Let’s get this out of the way right now—I hated this movie. It took all the creepiness, simplicity and dread I loved in the first film and made it a funhouse ride of nothing but cheap “boo scares” while serving many of the same reheated plot points and fear tactics. In a word, disappointing. But the point of this post isn’t to bash the film outright—PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, to me, exemplifies all the problems and pratfalls one encounters when trying to create a good horror sequel, issues that have plagued the genre since its inception.
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I’ve lived in West Hollywood, a.k.a. Boystown, a.k.a. The Gayborhood for 8 years now. By the time I experienced my first Halloween Carnival, this gay olde towne had the recipe down pat: Take one blocked off Santa Monica Boulevard, add heaping tablespoons of gays, music, food and booze, shake vigorously.
MANIAC
As I hope Monday is treating you all well, I also hope this past weekend was another exciting part of the glory that is October/autumn/Halloween season. What did you do? Like myself, I imagine many of you went out and saw the sequel to last year’s ultra-low-budget megahit, and while I mostly enjoyed it—or at least the experience of being startled with fellow spectators—I couldn’t help but think it squandered an opportunity at the end. Thus, I was inspired to pen probably the shortest of Terrifyingly Gnarly entries. Hit the jump to read a brief idea (though if you haven’t seen the movie, I would recommend not doing so) of just how I would’ve created a grand finale to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2…
Horror is a religion or at the very least, a spiritual pathway. No greater proof of that (in the inverse) currently exists than the remake of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, whose marketing has been marked most obviously by a campaign to make sure the film is released unrated in as many theaters as possible. The idea seems to be that if horror fans really love the “cutting edge” they’ll demand to see it this way. Sadly the truth is, the marketers do have a point. A rated, and thus necessarily truncated version of this film would be pointless not because it would violate the aesthetic of a complex work of art but because it would then fail to deliver the only thing I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) has to offer.
Dear horror fans—what scares you? Tis the season for terror, and in honor of my favorite month I figure I’d drop the angry rants for a post and talk about something different: the scenes in horror movies that have truly chilled me to the bone and that have made me such an addict of the genre.