Reviewing Horror Movies Isn’t Easy
Reviewing Horror Movies Isn’t Easy…
When I got the brilliant idea the other day to create this blog, I knew there would be a lot of work involved. I mean just setting up the back end of the blog, the plugins, finding a theme I can edit to my satisfaction that. It takes time and I rushed through it all in about a day. However, that was the easy part. Reviewing, that’s difficult and more difficult than that, remembering.
When it comes to writing reviews I want to be fair but I have found it’s really hard to write a bad review and be fair. I am giving an opinion, it’s not a fact. I am very science minded and when I offer an opinion, I like to base it on fact. Yet, reviewing movies, it’s all opinion. I can’t ever really back up my opinions with facts because there aren’t any. There is only opinions based on my interpretation of what I saw. I am learning a lot about writing by doing this. I also hope over time it will make me a better reviewer but not to the point of arrogance.
I used to get so pissed off as a kid when I would watch Siskel & Ebert trash the horror movies I loved. In the 80’s they didn’t understand the slasher trend. They reviewed these films like they were supposed to be Gone with the Wind. In later years, they eased up on their bashing of horror movies as they started to understand the modern day horror genre. But, I will never forget the arrogance and hate in which they went after these types of films. The insults they would hurl at the modern horror genre seriously did nothing but show their complete lack of understand of the modern horror film. Movie reviews should be fun and informative not mean spirited and hateful. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with slamming a film that sucks. But, I believe some attempts should be made to at least point out whatever good you can find in it, even when it’s total crap.
I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of horror movies. I have literally forgotten about more horror movies than most people have seen. Of course, if I truly have forgotten them, how I would know it’s more than most people have seen? Okay, let me change that to, I have figuratively forgotten about more horror movies than most people have seen. The problem I didn’t foresee when creating this site is how bad my memory is. I remember a lot of horror movies. So, I thought, to start out, I could just simply start by recalling the horror movies I have seen and review the bad ones. Not so easy a task.
The problem is that though I recall hundreds of horror films that I have sat through, recalling enough specifics to write an honest review, I can’t do it. Chances are if it was a bad horror movie, I only saw it once. Unlike something I would have liked that I would have seen multiple times and could review it at the drop of a hat. Halloween, Friday the 13th, I could write books on these two films. But, something like a review I did just yesterday for Grave Encounters. I remember liking this movie. I remember there being some good scares in it. So I put it on my list of stuff to watch. Just now I was reading some reviews and a few people slammed this little gem. It got me thinking, “Was I wrong? Did it really suck? Should I watch it again?”
This is the problem I have, I don’t want to mislead anyone. I want to give my honest opinion on the films I see or have seen. Most of all, I don’t want to you to go out and buy a movie or watch it because I said it was okay and it wasn’t. I will try to make it clear, should I list a movie as something I like, as to how fresh my memory is on it. I think that so far I have done that. I also think it’s important that you know this is something I think about. I mean one day, someone could actually visit this site and that would be great because so far, I know, I’m really just talking to myself here. And, should I actually have someone not watch a movie because I said, “It sucks”. I really, really believe that it does in fact suck and that I specifically recall it sucking and vice versa.