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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8262941">1) Sometimes old people are right. Sometimes there are bad trends in movies, music, art etc that in retrospect become clear, 2) I can't really comment on what the status of today's movies ought to be as we are living through it (just like the 80s looked different when I was living through them, 90s looked one way when I was living through them, the 00s looked one way when I was living through them, but now they both seem different in retrospect). My personal feeling is a lot of the modern horror movies, not all, just don't particularly scare me. Back when J horror was getting big in the US, I found that stuff scary, but the techniques from those movies used in modern movies, the newer styles of editing, they tend to confuse me more than scare me (and absolutely that is subjective, that isn't some kind of objective statement about the quality). My points were subjective of course (they were my opinions about horror). But I think something that recurs in this thread as a theme is a total dismissal of what came before as less scary, and I would argue that isn't true. Anyone who thinks that isn't the case should give Black Christmas, Nosferatu, Night of the Walking Dead, and stuff from hammer (I think pacing is honestly the biggest hurdle for most modern audiences). I know there is a think where people talk about how films like the Exorcist and Rosemary's baby are not scary anymore. I don't know where I stand on that. I still find the Exorcist quite scary. Rosemary's Baby is the kind of movie that is mostly scary the first time you see it (or the first time you read the book), and I can never have that first time watching it again. But those films in particular may also come down to what people believe in terms of demonic possession and the devil. And if this were any other setting besides Ravenloft I wouldn't bat an eye at that dismissal of older films, but since the central point of the black box was 'classic horror and classic horror techniques over modern horror' I think it makes sense to push back against this idea that it is an improvement on Ravenloft to make it more modern. If they were making a torture porn RPG, then there is no real point in bringing up Nosferatu or The House of Wax. If they were making something modeled after arthouse Horror, there may be a lineage to be aware of but it isn't rooted as rigidly the way Ravenloft was in these older movies and books. I will agree that horror movies learn and evolve. I am not arguing they don't. However I don't think that means horror movies have been a steady march to more scary over time. All art evolves. Saying horror movies from back in the day are less scary to me is like saying Led Belly or Muddy Waters is less moving than BB King or Stevie Ray Vaughan. These things are different because the style was still forming when the former were playing, and the technology and techniques were more limited (which doesn't make them lesser forms of art, it just means they were working in a medium that had more limitations). And you don't get to the latter without the former. Not throwing the baby out with the bathwater is about going back to those early sources and learning from them (which I think connects with  your point about horror evolving and movies learning from one another). A modern audience or RPG readership  declaring old horror tired and useless, is an extremely closed minded thing to say (and it probably isn't something a modern horror director would think as I am sure many of them do get their ideas and build off ideas from older films). But my point is what truly makes them scary really has to get at something a lot deeper than some of the superficial techniques, which can become tired. Like I said about J horror, that stuff was fresh and terrifying when it first came out (but as more people imitated it, it became less surprising). But there is still something about those originals that I find far more frightening than their imitators (because I don't think it was just technique, I think they were tapping into deeper fears). My point about modern horror movies wasn't that they aren't scary. Like I said before I like horror and I like a lot of different subgenres of horror, while I respect the POV expressed in the black boxed set for the purposes of running ravenloft (i.e. I think there is something to be said for a setting that cleaves to old horror and to classic techniques of terror, while eschewing modern ones; it isn't a viewpoint I take into the theater or into horror book shelves---I just think it makes for a really distinct and stylistic setting rooted in stuff that is proven to work). My point is people who simply assume modern horror movies are more scary than old ones because they are accustomed to the technique and special effects are as wrong as we were in the 80s thinking our movies were more scary than stuff from the 70s, 50s and 30s (and this became apparent to me the deeper I dove into that old material). We probably won't have a good idea of where the past decade stands and where now stands for a good 20 or 30 years (just look at how looked down upon 80s music was int he 90s and even into the early 2000s, and now it has gained a lot of credibility as a period of interesting music....and who knows what people will think of it in 30 years, good or bad). Personally, I don't believe we are in a horror golden age. Not every decade gets that label. I think it will pivot on what people think about arthouse horror. If that gets embraced by horror audiences over the decades, it may well be one. Personally I find arthouse horror made less for fans of the genre and more for elite audiences. It just isn't really for me.</blockquote>

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