What happened to horror movies?

I'm sick of horror movies.\nThere, I finally said it. Nothing is scary anymore and I am saddened by this current state of non-horrific affairs. \nI think the last time I was actually scared in a movie theater was when I saw "The Exorcist" re-release back in 2000. Why was I scared? The situations were horrifying, the dialogue was disgusting and the movie was just plain creepy, all reasons why others seems to consider it a horror classic. \nLast weekend I made a trip to the local movie theater with high hopes for "High Tension," a film that was supposed to look back at the old slasher and women revenge flicks of the late '70s, but the end results were just pathetic. Why? Well...\nSpoiler alert.\nIn "High Tension," when Marie (Cécile De France) finally kills the psychopath bent on murdering her best friend Alex (Maïwenn), Alex flips out and tries to kill Marie because the entire time Marie and the killer were the same person. Huh? What? I wish I could explain more on it but the movie ends with Marie in a mental institute mumbling and no explanation is given as to how she was the killer and the girl's best friend all along. It all makes about as much sense as Donald Kaufman's plot for "The 3" in "Adaptation." \nI guess what I'm sick of is horror movies that create this huge psychological bullshit mess, such as "High Tension" or "Identity," that makes the general audience think "Oh my God, I never saw that ending coming! It makes me wanna go home and discuss it on internet message boards!" Movies like that leave me insulted and annoyed.\n"High Tension" was supposed to homage slasher and women revenge flicks from the '70s? It doesn't come close. Movies like Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left" and Meir Zarchi's "I Spit on Your Grave" are horrifying because of natural, realistic elements, not some multiple personality disorder. Take "The Last House on the Left" where a girl is brutally raped and murdered and her family is held hostage only until they decide to avenge their daughter's demise. It's horrifying watching what a group of individuals can do to just one person. When the killer Krug Stillo (David A. Hess) rapes a girl and then carves his name into her chest? That is one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen on celluloid. \nOK, so maybe that reference was a bit over-the-top, but take David Lynch's "Blue Velvet." Dennis Hopper and his gang of corrupt cronies are just normal men terrorizing small town America. They aren't some supernatural force or psycho that keeps coming back for six more sequels; they're just regular men who go down after a bullet but their demeanor is frightening. \nSometimes the most horrifying thing in a movie is what occurs on a daily basis. Murder, rape, the suffering of an individual, there's nothing fake about it. Go watch "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and tell me you don't get the chills just watching Henry (Michael Rooker) when he's watching his prey or even worse looking directly at you on the screen. \nI remember when the remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" came out in 2003 and I saw it because I had to know how one could re-envision one of the scariest movies ever. When re-envision equals buckets of gore, overly sensationalized violence and turning an entire town into bloodthirsty rednecks, it isn't as effective as the original. \nThe weapons don't need to be excessive either. The staple weapon for a lot of the slasher flicks was the straight razor and you'd be surprised how frightening of a weapon it can be. The straight razor always popped up in Italian horror maestro Dario Argento's films such as "Tenebre" and "The Stendahl Syndrome" to name a few, and it worked wonders. Even better, take Argento's film "Opera," where a murderer is killing off opera house employees and performers while stalking the female lead. He even ties her up and makes her watch while he kills certain people. How does he do it? He takes a piece of tape lined with sharp pins and places them right beneath her eyes so when her eyelids come down she cuts them open. It's truly terrifying, but isn't that the point? \nAnd this recent flood of Asian horror remakes? All these "Ring" movies and "The Grudge" and "Dark Water?" It's all crap. Just because weapons are reoccurring doesn't mean the killer has to be the same. The American horror franchise is based around the big three: Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers. All these Asian movies have are creepy girls with long black hair running around the place and attacking people. It isn't even scary anymore, but just boring and unoriginal. \nIf you want to make a horror movie, make one that plays on the real fears of an individual. That doesn't mean make a movie with 20 scenes of rape and violent murder, but make one where it is something every person fears. Not everyone is afraid of hockey mask-wearing monsters with machetes but people fear muggers and criminals and serial killers. Make the antagonist be mentally disturbed but not psychologically impossible. \nPeople can only be afraid of the horror found in movies for so long, but they'll always be afraid of what can actually happen to them.