Oh that's lame, that's very, very lame

Well I should have seen it coming. Looks like the Black Christmas remake is going to suck. How, you ask, can I tell? Two things I saw in the trailer. For one, the voice of Billy is not very scary. Sounds run of the mill really. And (SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER) you learn the backstory of Billy. You know what? I don't want to know the backstory of Billy.

What makes movies scary is the unknown, the parts of the picture that are left black, the places you have to use your imagination. Movies like the Exorcist, Blair Witch, Session 9 and others leave enough open and hidden to creep you out. Once we learn what led to the scary events, they can be analyzed and understood. I prefer the shrieking terror of the unknown.

On the topic of scary, I was thinking the other day how few songs can tell a scary story. Love is obvs covered, and country and the blues do nicely with tragedy. Pop has the bildungsroman sort of tale down pat. And I guess Frank Black and Esquivel does scifi well. But what about a scary story? The only one I can think of is Nick Cave's Red Right Hand which nicely develops the feeling of growing doom.