Once again, we reach the second scariest week of the year: the week of Halloween. (The first, of course, is the week of President’s Day, when we’re bombarded with Mattress Commercials and the horrifying process of finding the perfect President’s Day Present.) This is also the last week before I start working on Nanowrimo, so it’s a little extra scary. At any moment I fear that a manuscript with a hockey mask is going to come and chase me around a lake. This is why for the past week I’ve avoided both paper and water. And hockey masks, for that matter. I’m like the Washington Capitals for most of last season. (Tip your waitresses.)
However, have you all looked outside lately? Or at a newspaper? Or turned on the TV “News” Channels where everyone is screaming so loudly that you think you accidentally turned on a horror movie? It’s HARD to scare people lately unless you knock out the wi-fi. Then they can’t check their work email for like, minutes, and what if an important document comes in at 5:00 on a Sunday morning then that big business merger thing might be delayed for almost FIVE WHOLE MINUTES ON MONDAY MORNING! (Cue Psycho music here. If you want to take a minute to download it, then read the rest of this post, feel free.)
Yes, this is the week that you’ll read the cynical posts about how all horror movies have to either work harder because they’ve been deconstructed so many times (Cabin in the Woods, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil) or because it’s a scarier time so they have to tap into our fears such as being watched all the time, (Paranormal Activity or any of the movies that pretend to be Paranormal Activity but aren’t even close to Paranormal Activity), or how they’re just getting grosser (Saw, Hostel, or any movie with a black and white picture of a woman creaming on the cover). And of course it’s the same with any movie season where a bunch of people will complain about sequels, remakes, sequels to the remakes, and the gritty reboots to the remakes. In one case, I know we’re getting a sequel to an original that was recently rebooted.
And don’t get me started on the scary fact that we’re getting another Jackass movie. Harold Ramis and Dan Akroyd can’t get their act together for Ghostbuster 3, but the Jackass boys can put a bunch of magnetic letters together on their fridge so we get another movie where they launch themselves off a roof in a shopping cart wearing a chicken costume with their junk hanging out.
Congrats to Bad Shakespeare on it’s first “junk hanging out” reference! With some of Shakespeare’s plays, I’m surprised it took this wrong.
In any event, you know that Bad Shakespeare is here to help with these things. As any horror movie fan will attest, the best horror movies are a reflection of what society is dealing with at the time. Zombies are just fodder for bullets, “torture porn” showed up when we couldn’t understand why people were suffering, the slasher movies of the 80’s were a reflection of our terror at neon clothing, and giant monster movies reflected our fear of Godzilla.
But rather than the latest zombie movie, or zombie movie parody, or shaky-cam style movie where nothing happens for 90 minutes then something inexplicable happens that scares us before the movie ends, I feel it’s necessary that I help out Hollywood by presenting to you: Truly scary movie plots for today’s more sophisticated, less easily scared, audience. Your welcome, Hollywood. Please send your checks directly to me.
*Wi-Fi Bye Bye: A computer virus knocks out the internet... for the entire world! People are forced to interact with each other! The post office is relevant again! Mail takes four... sometimes five days to get to it’s source! Rather than spending Saturday night checking email for Monday, people have to not work all the time.... oooooohhhh!!
*Zombie Rights Massacre (Part Two.): A Zombie virus is spread across the world, and the dead do rise from the grave. After about a half an hour of terror, the vultures of the world realize that they’ve got a pretty good snack thing going, and everyone realizes that shambling corpses don’t traverse very well up hills, in the heat, in the cold, or if anything even knee high is put in their path, so they’re rounded up and put to work in menial jobs. But wait... then someone sensing opportunity sues on the behalf of the zombies, and they all march on Washington, demanding equal rights.
It actually ends pretty quickly when the vultures realize they’re in Washington, and they all get eaten.
*Fact Checker: A serial killer named “the Fact Checker” targets anyone who posts anything on the internet that hasn’t been fact checked. Eventually spawning copycats, at one point the cult of the Fact Checker has over one thousand members, who all retire because it just becomes too much. Way, Way, too much.
*Nicolas Cage: The Movie: A biopic of Nicolas Cage written and directed by Nicloas Cage, starring Nicolas Cage. In every role. I’m envisioning this one as an animated musical, that reminds the world that Nicolas Cage won an Oscar, and was a well respected actor before he became a world famous internet meme. Also he once played Superman. (I’m 90% sure that this idea might already exist.)
*The Casting: Everyone loves to read their favorite news on their favorite movies. It was a typical day for actor Stephen Everyactor, who was just cast in the Big Summer Blockbuster. But then, the collective Internet, having never seen Stephen Everyactor in that specific role, decides they disapprove of his casting! Petitions are signed! Commenters are outraged that the person in their head wasn’t cast in Big Summer Blockbuster! Eventually the movie is released anyway, and only makes a billion dollars.
*Andrew Jackson: Werewolf Hunter: Piggybacking of the success of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, this is the tale of how most Werewolves are notoriously greedy, and can be enticed to leave town by paying them twenty dollars.
*Upgradening: Two days after you buy your new sparkly gadget, they announce a new one. This one is filmed in handheld shaky cam style as you go back tot he store and demand a new one, only to find they won’t sell it to you or accept a return, because you’ve burned it out. Filming the experience. In shaky cam style. The movie will start with a disclaimer that the footage was found in a trash can near a store that sells the shiny new gadget.
*Giant Monster Attack: Seriously... we really aren’t afraid of this? At any moment a mutated lizard could crush us all, why aren’t we taking this more seriously?
Get on it, Hollywood.
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