One of the things I really like about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds is that it had the potential to be an entirely different movie. The entire first half of the movie plays more like a screwball romantic comedy rather than a horror movie. And because of that it feels a little bit more real when something actual does go wrong. Too often in movies there is very little setup before the main event happens. Some try harder than others, but for the most part you're just waiting for the new ice age or aliens to come busting in. In doing that it's a lot more difficult to care about the characters because they are just props for the action rather than fully formed people experiencing something. Horror movies tend to be even worse about this because more and more there is a kill before the credits start rolling. Someone possibly famous meets up with a grisly end, which is supposed to prepare us for what's eventually going to happen to all the other characters in the movie. So by the time you meet Perky Girl #2 and Douchebag #5 you already are trying to figure out how exactly they're going to get butchered.
With The Birds the movie could have kept going without ever actually having the birds attack. They didn't even need to change the title of the movie since the first meeting of the two main characters centers around a pair of love birds. So when the first attack happens it's actually kind of jolting because you almost forget you're watching a horror movie. Now you get a sense that these real characters are going through something unexpected. Even Full Metal Jacket did this to some degree. The entire first half of the movie is about boot camp. You know that it's eventually going to be a war movie, but in order to get to that you have to experience what they experience. For them boot camp was its own kind of hell. The actual war was just a change of scenery. Granted most people feel that you could stop watching the movie after Private Pyle takes care of things in the bathroom. The rest of the movie is a pretty standard war movie. The only difference is that you've been with the main character through some horrific events before he even went to Vietnam. Few movies are able to successfully pull this off though. More often than not any attempt to do so comes off like a movie is confused about its own type. Is this a romantic comedy with some paranormal elements or a paranormal movie with some romantic elements? Ultimately it should be a movie about real people, the backdrop could be really anything as long as you believe the people aren't just caricatures.
Sometimes I wish you could remove the titles from a movie. Imagine going into War of the Worlds without the initial narration and titles. It's some movie about Tom Cruise and his two bratty children. Extend that a bit, showing that they are in fact people living a life not entirely predetermined by the fact that aliens are going to burst from the ground in about fifteen minutes. Then when the storm comes it's a little more shocking. Hey wait, there are aliens in this movie?! Love it or hate it, the show Lost did a good job of that right off the bat. When I first started watching it I had no idea that it was going to have all this mystery. I thought it was just a movie about people who survived a plane crash on a tropical island, which in itself could be a pretty interesting concept. Then all of a sudden there is something huge and probably monstrous moving through the jungle. What was already interesting just got even more so because something completely unexpected happened.
In today's age of nearly instant information it's difficult to hide anything from moviegoers. I remember as a kid my parents decided to take me to what was supposed to be a cute holiday movie. This teenager gets a strange little creature as a pet and cuteness would ensue. That movie was Gremlins. The previews made it seem like the whole movie would be about a boy and his mysterious little friend, kind of like E.T. When the mogwais started to change into gremlins the parents in the audience started to get worried. This was not the cute holiday movie they had been promised. Then creatures are attempting to chew faces and getting blown up in microwaves. As a kid I thought this was awesome because I had no idea it was coming, that and I was a kid so the grosser the better. Gremlins or a movie like Gremlins couldn't come out today and have the same impact. The internet, the movie trailers, and even the MPAA pretty much tell you everything that you're going to see before you see it. I know it must be hard to try and promote movies today without giving away the store. Here's a hint though, you don't try to convince a person to watch a porn by showing the climatic gang bang scene in the trailer. You do that then they have no reason to pay for it. Then again today's audience have attention spans that can be measured in nanoseconds so if you don't grab them quick, you might not get them at all.
The other issue with today's movie is that there is a big push to stick with brand recognition rather than something new. You say "Harry Potter" and people will know exactly what to expect. You say "Percy Jackson" and unless you read the books, you have no idea what that's supposed to be except that it's probably a Harry Potter ripoff. It just goes downhill from there. Imagine if they tried to make Star Wars today. Would it be successful when you've got so many other well-known science fiction franchises? So when you go into a Saw movie you know that no matter who you meet no matter the circumstances, you're probably going to see them caught in some elaborate trap that threatens to dismember them. Sometimes that's what you want though. You don't go watch a Saw movie for a thought provoking look at the horror genre. You go to see the new fancy trap that rips the skin off someone's face and feeds it to them. I think that's why a movie like Audition is so disturbing. You may have been told it's a horror movie, but the first half lulls you into thinking one thing and then smacking you with another. I guess the question really comes down to if people want to be blindsided by a movie's true intention. I'm sure a lot of people would rather know what they're getting into because there is a bit of safety and comfort knowing that you're going to watch a monster in space movie. I just wonder how much more effective the plot would be if you didn't see it coming. It's a lot like life in that regard.
