Can the US Horror Film be Saved? While recent horror flicks have delivered big box office revenues, the compelling horror flicks of the last 10 or so years have all been made overseas. American horror has lost its edge, mostly by abandoning social commentary and subversive politics for gore. To see this, all you have to do is compare the original Dawn of the Dead with the remake — the anti-consumerist thrust of the original was entirely lost from the remake. And movies like Saw and Hostel offer nothing but a slick, cheap, dirty scare that serves only to reinforce the conservative ethos of our times.

Is there no hope? Writing for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Johnny Ray Huston sees some good among all the carnage. I haven’t seen the movies he points to as having potential — like the remake of The Hills Have Eyes–so I can’t comment one way or the other, but the article is worth reading, if only for his analysis of The Descent (written and directed by an Englishman, shot in England, but set in Appalachia) which has two endings — one that has been shown internationally, and one that was made specifically for the US market.

One finale places the film within a tradition that examines a fractured female psyche (� la Mulholland Drive [2001] or Aja’s more recent Haute Tension [2003]). The other gives some sense, however deranged, of hope — if one can escape a country of the blind and its mindset. Interesting that audiences in essentially “the rest of the world” have seen one conclusion, while US audiences get another one. In fact, that might be something worth dwelling on.