There’s an impulse with a lot of recent horror to reinvent
the wheel. The logic goes that audiences have seen everything before, are hyper
aware of the tools and tropes of the genre, and thus you have to do something
new and shocking every time out in order to up the ante. Don’t get me wrong,
I’m all for innovation and progression, unless the price tag is making a movie
that sucks. With all of this new, new, new crammed down our throats, it’s easy
to forget that the standards become standard for a reason, when used well, they
can be used to create a movie that scares the hell out of you.
