With a total gross of $8,054,659471, horror movies have fallen down to the seventh highest grossing movie genre.

Due to a misunderstanding of the scare and creativity needed in the movies, directors and producers have degraded horror and its popularity since the golden age of horror began in the 1970s.

The 1970s was a decade full of classic horror movies such as The Exorcist, Jaws, Alien, Halloween, etc. What these films all had in common was their uniqueness in plots and their methods of TRUE scares. Notice not one of these classic movies has a plot remotely close to the other. They were originally thought out by some of the truly inspired minds in Hollywood, such as Wes Craven.

Craven is widely known as the God of horror movies, having created many awarded movies in his grand career. Craven explained true methods of scarring when he said, “The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.”

This could not be any more true. In todays movies, audiences are bombarded with jump scares, non imaginative plots, and revolting cliches. What is lacking in todays horror movies is the power to control the mind and twist the thinking.

Though not written by Craven, a perfect example of this is in the psychological horror movie “Silence of the Lambs.” Masterfully we are led to feel for a man which has committed horrific crimes. He captivates the audience with his brilliant intellect. By the end of this movie not only is he not the “monster”, but he is rather one of the reasons the case is solved.

Recently there has been a trend of movies in the past decade not understanding the necessity of the physiological element in their movies. Although physiological horror is considered a sub-genre in the horror movie industry the need to include this is so undervalued. Movies like “The Purge”, “Ouija”, and the infamous “Wrong Turn” series rely so heavily on jump scares and useless violence that audiences don’t feel the terror but just see the terror.

We also see a revolting amount of cliches. i.e. The black person dies first, the virgin is the last person alive, etc. Released in 2012, “The Cabin in the Woods” addressed all the problems of these cliches. If you have never seen this movie and are a big horror fan, this is a MUST watch. This is a highly misunderstood film. Although it has been given a 91% on rotten tomatoes by the experts, it is the audience score that stands out, just 73%. This is why horror movies are so bad now! The public fail to see the problem and even when the problem is addressed it is failed to be seen.

The “Cabin in the Woods” has made a respectable $66,486,080 worldwide. “Ouija”, one of the worst movies of the year, has made a ridiculous $100,642,172 since its release. That is over $30,000,000 more. This is a terrible movie! So why are people so interested in it? We continue to view movies so bland and boring that directors and producers have realized this one thing. Viewers don’t have to LIKE the movie, they just have to buy a ticket, resulting in money made.

I would like to ask people to rethink the way they see horror movies. They are not a mindless game of violence and gore but instead a challenging art only few can successfully accomplish.