Thursday, October 11, 2012

Please Stop, M. Night Shyamalan (aka Scary Movies Suck)

In 2011, up-and-coming actress Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress in a Lead Role for her work in Winter's Bone. The film itself was a critical hit, earning 94% on rottentomatoes.com. Lawrence went on to star in The Hunger Games (2012), which turned her into one of the sought-after young actresses of today. Many anticipated her next move, what would her next project be? The answer to that question is an unfortunate House at the End of the Street. It bombed, earning 12% on RT.
About a year ago, little sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Elizabeth, took her first step towards fame with the hit Indie film, Martha Marcy May Marlene (90%, RT). She was nominated for several best actress and breakthrough performance awards and, again, people asked the same question they did with Lawrence. In 2012, Olsen's next film, Silent House, was released; it earned 41% on RT.
What makes these young actresses want to go from acting nominations, award shows, nights of glamor and celebrities, and people you don't know handing you glasses filled with expensive wine (that probably happens, right?) to running from demons in forests at night in the absolute worst scary movies? Nine out of ten of theses that are released do awful critically, if not slightly better than that in theaters.
Maybe these actresses think scary movies will jump-start their careers as stars (in 2013, actress Anna Hutchison will have starred in three scary movies out of four movies total. By the same year, Sara Paxton will have starred in six scary movies just since 2009. Even Chloe Grace Moretz, an established fifteen-year-old actress, has starred in ten scary movies since 2005.) but don't Best Actress nominations already do that? I hardly doubt that these movies were the only ones Lawrence and Olsen could get.
Go back a few decades and, yeah, scary movies could've made you famous. That's only because, back then, these types of movies were scarce and original.
Take Jennifer Aniston. Her acting career was launched after playing Tory Redding in Leprechaun in 1993; since then she hasn't starred in another scary movie. Jamie Lee Curtis had the same thing happen to her with 1978's Halloween. Sandra Bullock has only starred in one horror film since the beginning of her career in 1987 and Meryl Streep, none, since hers a decade earlier. Yet these actresses have won countless awards and earned millions of dollars...weird.
This is the way to go: not starring in several scary movies over the course of a few years, or at all. Nowadays, all of these movies are about vampire-hunters or exorcisms or it's a Paranormal Activity sequel.
Hopefully Lawrence and Olsen will get this. I mean, Lawrence has TIFF-hit Silver Linings Playbook coming out soon, along with the much-anticipated, Catching Fire in 2013. Olsen is now starring in the independent film written and directed by Josh Radnor, Liberal Arts (now 68%, RT).
Now we just have to work on Chloe Grace Moretz.

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