Of Finding a Good, Satisfying Scare

[kriadydragon]

I miss the good old days of scary movies (scary, not slasher) when you had your ghosts wreaking havoc, a bit of a mystery, the mystery solved, the ghost going away and everyone happy as clams. I'm getting tired of these "ha, ha, just kidding, you didn't solve anything and the ghost kills everyone" kind of endings. One, they're so flippin' predictable to the point of not even being scary. Two, it's hard to watch a scary movie twice when you know it's going to have that kind of an ending.

I mentioned a while back that one of my all time favorite scary movies was Watcher in the Woods. It's PG, it's Disney and by all rights should be considered tame. But it didn't matter how many times I watched that movie, even knowing what was going to happen, it still scared the crap out of me. Same with The Lady in White. And neither of these movies relied on those obnoxious just-kidding twists. The mystery was solved, the source of the scary moved on and I was satisfied.

I miss that so much. I love a good scary movie but I'm so reluctant to give any a try because of the popularity of these unhappy twists. I can see these twists coming the moment the movie begins, and it leaves me wondering why Hollywood is so enamored with these endings when there are so many far more interesting things they could do.

Comments

[aim2misbhave.livejournal.com]

I'm so used to watching scifi that if the ghost kills everyone my first reaction is "meh they'll be back sooner or later".

...and I'm curious, have you seen Cabin in the Woods? (I promise I won't spoil anything if you haven't!)

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I'm so used to watching scifi that if the ghost kills everyone my first reaction is "meh they'll be back sooner or later".

Heh, so true ;)

I haven't seen Cabin but I have heard of it. the previews seem strange but from reading the reviews it sounds promising (plus, Joss Whedon made it. That alone tells me there's some actual creativity involved.)

[aim2misbhave.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Even if you go into it being like "Yeah this is a Joss Whedon film" you still don't expect 90% of what's coming, and it's a great satire of typical horror films too, and is hilarious for other reasons.

I actually got to go to the premiere, which was ah-maaaa-zing. And Chris Hemsworth is even prettier IRL than he is on film, and there was no red carpet which meant nowhere for anyone to tell the guests to stay off of ;-) And Joss was 20 feet away from me. And Drew Goddard was wearing the same Mockingjay pin that i was wearing that night. And it was awesome.