6. No More Torture Porn
There are few things I enjoy more than watching a good horror movie but I just don't understand the appeal of torture porn like Saw or Hostel, where the only point seems to be watching people be graphically tortured to death in increasingly sadistic ways. This trend began with the James Wan's Saw and continued with its popular sequels although he has since switched to making the complete opposite style of horror movie with Insidious and The Conjuring. The torture-porn sub-genre continued with Eli Roth's Hostel franchise which while not as popular as Saw as its sequels went direct to video, still made a mark in the movie industry. Although the sequels are all terrible, both Saw and Hostel did have some interesting ideas. Saw's villain Jigsaw started off interesting before becoming ridiculous in the sequels, and Hostel wanted to make a statement about American tourists abroad. However the focus was more on the graphic violence, and movies which are scary and disturbing over graphically violent are far more memorable. Filmmakers should make the audience scared by what might be hiding in the darkness, not by finding out how creative a killer can get with a power tool. When a movie uses foreboding atmosphere combined with a great location it can be far more unsettling than graphic violence, because this can make the audience care about the fate of the protagonists. Don't just make the hero suffer, make the audience care about the hero's life and what they have to live for, and then bring in the terror. The hero does not need to live, and the villain can win in fact it would be more original if they did, but as long as the audience cares about the hero then the movie will be far more affecting than watching some archetype fall in the hands of a of a psycho killer.