Greetings Fellow Nerds! – Dave Ward here, back again with more jabs to the jaw to make you lose your mind! As the title says – the Horror genre of fandom has gone stale; so stale that I would rather eat a bag of molded croutons than sit through another 80’s slasher remake, or watch another found footage/shaky camcorder movie…
Horror used to be the genre that pushed the envelope of what was acceptable to show in TV or movies. Harken back to when “War of the Worlds” first went over the radio waves and caused mass panic, shows like The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock, and more made it difficult to sleep at night, Ray Bradbury got into your head with gems like Fahrenheit 451, and I Sing the Body Electric, Vincent Price gave us our first look of the House on Haunted Hill, and The Fly. These were the good times, the times when people took the word seriously and aimed to scare the hell out of you, or at the very least make you look around and lock everything up before you go to bed.
Then we enter into the early 80’s and onward. All of a sudden we start getting these cheesy, one villain against a village of stupid, attractive teenagers, and we’ll throw in nudity, jump scares, and lots of gore to make up for a substandard plot line and lack of originality. Seriously, you can’t count on all of the appendages you have the amount of Freddy, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Pinhead, Phantasm, and Chucky movies that got pumped out in the 80’s to the point that Fangoria people couldn’t take it anymore and quit. This has become the cause of Horror mediocrity today. There are a select few that have pushed the envelope a few micrometers in the past few years in an effort to right the rudder of the genre, but anytime we get a true gem in horror… it just gets knocked back by REMAKES (see other NegSpace article on Remakes HERE).
That said, what’s even worse than nonsensical gore-fests known as “slashers” of the 80’s/90s, are the teen horror films of today! But I don’t even need to go into the sterile, safe, and ‘oh-so-romantic’ (note sarcasm) modern vampire tales. No, that pile of cinematic garbage speaks for itself. Moving on…
My point is, if Horror has any chance of surviving and thriving in this century, I surely hope the creators take a lesson from the old guys and use material that will actually scare your intended audience; otherwise, you are part of the handle of the instrument of its demise. Not a gruesome, terrifying demise… more like a whimpering, “who-the-hell-cares-anymore” one.
This is Dave Ward, and you have just warped through the Negative Space.
-Dave Ward
First Ambassador/Resident Grouch
Federation Starship: Nerd Nation
Please Note: The views and opinions expressed by Mr. Ward in “The Negative Space” are his and his alone. They do not necessarily reflect those of Nerd Nation Magazine, or anyone else… so please, don’t be a d-bag and try to sue anyone over the stuff he writes. It’s called an opinion… don’t like it? The internet is a big place. Just go read something else… preferably on here! =)
- NERD NATION MAGAZINE - 
You can’t seriously be arguing that FAHRENHEIT 451 and THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL are scarier movies than THE BABADOOK and IT FOLLOWS. If you can’t appreciate the two latter titles, SPRING, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, LATE PHASES, or any of the other incredible horror movies to come along in the past couple years, I think you may just not like horror movies.
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While I absolutely cannot speak for Mr. Ward (particularly on his own opinion/column) I do agree with you, sir.
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Blair in my opinion Spring and A Girl Walks Home At Night are not classified as horror movies. They were possibly a thriller but not horror. I absolutely cannot watch horror movies and I sat through both of those. They were well done, and captured my attention. On a side note, I wish Spring would have ended completely different. It was tied up in a neat package. I have to say I was let down.
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