Good Horror Film

So I just finished watching The Ruins whilst cleaning my garage. When I saw the preview of this I wasn't sure whether I wanted to check it out or not. It looked like a run of the mill horror yarn about teenagers exploring an old Mayan temple, so I figured that it would be run-of-the-mill horror fare at best when I eventually got to watching it. However, the guy who rents a room from me and works at a video store, whose opinions are usually spot on for films, said that he enjoyed it (from now on he will be dubbed themovieguy, names changed to protect the guilty).

Anyway, I decided to sit down and watch it as I cleaned up my desk and miniature stuff in the garage, as I said. I was immediately taken aback by the fact that they introduced characters about whom I could actually give a crap. This is a departure for most horror films produced in Hollywood, who for some reason believe that the movie-going public prefers to watch infantile idiots who deserve to get slaughtered in a film get slaughtered in a film. But more on that later, for now, just a critique of the movie.

Like I said, I actually liked the characters, college kids around 22 years old, who seemed responsible, but able to have fun, and who were actually distinguishable from one another. They are on the tail end of a holiday in Mexico, they meet someone who they like who has a map to an old Mayan temple on which his brother is doing some archaeological work. They do end up going there, but there is the obligatory "party scene" that always is forced into these film to show immoral behavior, T and A, etc, etc. to titillate a jaded and bored audience. I was pleased to see that this scene went differently from most, and actually helped to bring us closer to the characters - making the film in general have a much greater horrifying impact. anyhow, they get to the ruins, and the stakes are immediately raised by some locals, and we do not really know why - again a good call, I thought that they would do the generic "hey, I speak Spanish, lets figure out what the villagers are saying". They deftly avoided that cliche and gave good reason for it (they were speaking a Mayan dialect, not the smattering of Spanish that the German and Americans knew). We are left as perplexed as they, which engaged me more deeply in the movie. The characters, while at times may have made mistakes, still left me thinking that, yes, given who they are, these actions make sense for them. I never found myself saying, "Damn it, don't do that you f-ing idiot," as I do in many horror films.

I won't give away anything else that happens, but I will say that I liked the ending - hearkening back to the endings of many a seventies horror film as it did, but more so because it made perfect sense for the film. To end it any other way would not have made sense.

Now, I'm not saying that this is Oscar calibre film-making or anything, but if you like a good horror movie, that is a legitimate scare and that doesn't treat you, the viewer, as a hormonal teenager out to get his/her jollies on some nudity and pruning the dead wood off of the lower branches of the genetic tree that is the human race, then you could do a whole lot worse than treating yourself to this film. Here's a brief example:

Male lead character decides to go to bed early in the obligatory party scene, his long-time girlfriend has had way too much to drink and is staying up and acting stupid. She starts dancing and flirting with "new guy", the German guy they just met. Other male lead and girlfriend are watching the flirtatious behavior, and this second male lead bets his girlfriend oral sex that the girl ends up making out with the German guy.

So we can all see where this is going, but, to my amazement, they did not go there. The German guy feels awkward about her advances, motions for help, and the second guy's girlfriend comes to his rescue and starts having fun with her long-time friend (girl #1). That's it. It makes sense, it's how relatively mature adults come to the rescue of friends when they are doing something stupid that they will regret, and it immediately made me like the characters.

Even when the guy is insisting that his girlfriend "pay up" on the bet they made, it is not obnoxious; it seems playful and fun, like they actually care about each other, and they do not wreck it by trying to actually push the line and show us the act. Rather, they imply that something happened between them, and they are both in an unusually good mood in the next scene.

Like I said, it was a refreshingly smart change of pace, and it is because you actually like all these people that the horror aspects are so effective. If you allow yourself the luxury of being immersed in it, and you like genuine horror, you will like this. If, on the other hand, you want horror films that are more like comedies, then you will probably hate it, and I feel sorry for you.


Now for the rant.

This was an unusual film to come out of Hollywood. I am not going to detail everything I dislike about most contemporary horror, that is for another post. Rather, I am going to detail why I like the Asian horror cinema better than European or American horror.

Don't get me wrong, there are many fine American and European horror films, and many bad Asian ones. The thing that I like about Asian horror films is that they take it seriously. Even a low budget film does not try to go for a cheap laugh to try and get around bad effects or bad story. They try to find a story and be serious about it throughout. Ju-on is a good example. While there are some continuity issues in the film (Shimizu Takashi likes to play with non-linear stories, and doesn't always do a great job), it is always trying to keep you with the mood of the film. It is not unrelentingly dark, or continuously scary, but it does take itself seriously, and I like that in a horror film.

More and more American films are following this lead, and European horror has a serious bent to it as well, but many European horror films are just gore-fests with not enough story (in part because that is not something that is regularly available on television - this is particularly true of Italian horror). The more it is seen as a serious genre that can be used to look at the human condition, the better off we all are.

That's not to say that there is no place for the comic-horror genre. I really like that genre as well; films like Army of Darkness and Bubbahotep are outstanding. I just don't like films that haven't decided what it is that they really want to be and just end up vacillating between horror and comedy and doing neither well.

That's all folks.