Anyone who knows me knows that I’m an avid lover of horror and suspense films. The problem with these movies is that they often aren't very good. But then I was introduced to the "Conjuring" series, which includes a couple of my favorite horror films to come out in recent years.
The reason that they work so well is because they don’t rely on the same old tropes that so many other movies do. To be more detailed, I mean that they don’t scare you by using things like jump-scares and blood and gore and things like that. What makes them – at least in my experience – genuinely frightening, creepy and suspenseful is the atmosphere that is created and developed over the course of the movie. That’s what makes me like them so much -- they utilize great effects and storytelling in order to creep you out while you’re watching.
The only other movie that I’ve recently seen that reminds me of this is the first "Paranormal Activity." Of that movie series, I think that only the first one is any good. The idea of a found-footage movie was new and different at the time, and it was something that I’d never seen before, which is why it was so intriguing. Along with its new way of filming and telling a story through cinematography, it was also one of those horror films that was done on a cheap budget – like some other classics – and those tend to do well. The problem became that after the first of this style came out and did really well, more and more found-footage style films started coming out and it became just another common horror/suspense movie trope that I became tired of seeing.
These tropes that reoccur constantly in movies are what I feel have been horror movies for a long time. In addition, movies like "The Conjuring," "Annabelle" and "The Conjuring 2" do something that not many other horror movies are able to do, and that is making you care about the characters in the film. In my experience with the aforementioned films, I wanted to know what was going to happen to the families that were being troubled and how they were going to be helped.
The main reason that I think that all of this comes together for this series of movies is partly because they are based on true events. That doesn’t mean that I think that good horror movies can’t be original, but I think that something adds to the creep-factor when you’re told that the story or inspiration for a movie is based on true events.
Overall I have hopes that horror movies will get better as time goes on and directors and writers realize what people want from this genre of movies. My dream is that there will be a move away from trying to create a series of movies and things like that and moving towards just trying to make good movies, whether they’re completely original or based off of true stories.
