A Year of Horror and Autonomy

To support what I am doing, go to www.patreon.com/ronkiplingwilliams, and become a member for only $2.99 a month. Thank you!

This is it. The end of 2022. Another year of being human under our belts.

We came out of the pandemic (public health officials state that we are not fully out of it yet), looked around and said, what the hell happened? It was almost like The Day After, the 1983 ABC television movie hit, where Dr. Russell Oakes played by Jason Robards is walking around Kansas City in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

I was hoping to look back on a very gratifying year of horror, and it was. Films like Barbarian, Men, Nope, Orphan: Frist Kill, Pearl, The Sadness, and X grabbed audiences’ attention, while films like Terrifier 2 were surprise hits.

The big exception was Halloween Ends, the highly anticipated blockbuster, which became a gross disappointment. I cannot recall another horror film in the last few years that failed to deliver in the way this movie did. As you may have heard by now if you did not see it, the franchise decided to kill off Michael Myers with absolutely no payoff. That is an extreme no-no, and like the village people in Frankenstein, fans were mad as hell.

This new crew, who should have taken the baton from Halloween creator John Carpenter, instead decided to focus on a completely different character, Cory, a strange and suspicious twenty something who one night after being thrown off a bridge by some bullies confronts Michael in a storm drain, and from that point on grows in darkness until he begins killing, with the help of his new masked friend, who just happens to be the one we all came to see, but received very little screen time.

This film, was attempting to demonstrate how evil can be influenced by dark forces, is not what fans asked for. What fans have been waiting with bated breath to see from the iconic 1978 film was how “The Shape” could come back more often that a cat’s nine lives after being killed in many creative ways? Was he the devil’s spawn? Was he a haunting spirit? Who was he? Instead, he is made into a utility by this other narrative, thrust into a short and pathetic battle between him and his sister and nemesis Laurie Strode, and then ceremoniously thrown into a meat grinder with the whole town watching.

It was a well-rounded piece of bad cinema, drawing ire from horror fans worldwide.

In my last post I talked about this very anticipated film being the highlight of Monster Mania. The buzz was almost deafening, and yet the film went out as – grudging murmurs. Though quite assuredly it won’t happen, fans are demanding a revision that will satisfy them. I am really curious to see how that franchise will be received the next Monster Mania. I’m quite sure the panel discussions will be lively with a plethora of sharp and detailed criticisms.

But that is the way things go when we rely upon corporate Hollywood to deliver us films that both make sense and are entertaining, while giving us something to chew on for years to come. 100 years after its inception, Hollywood has continued to descend into the formulaic madness, and it does not look like it will reverse course any time in the near future.

Meanwhile, the independents are doing great, their film projects resulting in highly creative, plausible, and meaningful entertainment. Scripts that routinely get killed in Hollywood are being made in alternative movie houses such as Dark Sky, A24, Twisted Pictures, and of course Blumhouse, which is joining forces with James Wan to really blow things up. Then you have Jordan Peele, who is doing it his way, and is having grand success. As I said in my previous post, when it comes to horror, this genre has outperformed all others in the last couple of years, and it is continuing to grow, and streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime are loving it.

This is such refreshing news, that Hollywood for decades has monopolized and suffocated any chance of people like you and I to make a film, to know that that horrifying era has ended. We don’t need to sing Public Enemy’s “Burn Hollywood Burn” any longer. It’s our time now.

Shout out to Chris Stuckmann, long time movie reviewer, author and short feature filmmaker. You can check out his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisStuckmann. Next year he is releasing his first full length feature film, Shelby Oaks. He did a Kickstarter campaign and raised almost $1.4 million for his film. The behind the scene experience begins in May 2023, and the film itself will be released in July. You will no longer be able to participate in his Kickstarter campaign, but you can pre-order the film, which I recommend: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/abkoontz/shelby-oaks-a-horror-feature-film-from-chris-stuckmann

That’s right. Just like Chris, you can have a vision, create a team, raise funds for your project, and produce your own film, and there are platforms for you to get it screened and streamed, and there are film festivals and conventions to immerse yourself and network.

There are a lot of people during the pandemic and afterward who decided to strike out on their own and engage in a full-time business. Building upon what has been happening the last couple of years, 2023 is going to be a great year for independent filmmaking, multi-media art production, and overall creativity. So, if you have that project you have been working on for years, get a group together, plan, and do it. There is no time like the present to make your vision become a reality.

Meanwhile, I will still be dancing with the unknown. I hope you will be too, because next to the day to day horrors we experience, this one is much more satisfying. See you next year.