[Stingy Jack]

Yeah, I saw that! LoL! That's quite allright. As long as what he says is relevant.

Personally, I'm tired of gore. When I watched Dead Alive for the first time, I got the impression that Peter Jackson said to himself one night: "You know, the horror genre has totally gone to shit. Nobody wants to be scared anymore, they just want blood, blood, blood, guts, brains, and blood. Well, maybe if I give them something that is so blood-drenched and gut-clogged, maybe they'll move on. Maybe I can give them something that will never be able to be topped in terms of gore, that horror film makers will have to look to something else to put in their films. Maybe this film will finally put horror back on the track it needs to be." And so, Dead Alive was born. I mean, really ... horror is about FEAR, not blood and guts. And if you watch a film for the blood and guts, then you are not a fan of horror movies, you are a fan of splatter-flicks. As I wrote in an earlier thread, horror totally went down the tubes in the 80's. It abandoned the things like atmosphere, plot, and suspense for blood and guts. And this wave of horror adopted its own term: "splatterpunk". It was this trend in films that almost killed the horror fiction market all together. When fans of the films decided they wanted this same type of visceral inanity in their fiction, horror authors, for the most part, refused (there is something called "artistic integrity"). Horror authors preferred to write with atmosphere, plot and character in mind. So, when readers didn't get the nastiness in their reading, they nearly abandoned the books entirely. Which is really sad.

Its almost as if people don't want to sit and pay attention to a film anymore. "If I have to pay attention to it, then it must be shit. I don't want to devote my time to getting to know characters and 'suspensding my disbelief' and getting wrapped up in the atmosphere ... that's bullshit shit for people with standards. Just splash some chunky blood on the screen so I can drool on myself and giggle." I mean, this is almost exactly what I think of these people. I can imagine the people who want only as much blood and gore as they can get to be the same type of people that sit on their front porches for hours on end watching the bug-zapper.

The Shining, Stanley Kubrick's version, is probably the best horror film I have ever seen when it comes to providing atmosphere. The opening music is so ominous, and the hotel seems so oppressive and empty and isolated, that the viewer is on edge long before anything scary happens. And this idea of isolation is an excellent mood to put your audience in. Make them feel alone, cut-off and helpless ... and put something terrible with them. Atmosphere is so important, and I'm glad Vod was so quick to say it.

Also, natas made an excellent point. I don't want to be shown everything when I see a film. For me, once I have seen it, I can deal with it and move on. So, any horror film that leaves nothing to the imagination does not scare me in the least. The Blair Witch Project, and I know how many people here hate it (gore-mongers), was the scariest film I had seen in a LONG time when it came out. Everything in that film was left to the imagination of the audience, and it remains one of the most nerve-wracking horror movies in recent memory. It's crude, sloppy, oppressively atmospheric, and ultimately horrifying. Say what you will about the first three-quarters of this controversial, flawed masterpiece, but the last fifteen minutes are among the most genuinely terrifying I've ever experienced ... and the final, devastating image actually sent chills down my spine. When I left the film, even though I wasn't shown what happened to Heather and Mike, I was playing out their demise over and over again in my mind. It was disturbing.

One final thing: We need to care about the characters. At least care about them enough that we don't want them to get hurt too badly. And for this, you need characters that look and act like real people. The audience needs to be able to put themselves in the place of the characters if they are going to closely experience what it is the characters are experiencing. If we don't care about them, or cannot relate to them in some way, then we won't give a shit what happens to them. And all the scares go down the toilet.

So: 1) Atmosphere; 2) Leave MUCH to the imagination; 3) Believable characters the audience can like and relate to.

Those are my three reccommendations.

Sorry for the long post.