By Quin
The internet has killed reference books. Who the heck would buy a dictionary or a thesaurus or an encyclopedia in 2015? If you have a question on anything factual all you have to do is google it or ask Siri; if you need more detailed information then you might just turn to Wikipedia. Oh, what I would have given to have Wikipedia when I was in high school. Even reference books on criticism are dwindling. As you could imagine, I love film review books. I love them! But now Roger Ebert is gone and Leonard Maltin announced his 2015 Movie Guide would be the last – and now that I think about it, we seem to be at about the second-to-last gasp of newspapers as we’ve always known them, so it looks like web reviews are going to be all we have pretty soon. Fortunately, for those still looking for a more current recourse that just so happens to focus squarely on the horror movies we live for, Scott Weinberg’s new eBook Modern Horrors: An A to Z of Horror Movie Reviews 2000-2015 will be a welcome addition to your digital book shelf. It’s also so comprehensive and often entertaining that you may even find yourself (swiping) reading it straight-through from binary cover to binary cover.
I must admit that for this review I didn’t do that. I figured the most useful way for me to review a film reference book would be to think of a title and look it up, read and repeat. But after doing this for hours, I am definitely going to go back and just start from the beginning and read every word. I certainly don’t agree with Scott Weinberg’s opinions all the time (or even most of the time) but he is a guy who has done his homework. He’s seen everything and his brain is full of all kinds of film knowledge and you can’t help but trust his opinion at least a little.
Just to give you an idea of how much area this book covers, there’s a review for both Jurassic Park 3 (2001) and Jurassic World (2015). Okay, maybe that’s an unimpressive example. How about Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) and The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence (2015)? Oh, you get the idea. But there are some great titles reviewed as well. He hits most of the important titles of the last fifteen years – you know what those are. Strangely missing are all three of the Ginger Snaps movies. He also missed some of my favorites of the last few years like the low-key, but eerily brilliant I Am A Ghost. Given that many of his reviews from his time with Fearnet are now nowhere to be found online since that site went kaput, it’s possible that some of the holes are probably lost forever. Which reminds me of something I used to hear constantly in the days of floppy discs, before we had the cloud – always back up your work.
Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “But I follow Scott Weinberg on twitter and I don’t think I can handle a whole book of his opinions.” I had this same thought as well. I do follow @scottEweinberg and he tweets all the damn time. I don’t know if he even sleeps. But here’s how I reconcile with this thought – I am still following him. Sure, he can be smug and he comes off as a bit of a know-it-all, and I could always unfollow him. But I don’t. Why? Because I actually care to read what he thinks about these movies. Part of my own critiquing process quite often involves me wondering, “What does Scott Weinberg have to say about this movie?” Partly because I don’t want to regurgitate the same stuff. Perhaps that’s a bit too inside baseball; as a critic, it’s important to have your own, untainted opinions, but it’s also good to read what the other guys and gals are writing.
Scott Weinberg once had a Twitter conversation with Ti West over the term “slow burn.” West’s contention was that it’s a lazy way of describing his style of film making, but what West didn’t take into consideration is that film theory has its own set of terms and “slow burn” is a perfectly valid way of explaining how new indie horror films unfold. West and Weinberg seem to be on friendly terms, so this disagreement was actually a pretty level-headed conversation. Weinberg has reviewed Ti West’s most recent films, all positively. On the flip-side, Weinberg has a history of rubbing filmmakers the wrong way. This book of reviews is missing an infamous review of Weinberg’s for a low-budget movie called The Perfect House. To be fair, the film is terrible, but it’s an unfortunate example of how Scott Weinberg can be a bit of a troll feeder as well as a bit of a troll himself. Google it if you really want all of the juicy details.
But I’m not here to review Scott Weinberg as a person. I feel a film critic’s reviews should be what they’re known for. It’s best if they remain impartial without getting too chummy or too aggressively personal with filmmakers. I see Scott crossing this line a bit, but fortunately this book leaves all of that out. This book is all about the movies and one guy’s thoughts on these movies. Which was surprising and refreshing.
I am of the opinion that starting with the year 2000 and continuing through the foreseeable future we are in the midst of a horror renaissance. Weinberg’s book couldn’t have come at a better time. Throughout film history, horror has been cheap to make, but now it’s getting easier to make and it looks better than ever. It’s nice to have people like Scott Weinberg to point you in the right direction. I trust him and I think you should too.
Modern Horrors: An A to Z of Horror Movie Reviews 2000-2015 is available now.