WHY HORROR?

Confession time.

I can’t stand The Blair Witch Project. It’s a terrible movie with a brilliant ad campaign, and its director made a far superior film in Altered… if you saw it. Which most people didn’t.

I laughed all through Paranormal Activity. I watched it with another writer and a cinematographer and editor, and we annoyed the hell out of the rest of the audience by being terribly amused by the whole thing.

I think the Hostel films are boring rubbish marked by impressive effects work. On the other hand, I think the morality play aspects of the first three SAW movies are fascinating, and that the Jigsaw Trilogy is a masterclass in creating a villain who is actually sympathetic.

The last film that truly frightened me – can’t sleep for fear of what is in the dark frightened – was John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Not much does scare me on screen anymore, and a lot of that comes from working on/acting in/making horror films myself. Disturbs me, yes… Martyrs, for example, was deeply unsettling, and while I thought it was an extremely good film, I really don’t have any desire to see it again because I was so unsettled by it. And I’m not talking about jump-scares… those are programmed into the species, and a lot of fun when the filmmakers have actually earned that gasp from us.

You may agree or radically disagree with any or all of those statements above, and that’s OK, because there is such a wide range of what we all consider “horror” that if I wanted to ignore all the found-footage films that the studios crank out – and I usually do avoid them – there is still plenty of horror films, books, comics and television out there, that the things that I enjoy or you enjoy about horror are there for us to find, on our own, and together.

That’s why we’ve rolled out Horror4Me, my horror and your horror and all the great creepy, scary stuff we can find to share with each other, because what scares you may not scare me, and vice-versa, and that’s the way it should be. And a lot of the SciFi4Me staff are horror fans, who are keenly aware that so much of the science fiction and horror genres cross over with great regularity.

Frankenstein. Lovecraft. The Alien films. The Predator films. Event Horizon. Pandorum. Species. The Thing. Sunshine. Cloverfield. 28 Days Later. Cube. The Fly. Hardware. The Hidden. Mimic. Lifeforce. Reanimator. Screamers. Resident Evil. The Mist. Underworld.

The X-Files. Godzilla.

And just as we’re in a period where science-fiction, fantasy and comic books are mainstream entertainments, so too, horror has become something that is far more in the public eye and the mainstream then ever before. Just look at what’s on television:

American Horror Story. Bates Motel. Penny Dreadful. Hannibal. The Walking Dead. Ash vs. the Evil Dead. Supernatural. Teen Wolf.  Scream Queens. The Vampire Diaries. Scream. The Strain. From Dusk til Dawn. Z Nation. Lucifer and The Omen are on their way, as are Containment, The Magicians, Montauk, Outcast, Preacher, and Shadowhunters

Horror comics are back with a vengeance, both online and in the shops: Afterlife With Archie. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. October Faction. Nameless. Harrow County. Coffin Hill. American Vampires. Providence. Wytches. Constantine. Revival. Southern Cross.

This year saw the films Mother, Crimson Peak, Final Girls, It Follows, House on Pine Street, We Are Still Here, Maggie, AfterDeath, Insidious Chapter 3, The Visit, Bone Tomahawk, Spring, Krampus, What We Do In The Shadows, The Diabolical, and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.

I left out so very many titles in all of those lists, and probably a favorite or three of yours aren’t there, and I didn’t even try to dent the massive list of great horror novels out this last year or coming out this year, let alone the backlist of great titles. Don’t worry. We’ll get there… in The Bunker, we have soooo many horror novels and story collections to share with you.

We have, to borrow a phrase, such sights to show you. Literally. Horror4Me is based out of Kansas City, Missouri – you know, that place with the baseball team – but what you may not know is the huge independent film community that works and plays here, and we’re sitting on a giant catalog of great horror short films we’ll be sharing with you. We’re especially excited to give you a chance to revisit the series Shadow Falls, from filmmaker Kendal Sinn. One of the very first web series, back before web series were actually a thing, Shadow Falls carved (literally) new ground in the online horror world, and we’ll be running the series and its concluding feature film right here on this very site. It doesn’t hurt that we also have Mr. Sinn on the staff, so we can get the scoop on the making of this groundbreaking series directly from the creator himself. Seriously, the conversation went like this:

Me: Kendal? Can I show the peoples Shadow Falls?
Kendal: Sure.
Me: Cool.

So watch this space. There’s a storm rolling in and we’re building a monster, and you get a front row seat when we fire up the lightening rods and call for Igor to throw the switches, and the spooky, gory, scary-as-all-hell genre we love so much will rise from the slab and we’ll scream “It’s Alive, It’s Alllliiiivvvee” together.

Welcome… to Horror4Me.