The Conjuring was a fossil of a concept when it originally hit cinemas. Not only that, but it's a roadmap of every "haunted house," "possession" story you care to name. Already seen the Exorcist, the original Amittyville Horror, Poltergeist, the Haunting et al?; Then you've already seen this film, and already seen it done a million times more competently and a million times more interestingly. The fact that the best mainstream cinematic markets can boast in terms of horror right now is a spin off of this singularly lazy, unoriginal, conservative, pandering franchise is absolutely damning. The fact that the best mainstream cinematic markets can boast in terms of horror right now is a spin off of this singularly lazy, unoriginal, conservative, pandering franchise is absolutely damning. There's so much good work out there that has never been rendered on screen before; so many situations and creatures and atrocities that we haven't yet been exposed to in that medium. Flip open a random collection of horror short stories published during the last ten years, and I guarantee you will find subject matter you've never seen on the big screen before. Take a look at the art of H.R. Giger or Francisco de Goya, Jacek Yerka or any one of a thousand others, and you will find the same: images that suggest wider story; mythology beyond the canvas, that has never been rendered in film form. It is not that the material does not exist; there's actually a surfeit of it: so much to play with, so many ideas and concepts and images that could make fantastic fodder for cinema. Rather, it's that studios are so terrified of producing material that might alienate potential demographics (which horror will always do at its very best), they automatically favour the familiar, the weary, the known quanitities; stories that have been told again and again and again, over and over and over, such that even audiences who don't have much truck with horror know them inside out. It's pandering, it's corrosive to what the genre can do, at its highest and most ideal (i.e. shunt audiences out of their comfort zones, placing them in contexts and states of suggestion whereby they are obliged to transgress beyond certain bounds of consideration and experience) and it is VERY bad news for those of us who operate in it to any particular degree, as these are the wretchedly LOW standards audiences are going to come to expect. It's a state of affairs that necessarily cultivates meekness in the audience; a milksop quality in which they expect and demand their horror to be comforting and conciliatory rather than unexpected and transgressive. And to be unexpected and transgressive is what horror is for. If audiences can get up and walk away from any piece of media that describes itself as such, without feeling distressed or disturbed to some degree, than how can it legitimately do so? In what way does it warrant being classified as "horror" at all? We need to be braver, we need to be more incisive and to have more self respect as audiences, not to mention more respect for our audiences if we happen to be creators of material. And we need to stop paying to see decided-by-board-meeting, written-by-committee, edited-by-test-audience swill like this, that is about as transgressive and legitimately horrifying as a piece of lightly browned toast.
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AuthorGeorge Lea is an entity that seems to simultaneously exist and not exist at various points and states in time and reality, mostly where there are vast quantities of cake to be had. He has a lot of books. And a cat named Rufus. What she makes of all this is anyone's guess. Archives
May 2020
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