Horror is a very speculative genre, one day you have the stuff for a brilliant original horror film, and the next day you’re sitting with a piece of crap that would make people, such as myself, want to curse your existence. It’s not always the writer’s fault, nor the director or the actors, sometimes it truly was just a film that shouldn’t have been made… Other times it is a horrible movie because of all those previous mentioned reasons. It really does all depends on the variables that comes along with a movie. However if we look back at the true classic horrors from years past, we can see exactly what it is that makes them original and timeless:

CREATIVE KILLS

Now, in my opinion a creative kill is something that has never been seen before. Take ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ for instance. We start off with a brilliant first kill where Tina get’s brutally murdered in her sleep, by the invisible ‘Freddy Kreuger and then gets dragged up the walls, making a quite literal bloody mess. That was pure genius. That was pure HORROR. Another classic that got it right with creative kills was the ‘Child’s Play’ franchise. I once actually sat watching and counting each creative kill (the number escapes me at present, but basically it comes down to that EACH kill was creative). That is what makes horror exciting, the brutality that comes with a kill… the blood that spurts out of a helpless victim’s body or the unintentional shudders that you get from those creepy lunatics.

ORIGINALITY

It has been proven time and time again that an original horror is much scarier than a remake, a revamp or a sequel. Let’s take ‘The Blair Witch Project’ as an example, okay, it probably was scarier for me seeing that I was nine years old and basically pissed my pants (and got sick because of the shaky camera), but it was original cinematography and the storyline was brilliantly told from a first person point of view. It made it good, it made it iconic and therefore they made a sequel and it failed miserably. Another legacy ruined by the horror that is Hollywood was probably the‘Halloween’ remakes… my disgust in Rob Zombie for taking a truly original monster and turning him into a ‘character with feelings and emotions and reason’ has been documented all over the web. Thankfully I was not the only person who thought it was the flop of the century (excluding the recent ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ or Paris Hilton failure in ‘House of Wax’ remake). The fact is, originality, makes it iconic, no matter how bad it was. ‘The Human Centipede’ has proven this theory. The originality was so great, that it has become an instant horror classic.

SUSPENSE

In recent years it has become one of the major fails of the industry. They show the monster/slasher/psycho thingy way too soon in the movie and/or they give away the whole plot in the first ten minutes. It has become a nuisance to say the very least.However sometimes leaving the monster to the very end can make it a little less… aesthetically pleasing to the whole viewing experience, especially when you see it and it’s not as horrific as you thought it would be. Take ‘Jeepers Creepers’ for instance. In my opinion seeing the Creeper was very anti-climatic, it could have been so much better!

Movies that got the suspense right (not necessarily monster movies, but horror none the less) was ‘Gothika’, ‘The Orphan’ and ‘The Others’, where a good twist made for a brilliant thrill. The reason behind this is that suspense creates a lingering thought and memory of the viewing experience, suspense creates ‘classics’…

BLOODY!

If there isn’t blood in a horror then it shouldn’t be classified as horror, there are the exceptions to the rule, such as ‘The Exorcist’, but generally a horror has blood. Being stingy with brutality and gore is the biggest mistake a horror director can make and‘Joyride 2’ and ‘Pulse 3’ is the best example of a ‘I-forgot-to-budget-for-blood’ movie.(Sorry to those who thinks differently, but it is the truth). Therefore I say, make vats and vats of the blood, because basic biology tells us that a human bleeds… A LOT!

In the end it all comes down to common sense and general knowledge. A horror doesn’t need to be a big budget film to have all the elements to thrill or to be considered good. And a horror director should be able to know the difference between good horror and bad horror and adjust the script, cast etcetera, if not for themselves and their own pockets, at least think about the horror community.