To a great extent, it’s been another of those years when Hollywood followed our sad, cultural direction towards victimization and darkness and away from creativity and entertainment.
Here we are, approaching Halloween, and it’s another year with very few scary movies that are not just, well, sick.
There was a time when you could have fun, going to a spooky movie. And Halloween is, or used to be, the season when we especially sought the frights.
Now, however, we are accosted with more gore all year long, and it’s getting worse.
This year there is an ample supply.
In fact, Hollywood continues to remake the more wretched movies of the past generation, just to prove that cinema only moves sideways, never upwards.
In recent years, Hollywood reintroduced “I Spit On Your Grave” (2010) and “Last House on the Left,” (2009) both of which were made a generation ago, so there’s nothing new. They just have better production values today, thanks to computerization advances and what appears to be a steady stream of money being pumped into bad ideas in the name of “entertainment.”
These two are just examples, but they are admittedly bad ones, because they are about brutality.
That is their point.
And they are examples of extreme, brutal negativity — embracing victimization.
And that is their only point — that and making money for their investors, which you make work because you won’t stop watching them.
These pieces of trash aren’t about enjoyable frights, about spooky stories, hair-raising adventures. They are about people being victimized and then turning on their tormentors. Everyone loses, especially the audience.
Our culture has enough negativity in it. You can find plenty by just turning on the TV or listening to the radio, without having to go out of the way to create more as “art.”
The successful reintroduction of “The Wolfman” (2010) and the clever mixing of special effects and humor in “Zombieland,” (2009) show that there are still those in Hollywood who understand how to create a visually striking and thrilling monster movie adventure.
But victimhood exploitation is still just that — exploitation — whether it’s on the big screen or the little one, and we shouldn’t encourage it with our money.
— Chuck Smith