By and large, as the Scream series so ably demonstrated, there are set 'rules' to the horror genre. These have been flipped on their heads lately, with the 'No-One Survives' type of film... and it's these that I find most odd, particularly when the other 'rules' are followed.
I recently saw Cabin Fever on TV and, last night, decided to watch Final Destination 3 (since the fourth in the franchise, cunningly named The Final Destination, is in cinemas now). The former broke several rules (most notably by having not one single likable character... though perhaps that's just me), the latter followed the franchise template to the letter, making it slightly predictable.
Cabin Fever was the tale of a group of 5 college friends who had rented a cabin out in the woods in some nameless American backwater. The closest thing to civilisation nearby was a general store manned by an effeminate, apparently racist Father Christmas lookalike, with a mentally disturbed child sat out front, prone to biting anyone who came near. The child's father was on hand to 'protect' the boy, but this wasn't enough to prevent him biting one of the protagonists. Since the film opened with the introduction of the flesh-eating virus, this bite had me thinking "Ah, so now that guy's going to be mysteriously immune to the virus..."
I turned out to be wrong.
The protagonists comprised: The Arrogant Guy and His Girlfriend, The Moron, The Supposedly Likable 'Normal' Guy and The Girl He's Known and Secretly Loved Since Childhood. The Moron kicked things off by accidentally shooting a guy who had become infected, leading to him later showing up at the cabin and causing trouble (largely by coughing blood all over their car). He's driven off when 'Normal' Guy sets fire to him. Unfortunately for all involved he winds up dead in the reservoir that supplies the cabin with water. Eventually, all but Arrogant Guy (who ran off to hide with the beer) end up infected and dead one way or another, but he ends up getting shot by local police. Whether this is because of the rumoured 'murderous rampage', or simply to contain the virus (which the locals seem to know all about) is not entirely clear, but it seems to be the latter. The film ends by tracing a line from the death of 'Normal' Guy (lying in a stream having been pitched over a cliff by a local deputy who was supposed to be driving him to the next town) to the general store, where local kids have made lemonade from the tainted water. Not only this, but a truck is seen driving away, displaying the livery of the local bottled springwater. Not only is the virus not contained, but it's about to spread.
There's also a wild dog involved. It seems to eat people who are infected with the virus. Not sure why... Nor do I understand why it's not affected by the virus, when the first victim shown in the film is another dog. The local deputy at first seems to befriend 'Normal' Guy, but fails to bring the group the help they need, and simply accepts the 'murderous rampage' story at face value... Of course, it's true (from a certain perspective), because 'Normal' Guy has, by this point, killed several people... but there were vaguely mitigating circumstances. The mentally disturbed child - who, at one point and for no discernible reason, shows off some martial arts skills - ends up biting The Moron, and seems to be aware of the virus by the taste of his blood... but this is not explained. Nor is the 'kit' some of the locals have, stashed in a small wooden box they take along to the cabin... is it a cure, or is it a convoluted means of ensuring the death of victims..? Also not explained. And the apparent immunity of the 'Normal' Guy turns out to be false when he falls into the reservoir with the dead body of the guy he set fire to near the beginning.
The 'joke' about the rifle in the general store would have been almost funny if the punchline weren't so strained and unlikely but, in a film so woefully short on comic relief (and what little there was didn't make me laugh), I guess they wanted to introduce a lighter note before the ominous ending. Not exactly a satisfying conclusion.
Same deal, more or less, with Final Destination 3. The first film tantalised the viewer with a survivor, and the second tantalised further by offering the chance that Death can be stopped by creating new life. In each, there were clues about each impending death... and it's these clues that are the focus of the third movie. The filmmakers went to great effort to give the clues multiple possible meanings, and then alternate between going with an obscure interpretation or a blatantly obvious one. Some of the deaths are clever, some are just plain daft... but FD3 slipped up quite badly when it killed one character who didn't even have a speaking park - she just happened to be sat next to another victim (who was also a fairly minor role). It also veered off the tracks laid by the first two by repeatedly sparing three of the protagonists from their grizzly deaths... right up until the end of the film, several months after the fairground accident, when all three meet up on a train which then crashes, killing all on board.
The problem with both is that I really just didn't care what happened to any of the characters. I may have sympathised slightly with two of the characters in FD3, but I didn't care about them. Perhaps this was because, by the third film, I pretty much knew they were going to die, so it didn't matter... but this seems like a daft way of making movies.
That said, when I think about it, why does one root for the protagonist of a horror movie? More often than not, they are simply presented as 'The Protagonist'... occasionally, 'The Hero'... but the only thing that connects them to the viewer is their continued survival in the face of horrific death. Some movies spend their first half hour or so developing characters, others just offer a fleeting glimpse of the meat that's about to be splayed open.
I think one of the worst horror movies I've seen in recent years was Alien vs Predator: Requiem, for many reasons. First and foremost, though, it screwed up the characteristics of the Predator race (lots of killing without honour) and tried too desperately to link in with the first Alien movie (the ship that carried the Alien eggs is suggested to have been of Predator origin). It also featured far too much needless grotesquery - the oral impregnation with Aliens of the women in the hospital's maternity wing by the hybrid 'Predalien' being an image that will stick with me for far too long.
Perhaps horror movies have the same problem as genre television: the new proponents are those who have grown up watching that genre, and understanding its tricks, but not quite understanding how it's put together and made to work.
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