Looking over the modern-day horror movie landscape, you'll likely notice a couple of things. For one thing, following in the footsteps of past 21st-century horror movie trends like torture porn, remakes of classic horror fare and found-footage films, a large share of American horror films are aping the style of James Wan's Insidious and The Conjuring movies by placing an emphasis on paranormal villains, antique items being cursed and deriving scares from unsettling sound work. You know what else you might notice? A couple of horror movies icons seem to be M.I.A. not just this year but for most of the 21st century despite being omnipresent for multiple decades directly prior to the 2000's.
The likes of Freddy Kruger, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, particularly Freddy and Jason, were doing sequels on a regular basis, even sometimes releasing movies annually in the case of Jason. They were the kings of fear, haunting nightmares of millions across the globe. Then, in the early 1990's, these horror movie titans vanished, with Jason taking a nine year long hiatus in 1993 and Freddy also taking a nine-year long break the year after that. Leatherface never quite became as big of a franchise as Freddy or Jason but he too hung up his chainsaw for an extended respite while Michael actually got to do regular sequels into the 21st century until the 2002 movie Halloween: Resurrection was followed up by a divisive remake that spawned a single follow-up.
How could such popular characters vanish from the American horror movie scene for so long? Like many things in Hollywood, it turned out to be a confluence of factors that sent these horror icons scuttling into the shadows. For one thing, the box office of these franchises was on the wane as early as the first few years as the 1990's. Freddy Kruger's fifth movie, The Dream Child, sank below the $25 million domestic box office mark as early as 1989 while none of the four Friday The 13th sequels produced in the 20th century after 1985 exceeded $20 million domestically. The fact that Michael Myers was able to wring $55 million out of his 1998 movie Halloween: H20 is a primary reason why that particular character was able to endure into the 20th century. Otherwise though, the dwindling box office receipts ensured that the individual franchises Freddy and Jason starred in were getting put on ice.
Something else that hurt these once-untouchable horror movie properties is how the horror movie scene drastically got upended in the last few years of the 20th century. After years of audiences cheering on Freddy and Jason as they sliced and diced up teenagers, the likes of Scream and especially The Blair Witch Project echoed the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween movies by turning the spotlight onto the normal people who were victims of crazed maniacs or supernatural forces. We were supposed to be just as terrified of The Blair Witch as the characters, not hoping it would kill the petrified documentary crew that had gotten lost in the woods.
In the 21st century, these big horror movie heavyweights demonstrated they still had some cache by headlining gimmick films like Freddy vs. Jason (which actually made solid bank) and by debuting new versions of these characters in a large assortment of horror movie remakes, most of them produced by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes company. The default outcome for these horror movie remakes was that they would have large opening weekends but generate mixed to vehemently negative word of mouth that make the films extremely frontloaded, particularly in regards to that 2009 Friday The 13th remake. Some cash was made, but none of these films garnered much audience goodwill or made an impact on pop culture beyond the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake ushering in further remakes.
Where are these guys now? Well, Jason Voorhees has had a new movie stuck in development hell forever, with Paramount Pictures, back in February 2017, scrapping a remake directed by Brick Eisner just a month before it was set to start filming reportedly due to the box office failure of Rings. As for Freddy Kruger, nearly two years ago we got reports of another Nightmare On Elm Street remake being on the table but we've heard zero movement on the project since then. Leatherface is set to star in his fourth 21st-century film next month with Leatherface which will debut on DirectTV before getting a minuscule theatrical release while Michael Myers will returns to the silver screen with a reboot helmed by David Gordon Green. It's also worth noting that fellow 80's and 90's horror movie icons Pinhead and Chucky are stuck in the land of direct-to-video sequels. Pinhead has starred in six direct-to-video movies in the 21st century, with the two most recent ones being super cheap films produced solely so the producers behind said films can maintain the rights to Hellraiser while Chucky's most recent direct-to-video sequel got decent reviews.
Is there any chance any of these guys will get to return to their status as horror movie heavyweights in the modern day American horror movie landscape? Maybe but it would require these franchises to be willing to take bold artistic risks and actually spend time on good characters and scares instead of doing what too many modern American horror movies do and just rely on jump scares and maybe also brand name recognition. The likes of Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare On Elm Street aren't just scary movies, they're also great pieces of cinema. I haven't seen any of the sequels these guys starred in back in the 80's and 90's (I actually haven't seen any of the Friday The 13th films either) but my more horror-obsessed friends refer to most of them, sans a few like the apparently super homoerotic Nightmare On Elm Street 2, in derisive terms, ditto for the remakes.
Imagine if you made films as well-made, bold, thoughtful and scary as the original films though, especially since something like Get Out proves it's very much possible to make such a horror film in the modern day world. Because of that, I say there's still potential in telling compelling and terrifying stories with these horror movie icons and I'm hopeful upcoming projects like that David Gordon Green Halloween movie (which is being penned by Danny frigging McBride!) can demonstrate some of that potential. Sure, the likes of Freddy and Jason have been basically making appearances in American cinema in either stunt roles or cash-grab remakes, but I say there's still some creative life left in these guys yet. After all, isn't the whole deal with these slasher movie baddies is that they're always coming back from the dead?
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