A Bloody Good Time 5.08.08: Top Ten Overrated Horror Films

Posted by Joseph Lee on 05.08.2008

A Bloody Good Time returns, and it's going after the movies you love.

Welcome to A Bloody Good Time. I took a break last week to catch up with some finals work, but you don't care about that. No I had a promise at the end of the TV Terror series. A Bloody Good Time is going to alienate some of you by listing The Top Ten Overrated Horror Films.

Here are some things to keep in mind. In some of these cases, I am not saying the movie is bad. In fact, I actually like some of the movies on this list. What I am saying is that some of these films are regarded as classics and in my humble opinion, they get far too much praise and adulation. I'm going to change that by listing why it's good and why it's over-rated. Are we clear? Good. So no comments about how I have no taste for hating this movie or that movie, okay? Also keep in mind it's my opinion, and I'm entitled to it. No movie is safe.

The word overrated itself seems to get thrown around a lot, so let's just say what it means right here.

o•ver•rate: to rate or appraise too highly; overestimate

Got it? Good. Here we go.



10: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers(1988)

Director: Dwight H. Little

Starring: Donald Pleasance, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris, Beau Starr, George P. Wilbur, Sasha Jenson

Story: Ten years after the original Halloween(1978), Michael Myers awakes from a coma and begins to hunt his niece Jamie Lloyd.

Why It's Praised: Generally, Halloween 4 is regarded as the lone bright spot in a series of terrible sequels to the 1978 original. Even without Jamie Lee Curtis, the addition of a little girl being the victim adds a new sense of terror to Myers. If he'll hunt kids, he'll kill anyone. Donald Pleasance also returns, before he began just showing up for a paycheck and actually provides another memorable performance. Halloween 4 is looked at the point where the series could have been saved and didn't. It was also very successful with audiences in it's time. The ending is highly regarded as innovative in a series that was beginning to rapidly lose the innovation it had in the original.

Why It's Overrated: Well it's very simple. Halloween 2(1981) already took the series into typical slasher film territory and wasn't well-liked. Halloween 3(1982) is regarded as the worst of the series and didn't even feature Michael Myers. So they brought him back and this was the end result. More of the same slasher movie stuff.

I'll give them credit, they try some neat atmosphere tricks to try and relive the tone of the original. I love the part with the multiple Michaels sneaking up on everyone and how that plays later. But it doesn't' change the fact that Halloween 4 is really indistinguishable from most slashers of it's time. Michael returned but was officially like every other masked killer. This is due to the large amount of these types of movies coming out in the eighties, but also due to this not being much different from them. It's a decent slasher, but hardly the classic some have made it out to be.



9: The Last House on the Left(1972)

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Sandra Cassel, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Fred J Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Cynthia Carr

Story: Two girls going to a concert fall in with the wrong crowd and are tortured then killed. The murderers then stay in the home of one girl's parents, who decided to exact revenge.

Why It's Praised: This is one of the big exploitation horror films that arrived in the seventies. Some felt it was a statement on how terrible society can be as things like this plot could very realistically happened. Some actually enjoyed the torture scenes and felt they were disturbing. It's generally regarded as a scary and horrifying film.

Why It's Overrated: See how I summed up the plot in two sentences? That's about how thin that is. Basically, two girls are tortured and killed in the most boring way possible and then so are the people who killed them. Most of the movies on this list are ones that I like but feel are over-praised. This is not one of them. Critics were split in it's release between calling it "art" or "trash". I feel it's the latter. I dare any of you to name one redeeming quality about this film. I really do. I like torture films, having praised the Saw series and even enjoying Hostel to a degree. It's not due to the graphic nature. It's due to the fact it's so boring and the acting is horrible. I generally feel Wes Craven is overrated in general, but that's a column for another day.



8: I Spit On Your Grave(1978)

Director: Meir Zarchi

Starring: Camille Keaton, Richard Pace

Story: A writer living by herself is raped and left for dead by a group of men. She regroups and begins to kill them off one by one.

Why It's Praised: Like Last House, this is regarded as a solid and disturbing torture/revenge film. It's praised for it's unflinching look at rape and murder. Audiences also generally enjoyed it when the woman gets her revenge on her attackers. A pretty graphic murder is regarded as memorable due to what happens and is one of the reasons this movie is still talked about.

Why It's Overrated: In the Arrow's review, he has this to say: "Rape is an ugly thing and so is this movie." And that was a favorable review. I think it's ugly but not for the same reason. For starters, who wants to watch a woman get raped four times? Not only that, but graphically raped, four times. The big scene that's talked about involves castration. And it's not shown (thank God) and is boring, just like the rest of the movie. It's hard to watch rape that many times, and it's useless to the story. It felt like they kept adding in more rape to drive the point home. We get it. Rape is terrible. The woman's revenge is justified but not entertaining either.



7: The Hills Have Eyes(1977)

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, Dee Wallace-Stone, Michael Berryman

Story: A family traveling through the west have their vehicle break down and are attacked by a group of inbred savages.

Why It's Praised: Being a very low-budget movie, Hills did well financially and is a cult classic today. It's regarded as disturbing, violent and the villains have been remembered. Michael Berryman as Pluto is looked back on because he's a memorable looking person.

Why It's Overrated: It's guilty of the same thing the other two films were. It's boring. I won't got onto a Craven tangent because like I said, that's for another day. But this movie fails to be anything it promises. It does nothing to make me care about anyone, also. Why should I care about these people exactly? Is it because they're stranded or because they're too stupid to listen when someone tells them not to go a certain way? The family we're supposed to sympathize with is a group of unlikable characters. None of the characters are smart, in fact, if I remember right, the dog is the smartest of the whole bunch. That's just sad.



6: The Blair Witch Project(1999)

Director: Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez

Starring: Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, Michael C Williams

Story: A group of college students set out into the woods to research the legend of the Blair Witch. Soon they become lost and are hunted. All that remains is the footage of their adventure.

Why It's Praised: The marketing. That was one of the reasons. As I've explained in earlier columns, this movie was everywhere before it came out. People thought it was real and wanted to see it. It was one of the highest-grossing independent films of all time. It was also critically praised, with those such as Roger Ebert calling it "an extraordinarily effective horror film". The cast was relatable, as they weren't actors but real people, which made the documentary feel more believable and the movie reportedly more scary.

Why It's Overrated: This movie is only effective if you were one of the ones who believed it was real. Otherwise, it's like watching a documentary that a friend made. A terribly boring one. A good portion of the movie is devoted to what some would call "character development" but these people aren't very likable to begin with. In fact, they're sort of annoying. They become even more so when the paranormal happens. It's just not that well put-together of a movie. The fact you cant' see anything doesn't add to the fear, it detracts from it. Don't get me started on the "crying" scene.



5: Friday the 13th(1980)

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon

Story: Camp counselors are hunted down one by one by a mysterious killer at Camp Crystal Lake.

Why It's Praised: It's the one that started it all. It gave rise to many slashers just like it and eventually gave birth to Jason Voorhees. It's also highly regarded for the surprise of Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees. She hadn't been seen as anything close to the role, and it shocked a lot of people. This movie is also memorable for killing Kevin Bacon with an arrow through the throat, in one of his earliest film roles.

Why It's Overrated: It has history behind it, but not much else. This movie is generally looked at more favorably because of the series it started. There's nothing else about it that's very memorable, in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it's a fairly entertaining slasher. However like Halloween 4, that's all there is to it. There are some inventive kills, but everything else is unremarkable. If this movie hadn't spawned Jason, it would be looked at as one of many Halloween clones.



4: Jaws(1975)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary

Story:

Why It's Praised: The first half is one hell of a ride from the quiet opening scene of a teenage girl being attacked while swimming, to the less subtle but more terrifying scene of a boy being swallowed completely while on a raft in broad daylight. Plus the shot of everyone running and screaming out of the water is historic, among other things.

This movie also made me feel for the characters involved. Whether it was the main star, who just wanted to help everyone but didn't have the respect or the support, or the shark expert, or even crazy man Quint. All characters had something about them to make you genuinely care whether or not Jaws had them for lunch or not. It built them all up solidly, even Quint who before he went after the shark didn't have much screen time. The finale is also quite explosive (see what I did there?) and memorable.

Why It's Overrated: I would go as far as to say that Jaws is 2/3 of one of the greatest horror films ever made. The movie does not age well. It tends to go too long. Running at a span over a little over two hours, there's a lot that could have been cut out to make it a smooth shark movie. Some of it was character development, and I understand that, but some of it was scenes that felt stapled on or just felt out of place. The scene where the three men sing together comes to mind. Not to mention some of them were repeats of scenes produced earlier. Mainly most of the flaws were in that middle portion, once Brody and crew go to find the shark.



3: The Sixth Sense(1999)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams

Story: A boy can see dead people, and confesses this to his therapist. The movie shows his various encounters with ghosts.

Why It's Praised: It's Academy Award-nominated, for starters. It gave us the rise of M. Night Shyamalan and is probably his best film to date. It has an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is really good for a horror film. It features some really good acting, even from child actor and (at the time) newcomer Haley Joel Osment. It's also well-known for it's twist, something M. Night would become famous for. The twist itself is one of the reasons to see the movie, and you'll be hitting yourself for not picking up on it.

Why It's Overrated: If the movie is that good, who am I to say it's overrated? It is. Mainly because while it's a decent ghost story with some good acting (which is more than can be said for other genre efforts that year, even ghost stories), it's not one of the best horror films ever. What holds it back? It moves really slow. The pacing is all wrong and the movie takes forever to go from point to point. Also, once the twist has occurred, there's no reason to see it again. The movie's entire purpose is to build to the final twist and once you know what happens, it's not as rewarding to sit through a slow moving (if somewhat scary and well-acted) ghost story.



2: Ring(1998)

Director: Hideo Nakata

Starring: Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rikiya Otaka

Story: A mysterious tape comes into the hands of a reporter. She watches it and learns she only has seven days to live and must unravel the mystery before it's too late.

Why It's Praised: It's really really scary. Sadako is absolutely terrifying (one of the advantages over the remake) and the movie injects a feeling of dread throughout. There's a sense of foreboding in this movie that is still present even if nothing particularly threatening is going on. It's also one of the more unique and clever horror films to come out in a long time, straight out of (where else) Japan.

Why It's Overrated: The mystery is solved way too easy. The characters seem to know everything and it's a little annoying. This could be explained by the fact that one of them is psychic (and somehow makes the other psychic too in a bizarre twist). The backstory of the tape is also very melodramatic and laughable. The psychic subplot itself has always struck a chord with me and I generally didn't enjoy it. It serves no purpose compared to the rest of the story. The remake solved that problem by removing the psychic story…however it sacrificed Sadako for Samara. The two films compliment each other and make up for each other's flaws, yet this one is always preferred.



1: The Omen(1976)

Director: Richard Donner

Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Patrick Troughton, Billie Whitelaw, Harvey Stephens, Leo McKern

Story: An American diplomat and his wife become parents to the anti-Christ.

Why It's Praised: It's a well-acted horror film with memorable scenes and a disturbing child's portrayal of Damien, the anti-Christ. Gregory Peck, one of the finest actors of his generation, provides an engaging performance as Robert Thorn. The kid, as I just mentioned, is a very frightening Damien. He doesn't really do anything but is just creepy. This is something the remake couldn't capitalize on, as the child in that one acted creepy…this one just *was* creepy.

Why It's Overrated: Take what I said about The Sixth Sense and place it here. It moves really slow. It has everything that could make it one of the all-time greats and the fact that it moves at a snail's pace lowers it for me. Well, that and it takes itself far too seriously. There's acting and then there's over-acting, and at times it comes across as the latter to me. It tends to try to be smarter than it is, providing lengthy discussion about the end times and biblical prophecy instead of getting to the heart of the movie, that is, the child with no heart. A little thinking in my movies is fine (the remake took out all of that and left an empty shell of what this once was) but this is just so serious it borders on parody.


And that's it. I know I'm going to get hate mail (even with my disclaimer) so fire away. I'll respond to some of them next week when I present my Top 10 underrated horror films. Oh yeah, totally reversing the idea.