8 Horror Films Ruined By Showing Too Much
Less is always more.
As Goldilocks will surely tell you, there’s a fine line between just right, and a little too much - whether it’s porridge consistency, bed comfort, or the visibility of soul-devouring demons from the underworld ready to take your eyes out. There’s balance to these things, you know?
Horror films for years have been told to follow the golden rule of less is more, but instead of listening, we keep being given the full technicolour glory of movie monsters with little regard for how scary they actually are. Whether it’s from cheap CGI or bad creature design, characteristic flaws or over-explanation, film has a habit of sucking our imaginations dry when it comes to offering up the scares.
These are the films that have most suffered from the terrible fate of showing that little bit too much, ruining the sanctity of an unimaginable horror by needlessly outing their true form and making it, well, entirely imaginable. What’s scarier, hearing about a half-man, half-arachnid that will tear you in half, or seeing Dwayne Johnson stuck on the top of a CGI scorpion? I rest my case.
8. Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark
Guillermo Del Toro is a good guy. He knows what he’s doing, and balances the seesaw of crazy, fantasy weirdness and disturbing reality with a precision that’s hard to match, expertly presented in films like Pan’s Labyrinth and Crimson Peak. When it comes to films that he chooses to put his name on outside of directing - he similarly backs the weird and wonderful in everyone’s imaginations. Even when maybe, it’s slightly misguided.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark sees the acclaimed director taking a writer-producer credit, and features a young girl who's moved in with her father and believes she’s unleashed creatures from a sealed pit in the basement. Whilst it’s definitely a barrel of horror tropes, the original 1973 movie held promise - and the 2010 remake had the same, at least, until the creatures make themselves known.
Tiny monkey-rat-chihuahua monsters from underneath the house really don’t deliver the kick that the filmmakers thought they would, evidently, and turn a creepy premise into a CGI nightmare that’s scary for all the wrong reasons. There's really nothing frightening about an annoying imp you can sort out with one swift kick.