing nothing threatening at all, just being there in an intimate situation someone on the outside doesn't have a mental place for, keeping the viewer from feeling like their ever going to have a hold on what's going on.
Compare that to The Conjuring, which was half pretty-good horror and half shameless hagiography for a couple of real-life horrible con-artists, with the worst title ever (seriously, both bland as hell and dishonest - at no point is there any conjuring of any sort) but one where every reveal makes things less engaging.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:57 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Compare that to The Conjuring, which was half pretty-good horror and half shameless hagiography for a couple of real-life horrible con-artists, with the worst title ever (seriously, both bland as hell and dishonest - at no point is there any conjuring of any sort) but one where every reveal makes things less engaging.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:57 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also why the Werewolf has been completely de-clawed. A werewolf isn't scary if he can control when he wolfs out, it ruins the freaking metaphor - a normally sane and good person who becomes a monster a few times a year and is completely unaware of what they're doing - you know that's the absuive husband or the drunk or the person suffering mental illness or whatever. A guy who can control when he gets all wolfy and monsterous isn't even The Hulk*, he's just a dude a superpower.
*And every and all adaptations that make Mr. Hyde basically The Incredible Victorian Hulk miss that Mr. Hyde is *smaller* than Dr. Jekyll and he makes the potion so he can carouse and womanize and go bad in a low class way without ruining his reputation as an upstanding citizen. Like that's not really a thing anymore. a modern version would be a fine standing evangelical taking a potion to make himself look totally different so he could drink all night, screw guys in alleyways and run drugs without anyone knowing.
posted by The Whelk at 11:03 PM on February 13, 2015 [7 favorites]
*And every and all adaptations that make Mr. Hyde basically The Incredible Victorian Hulk miss that Mr. Hyde is *smaller* than Dr. Jekyll and he makes the potion so he can carouse and womanize and go bad in a low class way without ruining his reputation as an upstanding citizen. Like that's not really a thing anymore. a modern version would be a fine standing evangelical taking a potion to make himself look totally different so he could drink all night, screw guys in alleyways and run drugs without anyone knowing.
posted by The Whelk at 11:03 PM on February 13, 2015 [7 favorites]
And in that story we'd be rooting for Mr Hyde! A lot of folk-horror doesn't work as well anymore since we're not convinced that selling your soul to the devil to become a famous musician isn't a good idea all in all.
posted by fshgrl at 11:25 PM on February 13, 2015
posted by fshgrl at 11:25 PM on February 13, 2015
That seems dismissive, almost to the extent of saying "You black people should be happy you don't have to take part in this, although it's a billion dollar industry and one of the United States' primary cultural exports. Look how bad it is! It's below you, really!"
Wasn't intended as such. More of an attack against American mainstream horror and allowing all due credit to those who decide it really isn't where they want to go with their filmmaking.
posted by Samizdata at 12:13 AM on February 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wasn't intended as such. More of an attack against American mainstream horror and allowing all due credit to those who decide it really isn't where they want to go with their filmmaking.
posted by Samizdata at 12:13 AM on February 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah the articel says there are up my filmmakers who want to make horror movies. But it seems all that gets funded is slasher flicks. And maybe some comedy horror stuff.
posted by fshgrl at 12:55 PM on February 14, 2015
posted by fshgrl at 12:55 PM on February 14, 2015
Well, sad to say, but slashers are better for merchandising...
posted by Samizdata at 5:18 PM on February 21, 2015
posted by Samizdata at 5:18 PM on February 21, 2015
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posted by chavenet at 2:54 PM on February 13, 2015 [1 favorite]