Oh, The Horror

Back in 1999, two young filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, sent three actors into the woods in Maryland with nothing but some camping equipment, a camera and a fabricated myth about a local witch. The film became The Blair Witch Project, and through brilliant editing and even better Internet promotion and myth-building, went on to collect an astounding $250 million at the global box-office. The filmmakers and actors faded into obscurity as rapidly as they arrived, but the film sent shock-waves through the industry as it served as a stark reminder to the studios; audiences like to be scared.

The legacy of Blair Witch is, somewhat ironically, drenched in blood. The horror genre of the new millenium is relatively low-budget, with a renewed focus on violence and gore that would've been branded "Video-Nasty" twenty years ago. The stark difference is that it's now studio-sponsored and dominates the mainstream. The irony arises from the fact that Blair Witch, in common with several other groundbreaking entries in the genre (perhaps most notably the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is an almost entirely bloodless film. Violence is either implied, or occurs off-screen with only sound giving an indication of what's going on; the horror is almost exclusively psychological.

In the years since Blair Witch, however, visual subtlety has been increasingly drained from the genre. It seems audiences like to see characters suffer on-screen, and so each new horror entry attempts to out-do the last when it comes to blood-letting. Yet, despite the increasingly over-the-top nature of the genre, hooks to the real world have proved remarkably effective in securing often massive box-office returns. Blair Witch itself is the best example of this, as Myrick and Sanchez used the Internet to elaborate the myth of the witch. The film itself was presented and marketed as a documentary showing the last few days of the characters' lives before 'disappearing' in the woods. The filmmakers' skill at maintaining the facade was undoubtedley a major factor in the film's stunning success. Even informed audiences found it easy to believe that they were watching real events unfolding before them.

Over the last year, the genre has adjusted to take 'inspiration' from real-life events. The recent Wolf Creek, a tale of three young backpackers stranded in the Australian Outback to be hunted-down and tortured by a sadistic Bushman, was inspired by real-life missing-persons cases and even features an epilogue explaining what happened to the survivors. Similarly, the massively over-hyped Hostel, a gore-fest in which wealthy businessmen pay to torture backpackers (a somewhat persecuted bunch) in Eastern-European basements, was inspired by rumours of similar activities happening for real in the Far-East. The recently-revived Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise also plays up the 'Based on true events' line, as the original concept of the iconic Leatherface was very loosely inspired by the post-homicide rituals of 50s serial-killer Ed Gein.

The most successful franchise, however, is purely fictional. Saw drew direct inspiration from the bleak atmosphere of David Fincher's outstanding Se7en, and focussed on two men shackled to opposing walls in a dank basement, faced with the prospect of sawing through their ankles in order to escape. The film has spawned two sequels, the second of which opened last week, but unfortunately the premise has lost its imagination, substituting plot for ever-more creative ways of killing people. Still, the success of the Saw franchise, and the imminent arrival of Hostel 2, is a strong indication of both the future of the genre, and audience taste (or, perhaps, lack of it). Hostel was marketed as a gore-fest on a level never before seen by American audiences (it wasn't), and Quentin Tarantino's involvement as an executive-producer was emphasised in an attempt to reinforce this; audiences lapped it up.

Despite, then, its often more subtle ancestry, the horror genre looks set to continue (d)evolving into a bloody mess. Indeed, next year we'll be treated to Grindhouse, a double-feature directed by Tarantino and pal Robert Rodriguez, which promises zombies, psychotic hit-and-run drivers and no-doubt blood by the gallon. Still, there'll always be Shrek 3 to sink your teeth into if you find you're seeing a little too much red.