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Are Horror Films Supposed To Be Scary Or Fun?

From Fangoria.com:  After watching hundreds (or thousands?) of horror movies over the course of decades, how many horror fans still get scared after watching a horror movie? I’m not talking about merely feeling tension because a character is in danger, but actually feeling frightened by a film.

All too often, it seems that people complain that a horror film was “bad” because it wasn’t “scary”. Without any context, this is essentially meaningless. For example, when was the last time a movie scared them, and what was it?

I feel that this “problem” has less to do with the quality of a film than it does with someone’s having built up a tolerance. Besides being a horror fan, I’m also a fan of very spicy food, and I have an assortment of hot sauces made from habanero and scotch bonnet peppers in my refrigerator at all times. My tolerance of spicy food is significantly higher than average, but my fiancee would argue that just because I don’t feel a dish is spicy, this doesn’t necessarily make it so.

Curiously, when horror films aren’t being accused of being bad because they’re not scary, it’s because they’re “not fun”. This seems to be a by-product of the ’80s, when so many horror films were glutting the market that the genre largely descended from “fright films” into horror-comedies – intentional or not.

I’m not talking about films that use comic relief to briefly release tension, I’m talking about films where you’re laughing at the film more than you’re laughing with the film – or are scared of the film.

With that, if a horror film isn’t “fun” is it a bad horror film? I don’t remember Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre being a particularly fun film, but does this make it a bad horror film?

I also find it puzzling when people suggest that I’m “immature” when I don’t find a film that emphasizes shadows, noises and even action from off-camera “scary”. It may simply be a by-product of getting older, but I stopped being afraid of the dark – and creaky houses – decades ago, though I hardly feel that this is a sign of my immaturity.

So have at it – are horror films supposed to be scary or fun? Both? Neither?

via Are Horror Films Supposed To Be Scary Or Fun?.

Saw (Video Game, XBox) Review.

From ShockTillYouDrop:  While just about every major horror franchise has gotten a videogame (NES gave us the legendarily hard Friday the 13th and “4 Player” Nightmare on Elm St. games in the late ‘80s; Atari had Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre… things they called games), Saw is possibly the only one that would contextually make sense in video game form. Half of the genre games released nowadays start off with someone trapped somewhere without knowing why (like most of the Saw films have), and the series’ locales are the same sort of burnt out warehouses, dungeons, and dilapidated houses that most survival games take place in anyway. In short, it’s no surprise Saw: The Video Game exists, only that it took this long to hit consoles.

Taking place between the first and second films, you play as Detective Tapp (Danny Glover in the first film, but looking/sounding like a much younger guy here thanks to Glover’s refusal to lend his likeness), who Jigsaw apparently took the time to save from his seemingly fatal wounds at the end of the first film. You wake up with a trap on your head, and once you get it off (not very hard), you begin a six to eight hour journey through the halls and rooms of an abandoned insane asylum, avoiding as many traps as you can while pursuing Jigsaw (whose identity is still unknown at this point in the Saw narrative) and occasionally rescuing other characters.

Read the rest of their review at the link below.

via Saw (Video Game, XBox)- ShockTillYouDrop.Com.