Put Down the Damned Pocketbook!

I have watched an awful lot of horror movies over the years.  When I first lived by myself, I wasn't able to read Stephen King or watch a horror movie after dark.  Now that I've pretty much seen it all, zombies, exorcisms, Freddy Krueger, that after dark rule no longer exists.  I do, however, have a loose rule that, from my stack of library DVD's, the horror movie gets watched on Sunday night.  Maybe a throwback to my Catholic heritage.  Like the white guys in my neighborhood that pull out their guns for target practice on Sundays.

If you've watched enough of the genre, you know the devices.  Each new generation of horror had to give a new twist, so the hands coming out of the grave at the end of Carrie, totally terrifying, had to be bested by subsequent directors just to stay a couple of steps ahead of the horror aficionados.

Even before Carrie scary sounds and subtle sights -- banging on the walls and creaking doors, lights flickering -- would be enough to build suspense.  Alfred Hitchcock knew how to mine that technique.  Back in those black and white days, with the exception of the shower scene in Psycho, women crept about old houses looking for the source of the strange sound, in high heels and toting their purses.  "Put the damned pocketbook down!" we wanted to yell, and by the way, run in the other direction, you idiot.  What fun.

Then there was The Blair Witch Project, which in 1999, turned horror movies upside down with a brand new twist:  the video camera.  Back in those days, I waited till a family friend, also of Catholic heritage, came to visit; we needed the security of each other's company to brave this insane new flight into terror.

These days I just yell at the TV, "Put down the damn video camera."  It has become such an intrusion, such a cheap gimmick, such a cop-out that I can't believe how many movies continue to get made with the camera as the central character.

I have in the past been a huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan, as appears to also be true of The Nightly Show's Larry Wilmore, who masks his disappointment by stumbling over the writer/director's name as he insults his movies.  If you loved The Sixth Sense, you just have to keep hoping that in the next movie he will rediscover his genius.

So with that hope in my heart, last night I watched The Visit.  Two fairly obnoxious, all-too-clever-for-their-own-good kids spend a week with grandparents they have never met because of a falling out with their mom.  The older child has the pretension of being a film maker, and thus is able to carry a video camera around with her throughout the movie.

Even stupider, I think, running away from something that is supposed to be terrifying while running a camera on it, right?  Also, while crawling around in the crawl-space.  Preposterous "interviews" with grandma and granddad, not to mention brother and even herself, was just about the clumsiest expository technique -- and done poorly -- that I've ever seen.

Here's the thing.  I think the movie had the potential to be great.  Turns out the plot was terrific, and each step towards the plot twist worked.  Except for the damned camera.  It was a totally cheap device.  To make the movie without the camera doing all the exposition would have taken work.  The kind of work Shyamalan did in The Sixth Sense.  That made you want to watch the movie again immediately so you could follow all the clues you missed.

But he didn't do that.  And while I'm glad I resisted the urge to turn off the TV after a few minutes of watching the two precocious kids toting their camera around, I really, really wish I could see this movie done right.

I continue to hope that the video camera conceit will go away, and maybe it will.  But I'm afraid what is going to replace it will not be pretty.  There have already been a couple of horror movies that feature internet and iPhone chats.  And can you possibly imagine anything more boring than reading an iPhone chat in order to follow the stalkings of some nasty creature?  On the other hand, imagine a scene where a bunch of teens are Skyping and the movie monster sneaks up behind and clocks them with a purse.  Truly satisfying revenge horror.