Y2KRAP
Why Battlefield Earth, Blair Witch 2 and all those Mars movies make 2000 a year to forget.
      by Sarah Kendzior

"We have good reason to fear the unknown," proclaims -- what else -- those press notes to The St. Francisville Experiment, which seem more and more the defining key to understanding what has gone wrong in genre filmmaking. The thing is, we don't have good reason to fear the unknown. If anything, we should embrace it. The unknown -- small, offbeat films such as Ravenous, Stir of Echoes, The Blair Witch Project and eXistenZ -- has already shown how great it can be; the unlikely -- a Bruce Willis horror film directed by a newcomer, an intelligent sci fi cartoon for both kids and adults, a genre-defying achievement starring Keanu Reeves -- has triumphed; and even the predictable -- a gorgeous Tim Burton horror film, a visually stunning George Lucas fantasy -- has challenged audiences by pushing the boundaries of the genre just a little farther.

Can Cyclops save the world? Will we be too busy drooling to notice?

Sure, 1999 had its fair share of duds -- Wing Commander, Virus, Astronaut's Wife, Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, and, of course, that coup de grace of guano known as Bats -- but nowhere near as many as we will likely see this year, and I fail to see any indication that the innovation, creativity and passion displayed last year will be in evidence. There are certainly a few genre films to look forward to in 2000 -- Final Destination is good (although its reshot ending speaks volumes of the problems at hand), Pitch Black was better, American Psycho is excellent, and The Wisdom of Crocodiles, The Hollow Man, The Cell, The 6th Day, and Impostor look promising, if somewhat derivative.

But what we need is a Star Wars film, or some other monster of a movie to push things along. The X-Men is the closest thing we've got, and while debate runs high (and, generally, swaying towards the negative), it doesn't have that kind of overpowering presence that makes genre filmmakers go creative in an act of sheer rebellion -- or start jonesing to outdo Star Wars. Which is, of course, the bottom line of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, also known as Suck on this, Lucas!; opening in 2001, the series seeks to layeth the smackdown directly upon Jar Jar's candy ass, and anticipation for that film is high. You can see the results already in other ambitious 2001 genre projects as Steven Spielberg's A.I. and the Hughes brothers' From Hell, not to mention the first of the Matrix sequels.

And on to greener pastures: 2001's Lord of the Rings.

But for now, filmmakers remain complacent. With no strong competition looming ahead, they've taken it easy; having grown confident from the success of the past year, they aim for the lowest common denominator of taste to bring the highest of material fortune. You would think just the sheer increase in quality of recent films would be an inspiration, but instead it serves as a open invitation to greed and laziness. They've already aroused public interest -- why bother creating something challenging when sequels, ripoffs and other half-hearted efforts are just so much easier? We'll all see them anyway, out of idle hope. Mission to Mars grossed almost $30 million opening weekend, and $4.50 of it was mine.

The whole situation is reminiscent of 1979, when Alien, Dawn of the Dead, The Brood, and Phantasm revitalized the sci fi and horror genres. That year had its idiotic haunted house picture too (The Amityville Horror), and like 1999, was followed the next year by a string of second-rate moron movies: Terror Train, Prom Night, Friday the 13th, Battle Beyond the Stars, Superman II. They were a little better off -- 1980 also contained The Empire Strikes Back, The Shining and The Fog. No genre trend dominated 1980 more than the slasher film fueled by the 1978 success of Halloween; similarly, in 2000 we have six movies brought about directly by the 1996 success of Scream. But greater success, in Hollywood, seems to indicate a reciprocal reaction; we had more good movies last year than in 1979, so 2000 must, in turn, be even more tedious than 1980. History repeats itself in moviemaking too, only here they call them sequels, remakes, and ripoffs -- or, rather, "homage" and "coincidence" -- and learn nothing from the experience.

Genre filmmaking rides a fine line. It is so easy to move from the unsettlingly implausible to the laughably inane -- just ask John Travolta. But when sci fi and horror succeed, they tend to push the limits of human perception to new levels. I love a good drama or comedy just as much as anyone else, but genre movies, when done well, work the mind and the emotions like no other film can. In a genre that thrives on raw imagination, it is hard to be boring -- easy to be bad, sure, but that very badness generally comes from too much enthusiasm, not too little. (Ah-nuld trying to emote through the explosions in End of Days, for example, was positively endearing.) But lately I just don't sense the effort, and even the ones who do attempt to do something interesting -- like Final Destination -- bear quite blatantly the battle scars of ill-founded studio intervention. The problem with 2000 genre films is that no one even seems to try anymore, and it's a bad move for a genre whose passionate failures tend to be nearly as beloved as its established successes. This year, at least, genre filmmaking has lost its soul.

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