Jayson

Horror has long been fertile ground for storytelling that extends beyond the boundaries of the shimmering edges of the silver screen. It’s no secret as to why. If you can encompass the crowd in a real life mystery the horror can become real, leaving the audience with a muted, buzzing discontent they carry home with them and discuss on smoke breaks at work. Though, I’m not quite sure we’ve seen a story quite like this.

Perhaps one of the most important things a film should be is compelling. It’s a word that film critics love to throw around and at first glance could easily be dismissed as hollow, gobbledygook jargon. After all, it’s easy to view it as simply an overly complicated synonym for “watchable”, after all there’s plenty of terrible films that fill that mold. However, when you really drill down what makes a film compelling is more than that. Does it leave you with a feeling of mystery, visual panache and wonder?

There is a thin line between mystery and utter incomprehensibility. Often times a film seems bent on leaving the themes to be parsed by the viewer, peeling back the onion to get a pungent whiff of its artistic meat beneath its arid membrane. This can create a more memorable experience as the viewer is forced to assimilate these ideas themselves and leave them to resonate long after the film has ended. Other films, as with Necrofobia, you peel back the onion and find there is nothing inside.