Screenhead

Move over torture-porn, no one watches your vacuous attempts to elicit disgust and nausea are at an end. It seems as if Hollywood is turning its back on hard-core horror, and instead focusing on family-friendly scares. This week saw the announcement of two offshoot production labels that will dedicate their time and money making spooky chillers that even grandma and the pre-pubescent can scoff popcorn to. Sam Raimi’s production company Ghost House has created Spooky Pictures, with their first film to be a remake of the Danish film The Substitute, in which an alien who doesn’t understand the concept of love infiltrates our planet as a substitute teacher who trains her students for a competition in Paris (!?). Last month also saw Disney set up Double Dare You with Guillermo Del Toro, who aim to produce spooky animated films.

It’s not surprising that Hollywood is looking to “easier” frights, especially with the success of darker films like Coraline and the PG-13 horror flick The Haunting in Connecticut and the failure of many recent adult-oriented horrors such as Halloween 2 and Sorority Row. One could even surmise that with the wonderful and weird world of the web at our fingertips, with any information so easily accessed, the idea of truly scaring an audience is getting increasingly more difficult, at least when using traditional tactics.