I was struck the other day by a review of horror filmmaker Ti West's new film 'The Sacrament'. The reviewer at one point compared West to horror-meister John Carpenter ('Halloween', 'The Thing'). I nearly burst out laughing. While I believe West has some talent, which he displayed in his debut film 'The Roost', there is nothing in his work to suggest he is as talented as Carpenter. Yet, this does not matter. In the modern age of media, effort is more important than results. Perception more important than reality. And it shows just how manipulative the media can be. Just the idea that West COULD be as talented as Carpenter is enough to definitely conclude he IS just as talented as the horror-meister himself. Let's take a look at West's films...'The Inn Keepers' was a slow burn to nowhere. 'House of the Devil' was a clumsy attempt to ape 80s horror films. And now 'The Sacrament' is a lame stab at found footage and religious cults. Carpenter made the best and most influential horror films of the 70s and 80s. What groundbreaking films has West actually made? We are a culture trapped in a washing machine of over-stimulation, so desperate to feel something, we'll accept just about anything as long as it gives us our fix.
This seems to be the participation trophy generation, where you get a gold star just for attempting something, and can rest comfortably in the knowledge that you don't actually have to achieve what you set out to. As long as you TRY, you'll be rewarded. All those delusions your mother filled you with about you being special, about you being able to accomplish anything were horseshit. People can't accomplish anything. People fail. They lose. They come up short all the time. And yet, the entertainment industry reinforces the belief that it doesn't matter. As long as you can sort of, kind of approximate talent, then you ARE talented, and you deserve the world. Pretty boy and girl movie actors who can hit their marks, and kind of deliver a decent performance are lauded as the next Steve McQueens and Meryl Streeps. Movie directors who can give us a tinge of nostalgia for our favorite movies and directors of the past are just as good as those directors.
In the 'old days', where there was no twitter or facebook shuttling information at a constant rate, the bullshit filters were much more solid. You really had to earn your place. When a movie came out, the public's opinion of it wasn't broadcast all over the world in a microsecond. The only opinions you relied on were professional movie reviewers and your neighborhood friends who would tell it to you straight. It either sucked, or was good. There was no internet for you to log onto and see the instant, set in stone perception of a movie based on a rotten tomatoes or imdb score. There was no sub culture of movie geekdom who could make a break a director's career and launch mediocre filmmakers into the pantheon of greats just by writing an overhyped blog post. Since we crave so much information now, the fantasy worlds created by perception are extremely attractive. Why does your nostaglia for John Carpenter have to remain nostalgia? There's a director making movies who kinda, sorta makes movies like he did, so why not relive your John Carpenter days again right now? Fuck it, Ti West is the modern day John Carpenter. See? I said it, so it's true. We live in an age where everyone is taken seriously. If you have an opinion, you can broadcast it to the world on facebook or twitter and have it set in some kind of electronic stone. Forget about little technicalities like actually knowing what you're talking about. As long as you have an opinion, people are supposed to pay attention to it. Even journalism has become a joke. The blog culture of armchair revolutionaries and basement dwelling prophets is upon us. Misinformation spreads like a virus, and everyone wants to be infected. The internet has leveled the playing field, but is that a good thing for integrity? Anyone can put a video on youtube, but is it actually worth watching? 8 times out of 10, I find that not to be the case. Yet the silliest, stupidest, raunchiest, most ridiculous videos have hundreds of thousands and even millions of views. The youtube star is a real phenomenon.
But back to movies. When Tobe Hooper made 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', unarguably the most influential horror movie of the 70s, he was an instant star. He'd earned it. No one had seen anything like TCM, and it was so skillfully made, producing nightmare fuel for an entire generation of movie fans. It's one of the most, if not THE most visceral horror movies ever made. The last shot of Leatherface doing a death dance with his chainsaw with the setting sun at his back, as if in some hillbilly disco, is about as iconic as it gets. There is absolutely nothing in Ti West's work that approaches anything in TCM, yet he is more famous than Hooper ever was thanks to the immediacy of the internet age. The same goes for Eli Roth, an even more egregious filmmaker, who is far more famous than West. Roth has created a horror empire for himself based on the perception that he is some great savior of the horror genre. But where is the work? 'Cabin Fever' was genuinely creepy and terrifying, but 'Hostel' was an incompetent bore, using the cheap tricks of torture and splatter to deliver scares without any mood or substance to back it up. Ditto for 'Hostel 2'. Yet he's probably more famous than Carpenter ever was. Certainly more teenagers know the name Eli Roth than they do John Carpenter. Because of the pervasive and in your face stream of twitter, facebook and online movie blogs, Roth is able to weave a magic cloud of fame around himself, with no actual work of substance to back it up. In the 70s and 80s, Hooper and Carpenter didn't have that kind of access. Their fame was limited to a title card before their movie started.
Another notable example is Richard Kelly, who wrote and directed the cult hit 'Donnie Darko'...another filmmaker given the keys to the kingdom after one promising film. Yet his subsequent work is as bad as anything I've ever seen on the B-movie shelves of Blockbuster Video (when they were still in business).
And this problem is not just limited to horror filmmakers. But I chose to write about the horror genre because it is strangely nurturing. It seems to be easier to cement yourself as a genius in that genre because the requirements to entertain are extremely low. Throw some blood and gore at the screen and audiences squirm. Suspense is an entirely different animal. Hitchcock was the reigning king of suspense. And his first foray into true horror with 'Psycho' single handedly created the slasher genre. And Hitch was rightly rewarded, becoming the most famous director personality of that era, even his pudgy silhouette was famous. He parlayed that power into the well received TV series 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', much like Roth used his influence to create the 'Hemlock Grove' series on netflix and attach his famous name to other projects to get them produced and seen by millions. Hitchcock was the Eli Roth of the 60s and 70s...yet had more talent in his pinky than Roth has in his entire body. And to an outside observer, they have nearly the same influence when it comes to power.
So another question looms... Is it even possible to make truly groundbreaking films anymore? Or rather, is it possible for groundbreaking films to be seen as such and have massive influence? Could you make something today on par with 'Texas Chainsaw' or 'Halloween' and have them be so influential? Halloween played in cinemas for nearly a year, burning up the circuit via insanely positive word of mouth. Most horror films (and most films in general) today don't even get a theatrical release. If they do, they're limited to a 3 or 4 week run and then room must be made for the next in line from the sausage factory. Would a 'Halloween' be able to latch on when people are too preoccupied watching crude, juvenile videos on youtube or arguing on twitter about why Ti West is the second coming of Christ? The emergence of digital filmmaking has allowed more content to be created, but in reality, human beings can only tolerate so much. A constant torrent of visual and auditory information tends to get filtered out and becomes a stream of white noise. People don't pay attention anymore because they're being bombarded with STUFF.
The extreme danger in all this should be obvious by now. If filmmakers like West and Roth can make the public believe they are just as talented as the real deal auteurs of the past, and if the public's idea of a good time is 'Charlie bit my finger!' on youtube, then the public's expectation of what is actually good, becomes horribly skewed. Standards plummet. What will one have to do in 30 years to become the next Eli Roth? Throw a bucket of pig guts at the screen? Where is all this over-stimulation headed and what does it mean for our culture?
