Post the Second: Fear and Loathing in Southern Missouri

Let's talk about fear for a moment. Or rather, the utter lack of it in modern entertainment.

When's the last time an actually scary movie came out? I can't really remember one.

I understand what it comes down to, the bottom line, and a lot of people just don't like to be actually white knuckles and edge of the seat scared, but it feels like a lot of directors don't understand any more what makes a movie scary.

A monster, villain, or eldritch abomination tends to lose a lot of its edge once you explain it. Classical example would be, say, Lovecraft. A lot of his creations were - in-universe - utterly unknowable whilst retaining sanity, and were far scarier because of it. Of course, cultural drift makes it hard to take some of his stories seriously (Rats in the Walls springs to mind, with the narrator's cat being named Nigger-man) but the ones that aren't are no less terrifying.

For an alternate take while still knowing the base concept, Stephen King. Say what you will about his endings, he understands that monsters are more unsettling when you don't know what the hell they are... and doesn't like to keep them that way. (See: IT, Crimson King)

I don't know. It seems like it should be relatively easy to make a decent horror movie that doesn't try to make the villain sympathetic, or explain him entirely.