The tagline touts “Oh yes, there will be blood,” and the promotional poster depicts two gritty, battered fingers with jagged, broken fingernails.
At first glance, the ads for the recently released “Saw 2” seem pretty standard fare to suck in fans of the horror genre. In fine-tuning my appreciation and criticism of horror movies in recent years, though, I’ve learned to roll my eyes and dismiss most shock-and-awe advertising tactics such as these.
The fact is that a truly good horror movie is hard to come by.
First, it’s important to outline the criteria I use to judge, as the genre of horror may blur into genres of drama, suspense or sci-fi. The dictionary defines horror as “an intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear,” suggesting that horror movies should be not only scary but also hold an element of disgust or distaste.
Most importantly, a good horror movie needs a strong plot. It should keep you guessing and build to a striking, usually unexpected conclusion. It should be psychological and truly get under your skin. The best horror movies tend to be dark and subdued, either in tone or setting. Some criteria are optional, such as excessive blood and gore. A horror movie doesn’t need booming background music and piercing shrieks to be effective. Note that scantily clad women don’t make the list.
My father is somewhat of a horror movie guru, so growing up, I was exposed to every horror movie from the 1920s to the present. The classic movie monsters like The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and The Invisible Man will always be scary. Seventy years later, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and Boris Karloff still fascinate in black and white.
Classic doesn’t always mean good, though. I found “The Exorcist” cheesy and fairly uninteresting. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th” were entertaining for a while but became a bore as Jason took Manhattan and went to space.
Remakes are a dangerous and usually unsuccessful thing. The raw classic is, nine times out of 10, better. For instance, the remakes of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The House on Haunted Hill” were abysmal in comparison to the originals. There have been over 150 movies about Dracula, and yet none are as chilling as the 1922 silent film “Nosferatu,” which proves improved technology and special effects don’t automatically mean better.
That’s not to say, though, that special effects aren’t beneficial because any fan of zombie movies can agree that the better the special effects, the more believable the scenario. Although “Shaun of the Dead” is a hilarious spoof, it can’t fail to be recognized as a terrific horror movie as well, utilizing some fantastic special effects. In one scene zombies tear out a man’s intestines and begin feasting on them, as his still-human friends rip off the man’s legs and beat the zombies with them. Though the scene sparked uproarious laughter, it was very well done and won bonus points for gore. Other great zombie movies include 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead” and 2002’s “28 Days Later.”
Both “Saw” and “Saw 2” are some of the finest horror flicks I’ve seen in a long time. Both had excellent plots with surprising twist endings and featured some of the most spine-tingling, creative scenes of torture and grisly gore I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. The movies were so good that the plot and gore made up for the miserable acting.
Some of the more understated movies are successful at causing scares. “The Others,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “The Ring” quietly build tension until their intense climaxes.
Campy, often unrated horror movies are sometimes the most enjoyable of all. “Freddy vs. Jason,” “Cabin Fever” and the incredibly obscure “The Granny” are absurd and poorly acted, feature scenes of noticeably fake violence and gore, and are all around wonderful. Perhaps the first of this category is 1956’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” directed by Ed Wood and starring Vampira and Bela Lugosi.
Horror movies from past to present are a thing of beauty. Those not good enough to be good and not bad enough to be funny fall between the cracks into anonymity, while the rest surface as an art form that’s difficult to create and nearly impossible to perfect. So when a good one comes along, like “Saw 2,” it is well worth mentioning.