The Way They Use To...

I'm only thirty two but the way things have accelerated this past decade I feel much older at times. One thing that bugs the shit out me are modern movies. I have a very tough time actually liking most of them. It's astonishing how much shit is out there to watch. It's all quick cuts and garbled visuals that have replaced good choreography and storytelling. It's amazing to see how many films try to use style over skill. There's just too many hack fucks out there trying to be more than what they can be. (I'm looking at you Paul Anderson and Uwe Boll.) I miss the long takes and the ability to distinguish action shoots.

Horror in particular is my poison of choice and I've grown weary of the shit that gets peddled in it's name. It's fucking depressing the amount of PG-13 ghost story drivel that has come out in the last five years. I'm sick to death of the Japanese ghost remakes. The sad part to all this is that the good shit can't make any money or just gets dicked around by the studios. Drag Me To Hell wasn't even a blimp on the summer movie radar despite the fact it was Sam Rami revisiting his Evil Dead roots. Horror geeks have been bitching online for years about how he needed to stop doing the Spider-Man movies and do a horror flick. Then when he does and no one goes to see it. Instead I guess their saving their money for Saw 5.

Then there was Midnight Meat Train which was the U.S. directorial debut of Ryûhei Kitamura. He directed some truly excellent Japanese flick such as Versus, Azumi, Alive and a few others. Here we had a movie based on one of Clive Barkers short stories from the Books of Blood and a very innovative director ready to assault mainstream audiences with a brutally awesome horror film. Instead of getting a shot it gets shit canned and released in a handful of theaters and premieres on some obscure goddamn horror channel online only find it's way to DVD. Lionsgate are fucking morons.

This all leads me to believe I will never have to go to a theater again to see a great horror movie. Eventually they won't be made for mainstream audiences anymore. Horror just doesn't make the money that it probably does with direct to DVD releases. It's obvious people won't go out to watch anything unless it's a goddamn remake of something they're familiar with. God forbid they try to explore the field and little and see what else is out there.

I watched a little low budget horror flick this weekend that sparked this rant. It was called Laid To Rest. Like most good horror movies it received little recognition and was a straight DVD release. It was just a slasher movie that was very well done and had nice old school effects (no CGI). Me and the wife sat and watched it glued to all 90 minutes of it. It wasn't some ground breaking, genre turning, life altering experience but it was a fucking good horror flick like they use to make. The villain was cool looking the kills were well done and the story had just enough to keep me from nodding off. I loved knowing that I could still experience this kind of film. I'd compare the film to Halloween in most respects. It's basically a group of people trying to survive against a relentless killer wearing a chrome skull on his face.

If you like a memorable villain and plenty of gore then check it out. I watched this after setting through The Haunting in Connecticut with my wife the night before. It really drove home the idea about the contrasts between good and total shit. Needless to say Haunting in Connecticut is total shit. Laid to Rest deserve a audience much more than that film.

That's all the bitching I can muster for the time being.

Enjoy the Life!