Ok, i confess. I love me some good zombie, but I find brutal anatomy lessons of your standard slasher flick to be tiresome at best.
So why do I find the hordes of rank and putrid corpses doing the zombie shuffle more appealing than some guy in a hockey mask imitating a Cuisinart?
I have been puzzling over this while watching one fellow opening can of whoopass on a walking corpse–in the foyer, with a chainsaw.
Zombies are like a force of nature. Like time and tide, zombies wait for no man. Their quest for brains is as certain as the rising of the sun. It doesn’t have to be explained–just endured.
When an otherwise normal person, puts on a hockey mask and begins butchering coeds, no amount of pseudo psychological mumbo jumbo makes that okay for me. There is no art or artistry in the average slasher flick. The class cut-up is not usually possessed of an interesting intellect like Hannibal Lecter. Have you ever noticed how many guys who go on a postal killing spree can’t get a date or at least can’t get a second date? Who wants to watch that loser?
There are sub genres of slasher flicks that are reasonably entertaining but they may have been played out by over exposure. I am speaking of the type of slasher flick that is fully aware of itself and self referential, and, moreover, there is still some mystery about who dun it and why.
So I don’t have any one answer about what makes it a horrible movie rather than a horror movie but the general movie guidelines apply
1) Bad script
2) Bad acting
3) Poor visuals
4) Bad sound
The good thing about zombies is they don’t have to act. All they have to do is stand there and stink–and look menacing of course. All of the interesting action depends on the reactions of others to zombies.
Here is another horrible observation: In a slasher movie, often strategy doesn’t matter. Generally speaking, as long as the slasher is wearing his magic hockey mask, he can’t be hurt, at least not in a way that actually stops him. You may run as far and as fast as you like, but the slasher will always find you. You may get police protection and guards and private-eyes and magically the slasher always gets past all of them or kills all of them and gets to you.
Your basic zombie flick is always about strategy. And when the zombies come and eat your face anyway, it is almost always because the strategy was flawed. Somebody left the door open. Or, sure you can defend that one entrance with weapons, but what happens when your run out of ammo? In short, zombies play fair. Slashers don’t.
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