Dead Alive (1993), directed by Peter Jackson and set in New Zealand, is a masterpiece of zombie cinema. It's also an unspeakably silly gore-fest, best-known for making audiences want to laugh and retch at the same time. Zombie ears pop off and tumble into jiggling bowls of pudding. Zombies gnaw the flesh off their victims and each other, leaving wiggling bone stumps. And then there's the lawnmower scene.
Ah, the lawnmower scene!
Neat!
While Dead Alive rips on the goriness of the zombie genre, taking it from gut-wrenchingly gross to gut-wrenchingly funny, The Final Destination rips on its many prequels.
You know the premise: a group of teenagers miraculously survives a horrible accident only to realize that they are all destined to die anyway. Fate (or something) picks them off one by one in a series of bizarre sub-accidents while the kids try to break the curse.
I've never seen the original Final Destinations, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the final installment in the series. Each death is gruesome, to be sure, but they're also riddled with gags, surprises, and pure silliness. Take the guy whose intestines get yanked out and spewed out of a swimming pool water pump, or the girl who drowns in a car wash.
That's right, a car wash.
Finally, there's Jennifer's Body.
The premise: a hot chick gets possessed and starts eating teenage boys. The screenwriter: Diablo Cody of Juno fame. The result: a horror movie that combines Megan Fox vomiting black spumes; teenage girls making out; and witty dialog that trashes high school, best friendships, horror movies, indie rock bands, and teenage girl-hood alike. Jennifer's Body never takes itself too seriously, never forgets that it's a movie about demonic possession that puns on the term "man-eater" (har har!).
See it now, if only for the fight scenes peppered with tampon jokes.
But why should you watch funny horror movies at all? Why should you indulge in the admittedly sick pleasure of laughing at squirting blood and eviscerations and cannibalism?
Because truly great serious horror movies are so hard to come by. They're like the poetry of the film industry: it's so easy to make a slasher flick that's bad (red food dye and corn syrup are very cheap), but it's so difficult to make a great one. Great serious horror movies are subtle, restrained, and moody, and have a sound plot and realistic characters to back up their myriad scares. I mean, really, how many brilliant horror movies can you name? The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, The Omen--what else?
But because bad horror movies are so common, the genre is completely worn out. Any horror buff can name the top ten horror movie cliches Scream-style, and we all know what's going to happen when the heroine reaches her trembling hand toward the doorknob. Horror movie fans are incredibly well-educated about their genre; it's almost impossible to surprise them with a new premise or a new scare.
So how can a filmmaker overcome an audience's expectations to give them an experience that's fresh and exciting?
Well, if you can't beat the genre, you can always play up how funny its failings can be. Instead of trying to circumnavigate the challenges of making a good horror movie, scary/funny movies plow straight into the cliches: they amp up the camp and load on the gags, because it's better to laugh with your audience than to be laughed at, right? The jokes in these movies aren't about finding death and gore funny, they're about genre, tweaking the audience's expectations, and seeing how far a gag can be pushed.
Satirical horror movies don't undermine or pervert the horror movie genre, they're just a sign of horror's continuing relevance and popularity. So while I'll keep watching The Rings and the Quarantines Hollywood keeps churning out, hoping for the next Exorcist, I'll always be more excited for the Drag Me to Hells and Cabin Fevers and Slithers of the world, excited to see yet another genre-ripping, soon-to-be-classic.
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