Horror show

Industry professionals continue to watch the 2006 box office returns with fear and loathing. The numbers look slightly better than last year, but plenty of big budget movies were supposed to open with huge splashes and ended up bellyflopping instead. Maybe it's really true that people prefer to avoid the multiplex in favor of watching DVDs on home grown entertainment systems. But you know what continues to pull in the bucks? Horror.

The Hills Have Eyes - $41 million gross. Hostel- $47 million. When a Stranger Calls - $47 million. Final Destination 3 - $54 million. And keep in mind that these movies cost about as much to make as a macaroni and paste sculpture. Their numbers represent serious ROI.

I’m not about to knock the horror genre as being a legitimate art form, although it attracts a disproportionate amount of drek. Good, scary, well-made horror movies pack as much wallop as any other genre, and they should be respected as such. But what I see in the marketplace is a reflection of the cultural mood. Much like the world depicted in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, where people's lives are so dark that they flock to bands with names like Pale Horse and Krystalnacht, the current insatiable appetite for horror represents a deep-seated desire to fight fear with fear itself. Viewers want to deflect Iraq body counts, terrorist threats, and African genocides with red-dyed corn syrup and jump cuts. By appropriating Hollywood imagery of death and violence, we hope to exorcise or appropriate the real-life images that surround us.

I have no doubt that the current wave of horror will eventually end. Movie genres are cyclical, and eventually these pictures will stop opening reliably to $20 million weekends. When that happens, though, I wonder if it will indicate more than simply a Hollywood pendulum swinging the other way. It might also indicate that the real world itself has become a bit easier to take.