We offer up 4 reasons why there are no new horror villains.
The late great horror maestro Wes Craven once said, “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.” The engine or driving force that stimulates that fear and powers your nightmares is the bogeyman—the monster at the core of any good horror film that has the ability to creep into your subconscious and play with your reality.
Over the years, fans young and old have been getting their terror fix from a variety of horror villains. But good things never last. If you’re a horror fan or a casual fan of scary movies, you know that the horror genre is hurting.
Theatrical releases for horror films are dwindling year after year. For every It Follows, there are hundreds of forgettable and bad offerings that fail to generate business or new interest with the public.
If it wasn’t for television shows like The Walking Dead, horror would be on a hospital bed with tubes all over.
With that in mind, we offer up 4 reasons why the genre has failed to create new horror villains.
Bogeyman: Out of Season
Horror is very cyclical. Michael Myers and slashers rose to dominance because they were hot in the '80s. As soon as a certain sub-genre finds success, studios and producers go where the money is. We’ve gone from teen slashers to J-Horror to torture porn and zombie films. It happens every few years, as we’re now just heading out of the found-footage era.
Joining Michael in my roll-call of “Murder’s Row” is: Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th), Pinhead (Hellraiser), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Chucky (Child’s Play). These are the brethren of horror icons.
It’s no coincidence that the lackluster state of features is happening while little to no new horror villains are being created. Over the past 15 years, we’ve gotten a few decent additions like Jigsaw (SAW), Samara (The Ring) and Sam (Trick r Treat) but nothing close to the power of the previous generation.
Films today revolve around a dark mystery, a troubled protagonist or a possession-happy ghost. Horror isn’t fun anymore. The romance is gone. If horror were a dating app, we’d all be swiping left.
Hollywood's Copy and Paste Obsession
Dating back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, our imaginations have been fascinated by these monsters. My connection to these nightmare men didn’t begin until the 1980s, which coincidently served as the golden age for horror villains. Cinemas all over the world housed these invincible, disfigured killers that elicited screams and terror from audiences.
Unfortunately, creativity in today’s film market is seen as an obstacle rather than as tool. IP is king. If it’s not based on a comic book, toy or video game, they don’t want it.
The movie-making machine hinders new villains and ideas to develop. There are too many hands in the pot. Regardless of how amazing an original horror pitch or script might be, it will go through five to ten “creatives,” who each have their own vision of the story. I don’t know about you but I’m tired of watered-down horror!
There’s enough blame to go around in Hollywood, but this isn’t a call to action for more films starring our favorite slashers. I’m a Freddy Krueger fan but the last thing I want to see is another remake like that vomit-inducing 2010 film. If producers can squeeze five dollars more out of the corpse of their franchise, they will. Every year we get unnecessary remakes/reimagining’s like offerings for Poltergeist and Halloween. Considering most remakes crash and burn, hopefully this trend is slowing down…but who am I kidding?!
The Disappearance of The Mid-Level Market
As a child of the 1980s, I wasn’t old enough to watch horror films in theaters but that’s where the beauty of the video store came in. A short walk from my home to the local video store ensured that I would have a sleepless night. For a kid, you couldn’t help but be drawn to the horror aisle, which seemed endless and filled with VHS covers that seared their disgusting images into your head.
The Dude Designs
The demise of video stores hurt the 2nd and 3rd tier production companies and distributors. These companies continuously churned out content for the home video market, with slates full of horror films. Sure there’s Netflix, iTunes and Redbox today, but the mid-level market is narrow and drastically different. Not having those various outlets to finance and distribute a horror film, makes it that much tougher in getting out a movie with a new, unproven villain.
New Line Cinema is the house that Freddy Krueger built, and while that studio is still staying true to its genre roots (with films like The Conjuring) other studios are stepping back. Lionsgate, which once had a strong foundation in horror, is now releasing Boo! A Madea Halloween. That movie is revolting and terrifying for all the wrong reasons.
Where Have All The Storytellers Gone?
No era is immune to awful horror films. The '80s and '90s had their share. Movies today just lack appeal, humor and quite simply, scares. Go on Netflix and for every 90-minute film, you get about 10 minutes of horror, usually found in the final 10 minutes!!!
Audiences deserve better. Fans are yearning for a new crop of bogeymen (and bogeywomen) to terrify them. Filmmakers have to push for originality, experimentation, and mine those unexplored dark corners of the genre. We need risk takers behind the camera, not fanboys.
Talents like Wes Craven, John Carpenter and Sam Raimi were first and foremost filmmakers. Many directors today are satisfied copying films they grew up on or grounding the horror element as much as possible.
The real question isn’t “if” but “when” we’ll see the next great batch of villains. The call for new blood will be answered. The monsters may be gone for now, but we all know that they always come back!
