As a horror fan for almost over 25 years and a movie fan for a little bit over, I must say that this has been the year of fucked up priorities. First off, I would like to congratulate all of this year’s winners and previous winners from before but this is not a happy reminder, this is more of an angry rant. My angry rant is fueled by the fact that the last time and first time a horror movie had won Best Picture was in 1992 and that was Silence of the Lambs which people today still don’t believe that Silence of the Lambs is an actual horror movie.
The year 2016 was the year for a lot of horror movies to emerge like a phoenix from the ashes especially after reboot after reboot after reboot after remakes and it is now a time where horror needs to be recognized for more, much more than a lot of titles that are mainstream Hollywood. The fact that Suicide Squad ( which I have not seen nor am I interested in seeing due to the negative feedback from average moviegoers-to-people who just like to watch movies on a Friday night) but the fact that Suicide Squad won for best make up and hair really infuriates not just me but anyone who is out there aspiring or trying to make a living with practical effects with hair styling with make up with custom design with everything you can imagine that makes a movie polished. One of the movies I didn’t care for was Nicolas Winding Refn’s Neon Demon, but Neon Demon was beautifully shot and got snubbed. The Conjuring 2 being snubbed was also a disgrace because the special effects were stellar. Why is it that we are nominating all of these non-horror movies that not a lot of movie goers had ever heard and I’m not even mentioning that horror movies are well known for being cheesy B-movie like flops, hence Sharknado etc. etc; but you have movies like Hush The Witch, Train to Busan, Let the Right One In, Saw, The Mist, 28 Days Later, The Devils Backbone, Antichrist I Saw the Devil, The Conjuring series, Don’t breathe The Evil Dead remake and the list goes on and on and on of much more current horror. It is a disgrace to every person in the industry or anyone aspiring to be working in the industry as a hairstylist as a costume designer as a make up artist it is not acceptable for this for Suicide Squad out of all movies, to win this category. Yes we do have moments where the public recognizes that talents an effort or not being acknowledged by the Academy, whitewashing Hollywood IS a thing, don’t tell me it’s not a thing it is real, it is happening it’s still happening but every movie that comes out should not have to win based on actual events from the past. Now we have a dilemma!
Get Out directed by Jordan Peele is here, it is doing well for itself, Get Out received 100% Rotten Tomatoes (even though I don’t necessarily agree with Rotten Tomatoes, I don’t believe in their bias reviews but it has a hundred percent). Now let’s see the Academy try to dismiss this movie, let’s see them try to dismiss it because of a black cast, let’s see them try to dismiss it because it’s a horror movie, let’s see the Academy dismiss this movie because it doesn’t fit the criteria that they want. The reason I don’t watch the Academy Awards anymore it’s because its seems fake and it shows that winning today is all about who is friends with who .When I was younger, the Academy Awards were respected, the people who won deserved to win, the nomination’s that were up deserved to be nominated or so I thought. We are living in a world where horror is so unappreciated and it shouldn’t be any more. When ever someone sees a horror movie nowadays, it is dismissed as being bad, being cheesy, the acting is terrible, the budget is low but WE (the audience) are not in that world anymore, WE ARE NOT. We are in the world for horror is reinventing itself and we can see in the list of titles that I have mentioned earlier in this post for horror to be ignored anymore is despicable and absurd. Audiences are getting smarter, audiences are starting to see movies for what they, our audiences are demanding more than lifeless reboots, we need more original horror,
we need to make horror great again. Horror needs the artistic direction of the creators, not the suits.
The audience is feeling disrespected, we are not dumb, we are not stupid, and a lot of that has to do with access to the Internet, social media and listening to others instead of getting bullshit mainstream media and movies that we are spoon fed and told to expect it to be great. The Shining, The Exorcist, The Thing, Rosemary’s Baby, the Evil Dead The Blair Witch Project, Suspiria, Alien Dawn of the Dead, The Fly, American Werewolf in London, it’s inexcusable for these movies to not even win best picture and movies such as Suicide Squad to win anything at all. It’s a disgrace to the smarter audience out there, including myself, who are tired of bullshit media. We want to be entertained. Stop snubbing the better movies because they don’t meet your criteria, thank you!
