Horror has certainly come a long way hasn't it? From the days of slasher films with stars such as Freddy, Jason, and Michel Myers to the older horror movies of the 1950's such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and It Came From Outer Space. One could even go back further to literary horror geniuses such as Edgar Allen Poe and H.P.Lovecraft and find just how influential and terrifying that there works can be. Hell, from 59 to 64 Rod Sterling's master series The Twilight Zone terrified audiences on a weekly basis with the unpredictability of just were and when they would be transported to next. But just like any growing child horror appears to be going through a sort of awkward phase where a lot of ideas now are either just plain stupid or they're good ideas but a lot of the time the direction is so half-assed that the film is a complete flop. This is the case in M.Night Shyamalan's film Devil were people are trapped in an elevator and one of them is the killer. Sounds like a clever idea right? Well what if I told you that the killer was the devil himself inside a possessed old woman's body? Now if you're like most of the people who saw this film you might be thinking that this makes no sense and that that was the worst twist since Signs (which is also a film by Shyamalan) were we found that we could keep aliens away by simply using wood and water. If you've passed 4th grade and are thinking right now, wait the Earth is 75% water why would aliens visit us congratulations you're starting to get it. Then there are films like Insidious were literally 70% of the time we are listening to loud screeching violins and screaming. Which a few times during the movie would have been find only we hear it again 70% of the movie and after awhile it feels like you have to shout at the movie that you don't need screeching and screaming to be scary. Do you know what Alfred Hitchcock did to strike fear into people when he was filming Psycho? Well during the shower scene when Norman was about to strike he used chocolate syrup to make the blood stick out more. Do you know what the Blair Witch Project did to make itself scary? They let the fear of the unknown hit the audience and in doing so made 248.6 million at the box office and they had a budget of 60,000 dollars. Yeah, so directors saying that they’re limited by the materials given to them can just throw that excuse out the window because a good director will find away despite the restraints given. Ok, we know that lazy direction can make a bad horror film or hell even a bad film in general but what else? Psychological speaking you could say that horror is just less scary because we see so much violence now and days on the news that today’s horror films just don’t stack up. On the other end of the spectrum one could say that horror has lost its touch mainly because we’ve seen everything that could possibly frighten us. As mentioned before we’ve seen a lot from the 50’s to now, monsters like space invaders, undead slashers, murderers who can go inside your dreams when you sleep, and your own inner darkest psychological desires so things like The Lazarus Effect and The Visit aren’t that terrifying. Of course one could say that the whole horror movie formula is just repetitive and predictable. Every now and then you’ll get thrown for a curve ball like in Psycho but for the most part the audience can predict who is going to survive, who’s going to be the first one killed, and who or what the killer is. Now for the big question, what can be done to make horror better? Well a few things actually. Look around you, do you see people with phones? Do you see people reading? Do you see people graduating college? This is what I’m getting at, people are becoming smarter and in turn we need to start producing smarter well thought out material. Have you seen shows like Rick and Morty or Bojack Horseman? Have you noticed how well thought out each episode is and how complex the plot is and just what almost each episode teaches us? If you haven’t I can’t really say I blame you, I mean who has time for cartoons when we all have papers to write and jobs to go to. But basically each one offers something new while still being entertaining and funny. The whole plot to Bojack Horseman is what if Cartman or Peter Griffin had to suffer for their actions and be reminded of their actions almost every episode. Sounds interesting right? This has to be one of the best things we could do right now to help the horror film industry, offer something smarter while still being original. Ever seen Army of Darkness? It’s a horror comedy film and the final movie in the Evil Dead trilogy and revolves around what if someone who has put up with zombies, demons, or killers for so long that they just get so tired of their crap that they just want to get the job done with and leave. That’s the beauty of the Evil Dead trilogy, each movie has its own distinctive feel to it that keeps the audience interested and offers such a variety of creative scenarios for our hero to go through that you never know what will happen next hell, Evil Dead 2 has a mounted mouse head and a desk lamp get possessed and Ash (the main character) cutting off his hand and attaching a chainsaw to it. Never thought you would see that in a horror movie did you? Most of all if you want to keep the audience in their seats you need to put effort into the film you’re making. Just imagine for a moment that Wes Craven just do whatever when filming a Nightmare on Elmstreet, the movie would have turned out a whole lot differently from the finished product we saw. How do I wrap this up a nice, neat, little bow? How about I have the bow get possessed by the ghost of Ed Gein, then give the bow a Joker smile and Bambi eyes with shark teeth and whenever someone comes around it have the bow bite a finger off their hand? Boom, there’s an idea for a horror movie that’s completely new and original let’s see if Uwe Bull will direct it, he’ll direct anything. In all serious though to wrap this up the most I can say that has happened to horror is that we just got lazy after a while and now we need to start making new and better material if the horror genre is to survive. But if we need to we can always look to horror movies of the past and get inspiration for new horror movies in the future and maybe they’ll even be in theaters in time for Halloween.