2. Re-Animator
What more can be said? We're always in the need for good, fun, campy gore. A film like Re-Animator, much like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, finds its greatest strength in self awareness, and it embraces that wholeheartedly. Besides Shaun of the Dead, and most recently both Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and Cabin in the Woods, the genre has lacked a solid sense of humor and ability to laugh at and mock its own stereotypes. Obviously humor and horror don't always go hand in hand. Humor is the thing that brings us out of our state of fear and into the knowledge that what we're watching isn't real and is nothing to lose sleep over. But sometimes it's just too much fun and too clever to care. Horror Comedies are quickly becoming the new thing. Zombieland was a wild success and, honestly, it's harder for people to get scared anymore. We're trying to scare people these days by showing them someone's insides get torn out or sewing together 25 odd people tuckus to mouth in order to gross out audiences. It is horrific, but I'm not afraid someone is going to do that to me. It's just off the wall and uncommon. Someone breaking into my house and murdering me, that's real, that's scary. Gore always has it's place, believe me, but it strictly doesn't make for a scary film. Embracing the Horror Comedy genre means we're burned out on the over abundance of blood, guts, and gore, which means one very important thing. It's time to focus on story. I think being able to laugh at the scary stuff means we're ready to dive back in, but the product has to be solid and well constructed. A rebooting of Re-Animator is, at this point in the game, a necessity. It's time to embrace our ability to make fun of the cliches, the sterotypes, and all the formulaic nonsense. Why? Because there's light at the end of that tunnel, and that light (fingers crossed) is forcing filmmakers to come up with new, interesting, chilling ways to scare audiences. Re-Animator played this exact same role in the 80's, when Jason was a cultural phenomenon and violence was over the top and reason to cheer, it was the film that mocked these things and reset the balance. Considering we may have reached a similar point nearly thirty years later, a new Re-Animator means a new return to Horror as it was meant to be; scary.