Horror, it's mostly a bit rubbish isn't it?

Ok I know at the start of this I said I didn't like most horror and have then talked about the ones I do think are worth looking at, so I think it's time to take a quick look at why I don't really go for horror films as a general rule.

1. Predicitability
This is one of the key things, the vast majoirty of horror films I find very predictable. I think once you know the 'beats' of the genre it's fairly easy to tell when and where each 'scare' is going to occur. So those jump scares just pass on by, the shock reveal of the killer more often than not cruises on past without a care.
Far more than other films a horror film looks to keep it's audience off balance and on the edge of the seat so when they become so familiar half the film is already blown and then you're left with trying to find something to appreciate in the story or charactisation..and then you're really struggling.

The better entries can either subvert the typical pattern of the genre or use it to their advantage, for example Scream plays and subverts (gently)the norms of the genre but I find most (in particualr modern) horror films simply move from scare A to scare B to scare C.

2. They have nothing to say
That is to say the in most horror films once you look past the 'thrill' or the chasing and the killing or the fun of the spooking there is nothing else going on. No bigger themes to be developed or discussed just a group of teen and twenty somethings standing around waiting for the plot to happen.
Again it's the few that do have something else to them that are the better examples, like 'The Orphanage' with a focus on grief and isolation opening up the film to much more that just the spooky boy in the corner, it puts some meat on the bones so to say and it's the reason I really like 'The Orphanage' despite seeing where it was going to end about halfway through. On the flip side you'll struggle to find anything approaching a theme in the likes of 'Prom Night' Well, despite the curiours puritanical downer on sexual intercourse that the slasher genre appears to have adopted for some reason.
In other worlds they seem to be empty headed and if I'm going to watch something empty headed I'd rather watch a big dumb 'ol action film rather than something focusing on the suffering of people.

3. I have no interest in gore.
I really don't care how realistic wounding can be made look or how over the top it can be made to look. Show me a giant transformering robot as an effect, cool! Show me an oozing chest wound, meh. Can we move on to something intersting now?
And these days the focus seems to be increasingly on the gore with the likes of Saw and Hostel et al and I simply don't find that remotely intersting. Thank god for the reaction in the forms of more thoughful fare like The Others.

4. Franchise, franchise franchise
In no other genre are series milking quite so aggresivily, just look at the Halloween, Friday the 13th and Saw franchises to see it. Then wonder how these things go for so long once the law of dimishing returns really starts to bite and the cycles of stalk, slash and trap get repeated ad infintum, the same films essentially rehashed each time.

5. I don't enjoy watching people suffer.
Which is something that doesn't really need much explanation beyond the fact I will watch films where things are grim for people (like 21 Grams or Revolutionay Road) but these are films which are about so much more. I'm not saying all horror is specifically about suffering but it does form a large part of a lot of the genre and when combined with the genre's typical lack of deeper themes it just leaves you with a strange kind of voyerism which I don't enjoy.

So there you go, a brief look at why I don't enjoy or horror and why I think most of it is, well, rubbish. I do like the Scream series (well the first two at least) as they play with and reference cinematic conventions amusingly, the Final Destination films I've already covered and I've mentioned The Orphanage and The Others but beyond I don't think I own anything else you'd call an outright horror film (and already consider Final Destination as dark comedy).