The old horror canon is still out there, from F.W.
These films, and a handful of others, set the stage for a whole new canon of horror classics that are still affecting the industry, giving new horror directors a model for how to work, and promising huge paybacks on low budgets, if filmmakers and studios can just find their audience. The Sixth Sense suggested an immense mainstream market for psychological horror built around big twists, while Saw revealed an equally dedicated market for gory, nasty, cheaply made movies with their own sharp surprises. The Blair Witch Project showed the value of viral marketing, and proved a compelling story and tense tone was more important than a high-gloss studio sheen. Wes Craven’s Scream gave horror a hip, self-aware, meta-comedy feel, letting horror movies stay scary while intelligently acknowledging their own tropes. Over the course of less than a decade, starting around the turn of the millennium, the genre entirely changed its tone and its focus.Ī handful of hit films laid the foundation for the new cult horror standards.
Directors were another thing entirely, with a handful of dedicated genre enthusiasts, from George Romero to David Cronenberg, reliably cranking out memorable work - but they were usually the exception to the rule.īut rapid changes in digital effects, filmmaking, and distribution helped put a new generation of horror filmmakers behind the camera, gave them a new tool set to produce cheap but effective monsters, and then let them get their work directly to their enthusiastic audience. The field was dominated by cookie-cutter sequels full of masked slashers and low-rent monsters, and while many actors of note started out in horror, few willingly stayed there if they could get more prestigious work.
Just a few decades ago, horror films were mostly considered disreputable and schlocky. For people with a lively interest in cinema’s rapid technolgical and cultural evolution over the past few decades, few areas are as fascinating as the horror genre.