Quote:
Originally Posted by _____V_____
Roshiq's Query - "What do you think has been the single biggest factor in contributing to the downfall of horror from the early 90s till now?
1 - Too much corporate interference from the studios?
2 - Lack of original talent and material?
3 - Too much emphasis on sequels and remakes?"
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From the 3 options of answers from our honorable judge the Simian Man, I chose no. 1 =
Too much corporate interference from the studios.
Analysis/points to support my answer:
Apart from a nice little boom of serial killer sub genre & some acclaimed original films like I
n the mouth of Madness, Candyman & Jacob's ladder two main problems pushed horror backward during 90's:
1. The proliferation of nonstop slasher and gore films in the eighties.
2. The young audience who feasted on the blood and morbidity of the previous decade grew up, and the replacement audience for films of an imaginative nature were being captured instead by the explosion of special effects possibilities with CGI.
Directors and producers started to feel somehow as if they have to show more in order to get more from the audience and make sure it will appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Money-shark studios and directors alike tend to borrow successful scenes or effects from one film, and repeat it consistently throughout every subsequent film, relying on those said scenes and effects to provide entertainment in lieu of any originality or plot. What happened to keeping the audience in suspense by waiting until the finale to reveal the monster or the breathtaking big murder scene? Horror films then begin to producing a chain reaction, the more creatures and blood and guts that films show, the more the audience 'will want to see in the future'. Studios sacrificing substance for shock treatment.
It was supposed to happen while the rapid commercialization goes in an expanding industry like entertainment and media, all that matters to the people that put up money to fund a project is cold hard cash or an assurance of secure & quick return.
A blockbuster film is not always necessarily a good one, but under the hands of corporate culture studios seem to watch the numbers more often than the movies they produce, and one blockbuster is apt to be followed by five others bearing extreme similarities. Of course, this results in numbers dropping as audiences tire of the same drivel, leading the studios to find the next big blockbuster to reproduce into oblivion. New and eager filmmakers may in some case repeatedly turned away in favor of the next remake of a horror classic. This isn’t going to become an argument about how remakes nowadays are abundant and terrible; it’s just going to say that this is how it is now. This is the popular trend and people are sick of it. Of course, it doesn’t matter that people are sick of it as long as the money is made by the studios.
Stuart Gordon once said that the investors for
Re-Animator gave him these guidelines: Has to be horror, has to be feature length (which at the time was 75 minutes at minimum), and had to have a final cut delivered by a certain date, which was around a year after they were to begin principal production. Nowadays, these types of deals are unheard of. Independence of creativity have to fight & get its license under the seal of corporate demand.
In the last note I like to add the following quote of Joe Dante said in an interview at Edinburgh International Film Festival, 2009..."There was not the same degree of freedom as there had been in the Seventies, but there was not the kind of studio interference that we see today with the corporate mentality. That was just coming in, but it hadn't fully taken hold. Now it's like working for a bank."