Top 10 Reoccurring Horror Movie Gimmicks

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Top 10 Reoccurring Horror Movie Gimmicks Posted: 23 Oct 2011 12:30 AM PDT Horror movies are rarely ground-breaking, and when they are, it just leads to a thousand formula-dependent duplicates riding on the successful tailcoats of the predecessor. Some of these fads have come and gone, but some are relentless and proving to be a market of not fully-exhausted wealth. When they are bled dry, we might see a new, good idea come along, but such moments are few and far between; otherwise the horror industry, like anything else in Hollywood, is just an overgrown recycling center with far too many unsorted knife blades. Here are the top ten gimmicks that we see time and again in the palest parts of the Fear Factory. 10 The Camcorder Conceit Examples include The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. It hasn’t quite been overused, except to say that the Paranormal Activity franchise has milked the gimmick into a part three. It was this conceit that made a movie with a budget in the mere thousands extremely successful, as was the case with Blair Witch, raking in about $2.5 million at the box office. This idea of “lost footage” is admittedly creepy – just like any “real” footage of poltergeists or Big Foot is scary. Feigning that an elaborate Hollywood production is truth via this kind of trickery adds a dimension of false realism wherein which this isolated happening could just as easily happen to you.

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