I'm not sure who decided January and February were good months to release bad horror movies, but they probably had some sort of logic behind the decision, and the logic probably went like this: Most people don't care about horror movies, and we can fob any old crap off on the die-hard fans, so stick the low-budget should-be-direct-to-video non-productions in during the bleakest, coldest, least popular days between New Year's and Valentine's Day (also famous for the high number of suicides). Horror is a second-class citizen when it comes to genre films and books, but it always has been, so complaining about it is like pointing out that oppressing other cultures is bad. Either you already know, or you don't care.
No, that's not my problem.
Horror as a genre only started to be recognized about 25 years ago. Most of the great horror classics, and even some of the modern giants were written in a time when scary stories were completely excluded from literary circles, instead of just being the black sheep of the family. William Peter Blatty wrote "The Exorcist" without any idea of what to do with it, and Shirley Jackson wrote "The Haunting of Hill House" as suspense. And so on.
The problem now is that just as it's earned itself a place--even if it is at the very end of the table--in the world, horror is dying. And the people who are killing it are its greatest supporters.
Horror writers have their own group now, called the Horror Writers Association, originally started by some of the big names in the genre -- Robert McCammon, Dean Koontz and so forth. Of the steadily dwindling number of horror magazines publishing new fiction, many will not accept submissions from writers who are not members. Many of the members, both of this and similar organizations, are either writers of mediocre talent, or lazy writers who'd like to make a quick paycheck. So now we have an organization in which large groups of mediocre writers can get together, help each other out, pat each other on the back and give each other gleaming reviews. These folks are the vocal majority, and as with any society, the majority makes the rules. The same situation applies to filmmaking and screenwriting as well. Just replace "writer" with "script writer" or "director."
Horror is, appropriately enough, rotting from the inside out, and the problem is the same as it has always been: Most people don't care. I dread to guess what will become of it in 20 years... or 50. Many bookstores are already phasing the section out, or melding it into the "general fiction" shelves, and the days of the small-press horror magazine are long gone. Hollywood is releasing the most insipid, poorly-acted, low-budget garbage and calling it good. Such thrilling releases as "Alone in the Dark" and "Boogeyman" deserve, at best, direct-to-video status, yet there they are, filling the trough from which we horror fanatics will willingly feed. With enough time, you can get used to anything.
Maybe, some day in the future, horror will rise from the dead and dig its way out of its own grave to walk again amongst the living.
But I wouldn't count on it.
Write to Jonathan at tenement_cellar@msn.com
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