There are fewer than two weeks until Halloween, and it’s time once again to get back in the spirit of frights and fears. Per usual, the entertainment world has a big effect on how the faux-holiday turns out; costumes of the season’s favorite characters find their way into the evening’s attire. We personally anticipate the tiring overabundance of “Breaking Bad” yellow Hazmat suits.

But the horror genre in particular has provided a lot of inspiration recently, from critical hit “The Conjuring” to surprise box office hit “The Purge,” a remake of Stephen King’s “Carrie” to, perhaps the most terrifying of all, a “Toy Story” Halloween TV special. Columnists Sebastian Torrelio and Tony Huang take sides on modern horror in the media, and how it holds up to the standards of past generations.

BY SEBASTIAN TORRELIO
A&E; Senior Staff
storrelio@media.ucla.edu

Brian De Palma’s 1976 version of “Carrie” is a landmark in the horror field, partially because of the thematic messages he tells of teenage life and angst, but mainly because of the climax: a disturbing and wonderfully shot scene of prom night destruction and devastation. It likely fuels nightmares to this day, and keeps high school prom pranks down to a hesitant minimum.

Kimberly Peirce’s remake of “Carrie,” with Chloë Grace Moretz donning the bloody dress, reflects a lot of what recent horror pieces have been like. At heart, yes, it’s a bit of a rehash, likely following the same plot and dramatic cues as De Palma’s film. But the trailers and advertising seem to show something a bit more, giving Carrie a surprisingly creepy appeal with technologically pristine effects and skillfully clean shots of scenes the audience already comes to expect.

In this way, it feels more like an update than a rehash, something very necessary when making horror films today. Invoking the artistic techniques that filmmakers seem to be obsessed with today has made for some interestingly successful pieces in recent years, including “The Conjuring,” which aimed more for atmospheric scares than those of ghosts and spirits, and “Let Me In,” a remake also starring Moretz that was lauded for its elegantly creepy tone.

The genre has recently had a good tendency of being out of the box, fueling interest through the revelation of new methods and ideas of getting word around. Take “American Horror Story: Coven” for instance, one of the more popular television shows of the current season, an avant-garde take on suspense that has heavily relied on ads featuring people eating snakes. The strangeness seems to appeal to viewers, independent of quality – though the quality too is often daring enough to reach unexpected highs.

New takes on horror are usually unimaginative, bar a “The Cabin in the Woods” here and there, but directors and filmmakers willing enough to break free of the formula have made present day horror more appealing than not. Not to say that this week’s “Carrie” remake will be refreshing, or even good, but at least it appears to have its head in the right mindset.

BY TONY HUANG
A&E; Contributor
thuang@media.ucla.edu

I’m not a big fan of horror as it’s generically defined. This is because I’m not sure what modern horror films want from me – they inflict injuries to my facial muscles, but my response is rarely much more than to marvel at the blood and guts. I think I prefer being creeped out to being actively prodded for shrieks, and for my money, horror films did a much better job of actually being horrifying back in the day, when the genre hadn’t yet settled into gory, unconvincing sadism.

Case in point, 1968’s “Rosemary’s Baby,” is one of the most effective horror films because its ending actively incited repulsion from me. If I’m not mistaken, there’s really only one on-screen death and zero on-screen murders – yet there’s at least one scene, a single shot of Mia Farrow making a frantic phone call, that made me more paranoid about my surroundings than all the “Saw” films put together.

What has recent horror had to offer? The big thing is director Ti West, who makes slow-burner movies that are almost up my alley. But it seems by and large to be remakes of old horror, punched up with more aggravating special effects. The new “Carrie,” for instance, seems to be the old “Carrie,” except with a dash of digital veneer, a more generic aesthetic and removed of the sociological (bullying is bad) focus of the original. Speaking from experience, “The Grudge” and “The Pulse,” American remakes of some excellent Japanese horror films, are both as lifeless as the corpses on screen – this cannot turn out well.

Horror nowadays seems designed to check off requirements: monsters, victims, blood. “The ABCs of Death,” a horror anthology from earlier this year, showcases all the worst tendencies of how the genre is approached today: In the effort to be in the horror genre, these gore fests have sacrificed the ability to be genuinely horrific.

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