Realism in Horror Movies - HorrorMovies.ca

Realism is for some reason, one of the most important elements that can be found in modern narrative cinema today. Ever since the early 1900's the goal of the moving image has been to do whatever can be done to capture the reality of the moment. The first films consisted of pedestrian events such as a dog running across a field, or a train coming into the station. These were huge leaps in the innovation of the technology at the time, but now, over 100 years later, the demand for reality has reached epic proportions. Now, rather than believe what we see on the big screen, we pick apart the details and point out the CGI effects to others to show how smart we are. Along with that, the motivations of the characters have to be on par not with what we actually see in real life, but rather the elevated perceptions of ourselves that we see on the big screen. This inflation of self reflections for example could come in the form of an escape scene, when our hero tries to get out the front door and its locked, so they run up the stairs to the second floor. As viewers, we all know that this is a dead end but put in the situation, we would totally know to break a window or run for the side door. The reality is that we probably would all react in the same manner when we are scared out of our mind (looking for the immediate solution: it's called panic), but then again, I'm not here to tell you who you are or how you would react in the situation, I merely want to acknowledge that there is a line of realism and it can get very blurry.

It's important here to show you my intentions. I'm not going to spout off about how violence is too real and people are becoming desensitized to the horror they see on screen. I'm talking about the realization of the moment and the demand for what we perceive as reality on screen. One quick example of this is the shaky camera bit. Why is this more real than a normal shot? I don't shake around violently when I see things happen so I can't relate to this. Why is this more realistic that a Point of view shot? A lot of these moments come into play in a fairly recently released horror film titled Halloween (Rob Zombie's Version). I'm not here to voice my opinions on the general quality of the film (it was good), but rather take issue with what Director Rob Zombie thought was "real" and why this reality filmmaking really doesn't make any sense to me.

When watching the four hour long documentary on the making of Halloween, it becomes an inherent theme that Rob Zombie was going for realism (the word real came up a lot). His goal was to take an out of this world story and bring it down to earth where these events could conceivably happen in any small town. So yeah, it was a lost cause from the get go. Before the movie was made, it had a lot of weight to it and to take that character into the real world was impossible after he has already achieved mythic status. Adding to this was the origin story on Michael Myers himself. While it was interesting to see Michael Myers growing up and where he comes from, it isn't all that important to the Michael Myers mythos. When he was a kid, he snapped and killed people. I feel that with that sentence alone we enough all we need to know we don't need to see anything else about Michael's broken home.

Although it was a bit unnecessary, showing Michael as a child did help ground the story in reality quite a bit. He was now a person who came from a disturbed home life, and that's how he became what he is. But just according to me, less is more when it comes to horror back story. The more we know about the past of a monster, the more we may be able to sympathize with them and actually root for them. We did that with the shape, Freddy, and Jason and it was always a bit satisfying to see them mow down a bunch of assholes, but in Halloween (07) these roles are somewhat reversed. We are supposed to pull for Laurie and her friends which proved to be much harder than it should have been.

Not only is it hard enough to bring a character of that magnitude into the world that we live in today, but it's even harder to find believable and exciting teenage characters to bring to the screen. Now I do believe that the high school girls in Halloween were in a sense "realistic" I feel that this is an aspect of the film where the theatrical license should have been implemented a bit more. These girls are annoying. They don't seem to ever think about what they are saying, just blurting out the first things that come to their mind with no thought beforehand. Maybe that is realistic, but it's not what the audience's perception of reality is.

The concept of reality in movies is ridiculous in and of itself. It's a movie. We all know it's fake and that these people aren't really dying so why do we strive to make it as real as possible? Is it so that we can identify with the characters in the roles and therefore go on the same ride emotionally as they are being put through? What I don't entirely understand is why the filmmakers have to cater to the trap of realism in a medium that allows you pretty much unlimited creative license. It doesn't make sense to me, it's kind of like getting a brand new Porsche and never driving it out of first gear, going under 20 miles everywhere. There may be a ceiling there, but I have a feeling we are nowhere near it. Realism can be a great tool, but it shouldn't be a necessity. Audiences should have more of an imagination and accept the world of the film, not shout out from the seats "that could never happen"! Well guess what in the world of this film it did happen and hopefully it won't ever stop.

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