Cheap screams and tasteless cliches are a dime a dozen in the horror genre. Scaring people is hard, and these movies almost got it perfect.
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00:00 Cheap screams and tasteless cliches are a dime a dozen in the horror genre.
00:04 Scaring people is hard, and these movies almost got it perfect.
00:08 In the DVD commentary for Scream 6, directors Matt Bednely-Ulpin and Tyler Gillett acknowledge
00:13 the longstanding rules governing the franchise.
00:16 Canonically, the directors recognize that even when armed with a gun, characters leave
00:19 Ghostface to flee, instead of chasing him down and stopping the killing spree in the
00:23 first act.
00:24 Like all horror franchises, Scream comes with its own brand of unbelief.
00:28 The first entry's killers are expectedly as smart or as dumb as the plot demands seem
00:32 to seem.
00:33 However, director Wes Craven's mastery of tone and staging ensures the seams never show.
00:38 Audiences are simply there for the ride.
00:40 Mostly.
00:41 "There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror
00:46 movie."
00:47 A masterclass in meta-slashers, and horror in general, Scream has endured for decades
00:52 on account of its wit.
00:53 It's intelligent, subversive, and clever, willing to play by the rules when it counts
00:57 and break them when it doesn't.
00:59 The first Scream is nearly perfect, even if two brief beats seem lazy in an otherwise
01:03 expertly assembled shocker.
01:05 In the second act, series protagonist Sidney Prescott is twice stalked by Ghostface.
01:09 The camera zooms in first on Ghostface as he hides in the bushes in the middle of the
01:13 day.
01:14 Later, he's costumed and skulking around the aisles of a local grocery store.
01:17 Logically, the killers couldn't possibly be in either location.
01:20 Even if they could, the risk would be too great.
01:23 It's an old cliche in an otherwise perfect movie.
01:26 Rick Rosenthal's Halloween II is a better movie than most slasher fans remember.
01:29 Sure, it's no Halloween, but few movies are.
01:32 In the decades since John Carpenter's Halloween premiered, few movies have come close to matching
01:36 the terror of Carpenter's stripped-down slasher masterpiece.
01:39 Halloween II is as close as the franchise has come, however, even exceeding David Gordon
01:43 Green's rebooted trilogy.
01:45 It's essentially more of the same, only this time Haddonfield Memorial Hospital stands
01:48 in for quiet suburban streets.
01:50 Rosenthal's Carpenter impression is strong, and he even manages a few nifty tricks of
01:54 his own.
01:55 Most notably during a breathless chase in the third act.
01:58 It isn't all perfect, however.
01:59 Some of that is likely due to conjoining visions.
02:02 Carpenter and Rosenthal no doubt got along, though infamously several scenes were reshot
02:06 without Rosenthal's involvement, the goal being to ramp up the gore quotient and position
02:09 Halloween II as more competitive in the '80s slasher market.
02:13 Additionally, and most egregiously, Halloween II introduced the long-standing sibling angle.
02:18 That's right, the boogeyman isn't the boogeyman.
02:21 He's the final girl's long-lost brother.
02:23 That decision plagued subsequent entries for years, regularly backing them into a narrative
02:28 corner as they tried to work around a mythology that never belonged there in the first place.
02:32 Green's reboot wisely did away with the familial frights, though with its origins in Halloween
02:36 II, a stellar slasher is constrained by its short-sightedness.
02:41 There's a theory some horror fans abide by known as horror logic.
02:44 It's the rationale behind going into the dark basement alone, splitting up, or in Scream's
02:48 case asking "who's there?" while a killer lurks around the corner.
02:52 Probably, horror movie characters don't know they're in a horror movie.
02:55 As a result, their decisions might not always make the most sense.
02:59 Broadly, that's okay.
03:01 If everyone behaves their absolute best, there isn't a movie.
03:04 There would be no Scream 6 if Casey Becker locked herself in an upstairs bedroom and
03:08 called the police in the first.
03:09 Sometimes, however, that horror logic gets stretched thin.
03:13 Filmmakers strain fragility a bit too much, undermining what should otherwise be a terrifying
03:17 sequence of events.
03:18 David Robert Mitchell's It Follows is a modern horror classic, a sex-infused riff on The
03:23 Ring that sees a curse being passed along via intercourse.
03:26 Once plagued, the options are to pass it along or endure an "it" that follows you until "it"
03:30 kills you.
03:31 To stop the titular monster, the protagonists of It Follows try several options, though
03:35 their last stand is a mark against the masterful command of narrative Mitchell had previously
03:39 exhibited.
03:40 In the final act, the survivors trap the monster in a pool and try to electrocute it.
03:44 They throw toasters, televisions, and all manner of electronics in.
03:48 It doesn't work.
03:49 There's horror movie logic, and then there's whatever that was.
03:53 Speaking of horror movie logic, Brian Bertino's The Strangers is practically a case study.
03:58 While it remains a horror classic, even receiving the reboot treatment, it's worth remembering
04:02 that after a stellar first half, the latter end devolves into cliché.
04:06 Structurally, The Strangers was disadvantaged from the start.
04:09 Sticking to the motto of what's unseen being scarier, the trio of masked strangers, often
04:13 hidden at first, make more regular appearances, undermining the efficacy of Bertino's scares.
04:19 It's still terrifying, but just a little more familiar.
04:22 Luckily, Bertino course-corrects, ending The Strangers with one of the most disturbing
04:26 lines in horror cinema.
04:28 As our protagonists are captured inbound, they ask a question whose answer is better
04:32 left unheard.
04:33 "Why are you doing this to us?"
04:38 "Because you were home."
04:43 Kristen and James are stabbed to death, ending the nightmarish ordeal they and the audience
04:47 were subjected to.
04:48 It's a brutal, unconventional way to end a mainstream horror movie.
04:52 Though, a beat later, it's incredulously undone.
04:55 As a young boy arrives at the house, Kristen awakens and screams, ending the movie with
04:59 Hollywood's infamous final scare.
05:01 It's cheap and, as noted, painfully cliché, pretty much the opposite of everything The
05:07 Strangers have been trying to do up until that point.
05:10 While directorial credit remains a soft spot among cinephiles, was it Tobe Hooper or secretly
05:14 Steven Spielberg directing?
05:16 Evidence clearly points towards Poltergeist belonging to Hooper.
05:19 That isn't to say Spielberg's influence isn't present.
05:22 Hooper's horror sensibilities melded perfectly with Spielberg's suburban melancholy, underscoring
05:26 why Poltergeist is still one of the scariest haunted house movies ever.
05:30 Not everything is flawless, however, and in trying to explain the machinations of its
05:34 titular haunt, Poltergeist very briefly slows to a crawl.
05:38 While difficult to confirm, it has been suggested that Hooper and Spielberg regularly argued
05:42 over the paranormal dialogue.
05:44 Spielberg wanted something dense and scientific.
05:47 Hooper conversely thought it was too much for an audience to digest.
05:50 Hooper might have been right.
05:52 When Tangina arrives at the Freeling house, she explains what likely happened to Carol
05:55 Anne.
05:56 Over three minutes long, her monologue is dense, silly, and too expository, over-explaining
06:02 the haunting when a swift explanation would have sufficed.
06:05 Poltergeists are willing to accept the unbelievable, and it's a shame Poltergeist didn't give them
06:09 a chance to do so fully.
06:12 Love or hate, Bo is afraid, Ari Aster remains one of the most singular filmmakers working
06:16 today.
06:17 His feature before Bo, Midsommar, ranks as one of the most distressing pictures of interpersonal
06:21 trauma around.
06:22 His debut, Hereditary, likely needs no introduction.
06:25 As the scary movie to end all scary movies, it will likely be this generation's standout
06:30 horror classic.
06:31 With the grit of the Exorcist and the provocative plotting of Psycho, it deserves to rank among
06:35 the best of the best.
06:37 It's practically flawless, with Aster achieving mainstream scares within arthouse confines,
06:42 while Toni Collette's terrifying performance ties it all together.
06:45 Only once does Hereditary risk falling apart.
06:48 At the movie's conclusion, the thrust of the family's curse is explained.
06:51 Alex Wolfe-Peter Graham is the only family member left alive.
06:55 Cornered by naked cultists, he throws himself from an attic window, the fall presumably
06:59 killing him.
07:00 He reanimates as the reincarnation of the demon Paimon and climbs into the treehouse.
07:04 Several more cult members greet him with a recitation.
07:07 "Hail, Paimon!"
07:10 "Hail, Paimon!"
07:13 The efficacy of the scares is doled by Aster's insistence on literalizing what had been suggested.
07:20 Like The Strangers, it feels like an ending appended for executives.
07:24 Rather than trusting the audience, it feels like too clean a bow to wrap everything up.
07:29 While most nearly flawless horror movies are undermined by a single scene, in the case
07:33 of The Descent, it's the removal of a scene that dulls the impact of one of the horror
07:36 genre's scariest movies.
07:38 Famously, Neil Marshall's The Descent ends on a grim note.
07:41 Sarah apparently escapes the cave system, though Marshall then cuts back to the cave.
07:46 Sarah is still there, sitting across from the hallucination of her deceased daughter.
07:51 The Descent fades to black, leaving Sarah at the mercy of the cave's monstrous crawlers.
07:56 If that sounds unfamiliar, it's likely because the United States release wholly removed the
08:00 twist.
08:01 The truncated ending feels like a cheap Hollywood ploy for a happy ending.
08:05 More incredulously, The Descent Part II, which follows the U.S. ending, didn't even get a
08:09 wide release stateside.
08:11 It did, however, open wide in U.K. cinemas despite following a different ending.
08:15 It's not only strange, but thematically, Sarah shouldn't have escaped the system.
08:19 That was Marshall's intent.
08:21 The burgeoning grief and anger coalesce in a downer of an ending.
08:24 The total impact of The Descent is genuinely spoiled by the alternate ending in the canonical
08:28 sequel.
08:30 Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead needs no introduction.
08:33 As both franchise and career springboard, it's the kind of gritty, aspirational horror
08:37 movie as successful as it is inspiring.
08:39 Talented friends and creatives got together in the woods, spilled some blood, and the
08:42 rest is critically acclaimed history.
08:45 Throughout its decades-long run, the franchise has understood better than most what makes
08:48 horror and comedy the perfect pair.
08:50 When employed with care, both simultaneously complement the other, cultivating a grindhouse,
08:55 midnighter feel unique in its capacity to endure.
08:58 However, even Raimi regrets one pivotal moment from his horror classic, a scene so out of
09:03 place that it mars an otherwise flawless masterpiece.
09:07 Widely known as the tree rape scene, it begins when Cheryl flees the cabin in the woods only
09:11 to encounter a possessed tree whose branches and roots violate her graphically.
09:16 Raimi has since spoken of his regret, noting how the scene is too brutal for its own good.
09:20 The Evil Dead pushed all the right buttons, but with the tree, it skirted over boundaries
09:24 it should have left alone.
09:25 -