What Last Week’s Box Office Means In Terms Of Genre Films: The Division of Horror Fans and Gore Fans
On September 11, 2004, I was in the second audience to ever see James Wan’s Saw. I left the Ryerson Theater in Toronto feeling a tectonic plate in a genre I followed since my youth changing. I remember walking down Church St. in Downtown Toronto and seeing children playing in this park, with their parents watching. It was 2 AM, and very unsettling. Then, the marketing of the film, and further prostituting of one good idea until it had no life left in it. I didn’t like the first sequel and checked out of the series thereafter, continuously shocked to hear that they are getting ANOTHER film out of this franchise.
The major change I felt that night, but couldn’t really identify was apparent the following Halloween season, and the four that have come since then. What had changed was that studios saw how these two guys did it, and used great efforts to maximize the cost-to-profit ratio. No Saw film has made 100-Million-Dollars (the mark of a modern hit). Yet, the most recent one, Saw VI cost $11M and while it was pummeled by the lesser-known, less-costly Paranormal Activity, it turned a profit in 70 hrs of release domestically.
I similarly saw Paranormal Activity before most people, and walked out feeling like something shifted. The film does not contain any gore, and was made for less than I owe DePaul University. The story of two people alone in a house while something is also in their home is weird. But, what has shifted?
Notable horror filmmaker Eli Roth said at a Q&A that most critics and audiences don’t enjoy gore (this came from the guy who made Hostel), “most critics probably have fun with it in theaters, and then give it a negative review.” I don’t know if this is fully accurate. But, at a screening of Roth’s film Cabin Fever, Richard Roeper sat in front of me. He jumped and covered his eyes throughout the entire movie, only to go onto the show opposite Roger Ebert, and attack the film, calling it unscary.
With the characterization of “torture porn,” the horror genre has seen a massive uptick in gore this decade. With the recent success of a film like Paranormal Activity , is the level of gore in these films going to lessen? One major reason the film is successful is that it can be marketed to an unconventional horror audience because of its complete lack of gore. Will this be a film that stays around because of its lack of gore, and thus its easier reach to different age-groups?
Gore has been used, and in many cases over-used in the genre since the late 1970’s. With the recent upping of the graphic-ante by many filmmakers, they have created a division of the fans of the genre. So last weekend, when the inter-web was all a-twitter with the news that Paranormal had slain the giant franchise it came with the forgetting that Saw started as an independent film, and had been forged into a cash cow by a conglomerate who purchased the creative rights. Is there going to be a long term division of horror fans, or is there a new market for people who don’t like gore, but still like a scare? This past weekend, I looked at it as HORROR vs. Gore at the box office, with Horror winning out. I wonder if there is going to, one day, be a subsection of the horror genre for substantially gory films.
With Paranormal’s success, and the Paramounts pronouncement of sequeldom, maybe all of that is for-not. The original SAW is an intelligent film, and the sequels are just designed to make money using graphic gore. Will this become the fate of Paranormal Activity? Will the fans allow it?
The major change I felt that night, but couldn’t really identify was apparent the following Halloween season, and the four that have come since then. What had changed was that studios saw how these two guys did it, and used great efforts to maximize the cost-to-profit ratio. No Saw film has made 100-Million-Dollars (the mark of a modern hit). Yet, the most recent one, Saw VI cost $11M and while it was pummeled by the lesser-known, less-costly Paranormal Activity, it turned a profit in 70 hrs of release domestically.
I similarly saw Paranormal Activity before most people, and walked out feeling like something shifted. The film does not contain any gore, and was made for less than I owe DePaul University. The story of two people alone in a house while something is also in their home is weird. But, what has shifted?
Notable horror filmmaker Eli Roth said at a Q&A that most critics and audiences don’t enjoy gore (this came from the guy who made Hostel), “most critics probably have fun with it in theaters, and then give it a negative review.” I don’t know if this is fully accurate. But, at a screening of Roth’s film Cabin Fever, Richard Roeper sat in front of me. He jumped and covered his eyes throughout the entire movie, only to go onto the show opposite Roger Ebert, and attack the film, calling it unscary.
With the characterization of “torture porn,” the horror genre has seen a massive uptick in gore this decade. With the recent success of a film like Paranormal Activity , is the level of gore in these films going to lessen? One major reason the film is successful is that it can be marketed to an unconventional horror audience because of its complete lack of gore. Will this be a film that stays around because of its lack of gore, and thus its easier reach to different age-groups?
Gore has been used, and in many cases over-used in the genre since the late 1970’s. With the recent upping of the graphic-ante by many filmmakers, they have created a division of the fans of the genre. So last weekend, when the inter-web was all a-twitter with the news that Paranormal had slain the giant franchise it came with the forgetting that Saw started as an independent film, and had been forged into a cash cow by a conglomerate who purchased the creative rights. Is there going to be a long term division of horror fans, or is there a new market for people who don’t like gore, but still like a scare? This past weekend, I looked at it as HORROR vs. Gore at the box office, with Horror winning out. I wonder if there is going to, one day, be a subsection of the horror genre for substantially gory films.
With Paranormal’s success, and the Paramounts pronouncement of sequeldom, maybe all of that is for-not. The original SAW is an intelligent film, and the sequels are just designed to make money using graphic gore. Will this become the fate of Paranormal Activity? Will the fans allow it?
posted by Brian Sosin at
2:07 PM
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