I think my two biggest problems with modern horror movies are the following:
1. The urge to explain. Oftentimes a film has a somewhat effective atmosphere, or particularly unsettling imagery, but then squanders it with banal exposition. Generally speaking we really don't need the monster's back story, or an explanation of the precise mechanism by which a curse is activated and its motivation.
This is true. Horror is best when it's mysterious. (Looking at you Prometheus / Alien Covenant) The xenomorph was more effective when it was unknowable.
2. "It's actually about real life." All horror touches on "real life," duh. Shoving this realization in the audience's face does not actually make the horror feel more relevant, just less effective. So many promising films get ruined by the filmmakers' desire to shout "This is actually a metaphor for losing a parent/ cancer/ divorce/ loneliness, guys! We're not just a genre movie, we're serious stuff!"
Horror is never really about real life.
Schindler's List isn't a horror film, even though the things that happen in that film are beyond anything in any mainstream horror. Same thing with
Come & See - probably one of the most true depictions of real life horror ever committed to celluloid.
I think you can split horror into two broad categories - the fairground ride and the encounter with the ineffable.
The first is about cheap jumps, gross-out visuals and evoking disgust - nightmare on elm street, jason, saw, hostel, buckets of blood, skeletons flying over the audience etc.
The second is about mood, atmosphere, expectation, the psychological - gothic castles, the strange, the uncanny, madness - they're about reckoning with history (writing the wrong, or the way the past haunts the present) or the unknowable.
I guess the above two points could be subsumed into one: A fear of ambiguity, irrationality, and loose ends- all of which feature heavily in a lot of effective horror.
I think it's more that modern audiences are desensitised to so much. There is gore in teen shows nowadays that would have been 18 certificate 30 years ago.
Another problem is the MST3K attitude--there's a mocking attitude towards a suspension of disbelief nowadays and I think it hinders the ability to appreciate straight horror stories, especially economical made ones with an imaginative theme.
Agree - we're much more self conscious nowadays than we ever were.
I really hate found footage films though.
I despise them because the lack of traditional narrative structure and musical scores and photography---it's not a boon for horror to do everything like a news documentary.
I really hate them.
Found footage was a novelty. Blair Witch was good at the time, I thought. It did bring something new to the table - both in terms of marketing and in the way it was shot. The iconic scenes of the harsh lighting and the performance of the lead actress very much sold the terror.
I watched Scorcese's Cape Fear for the first time yesterday. Even in 1990 it was a period piece - Scorcese is trying to channel Hitchcock (as was the original on which the film is based). But the sheer creativity in the editing, the use of camera, blocking really was fantastic - but having lived for twenty years now with over the shoulder shots and documentary style shaky cam, it also looked bizarre.
I was also watching something about film editing, and they were saying that modern films cut almost every second because they're concerned audiences will get bored - instead of letting a scene play out they make up for the deficiencies in script and performance by putting the most obvious musical scores on them to signify YOU SHOULD FEEL SAD HERE. THIS BIT IS DRAMATIC. THIS GUY IS AN IDIOT. etc.
One of the things I objected to about Jackson's LOTR was the score. Other than the use of the execrable Uillean pipes and the trite "oi'm from oireland, talooraloora" cod-folk melodies (much better was Bakshi's score), Jackson uses it like a crutch - as a bed under every scene. It's like the performances weren't good enough, so here, FEEL THIS.
Going back to Cape Fear - I LOVE LOVE LOVE Bernard Hermann. The score is fantastic, but it's much better used sparingly. Towards the very end of the movie where it somehow manages to push melodrama through the veil of comedy, the music does feel too much. That vein of Debussy and Rachmaninoff that Hermann is cribbing from seems out of place now we're accustomed to the generic Hans Zimmer / Junkie XL sparse music score.
It's not so much that the ability to suspend belief isn't there - but that the boundary is diminished because so much music / tropes have been reified by other things - adverts / films / comedy. etc.
