I have yet to see either The Ruins or the remake of Prom Night and yet their respective performances at the US box office bothers me. The Ruins, based on a gruesomely entertaining book by Scott Smith, met with reasonably good reviews, was R rated and pulled in a disappointing $5 million in its opening weekend. While Prom Night 2008, "a lazy, lifeless, senseless insult to the horror genre", was a PG-13 and made a whooping $23 million at the weekend. What does that say about the current state of horror? That crappy, bloodless remakes are the way to go? Or that adults aren't interested in horror anymore?
Monday 14 April 2008
The horror, the horror
I have yet to see either The Ruins or the remake of Prom Night and yet their respective performances at the US box office bothers me. The Ruins, based on a gruesomely entertaining book by Scott Smith, met with reasonably good reviews, was R rated and pulled in a disappointing $5 million in its opening weekend. While Prom Night 2008, "a lazy, lifeless, senseless insult to the horror genre", was a PG-13 and made a whooping $23 million at the weekend. What does that say about the current state of horror? That crappy, bloodless remakes are the way to go? Or that adults aren't interested in horror anymore?
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12 comments:
Prom Night. I'd rather eat my own young.
Horror needs a shot in the arm and a knife in the face. Spot me $5 million to give it a crack?
no. it means that the teenagers that eat this slop up drive the industry. yes they want to be scared but their parents don't want them to see blood.
plus, comeon... it's prom season, dude! the ruins would have done better around graduation.
See, us Brits don't do prom. But I think you might be right re: The Ruins. Have you see it?
Horror needs something, that's for sure. Brains might be a good start.
Is your script horror then?
of course the script is horror.
unfortunately, you'll be screaming for all the wrong reasons! oh snap!
j/k gerard, just give me your bank account number and all other identifying pieces of information that i might need to transfer the 5mil directly to you.
How about I send you the keys to my house and you can leave it in a sack in my kitchen? I trust you, S4B, you have an honest... avatar...?
And I do have something which is part horror, but not really. It's kind of a horror idea and certainly has horror qualities, but I'm not sure I'd call it horror... It's an odd duck. And certainly needs more work, so the screaming for all the wrong reasons might not be too far off the mark!
See, this is exactly the kind of reader interaction I want on this site. Please continue. :)
Well, it's got vaguely Twilight Zone elements crossed with family and relationship drama, a Telltale Heart/ticking-clock zombie returning from a backyard dismemberment and burial in search of missing eyeballs, some instances of extreme brutality and a tragic hero who ultimately proves the architect of his own demise. Also, practically everyone winds up dead. And it sort of runs two parallel timelines with the earlier making clear the events of the now. But, like I said - it needs work.
Again, anyone with a spare $5 mil, I'll be your best friend and mow your lawn FOREVER.
I think you need to work on your pitch.
what if... one doesn't have a lawn?
quick question: a zombie comes back from... the un-dead? does that make him a real boy again?
post a taste for us!
I could pitch the hell out of this sucker if given a legitimate opportunity - that was more of a 'there's this, and this...!' cause, y'know, I'm not sure it's the cleverest thing to go around dumping your entire idea on the internet :P But between friends, it does need a lot of fine tuning - I haven't really looked at this particular script for about a year and a half.
Oh, ans S4B, that's my bad for explaining it poorly - there's a corpse which is dismembered and dumped in the backyard by our protagonist, only to find it returning as a zombie who only has eyes for him. There's a much simpler way of conveying all this, but to do that would be to divulge the whole basic premise. Let's just say the zombie is a big part of that Telltale Heart element...
You know the Scott brothers are producing a modern day version of the Tell-tale Heart. That being said, I'd like to read yours.
I do know that. It's something I'm sort of in two minds about. But it has Bryan Cox, no? He's always watchable.
And mine's not really a modern version of Tell-tale Heart in anyway, it just sort of takes that theme and applies it to a completely different canvas. A good reference point, more than anything.
Well, like I said - it needs a sh*t-ton of work, but you know what? I could clean up some of the more glaring offenses and give you a look at it in its present state of naked humility? Some feedback would probably be a good impetus to dust it off and have a proper crack at it again...
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