Ask anyone, and they'll tell you that most of the good horror films made in the U.S. are indie films. You might get 'The Ring' or 'The Others,' but most are independently produced.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema.
With horror movies, a bigger budget is actually your enemy. You want to feel the rough edges, the handmade quality to good horror films. It's a genre that benefits from not having everything at your disposal.
I think that, back in the day, there used to be a lot of horror films that kind of had a checklist of what went into making the 'perfect horror film', and I think now people are raising the bar in the industry, as far as the types of horror films that are being made.
Horror films are the ones that pay the bills, and historically, they have shown that they are good investments. They helped Universal survive with that initial splash of horror films in the 1930s and '40s. And horror films kept New Line alive with the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' series.
In horror, character development is often pushed aside in favor of the shock value. The best genre movies to me are movies like The Shining. You had a connection to the characters in that film.
The best movies now are called 'thrillers.' Because if you use the word 'horror,' people's associations are straight-to-video crap.
Most horror films fail to scare me. I think 'The Ring' plays more as a psychological thriller. It's smarter, there's more character development and some of the themes explored go a little deeper.
I think that horror, in general, is fairly popular. It's definitely popular in film. There's just not a lot of good horror on TV, so whenever there is good horror on TV, people rush to it.
I guess in Australia every film is sort of an indie film because there are no studios.
No one pretty much tells me what kind of horror films to make.