• What is This Blog?

benjaminwhittaker

benjaminwhittaker

Tag Archives: AMC

Horror Today: Are Our Expectations Too Low?

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Features

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1922, Alfred Hitchcock, Alien, Amazon Prime, AMC, American Horror Story, Audition, Before I Wake, Blumhouse Productions, Cinema, Film, Frank Darabont, Friday The 13th, Funny Games, George Romero, Gerald's Game, Goodnight Mommy, Halloween, Horror, Horror Films, Jigsaw, John Carpenter, Lights Out, Mother!, Movies, Netflix, Rings, Robert Kirkman, Rosemary's Baby, Saw, Scream, Stanley Kubrick, The Babadook, The Descent, The Exorcist, The Gallows, The Green Mile, The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption, The Walking Dead, Twisted Pictures, Wes Craven

6359224225543779371029959219_horror-movie-villains-collage

The Horror genre is an established and beloved facet of film with a wide variety of sub-genres, each of which have garnered healthy fandoms. The Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Slasher and Torture Porn genres all boast classic films as part of their libraries – from mainstream hits like Halloween to less conventional movies like Audition and Funny Games – and each year a plethora of new additions hit our screens.

Shows like The Walking Dead and American Horror Story keep the genre relevant in the mainstream and provide a valuable (if somewhat diluted) gateway to more artistic and intellectually stimulating experiences in the world of cinema, but on the big screen the Horror genre is often misrepresented and abused by filmmakers, production companies and studios alike.

07-babadook.w710.h473

Narratively cohesive and visually exciting films like The Babadook and Mother! are widely disregarded by audiences because they challenge viewers and don’t rely on cheap tricks to generate entertainment, and in an effort to cater towards the masses studios produce fast-paced, surprise-heavy films with little substance by the bucket load. In doing so they inform their audience’s choices and create a lower level of expectation, facilitating a system which favours profitability over quality and doesn’t require one to ensure the other.

Audiences are consistently short-changed by companies which would rather make an empty but financially-safe movie like The Gallows for $100,000 than something ambitious, and the idea that effective jump scares are essential to the genre is constantly reinforced to mainstream audiences by these kinds of films. Movies like Lights Out are heralded as ground-breaking by casual cinemagoers because they have appealing premises and are marginally more stimulating than the standard throwaway horror that you might find at your local Cineworld, regardless of the fact that the filmmaking is middling at best.

lightsout1280jpg-19acd6_1280w

As previously mentioned, the genre has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to variety; many of the classics come from one or two sub-genres – with movies like Scream, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street all most readily branded as Slashers – but others are great films regardless of how they are categorised such as Alien, The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.

Horror is a study of themes – an exploration of human psychology and our penchant for fearing that which we do not understand – so by virtue of the fact that we know as little as we do it’s a diverse and rich field to study. Yet, within this field filmmakers and audiences alike play it safe, preparing and digesting the same mishmash of clichés on a daily basis whilst ignoring the fact that the taste has faded.

Jigsaw-feat.jpg

This Halloween the only cinematic release to capitalise on one of the calendar’s most celebrated holidays was a tepid reboot/sequel of a franchise which should’ve died many movies ago. Jigsaw was a tired and inept attempt at breathing life into a series which at this point has about as much energy as the rotting corpse of its fictional anti-hero John Kramer, and the fact that audiences went to see it is both disappointing and encouraging in equal measure.

The good news is that Jigsaw’s commercial success demonstrates the fact that fans will still pay to see a horror film if a trailer piques their interest. When there isn’t a recognisable name behind the film the situation is admittedly more complicated – the stars have to align and the need for careful marketing is more pronounced – but if you can find the balance between a pandering set of jump scares and a pretentious art film then there’s a lot of money to be made.

The bad news is that the majority of people can’t tell the former from the latter, and ultimately they’ll pay to see anything as long as a marketing team makes the choice for them.

bh_productions

The truth is that fans aren’t given an immense amount of choice. Brilliant horror films are being made around the world on a regular basis but they aren’t easily accessible to everyone and they certainly aren’t shown in every cinema across the United Kingdom. You can find them, of course, but in an age when people aren’t willing to interact socially unless their conversations are filtered through a barrage of apps, and can’t articulate their emotions without a meticulously chosen emoji, how can we expect them to make informed decisions on which films to watch? People do as they’re told – like it or not – and they’re told to watch whatever Blumhouse Productions wants them to watch.

Goodnight Mommy is a prime example of the type of movie from within the horror genre which should be made available to fans without the need for excessive research, but unless you happened to stumble across it at your local arthouse cinema it’s unlikely that it made a blip on your radar. Luckily Austria’s nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards is now available on Amazon Prime and is accessible to anyone with a subscription, but the fact remains that for every well-produced horror drama there’s a franchise-killer like Rings to tell audiences that they needn’t get their hopes up.

rings_ukquad_feb3_l

Streaming services like the above-mentioned Amazon Prime make lesser-known movies available to the masses, and Netflix has recently added quality to the genre with two stellar Stephen King adaptations (Gerald’s Game and 1922 respectively), but these services can only suggest which films their viewers should watch. They have extensive libraries and an abundance of quantity over quality, so for every film like The Descent there’s an eyesore like Before I Wake to balance the scales, and the latter will likely gain just as much traction as the former.

This isn’t a criticism of people’s viewing habits or a recommendation for what they should choose to enjoy – I can appreciate a bad film just as much as the next person – it’s merely a reflection on the fact that as a society we’ve been conditioned to accept movies of a certain standard simply because they’re convenient to find and consume. We shouldn’t give our money to Twisted Pictures so that they can churn out another lacklustre film in the Saw franchise – that horse is dead and it’s about time that we stopped beating it – we should collectively put more of an emphasis on quality and demand that filmmakers earn the money that we give them.

All of these points boil down to one thing, which is that Horror is an underappreciated and misunderstood genre which is unfairly categorised as niche and tasteless because people don’t have easy access to the types of movies which validate being a fan. As fans we’re as much responsible for that as the filmmakers because we fund their projects and thank them by buying a ticket when they make something which is fundamentally deficient.

TWD-retrospective-special-1600x600

Refer back to my earlier comment about The Walking Dead; it’s one of the most watched and talked about shows on television today, yet in my view it’s also one of the least compelling. The first six episodes were character driven, well-shot, and they had direction, so although the characters weren’t fully-realised there was a sense that it could become something special.

Frank Darabont started as showrunner and he cared about Robert Kirkman’s material; he got some of his talented friends on board from projects like The Mist and they helped to steer the ship in the right direction. However, by the time the second season rolled around creative differences between AMC and Darabont (director of films like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile) meant that he was let go. Ever since then the show has been less of a drama and more of a soap opera, yet the popularity of the series remains intact because now people are invested and want to be part of the conversation.

636080402361086064-1092865012_dark-horror-movie-monster-1920x1080.jpg

Horror is an exceptional genre of film and popular culture. It plays with human emotions more than any other genre, forcing people to participate and to use their imagination in order to  answer the question – ‘what would I do in this situation?’. It’s an engaging form of entertainment and a valuable tool for growth which encourages people to face their fears and conceptualise scenarios which they’d rather avoid. It provides an avenue to explore abstract concepts and themes which are relevant to our everyday lives, and it does so through a format which allows casual viewers to enjoy what’s happening on screen even if they don’t want to consider the implications. Of the films that I’ve already mentioned The Babadook considers mental illness, Rosemary’s Baby examines ambition and The Descent explores the impact of grief, and each one does so in a considered and symbolic manner.

It’s a genre which iconic filmmakers like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and George Romero have each dedicated large portions of their lives to, and it’s one which needs to be disassociated from those films which sully its reputation in cinemas today. Horror is not a group of teens throwing popcorn from the back of the cinema or speakers turned up so high that you can’t help but jump out of your seat at the end of every sequence; it’s a study in aspects of human psychology which are too complex to consider through everyday experiences – an exploration of our vulnerabilities – and when it’s done right it can be the most emotionally effective variety of film.

Fear The Walking Dead: Season One Premiere

06 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Television Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alycia Debnam-Carey, AMC, Fear The Walking Dead, Frank Dillane, Kim Dickens, Lexi Johnson, Maestro Harrell, Melissa McBride, The Walking Dead, Twitter, YouTube, Zombie Apocalypse

the-walking-dead-spinoff

“Fear The Walking Dead” is the kind of series that I wish didn’t exist, not just because it feels uninventive and cash-grabbing but because I can’t help but watch it despite knowing that this is the case! “The Walking Dead” is an incredibly lucrative show for AMC so it’s only natural that they would want to cash in by creating a companion series, but it feels a bit manipulative to have a show with “The Walking Dead” in the title when in actual fact it has very little to do with the flagship series. I would personally much prefer that a new show was created with gifted young writers and actors because AMC is already making its money with “The Walking Dead”. Instead, we have “Fear The Walking Dead” which is basically a knock-off of “The Walking Dead” but with cheaper actors and less decayed walkers.

The reason that I’m tuning into “Fear The Walking Dead” isn’t just because I watch “The Walking Dead”, it’s also because I want to know how the zombie apocalypse began. How did the world react to the world coming to an end when Twitter and YouTube were still prevalent? When did the dead start turning into walkers? Like when exactly – everyone is infected in “The Walking Dead” so if Nick (Frank Dillane) had died when he was hit by the car in this episode would he have turned into a walker? When did the process begin?

My interest in “Fear The Walking Dead” is clearly tied to the main show which is why I’m a bit frustrated at both AMC and myself. I don’t actually like the cast and this premiere was pretty appalling, so the fact that for some reason I’m invested is incredibly annoying.

img_4182

via amc.com

In all fairness this show has a lot going for it; it could go in a number of interesting directions because, after all, we’re witnessing the start of a zombie apocalypse! There’s so much going on in the city and there are so many people for the walkers to feast on, so the show could actually end up being pretty good if the writers can be bothered to try. Sadly, from what I’ve seen so far I have to imagine that the showrunners will take whichever road is the most travelled so that they can do as little work as possible.

This season premiere began with a typical zombie cliché, as Nick searched a creepy looking building for a girl named Gloria (Lexi Johnson), only to find that she was a walker. The sound was ominous (although clearly artificial), the lighting was dim, and shrieks of panic could occasionally be heard in the distance. What could possibly be the matter?

I was so disappointed with this opening because we’ve seen it before hundreds of times, and there’s no surprise when a walker appears at the start of a television series about the walking dead! Why bother trying to build suspense at all? If you’re going to immediately reveal your cards then there’s no point in bluffing. Surely nobody was actually scared by this sequence.

img_4183

via amc.com

I’m not a massive fan of jump scares, because most of the time they’re designed to shock rather than scare which gives the name a bit of a false feel. However, in this instance I would’ve been quite pleased if the opening had paved the way to a comedic one, with Gloria playing a trick on Nick rather than simply being a walker. This would’ve established that although the show isn’t going to be original, it will be fun and try to play around with genre conventions. Alas, the showrunners don’t seem to have any intention of thinking outside the box, so I don’t expect to see anything new or exciting.

I don’t want to linger on the opening scene too much, but it really is infuriating that the showrunners couldn’t have thought of a better way to introduce the story and one of the show’s main characters. The showrunners could’ve done hundreds of different things with the setting of the church whilst still establishing that this is a show about zombies. They could’ve started with a drug bust, which would’ve been interesting because the sounds of panic could’ve still made the audience think that a walker was about to appear. Alternatively, they could’ve had a walker banging at the door trying to get in, with Nick believing that it was a dealer and thus leaving the area. He could’ve even seen the walker that was knocking on the door from a distance afterwards and made a joke about it looking messed up, given that from a distance it might just look like a person on a large quantity of drugs. This would’ve let the audience have a glimpse of a walker and also established some sort of personality within the show.

img_4184

via ajc.com

The characters, like the opening, were completely clichéd – Nick is the stereotypical screw-up junkie and as usual he’s the only person in the main cast who knows the truth to begin with. But who would believe a junkie? Wow, how original. On top of that, he’s part of a dysfunctional family. Madison (Kim Dickens), the mother in this family, seems pretty well put together, although her son is a junkie so we’ll have to wait and see. She seems to wear the pants in the relationship with her new husband so she’ll probably be a badass like Carol (Melissa McBride) is on the main show. There’s also a daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who has a boyfriend, Matt (Maestro Harrell) – that’s going to be her character development right there. The boyfriend dies and hey presto she becomes another lost soul hardened by the world.

Now I may be being slightly cynical and also a tad sarcastic, but come on, are the folks down at AMC joking? These characters are a disgrace! There’s nothing to any of them – they’re straight out of the ‘Writing a Zombie Film/TV Show for Idiots’ guide book.

Beyond the issues with the writing, characters, and general lack of ambition from AMC, the performances across the board were poor. I don’t want to condemn any of the actors, because the fault isn’t really with them, but they didn’t elevate the material they were given. Frank Dillane wasn’t good at all and he didn’t show half as much emotion as was necessary when he was explaining what happened in the opening scene. He whispered through his lines and tried to make his eyes water, but the rest of his face didn’t move and he flittered from sad to indifferent like a child in a school play.

img_4185

via culturefly.co.uk

Maybe things will get better, but right now “Fear The Walking Dead” seems like nothing more than a mediocre attempt to piggyback on the success of “The Walking Dead”. Whilst the idea of gaining an insight into where the zombie apocalypse began is potentially interesting, what I saw in this premiere leads me to believe that nothing creative will be done with the premise. Overall, this premiere was incredibly dull and extremely disappointing, with very few positives to speak of.

3/10

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • June 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014

Categories

  • 1/10 Reviews
  • 10/10 Reviews
  • Features
  • Game of Thrones
  • Game Reviews
  • Movie Reviews
  • My Favourite Films of…
  • Television Reviews
  • The Oscars

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy