Why do you guys cover some movies—particularly in the horror genre—and not others?
That was essentially the question Ethan had for us recently. He wrote into Plugged In and asked:
There's a couple of movies that came into theaters (one in 2003 and the other in 2005), namely House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. I just wanted to know why there aren't any reviews of them on your website. At first I thought about how you figured any parent should know not to let their kids see it, that you'd just be stating the obvious, but then your reviews for Saw and Rob Zombie's Halloween came out, and I became confused. I'm not entirely asking for a review of either movie, but I am wondering why Saw and Halloween and The Strangers and not 1000 Corpses or Devil's Rejects?
Ethan, that’s a very good question, and the simple answer is this:
Horror movies scare me. And my editor gets sick of me asking for combat pay.
I’d rather avoid horror movies if at all possible, and I’m not alone. Most of my fellow Plugged In-erites would rather sit through a whole season of The Smurfs than review Saw XXXIII. We really believe that watching too much of this stuff isn’t great for anyone—even us. And so we’re always more tempted to drop a middlin’ horror flick from our review roster than, say, a family comedy.
Why review them at all, you ask? Well, because people watch them, of course—even our very discerning readers. Informally, we’ve found that 80% of our readers go to R-rated films on occasion, and we can’t assume that Saw will never be among them.
So it’s actually kind of rare for us to skip one. And if we do, we usually have a good reason. Sometimes it’s because the horror film in question didn’t have a very wide release. House of 1000 Corpses, which started its theatrical run quite small and never got above 1,000 screens, likely fell into this category. Sometimes it’s because we’re short-staffed or in the midst of a packed movie-review week: The Devil’s Rejects, which did have a pretty wide release, was probably a casualty of this.
And, to tell the truth, those films came out years ago, and we’re simply watching more movies these days—we set a record for films reviewed last year—which makes it all the more likely that even lower profile horror flicks will get covered. We want to give you, the reader, as much information about any film that might be coming to your local multiplex. And, personal preferences aside, we’ll do whatever we can to make that happen.
Thanks, Ethan, for the note. Sorry we don’t have a review of House of 1000 Corpses for you. But Saw VII? You can count on seeing something from us on that one. Unfortunately.
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