Thursday, October 27, 2016

The Modern Age of Horror Cinema

For now, I consider modern horror filmmaking to start in the 90's, where the genre had a few gems still getting released, but the general public was getting tired, until Scream(1996) rejuvenated interest back, with a slasher revival and making parodies.

The early 00's/2000's saw an increased interest into Japanese horror, and their subsequent remakes being arguably even better. The most famous examples are The Ring and The Grudge, which recently got a Freddy VS. Jason kind of flick in regards to the iconic supernatural spooks.

This decade towards the end of it also saw the rise of the French Wave, where a surprising amount of terrific good French horror was released. Highlights in here include Inside(2007), High Tension(2003) and one of my all time favorites, Martyrs(2008).

New horror icons also slowly started rising, with Jigsaw and his puppet alter ego Billy being the most recognizable in the Saw series. Another well known franchise became Paranormal Activity, although both of them have definitely seen the peak of their success already.

And then there's the future of horror cinema to ponder about. How many remakes, prequels and sequels need to be directed still until we get to see a nice amount of titles, instead of hopefully getting 1 good project each year, such as Insidious(2010), Sinister(2012), The Conjuring(2013) and The Babadook(2014)?

I really look forward towards seeing new upcoming successful horror films, because I can very well understand how hard it can be to achieve something truly frightening in this age of the internet, where 9 out of 10 horror movies are really not worth anyone's time.

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