Saturday, March 14, 2009

Once upon a horror movie...

Guys just love horror movies. And seriously, we don't like to take girls on horror movies so that they can cuddle in with us when the not-so-spooky ghost turns up with a clattering sound. It's nothing but a fad movie theme. And if you're a girl don't count on the movie to turn the guy on and give you a protective hug. Chances are when the story gets really creepy, he won't even notice that you're sitting next to him. It's not like guys aren't romantic, just that horror is a little bit like an opium that lifts us out of ourselves once in a while.

But there are different kinds of horror flicks. If you catch somebody watching a Ramsay horror or a hindi horror movie chances are the guy's not much into horror but is frying some other fish, if you know what I mean. I remember watching a  hindi horror movie where the so called "ghost" had not even a mask on. The only thing for special effects was that he had a nice beard and the lights went red everytime the guy came into focus. Pretty scary, huh!

Indians have a long standing romance with superstitions and myths and there's a galore of material waiting to be explored. And what do they come up with when they make a horror movie. Some fucking idiot who practices the black craft is killed by the village head and he becomes a demon and haunts the daughter of this village head, who is finally saved by a guy who's come in town for a couple of days and falls in love with her. Well, shitting blimey!!! It's just ludicrous!!

But the story doesn't end here. There's still more to come. Ramsay's make honorable movies according to some people. Go down a peg and the you'll find horror movies with the most bizzare farcical themes. During my grad this guy from Chandigarh told me about a horror movie where an innocent guy is kidnapped by a group of girls and the guy gets killed accidently while these girls are having some fun and this guy becomes a ghost and avenges himself. The moment I heard this, I held my head in my hand and I uttered every single fucking obscenity that came into my feeble mind. KS was with me and he laughed like a fucking retard when he heard this. Shit, he was literally crying with laughter.

I remember watching The Exorcist as a kid and I was really fascinated. Some religions don't have a negative figure as strong as the antichrist, Lucifer and that might be one of our weakest points in terms of movies. I hate to bring demography, politics or religion into debate but it's just for the sake of movies and legends that I'm talking about so flee before you take offense. A horror movie touches you on many levels. Shit, I didn't sleep right after watching Exorcist for a week. The horrible face of that childish monster is one of the best depictions of horror I've seen. It carried a lot of depth, and power too. Most of the hindi movie ghosts go weak in the knees the moment you put a trident in front of them. So, it takes all the fright out of it, basically. If you don't have a really badass villian then what's the fun in it?

There aren't many scary horror movies that you'd get to watch these days. They're more shocking than scary. I saw "The Skeleton Key" and it had a beautiful ending but it wasn't a scary one. You can watch "Mirrors", "End of Days" was Ok too. I can't recollect many others. Umm..."Ring" was Ok, I didn't like Grudge all that much and won't call Final Destination as scary but they were Ok. "STIGMATA" was good, really nice movie. Aha, I didn't even remember this one. Watched it ages ago.

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