By Faith Nguyen, Copy Editor
The Halloween season is filled with candy, parties, costumes, and most importantly, a variety of movies to fulfill your need for screams and thrills. Horror movies have been in popular demand for over a century.
Expectations for horror films have changed throughout the decades due to the advancement in the quality of films' effects, suspense, plot and jumpscares. Although horror films tend to depend on supernatural and unrealistic fears, there has been a shift in audience interest towards psychological thrillers.
What deems a horror film bad is an overuse of jumpscares and an excessive amount of sequels. The constant use of jumpscares often causes the audience to lose interest as it makes the horror feel forced and cheesy. The excessive use of sequels can have the same effect on audiences.
Horror films with multiple sequels include: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Paranormal Activity,” “Child’s Play” and “Halloween.”These all contained the idea of the original film’s storyline with no real additions, causes the sequel to lose its’ appeal.
“For me, I like the first ‘Friday the 13th’like one, two, and three, but then you get to four, five, six, seven, and the sequel is just being played out,” Comedy and Culture teacher John Adair said. “The overuse of sequel, anytime you go above a trilogy, I think you’re kind of on shaky grounds and jumpscares can be effective if they tell the story and add to the atmosphere unless over relying on it(sic).
Unnecessary sequels, jumpscares, and poorly written plots as seen with movies like “Jaws,” “Truth or Dare,” and “Jason vs. Michael Meyers,”tend to have low box office ratings and result in audience dissatisfaction.
“Usually I think the jumpscares in bad horror movies are as effective as good horror movies because it’s still something unexpected,” senior Shreya Dholakia said. “Although, the jumpscares are ineffective when the characters are not scary.”
Even though many horror films have the potential to suit the Halloween Season, the majority fall short and result in disappointment.
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