An open letter to horror movies:

Dear horror movies and the people who make you. You used to be awesome! Creative stories and designs, next gen special effects, and top acting. Unfortunately, you’re in a slump. Okay a bit more of a slump. More like the ground. Approximately 6 feet under the ground.

But don’t fear! You can rise from this grave like the movies of yesteryear! You just have to eliminate the following things:

1.       Sequels and prequels. Okay, I can see where youre coming from here. Make a movie, have some people watch it, get a bit of cash, and you want to repeat the process. But let me respond with a question, when the hell has a sequel been halfway decent in the horror genre? I can’t think of a single one. Pumping out the same story and characters time and time again is not a good way to make movies. And reviving once great stories from the dead just makes them a zombie, no one wants to see that… okay a lot of people do… the zombie part not the reviving old dead stuff and trying to make it new.

2.       The idea that horror films can be cheap. Nowadays, horror movies feel like they were made from all the least expensive parts in all areas. If this continues, people won’t.

3.       Bad acting. This goes hand in hand with the cheapness. It’s not all that easy to portray the emotions necessary for a good horror movie. You shouldn’t skimp out here and grab someone who claims to be an actor and will work for peanuts. If they can’t convince me then I’m not going to get into it.

4.       Un originality. God dammit guys it’s your jobs to think of new stuff to make can you please just sit down and think about it for a minute? You suck. Most movies are as predictable and basic as “The Cat in the Hat” and about as entertaining. There was a time when there were new ideas going around and when a horror movie came out, it was something that no one had ever seen before. Now you can guess the entire plot from the trailer. There have been some good ideas recently but they are squandered due to lack of plot and other things. I’m looking at you “Purge”

5.       Shaky cam. The point of going to a movie is to see something. If we wanted flashing lights a bad audio we would’ve stayed in the 30s, looked at Christmas trees, and listened to the radio.

A few other things. I don’t go to horror movies, I barely even watch them. Even when I do go, I don’t follow along. And the reason why is because I don’t give a damn. I don’t care about any of the stuff going on. The whole movie could be replaced by a black screen and every 15-20 minutes a scary monster face would flash up on screen and have a loud scream and it would be about the same level of commitment to the characters.

The problem with horror today is, you can’t make me scared if I don’t give a shit about anything going on. You can startle me. In the same way that a person jumping out from around the corner startles me. It’s not scary, I’m not afraid, I don’t have any fear, and in the case of horror movies, I’m not going to go.

Now, how do you fix this? My advice, take a few years off. Just stop making them. They won’t be missed. And it will give you all a chance to get your crap together and put together a decent film that would be good without the jump scares.