Horror and Modern-Day Reimaginings

Lately there have been a lot of modern-day reimaginings of famous franchises. Superhero movies such as the Nolan Batman films or Man of Steel, James Bond for the past three films, the Star Trek franchise’s prequels, the remake of the Hawaii Five-O TV series, and Doctor Who’s revived series. All of them have been rebooted for the modern era in some way or another. And why not, says movie and television producers and executives. These franchises have strong fan followings, they are mainstream, and they’ve enjoyed huge success in the past.

Horror however, has not been as lucky. Horror is not mainstream, the chances of making a success with any horror film is hit-or-miss, especially if you think it’s easy to scare people (it’s not, but that’s a post for another time), and even franchises with strong followings don’t get these sort of reboots because of the image of the horror fan is so negative (creepy teenatgers and adults in basements who like porn and playing the Peeping Tom and are just waiting for an excuse to imitate the killers on screen). Who wants to cater to that sort of audience?

And when there have been modern-day reboots, they’ve either been really bad (check out the remakes for Friday the 13th, Black Christmas, or Prom Night for examples), or they’ve been good but are often compared negatively with the original (Dawn of the Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street) or are ruined by really bad sequels (Rob Zombie’s Halloween II). As a result, there hasn’t been a lot of rebooting for horror.

Until recently that is.

Over the past couple of years, some successful horror franchises, such as Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, have been rebooted with sequel/remakes taking place in modern times, and famous films such as Carrie have even been remade for the modern audience and modern world, with talks about Cujo, Gremlins and Van Helsing also getting the modern-day remake treatment also occurring (though I debate the wisdom of doing that with VH, seeing as the Hugh Jackman original was awesome).

Not only that, but with TV executives finally tapping into the horror fanbase with shows like American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and The Following, there have been a few reboots for TV as well. During the summers, Teen Wolf acts like a modern-day Buffy the Vampire Slayer with monsters, magic, fighting, romance, and humor, and late season premieres such as Hannibal on NBC and Bates Motel on A&E have been holding steady ratings since their premieres as they bring fresh life to the legends of Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates respectively. And more is on the way, with NBC doing a Dracula reimagining for the fall and other projects based on Hellraiser and Leprechaun on the way as execs start looking to reel in the horror junkies.

Why so many modern-day reimaginings? In terms of TV shows, I think TV execs are finally becoming more comfortable with horror itself and with taking risks on shows that appeal to horror fans. And as many horror fans are watching these shows and raving or debating or criticizing them on social media websites, these same execs are finding more and more ways to appeal to these horror fans. And if that means they must remake a few famous stories and franchises, why not? As long as it does well.

As for movies, I tend to think those movies are usually remade and rebooted by fans of the original franchises who see where those who came before had gone wrong or could’ve done more to improve the overall story, so they try and fix what has been done before. For example, the TCM franchise’s sequel got bloodier and more ridiculous with each movie, so the filmmakers tried to go back to the roots of the story and start from there with TCM 3D. As for Evil Dead, those movies were unnerving even with the really bad special effects. Imagine what could happen with better SFX, said the filmmakers.

Regardless of the reasons though, I think this is a good time for these sort of remakes, and there’s plenty of material for it. Here are some suggestions I have for modern-day reimaginings:

Frankenstein–With the rate of technology these days and the amount of zombie-based works being released these days, I say it’s high-time we have a Frankenstein remake. This could work either as a movie, or better yet as a TV series that could expand beyond the original novel and go in all sorts of directions in terms of story and character development. And who says the monster has to be ugly? We could have a halfway decent-looking monster to draw in the female viewers (I’d certainly go that route).
The Phantom of the Opera–I’m not talking about the musical, but the original novel. The story itself, which I read in high school, hints at several hidden, magical creatures and beings living with the Phantom underneath the Paris opera house. Imagine a drama set around the Phantom and the other inhabitants of the opera house trying to interact with the opera house. And imagine if it was set in modern times, when we are so sure of science conquering over the mysterious and superstitious. Sounds like fun, right?
Labyrinth–How many of you remember the 80′s Muppet-filled musical-comedy starring David Bowie as the goblin king? Imagine if it was remade as a serious story with CGI and animatronics and no musical numbers. That could work very well, especially if we delved more into Jareth’s history and his motivations and showed the goblin’s darker sides.
Tale of the Body Thief–Anne Rice’s fourth book in the Vampire Chronicles was recently optioned for a movie, but the movie never materialized due to differences between the movie studios involved. I wouldn’t mind seeing that movie made. Would you?
Willard–This famous 1971 film about killer rats spawned quite the legacy, including the sequel Ben and its famous theme song by Michael Jackson, several films about killer animals (including Jaws), and a 2003 remake. Imagine what would happen if that movie could be remade today?

Whatever the future holds, I hope it has some pretty good reimaginings of famous works, and plenty of people willing to make and to watch them.

What would you like to see remade and set in the modern world?

Review: The Great Gatsby (2013 film)

I find some parts of the original novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald very confusing, just by the fact that Fitzgerald used a different sort of language than most of the authors I read do. Maybe that’s why I find watching adaptations of these sorts of stories so edifying. Because I can actually understand what’s happening.

The latest outing of The Great Gatsby in Hollywood, this time helmed by visionary director Baz Luhrmann and starring the still-youthful Leonardo DiCaprio (what’s that guy’s secret anyway?), is an interesting take on the old story. Luhrmann takes out a lot of character development and does a lot of telling rather than showing Gatsby’s history in order to make room for stunning 3D effects and his usual eye-candy filming. Most of the character development is devoted to developing the warm relationship between DiCaprio’s Gatsby and Tobey Macguire’s Nick Carraway, making them seem like the best of friends. There’s also a bit of time spent on the complicated relationship between Gatsby and Carey Mulligan’s depressed-and-indecisive-but-still-trying-to-seem-sunny Daisy Buchanan, but not as much as that between Gatsby and Nick.

We also don’t see much of what precipitates the final events of the novel and skip over the entire funeral, which might upset quite a few purists. And the relationship between Nick and Jordan? Dashed out completely in favor of showing Nick therapy-writing Gatsby story at a sanitarium, where’s he’s been placed due to alcoholism and all the issues he’s feeling as a result of what happened to him in America.

But credit to Luhrmann, the party scenes are so enticing, especially in 3D, that you want to step right into the party and have a drink, or at least rewind the movie to watch those scenes again. And the arguments during the final half of the movie are realistic and emotional, so much so you feel like you could be seeing an actual fight between real people. And finally, Jay-Z’s rocking soundtrack is so much fun to listen to that you find yourself grooving in your seat. There should be an Oscar just for that.

Overall, I have very mixed feelings about this film. But I enjoyed it anyway and I felt it was a very decent adaptation. So for The Great Gatsby I give a grade of 3.7 out of 5. Not the best film I’ll see this summer, but definitely a well-spent two and a half hours.

Many Ideas On My Mind

This is the first of two posts I plan to write this evening. This one was inspired by my younger sister, who asked me how many stories I’d thought about in my head yesterday as I was helping prepare dinner. Now I’ve mentioned my Ideas list on this blog before, a document on my flash drive that contains a little over fifty different ideas for novels, movies, TV shows, mangas, and even a video game. I keep this list because my memory is amazing on some things but remarkably poor on others (but doesn’t everyone have that problem?). However at various times throughout each day I’m thinking about one or more of these stories and trying to work out various plot points and scenes, even if I won’t write these stories for a long while.

I answered my sister truthfully, “About three or four.” One of them was my science fiction novel Reborn City, which is in its final draft and less than ten chapters away from completion (thank you, Matthew Williams, for your diligence on this project). The other, my thriller Snake, is in the middle of its third draft, and when I had the chance yesterday, I was able to edit a few more chapters. The other two was a possible novel about an assassin with multiple personalities, and a story influenced partially by Sleeping Beauty (by the way, I call stories I write based off of fairy tales and other well-known stories, of which I have many ideas for, ”Fractured Fairy Tales Untold”. Catchy title. A prize goes to the first person who gets where I got the title for this category from).

Anyway, my sister’s latest dream of what she’ll do when she’s an adult is to write, though I think she’s more into fantasy and I’m not sure how deep her devotion is or if this is just one of those passing fancies all kids seem to go through, even during the teen years. She claims she has twenty ideas going through her head each day, which I take to be exaggeration and possibly the hubris all starting writers have when they find they can string a few sentences together to make the bare bones of a story. But the conversation got me thinking, and I’ve been wanting to write this post since then, because there are a lot of writers out there who have a ton of ideas running through their heads and I think it’s a good topic to explore.

Every writer wants to be known for something they’ve written. Some have just the one work and want that to be well known, while others want to be prolific and have lots of famous stories. I think the former dream of just publishing their manuscript, while the latter dream of being the next Stephen King or Ernest Hemingway or Ezra Pound. I also believe the latter tend to have many different ideas brewing at any one time in their head. After all, if they want to be known for a large body of work, they have to have a lot of it in their heads already, right? These authors are always working on something, and they often spend great amounts of time just working on a story, whether by writing or by daydreaming. Not to mention, they also have new ideas coming into their heads, so when they do get a new idea they may spend hours, days, weeks, months, or sometimes years plotting and planning before they start to write it.

Of course, with so much in their head, it’s doubtful they’ll run out of ideas at any point. Or more precisely, it’s in doubt that they’ll finish even a tenth of all the work they’d like to do. I personally view this to my advantage, as it means that I’ll have multiple objects every time I start a new project. Should I start the next volume of a series? Should I work on a new series? How about a stand-alone? Which one? A Fractured Fairy Tale Untold? A psychological thriller? Something with the potential of a sequel should it do well? A science fiction novel with thought-provoking social themes? The options are endless!

Other writers may not have the same view of having many ideas as I do. They may think its better just to focus on the one idea, or perhaps they try to write as much as possible so they can get as much out as they can while they’re still breathing. Or, if your name is James Patterson and you have tons of money on hand, you hire co-writers to work with you so you can get out nine books a year (yes, I’m still a little sore over this, though I thought Alex Cross, Run was one of the better books in the series lately). It’s different for every author.

But like I said, I like having multiple ideas to focus on at any one time. It gives me something to do, and I think as time goes on, like wine, these stories get better with age. And even if I don’t write everything on that Ideas list, even if every manga isn’t serialized, every movie made or every TV show has a pilot filmed, I can still say that I gave it my all while I was writing and that’s enough for me.

Do you have multiple ideas in your noggin? What’s your view on having all these ideas?

Review: Iron Man 3

My first summer movie review, and I’m happy to say, this is probably the best Iron Man film in the franchise yet, for reasons I will go over in a moment.

First, paint a scene in your mind: Tony Stark trying to say something important while showing a certain image from the trailers (I won’t say which one) and totally fumbling it. Cue 90′s music, the studios behind the film show their logos, and we’re transported to a New Year’s Eve party in Switzerland in 1999-2000. You think to yourself, “Is this really how they open this film?” And then as the rest of the film unrolls, you think, “That is how they start a seriously awesome film”.

In the latest entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, Robert Downey Jr. returns as Tony Stark, only this time he’s dealing with an anxiety disorder caused by the events of last summer’s The Avengers and his near death by nuke and closing wormhole and falling to the ground from higher than most skyscrapers. Meanwhile, a terrorist with a Chinese name, an Indian look, and a Southern Baptist voice named the Mandarin (played by Ben Kingsley) is causing horrifying bombings all over the place, and one of them hurts a friend of Stark’s. Meanwhile, Guy Pierce as Aldrich Killian, the head of a creepy think tank doing some very heated work (and I don’t mean controversial, I mean heated), and he’s got something to do with the Mandarin and his terrorist attacks.

As we watch the movie, we see amazing performances by Gwyneth Paltrow and Guy Pierce worthy of Oscar nods (though considering the stigma of superhero movies, that may not happen), twists that could get me death threats if I revealed them here, and an explosive finale that’ll make you want to stand up in your seat and scream “Oh my God, I can’t believe this! Awesome!” And stick around after the credits, you’ll get a special treat and a news update on Tony Stark.

Oh, and as you can expect, the special effects were awesome. Honestly, the bad guys scared the crap out of me when I saw what they could do, how they were doing it, and the implications of what could happen if such technology were possible here on Earth (and thanks to current technology and its speedy advance, everything in the movie except the actual suit could actually appear in the next 5-20 years. Be warned!). Plus the suits are so cool, you want to get one for yourself and take it for a test drive. And watch out for the sky-diving scene. That must’ve been really hard to film.

All told, I give Iron Man 3 a 5 out of 5. I cannot wait to see if anything compares to it.

Also, watch for a trailer for Thor 2. It’s not to be missed.

Spring Semester 2013 Wrap-Up Report

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to really write about, but I have something now. While I moved out of the dorms on Tuesday afternoon, I did not recieve my final grades till just now, so I’m writing this post now which some of you may have been eagerly anticipating. Others of you may also care less, but I hope you read this post anyway.

So anyway, a whole semester went by a little too fast if you ask me, but I did very well. I got a 3.3 GPA, an improvement by 0.1 from last semester. I didn’t get all the As I wanted, but I’ll work for that this coming semester. I did very well in Creative Writing with an A and American Literature with an A-. I also met some really awesome professors and learned a whole bunch.

I also worked hard on finishing up The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones and I’m now waiting for the copyright. Also, thanks to my friend Matthew Williams, Reborn City is close to having its final draft finished, and Snake is getting its 3rd draft. I’m a busy guy, but with all this effort I’m putting in, I should have RC out by the holidays and Snake by summer 2014 (hopefully).

In the meantime, I’m going to be working in the financial aid office at Ohio State like I did last summer, and I’ll be writing when I have the chance. Plus I’ll probably be seeing plenty of movies and reading a lot of books, so expect reviews. And let’s not forget I’ll hopefully be getting a Kindle, so if you want me to read your books, better start bribing me now.

So here’s to the start of summer. Let’s hope it all goes well.

Review: The Lords of Salem

And I kind of wish I hadn’t waited.

Strange.

That’s the only way I can categorize horror rocker and director Rob Zombie’s latest piece, ultimately a story about the inability to escape your fate with a Satanic bent.

The film follows Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob Zombie’s wife (the fact that she’s in the film must do miracles for the marriage) as a radio DJ in Salem, Massachusetts, as she finds a mysterious record from a group called The Lords of Salem. Slowly but surely, she becomes ensnared in a plot to turn her into the mother of the Antichrist because of a curse placed on her by some actual witches from Salem. And by the way, Satan and his kid look more like a mud creature and the face-hugger from Alien.

I thought the film had good promise at the beginning. A few scary starts, a sense of unreality. But from then on there seemed to be just trippy imagery as Mrs. Zombie goes to her fate with barely any protest. At the end we’re confronted with enough sexual imagery and weird video effects to make us more confused than scared. Heck, it’s enough to make me wish for gore, and I’ve been complaining about the prevalence of that in horror for a while now!

And what’s also upsetting is that Mrs. Zombie doesn’t try to fight back, but just goes too willingly with her witchy landlord’s plot. The only one doing any digging to figure things out is a local historian and author, but unfortunately when he gets close to the truth he gets whacked. And the use of nudity is more disturbing than titillating in this film, but that doesn’t mean we want it in this film! And having a body of dead women whom we never see die? What’s up with that?

Oh Rob Zombie, how I miss your success with the Halloween remake! That film would earn a 4.2, should I decide to do a review of it. Unfortunately though, I can only give The Lords of Salem a 2.6. If this is supposed to be an example of the growing witch trend, it’s going to be an example of what not to do, mark my words!

And if you’re wondering if there was anything I liked, it was the music. The music was definitely catchy. Reminded me of something I’d heard in a Marilyn Manson album once. Listen below if you’re interested.

The New Fad: Witches

“Film is powerful and powerful is film. Hover on the TV and silver screen. Mwha ha ha ha!”

We’ve had the vampires, cool, collected, tortured, ferocious and merciless while elegant and noble. With so many Twilight knock-offs, they’re out the door, though a few want to stick around.

Ladies and gentlemen, possibly the new face of supernatural fiction, played by Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob Zombie often includes his wife in his work. I bet it does wonders for their marriage).

We have zombies at the moment, metaphors for the numbing effects of society on man and creepy cannibals without brains (fast or slow depends on which adaptation you’re watching/reading). Not sure if this fad is peaked yet, but I think you could make an argument for affirmative and negative on this.

And werewolves, with Teen Wolf and The Wolf Gift rocking critics and bringing in the money, might still get their own fad (I’m hopeful they will, anyway). And why not? They can go from calm, human, and even meek to large, ferocious, and virile in a space of seconds and then back again. There’s something magnetic about that.

However quickly beating the werewolves to the popularity stage and joining the zombies are some ladies I didn’t see coming: witches. Double double, boil and trouble.

With Oz, The Great and Powerful making millions at the box office, a reboot of Sleeping Beauty based around Maleficent by Disney coming out next year, the Rob Zombie movie Lords of Salem starring his brilliant wife Sheri Moon Zombie coming out this coming this weekend, plus a whole slew of other works that I can’t list here and more that I don’t even know about, it’s safe to say that witches are getting their own turn in the supernatural spotlight.

Why witches? it can’t be the Harry Potter fandom looking for something to keep them occupied now that there are no more books or movies, is it? I seriously doubt it. In fact, I think it’s the idea of a woman taking power and fighting back against the cruel world with a tool all her own. Witches–or Wiccans, as they were first called–were seen as mediators between the physical world and and the spiritual worlds, making them objects of both admiration and fear. With the later demonisation of Wiccans, witches gained an official position of being for good or evil. And in the past hundred years, witches have taken a center status in the scale of good and evil, with the evil including the Evil Queen, The Wicked Witch of the West, and Maleficent, while the good include Glinda, Hermione, and Willow Rosenberg (that’s a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference if you didn’t get it).

Until now, portrayals of witches has been somewhat sporadic. But I think now, with the women’s rights movement gaining a new prominence in our world and women showing men that yes, they can do many of the same things that men can do and sometimes even better, studios and authors are using witches to portray women in roles of leadership and power and able to do things that some say only men should do, including saving the free world, and are not usually desperate for love, though they don’t mind companionship in their lives. It’s a stunning archetype compared to women in zombie or vampire films, who are often damsels in need of saving and often only become warriors after a lot of prodding and are constantly looking for love.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of this in the future.

So what can we expect? Perhaps a resurgence in older works centering around witches, like The Wizard of Oz and perhaps Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Wtiches trilogy. There might be a wave of magic-centric books with female protagonists (I know I’ve got one tucked away that I might pull out one of these days), plus movies and TV shows that remind us of Once Upon a Time while they try to be better than that show. And of course, as with vampires and zombies, there will be the detractors and parodies that always acoompany fads in fiction with this.

It’ll be interesting to see what materializes in the next couple of years if this fad takes hold, won’t it?

And as for my own stories about witches (and there are a couple, though only one features a magic that can be used only by women under normal circumstances), I’ll probably wait for a while. I don’t like to follow fads in fiction, which is why I haven’t written a zombie novel yet or released my previous vampire novel (which I’ll rewrite at some point in the future, I’m sure). But hey, look on the bright side: when I do write these stories, you won’t have to worry about my stories being the same as everyone else’s.

Do you think witches will be the new zombies or vampires? How do you feel about that?

Review: Evil Dead

I swear, it’s so hard to find a good scary movie that doesn’t rely on obscene amounts of gore these days. However, the remake/sequel of 1981′s The Evil Dead does do the original justice, even with the amount of gore involved. Throughout the film we see both homages to the original, and we see it made anew with much better special effects (which apparently never relied on CGI, though at times I find that really hard to believe, especially during that first scene and the scene with the meat cutter). Plus there’s a bit more substance to this film in terms of character motivations and what-not, but like I said, just a bit.

For those of you not familiar with the original film, these films revolve around a magic book that summons sleeping demons that possess human bodies in order to resurrect something much worse. As five teens get possessed and become bloody and disgusting, it’s up to the one normal dude (or gal, in this case) to kill them all to save their souls. The original films were DIYers, so they didn’t have much in the way of special effects and they were simplistic in nature. However the odd camera angles and filming techniques were what made this indie project a classic, spawning sequels, comic books, video games, and now a new line of films meant to bring the old and the new films together.

I warn you, if you’re not easily scared, you may only receive minimum scares to satisfy your morbid self. If you scare easily though, you will not be disappointed by this film. I would’ve preferred a lot less gore and more focus on building suspense and causing terror, but what’re you going to do, except either not see the film or show the world how you make a scary film?

On the whole, I’ll give this film a 3.6 out of 5. Not bad, but still room for improvement.

The New Carrie Trailer

I’ve been wanting to post about this since Thursday, but like I said in my last post…I’ve been busy.

Now, some people think that this’ll just be a remake with nothing new to add to the story of Carrie White. I’d like to disagree (though I do acknowledge their point). I think the trailer offers plenty of room to say otherwise. We can see Chloe Grace Moretz as Carrie disagreeing with her mother, something that Carrie doesn’t usually do without her psychic powers. Not to mention that Carrie might use her powers to…have a little fun. I mean, look at her smile when she manipulates the flag! That’s a girl who knows she going to go a little bad and have a wild time with her powers.

Plus Carrie’s mother does some head-banging  early in the commercial, an indication that we may see just how crazy she is. And the special effects…should…be…AWESOME! I mean, look at the trailer. This is more than just lifting stuff, this is causing the whole house to go crazy with your power.

Don’t believe me? Watch the trailer, you’ll see. I cannot wait till October.

The Importance of Build-Up And Mystery

What is in that fog? Something wicked this way comes.

I’ve often used this blog to rail against horror movies where filmmakers have spent a ton of money on CGI and making a top-notch movie, and yet the most exciting aspect of the movie is the trailer. I’ve even done lists of what you should and shouldn’t do when making a horror movie (for that post, please refer here: http://ramiungarthewriter.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/what-not-to-do-when-making-a-horror-movie/). Now I think I’ve identified two more factors in horror films that could separate a good scare from a boring waste of $6.50. Those factors are build-up and mystery.

For the first one, I’d like to call attention to the beter films in the Friday the 13th franchise versus the remake, the latter of hich I never get tired of ripping for how really bad it was. In the better films, the filmmakers had a way with building suspense that terrified audiences and made them want more at the same time. The best way to illustrate this technique, if you ask me (and I’m assuming you are, you’re reading this blog post after all), is through stream-of-consciousness from the POV of a moviegoer:

“Oh, she’s going out to that shed. Will Jason kill her there? She’s in and the light’s on. She bends over–I can’t see what’s behind her! Oh, Jason’s not there. Good. Oh, she’s bending over again! I can’t see behind her! Oh, Jason’s not there. Oh, how many lightbulbs does she need? Oh, Jason’s still not there. Okay, she’s heading back to the house. Will Jason get her now? Opening the door…OMG! What was that? Oh, it was just the cat. God, I feel as silly as the actress in that close-up–OMG there’s a machete poking out her front! She’s being lifted up! Yikes it’s Jason! AAAH!”

Somedays his writers do great with him. Other days…you know. All depends on how the suspense is added to the story.

You see there? Through visual dynamics and waiting until the least expected moment, they get the tension really high, make us think that we’ve seen everything to get scared of, and then WHAM! They scare us when we least expect it. In the better Friday the 13th films, this technique would scare the bejeezus out of people, and made the films famous and box-office smashes. Now contrast this with the reaction of me when I watched the remake:

“Okay, the naked chick with the bump on the head is hidden under the dock on the bad side of the lake. Jason’s probably seen her. She’s so dead. He’s on the dock. She’s looking up like he might get her. He steps away from her. Machete through the roof of her head! We see her bare breasts. She’s dead and in the water. Wow, so scary. NOT!”

No surprises in that film. We knew when a character was going to die, and there was no build-up of suspense to make us terrified. There was a reason that fans and critics hated that film. The only reason it did well was because people went hoping that the reviews were just by people who were overly critical and hard to please.

This is why it’s important to get a feel for building suspense like in the better of the Friday the 13th films. it makes the movies that much better, and if you’re really good at it you can keep it going throughout an entire film and even afterwards without letting the suspense and terror abate. And if you do become good at it, you can hopefully become someone in the horror movie industry.

Another aspect of making horor movies that can make a horror movie great is mystery. To illustrate that, I’d like to use The Amityville Horror and its remake (I love showing how bad remakes can be. Maybe people will learn something from it). In the original Amityville Horror, we never get a sense of what exactly is haunting the house. We see flies and hear masculine voices shouting “GET OUT” at priests. Things move on their own, and anyone of a religious nature gets horribly sick near the house. We know the little girl is playing with an imaginary friend named Jodie, who somehow locks the babysitter in a closet (that’s scary as it is), and there’s a room painted red under the basement stairs that causes the very-spiritual family friend to go into hysterics and scream “It’s the gateway to hell!” Later, the male lead sees a pig with glowing eyes in the window, which we assume tells him to kill his family, and later the same guy falls through the stairs into the hidden room and falls through the floor of that into a pit of blood.

Beware this room: its darkness is only rivaled by so little we know about it.

But do we really understand what’s haunting the house? NO! We know that the murder of the preivious residents of the house were killed by their crazy son, but we’re not sure if they’re causing the haunting or if they’re just one small piece of the puzzle. We also hear something of a satanic preacher living on that land many years ago, but it’s not assumed that he’s behind it in any way. At the end of the movie, we’re left thinking: “Oh mygod, I’m so scared! What was with that house? What was in it? And where did all that blood come from? And the pig in the window…what the f*** was with the pig in the window!” You see how awesome the amount of mystery in that movie makes it?

Contrast that with the remake, which is utilizing the whole mythology from all the films based on The Amityville Horror. Right away, we’re made very aware of what’s causing everything. Messages through TV, little ghost girls that manifest themselves in front of everyone and are held by mysterious arms against the ceiling. Messages in blood on the mirror…need I go on? There’s no mystery, except for a supposed-to-be startling revelation about the satanic preacher. At the end, we understand too well what’s causing the haunting, and we’re left very not scared. The mystery of the first film made it awesome, while the lack of mystery stripped the second film of any scariness.

At least that’s what’s happening with this film.

Is that all that is needed to make a scary film? Heck no! A lot goes into scaring anyone with anything, be it a story, a movie, or even a silly prank for Halloween or April Fool’s Day (I speak from personal experience on all but one of these). But these two factors–a build-up of suspense and an air of ever-present mystery–can create a terrifying experience that leaves those doing the experiencing chilled for the rest of the night. So keep these factors in mind when creating your own story (and it doesn’t necessarily need to be a scary story). You might end up creating a wonderful work of art that’ll be remade in thirty years by a high-powered team of filmmakers and debated about by fans in chat rooms for years to come.