There was a time, not long ago, when horror films were meant to frighten people.  The monsters crept around, looking for their victims, and jumping out at the right time to give you a fright.  Nowadays, it seems as if the horror genre has taken to graphic violence as its primary element.  Practically gone are the days of such classics as Friday the 13^th, Aliens or Jaws.  Now we are left with Saw and Hostel and other such splatter-fests.

I enjoy a good splatter film from time to time, but when the whole point of a film is just induce shock by showing people tortured in various horrible ways, the subtlety has left the craft.  No longer are we kept on the edge of our seats, but rather waiting in line for the bathroom to unload the contents of our stomachs.

Perhaps the viewing audience has become so jaded with past films that every good device has turned into a cliché.  Maybe this new turn in horror film making is just an attempt to wake people up from their violence- induced coma.  I couldn’t say for sure, but I do know that I am unimpressed.

The other turn that horror movies have taken involves mixing more humor into them.  The old clichés are turned on their heads and made silly.  While this may not qualify as a horror film in the classical sense, at least it’s a better option than the masochistic portrayals.

Me, I wish that the same care and attention could be paid to producing good horror flicks as is paid to producing good drama.  Make the intelligent film, make it scary and still make it accessible.  Then more horror movies will be made which stand the test of time and leave as strong an impression on the world that a classic like Nightmare on Elm Street did.