Devils and Darkness: The Horror Season Comes Closer

The fall is approaching and with it is the plethora of blood, guts, creaking doors, loud noises, failed attempts and missed opportunities. Yes I am talking about my beloved and accursed Horror genre. Many films will attempt to scare audiences, many will do so but I must add that most the "scared" audience is mindless teenagers. Now I don't mean to generalize all you teenagers together into one mindless drone group....but I know from experience as a former teenager that you are indeed more or less mindless.



Now if you are an even half intelligent young to old adult, the majority of the Horror films will not scare you, at most they will bring a mocking laugh of incredulity flying from your lips. But next to the heaping pile of rightfully disrespected horror trash, there always sits a small neat stack of respectful, artistic and most of all scary horror films. Each year I watch closely filled with trepidation at the fresh stock of scary movies, always hoping that a few will meet my very strict standards.



Now if you thought films like "The Ring", "Paranormal Activity" or any one of the atrocious "Saw" films are scary...well then I'm sorry but you are not going to be saved, you are completely hopeless and again sorry for my generalizations. Most the good horror films already came out in the 70's and 80's and are now being revisited in misguided and unoriginal remakes. If they are good and new you can almost always bet they are A. Foreign, or B. small budget, art house films. You could have chosen A and B, and you would still be right.



So now that I have both bored you to death with my Horror rant, lets start talking about a few of the upcoming fright fests. You have already heard me talk about John Carpenter's "The Ward" and you'll read more about that another time. Right now I want to focus on "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" and "Devil".



"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" technically isn't coming out during this Horror season and is being released early next year on the 21st of January, and technically it is a re-make. So I may be a bit hypocritical with this one, but the original was made for television. This re-make stars Guy Pearce (Memento, The Proposition and L.A. Confidential) and regrettably Katie Holmes. Its about a family who moves to a mansion (as usual) and the young girl opens a door that contains evil creatures who want her. Yes i know cheesy premise......but that doesn't mean it wont at least be a fun horror movie, and Guy Pearce makes me look forward to it. Not to mention its being produced and overseen by the brilliant Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, and producer of El Orphanato)



"Devil" is a different story altogether. First things first, its based on a story by the hack M. Night Shyamalan. But we can forgive this since he is good at coming up with ideas for the most part and isn't involved with the writing or directing of the film. The directing falls on the Dowdle brothers who both worked on the movie "Quarantine". The films premise is about a group of people who get on an elevator. The people get trapped, hi jinks soon ensue. And it would appear that there is a malicious and malevolent presence with them, this presence is more commonly known as the devil......only which one of them, if any of them is the devil?



Now this film could go many a direction and I hope it goes well because the trailer is excellent and it is kinda a cool premise either way. It is due out the 17 of September.



So there are just a couple of Horror films I am looking forward to, do not worry I will be posting more about Horror films as Fall continues, along with my top ten list of my all time favorite Horror films and reviews of them all.