7. Action-Horror
There are different genres for a reason. Action is good for getting pumped up and excited, romance for feeling sappy, drama for serious thinking or proving to your girlfriend you can be sensitive (Isnt Schindlers List a brilliant film?), and horror for being scared. You can combine two genres to produce a variety of emotions in audiences. But eventually, one or the other will dominate: romantic comedies end up being either super cheesy or, well, ok, thats a bad example. You get what I was trying to say, though. Action-horror is one of these. It seems like a good mix: getting scared by zombies and monsters and watching someone defeat villains and blow stuff up should go together. But the action elements degrade the horror. Horror is about gradually realizing we are defenseless against the evils that haunt society; it usually ends with a victory over the evil, but this isalmost alwaystemporary and partial. Action is about humanitys ability to overcome the challenges we face, often through seemingly superhuman feats. Its hard to be scared when we know the hero will win. Action-horror thus basically involves actions movies with horror motifs, like vampires or zombies. My issue is the prevalence of such movies. How many Resident Evil movies are there now? Underworld sequels keep popping up. Granted, these are just pretty bad movies to begin with. But they also represent lazy attempts to draw in both horror and action movies fans without really building suspense, or a coherent plot. It didnt have to be this way, though. The earlier Resident Evil games were pretty scary to play, and full of puzzles and twists, not just killing zombies (although the game franchise has moved in a more action-oriented direction). A movie that reflected the tone of these games would be great horror films. But its just easier to have a good-looking woman running around killing things.