Stephen Hunter on "House of Wax"

Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter (registration required) writes similar thoughts to what I posted about Cursed and horror movies of that ilk:

I should be honest and acknowledge one truth: I like this movie a little bit because they still kill the old way. In recent years, in search of big bucks, a number of horror movies have been produced as hard but nevertheless permissible PG-13s, to bring in a younger cash customer. When you see that, you know there's a certain line the movie won't cross; it lessens the upfront apprehension, which after all is the point of the horror movie, no? (It's certainly not to encourage better citizenship.)

This movie gives it to you, as no movie has in some years. Okay, if that's not your part of the swamp, don't go into it. You know in advance it's R-rated horror, with all kinds of skewerings and slashings. But some people -- roughly 40 million under the age of 25, and the 40,000,001st, that is, er, me -- sorta kinda like this sort of thing.

Stephen King in Danse Macabre wrote that he tries to scare the reader and if he can't scare them he'll go for the gross out. I don't know if Hunter saw Rob Zombie's film House of 1000 Corpses (I suspect he didn't), but one of the best things about Zombie's film is it pays homage to horror films of the '70s with the killings. Horror films should follow King's model: it should really try to scare us. But if it can't scare us it should be gruesome. (There should also be gratutious nudity for tradition's sake). Otherwise, you might as well wait until the movie comes out on SciFi Channel or USA Network to catch it.