An unforgettable moment in THE RING... or perhaps THE RING TWO.Like any horror fan worth his salt, I try to see everything that comes out of the pipe, which means of course that I have to swim through a lot of shit to see something worthwhile. But for every flick I like (THE DESCENT, 28 WEEKS LATER) or hate (THE TOOLBOX MURDERS remake, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake, the "original" THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) there are scores of medium-big to big-big budget Hollywood horror movies that just sort of come and go, eliciting little more from me than "well... that happened." Some are okay (THE RING, Ghost House Pictures' THE BOOGEYMAN), some are neither here nor there (THE AMITYVILLE HORROR remake, THE SKELETON KEY) and some are flat-out execrable (THE RING TWO). Oh, I know many of these soulless enterprises make a boatload of money for their stars and the studio suits and that there explains the why of it... but beyond that, after these bloated bagatelles make their investment money back, what then?
The ghost of contractual obligation haunts Sarah Michelle Gellar in THE GRUDGE 2.I ask this because I found myself, not so very long ago, pondering the career of Ehren Kruger, the former Fox Network staffer who parlayed a Nicholl Fellowship into a lucrative career as an A-list Hollywood writer-for-hire, with such scripts as SCREAM 3 (2000), THE RING (2002), THE RING TWO (2005), THE SKELETON KEY (2005) and BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE (2007) to his credit. Now what I thought about these individual projects is immaterial; they were big movies that got a lot of press and were seen by a lot of people... they're major projects and I haven't even listed all of Kruger's accomplishments (he also wrote Terry Gilliam's THE BROTHERS GRIMM, which I found unwatchable but I don't think that was his fault.). So what I want to know is, why don't people talk about Ehren Kruger? Or Stephen Susco, who wrote THE GRUDGE (2004) and THE GRUDGE 2 (2006) for Ghost House? Or Scott Kosar, who penned the recentTEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003) and AMITYVILLE HORROR (2005) remakes, as well as Brad Anderson's flawed but still worthwhile THE MACHINIST (2004)? These guys are major guys. Why aren't horror movie bulletin boards buzzing with these names, pro or con, love them or hate them?
Kate Hudson looks for a reason to care in THE SKELETON KEY.I don't have an answer, only more questions. I should state at this point that I don't, despite my largely negative reactions to the lion's share of their work, be(heh)grudge these men any hosannas that horror fans might be willing to bestow upon them... it's just that I'm not hearing much in the way of praise or condemnation, such as the kind of vitriol that gets shoved Eli Roth's way. Of course, these guys don't direct their films, they only write them, but still... horror fans of a certain age still wax rhapsodic about writers like Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Charles B. Griffith, Kim Henkel, Dennis Paoli and [fill in your own blank], so why not Kruger? You couldn't ask for a better brand name for horror (although Kruger had nothing to do with Freddy) and yet Ehren Kruger is treated like a house painter or a paper hanger, someone to be sent home once his check has been cut and forgotten as if he never existed... even though THE RING was a huge hit. Same with Stephen Susco, whose adaptation of THE GRUDGE broke the bank and yet you never hear him nominated to the status of Master of Horror.
Up to their flat abs in shit in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE '03I have two theories about the lack of recognition for writers like Ehren Kruger and Stephen Susco in horror cycles. Theory No. 1 is that big ticket horror is ultimately, for all its stylistic flourishes and CGI braggadocio, just too bland and safe and textureless for horror lifers to get too excited about. These movies work best as popcorn munchers for the hoi polloi, made to attract attention with their superficial flash, to compete on their opening weekends and then, a few short months later, to pull exhausted weekenders to their prominent placement on the New Releases rack at Blockbuster, where 25 boxes of THE SKELETON KEY will naturally steal focus from that one lonely copy of MULBERRY STREET (2007). These movies don't care about Horror. They only wear the mantle of horror like a Halloween costume that can be shrugged off after midnight when it's officially November and the novelty of dressing up has evaporated.
"I sure picked the wrong day to wear ill-fitting pants."Theory No. 2 is that I'm in denial about the point of big money horror and that it is horror fandom and not Hollywood that is fearfully out of step. Being a horror geek, I think that horror naturally belongs to me and people like me, people who own many black tee shirts and at least one articulated monster figure and can tell you where Stephen King jumped the shark and recite dialogue from BLOOD FEAST (1963), THE WICKER MAN (1973), CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) or RE-ANIMATOR (1985) as reflexively as a Baylor matriculant can quote Scripture. Maybe horror really belongs to the punters, who don't care about the history or the direction of the genre, but who just want that immediate raw reaction to be savored and then forgotten in the pursuit of some other fleeting joy. Maybe horror really belongs to those folks, who don't give a shit about the Masters of Horror and just want a disposable good time or at least something to look at on Friday night when nobody is returning their calls. Maybe big money horror, whom we thought we had under our magnifying glass just now, is really looking down on us from on high, laughing at us, mocking our aesthetics, and telling us to get a life.
What do you think?
.JPG)
7 Arbogasps:
I think you nailed most of it when you mentioned that folks like Kruger don't get cred because they don't direct their scripts. That, and the perception that they're hired hacks that don't particularly seem to like the genre.
As far as Matheson, although he never got around to directing, he pretty much did it on the page. All someone like Corman had to do is follow the blueprint and the project generally turned out nicely.
I'm sure that there are a handful of solid scripters that consistently delivered the goods, but the ones with the genre in their blood went on to direct before the fans started to remember the name (like Dan O'Bannon).
My guess = Remakes.
It seems to me that the writers you mainly focused on above (Ehren Kruger & Stephen Susco) are basically all mostly known for re-writing someone else's original script or story and not doing a great job of it either (just my opinion of course).
Brad Anderson is in a whole other league since he directs and writes his own original material. I have no idea why Anderson isn't praised more because I think Session 9 and The Machinist are two of the best horror films produced in recent years. For the record, I'm looking forward to his new film Transsiberian, which I just read about a few days ago!
"up to their flat abs in shit" -- Arb, that's just priceless. You ought to be writing photo captions for a magazine... at the very least.
Don't understand where you got off on the wrong foot with THE BROTHERS GRIMM, though. I found it a lovely movie, and the little "gingerbread boy" sequence that Michele Soavi directed for it shows he still has the goods.
Kimberly - I like Anderson, too, and enjoyed his rom-com NEXT STOP WONDERLAND. While I'm uncertain about how shrewd Scott Kosar's third act for THE MACHINIST was, the first two were spellbinding (particularly that ride through the amusement park horror house). I hadn't heard about THE TRANSSIBERIAN but you can bet your bippy I'll be looking into it.
Tim - I would imagine picture captions are the easiest thing in the world to write unless you had to. As for THE BROTHERS GRIMM, I found the first 20 minutes or so abrasively kinetic and put my back to it... but I wouldn't be opposed to giving it a second chance.
The one thing that nearly all the movies that you mentioned have in common is blandness. The perception is that they’re paid contractors; if you see an ugly house, you don’t curse the builder – instead you save it for the person who paid for it.
It’s fun to get phony-apoplectic over guys like Uwe Boll because laughing at ineptness makes us feel superior. Ehren gets a pass because being nondescript is something that armchair internet critics don’t want to touch.
Most of what passes for horror these days is remakes of better (but not always) Asian films. There was one part of the American version of The Ring that I liked, but there was more money than in the Japanese version. By the way, when I was in Thailand, two of the more popular films were the American remake of Grudge 2 and Courtney Solomon's American Haunting. Speaking of Thailand, I hope you check out the original Shutter before the remake comes out.
One of the trends I am really tiring of is remaking all of these classic '70s horror films -- TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE OMEN, DAWN OF THE DEAD and so on. These flashy remakes with their WB TV hotties are drained of any social commentary that their original versions had. Hell, to switch decades for a moment, even the remake of THE HITCHER, a great, balls-out horror flick, was horribly bungled.
What I thought worked were WRONG TURN and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS which were love letters to '70s horror without being complete shameless rip-offs.
There's a really good Round Table Discussion over at the Video Watchdog site that sums up my feeling so much more eloquently about this trend than I ever could. Definitely worth checking out:
http://www.videowatchdog.com/home/RoundTable/Revivl.htm
Post a Comment