Why Is Horror Underperforming At The Box Office? Should I Be Scared?

Could this be the savior of  the horror box office in 2014?

         Horror on television has never been more popular, and what horror fan isn't happy about that?  The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Bates Motel, and scores of other genre shows are consuming cable and broadcast like creeping dread.  Horror shows are everywhere, and even more are coming.  In addition to the shows already airing, the coming year will most likely see new ones based upon the Friday The 13th and Scream franchises, as well.  I recall a day a couple of years ago when I read online that new episodes of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story were the two highest rated shows on cable the preceding week.  I never imagined I'd see the day that horror was the most popular thing on television.  I actually got a little verklempt about it.

     You see, I grew up at a time when horror shows on television were watered down and doomed to cancellation.  Unfortunately, even the handful of horror themed shows that stuck - Tales From The Crypt, Monsters, Tales From The Darkside - were of little interest to me.  They were either crippled by poor production values and censorship or, in the case of Tales From The Crypt, just too hokey and simplistic to actually be scary.  Crypt, in particular, always irked me.  Most episodes of that long running anthology were built on the same hoary framework utilized in the old EC comics the series was based upon.  It was a labored set up for a horrific punchline telegraphed far too early in the proceedings to actually be scary or surprising.  Why bother? 

Why, Shane?  Why!?!

     At least now the anthology format has largely been abandoned in favor of ongoing stories with recurring characters and complex narratives.  That sturdier dramatic framework makes it a lot easier to actually care enough about what's happening each week to return for the next.  Both The Walking Dead and American Horror Story whiff the ball almost as often as they knock it out of the park, but I'm sufficiently engaged by both to keep coming back for more. I was actually incensed when The Walking Dead killed off Shane at the end of season two, and I was little bit tickled when Lori bit the dust in season three.  I'm not always happy with the narrative choices the show makes, but I'm not indifferent, either.

     Why, then, when horror is so healthy on television, has it been failing so miserably at the box office?  Granted most wide release horror aims for the lowest common denominator, but even a slow year generally  yields at least a couple of flicks that somehow manage to be financially successful and not blow monkey nuts.  So far this year, Oculus is as close as we've gotten, and even that ended its domestic run with a relatively modest $27 million.  That's a great return on a $5 million dollar budget, but it's chicken scratch compared to the $137 million The Conjuring scared up last year.  What's even more disheartening is that I don't see anything on the horizon likely to turn the tide.

Why, Dracula?  Why!?!

     The Purge: Anarchy (releasing July 18th) seems like a sequel no-one really asked for to an original that, though financially successful, left many viewers underwhelmed.  Annabelle (October 3rd) seems promising, but am I the only member of the audience getting a little burnt out on all the ghost stories?  That's precisely why I couldn't care less about Jessabelle (August 29th) or Paranormal Activity 5 (October 24th).  I'm not very enthusiastic about yet another retelling of the Dracula tale, either, so Dracula Untold (October 17th) is also a pass.  I'm more interested in Eli Roth's cannibal movie The Green Inferno (September 5th) than anything else scheduled for release in the back half of 2014, and that's mostly just because I haven't seen anyone take a stab at a cannibal movie for a while.

     If it turns out I'm wrong about any of these upcoming releases I'll gladly eat crow, but things are looking pretty grim to me.  I know better than to fret prematurely about the death of the horror genre, because that particular passing has been predicted - and then failed to materialize - too many times in the past.  We will always be scared of something, and some enterprising young filmmaker will always be willing to exploit our fear in hopes of making a splash with an inexpensive first feature. Horror does go in cycles, though, and I'm convinced we're heading for a fallow season.  What do you think?

Horror Documentary Alert! Nightmare Factory (2011) Is Now Streaming On Netflix

Nightmare Factory (2011)

      Nightmare Factory (2011) is an inside look at the world of special make-up effects that focuses primarily on the work of KNB EFX Group.  Effects artists Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger founded KNB in 1988, and it's now one of the most prolific effects studios in the the world.  The doc is filled with great behind the scenes footage, much of it culled from over 200 hours of material provided to the doc's producers by KNB themselves.  Nightmare Factory is even recent enough to include production footage from the likes of Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D (2010) and AMC's The Walking Dead. 

      Since it's probably going to be a while before I post the next installment of Noteworthy On Netflix, I decided to share this mini-post alerting everyone to the addition of Nightmare Factory to Netflix streaming.  I stumbled upon it yesterday, and Dog Farm readers know how much I enjoy a good horror doc . . .

     On a related note, the first season of A&E's Bates Motel is now available, as well.  If you missed it initially, now's a good opportunity to catch up before the March 3 premiere of season two. 

How (Not) To Raise A Psychopathic Child - Things I've Learned From Watching A&E's New Bates Motel

     It's been difficult to watch a full-length feature film for a while.  There's now a three week old infant in the room  most nights, and he sets the schedules.  His scheduling doesn't include too many ninety minute blocks of downtime, so I've been making due with hour long horror dramas like American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and A&E's new Bates Motel.  I can almost get through an hour long episode during Gunnar's between feedings nap time.  I'm looking forward to the debut of Eli Roth's Hemlock Grove on Netflix next month, too.  Should I be watching this kind of programming with a baby in the room, though?

     Yeah, I know, it's probably a bit early to be worrying about whether or not the baby is being irreparably damaged by exposure to televised horror programs.  For one thing, he's unable to hold his head up long enough to watch anything.  The only time he displays any neck strength at all is when I'm trying to burp him, and then he seems determined to throw a red-faced skunk eye on me throughout.  He can hold his head up just fine for that.  Still, I know he's cognizant of what's going on around him.  It makes me wonder if immediate and prolonged exposure to this kind of entertainment explains what happened to me . . .

Thom Yorke of Radiohead - Hey, man, are you OK?

     The baby seems to have an affinity for the music of Radiohead already, and I attribute that to the fact that he heard a lot of Radiohead while still in utero.  If Thom Yorke's solo album calms the baby,  I'm more than happy to store that in the arsenal alongside his swaddling cloth and his Bippy.  Whatever works, right?  Then I'm watching the first episode of Bates Motel - while holding the baby, of course - while onscreen the young Master Bates attends a high school party (wait - what?), and waddayaknow, the music playing in the background is a Radiohead song.  . . . so a young Norman Bates + exposure to Radiohead = Psycho.  And I'm playing the kid Radiohead to soothe him.   Nature versus nurture.  I may as well start collecting small animals for Gunnar to kill.

     Of course, Norman's problems are the result of a far more complex set of circumstances than just the music he hears.  I watched the second episode of Bates Motel last night, and I nearly crawled out of my skin with "eeeew!" when Norman's mother very nonchalantly stripped clothing in front of her teenage son.  Sure, in this case we know this is heading to a bad place, but . . .   Only an hour or so before I'd been holding the baby because he'd been particularly fussy.  I'd finally succeeded in getting him to momentarily settle down and rest, his next feeding was in the warmer, and I didn't want to rouse him unnecessarily before his bottle was ready.  Here's the rub:  I really, really needed to pee.  If I laid him down he would immediately open his eyes and fuss.  Well, I can hold the baby with one hand, and I can pee with one hand, sooooo . . . Don't judge me - I wasn't wearing a diaper.

Norma Bates doing some household cleaning

   Still though, I've yet to enlist Gunnar's assistance in cleaning up a murder scene, so maybe there's still hope.  As long as I continue to tend to those chores solo then everything should be just fine.  That'll also forestall the touching family moment we have prior to disposing of a dead body in the lake together.  As far as I know, Gunnar doesn't yet have a sketchbook full of bondage pics hidden under his bassinet, so we're good there, too.

     I just want the little guy to grow up healthy and happy.  I want the same for young Norman.  Maybe there's hope for him, too.  The show's producers have already made clear that they won't necessarily be beholden to canon based upon Anthony Perkins' portrayal of the character.  Is it possible that we live in a world where the young Norman Bates might somehow escape his dour fate, upbringing be damned?   I actually think that would be weirdly inspiring.  If there's hope for the most psychopathic fictional mama's boy that ever misused the cutlery, then maybe there's a chance I won't do too much damage to the wee baby Gunnar. 

We can fix this, right?

Movies At Dog Farm Remembers . . . Glorious Black & White

       I'm not completely backwards.  I'll embrace any new technology that I believe genuinely improves my quality of life.  I'm much quicker to embrace improvements in audio and video presentation, too, because how could any sane person argue that high definition, lossless audio, and correct aspect ratios aren't improvements.  I do not, however, believe that new tech automatically renders old tech obsolete.

     Example:  I can't stand listening to my home theater receiver attempt to make 5.1 surround sound from an older movie's mono soundtrack.  The sound engineers who created that soundtrack created it with the intent of mono playback, and trying to "improve" that soundtrack by spreading it over multiple channels just sounds thin, scattered, and wrong.  I'm not a big fan of "better" refresh rate making my shot-on-film-at-24-fps movies look like shot-on-video soap operas, either.  Different isn't automatically better.

The colorized Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth.

     You've probably already surmised that I wouldn't be a fan of colorizing old movies, either, and you'd be right.  There are exceptions, though.  Ray Harryhausen oversaw the colorization of three of his black and white movies a few years back (story here), and by God, if Ray Harryhausen himself is cool with it, then I want to see it.  They're beautiful, by the way.  The DVD releases offered the original black and white versions, too, so it's not like the "real" versions were tossed aside.  As long as originals aren't replaced by the newer versions (I'm looking at you, George Lucas) then the artists can do as they please with their own work.

     So how about making a color movie black and white?  Well, the same reasoning applies.  If the artists who created the work want to see it in black and white, have at it.  Black and white presentation still has merits, strengths that color presentation can't duplicate.  Particularly with horror movies, the interplay of light and shadow in a black and white presentation can render a focused and dreamlike atmosphere not possible with color.  It can also make a newer color movie look more like its cinematic forebears.  Witness the black and white version of Frank Darabont's The Mist (2007), for example.  Some work  benefits from a noirish presentation.  Like maybe . . . oh, I don't know . . . The Walking Dead?

The Walking Dead comic

     The Walking Dead's former show runner Glen Mazzara recently Tweeted an image from a fan mag (prior to his departure) that indicated AMC will show all 18 episodes of seasons 1 and 2 in a monochrome format.  Makes perfect sense, right?  The black and white presentation mimics the presentation of the show's comic book source and will make the whole affair hearken back to the moody glory days of the old black and white Universal classics.  What's not to love?

The Walking Dead TV show

     I was horrified to discover that pretty much everyone I know who isn't as old as me felt like this was an unwarranted step backwards.  O.k. - don't watch.  I'm sure AMC will also re-run all the episodes in color.  Personally, I can't wait for the black and white episodes.

     Black and white is a misnomer, anyway.  When we say a program is black and white, what we really mean is that we're seeing a continuum of black and white that includes the shades of gray.  I suppose the youngsters just prefer not to see things in shades of gray.  Sorry, kids, but I'm seeing more and more gray every day.  I'm cool with glorious black and white.