As we draw closer to the festive season, you would be forgiven for thinking that the majority of cinema viewers are paying to see euphoric scenes of snow and red nosed reindeers.
In reality, film audiences of today are fascinated with themes slightly more sinister. Hollywood is leading the way with a series of blockbuster films, the latest being the Strause brothers, Skyline: where an extraterrestrial force threatens to kill mankind. Film producers and directors are all battling it out to create the most elaborate scenes, saturated with special effects depicting the world’s end.
From dramatic climate change to the end of the world predicted by the Mayan civilisation in 2012, Hollywood simply cannot get enough of death and destruction. Humanity is obsessed with the concept of fear of the unknown. Like any box office hit, humanity is left in the dark wondering what will happen at the end but compelled to keep watching and waiting for the ultimate answers.
The demands of the wider audience dramatically change the structure and style of films produced. Today’s audience want to be shocked by what they see. Hollywood, therefore, provides that shock factor. Saw 3-D and Paranormal Activity to name but two recent, and altogether disturbing, films rely almost solely on graphic scenes designed to satisfy this innate urge to have morbidity and destruction thrown at our face. Literally.
Hollywood and its audience cannot seem to resist films where death seems to be the driving force of the action. Are these pseudo masochistic ideals are becoming more prominent in the mind patterns of society because we are constantly faced with them streaming out of the film industry? Or, more uncomfortably to imagine, is it the film industry being influenced by society, marketing their films to appease our own sense of fascination with the moribund?
By: Alice Rose Palmer
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