By Scott Roxborough. Europe Bureau Chief. Dutch director Tom Six had a dream. He wanted to make a movie. A movie about a psycho German doctor who kidnaps unsuspecting tourists and sutures them together, mouth to anus, to create a man-made arthropod. Six made his movie. The Human Centipede was one of the sickest, scariest films of Six is sick β seriously. In Inside, fellow Frenchman Alexandre Bustillo took a pregnant woman and unleashed Beatrice Dalle, armed with tailor shears, knitting needles and whatever else she lays her hands on, determined to claim the unborn child.
But Europe, whose cinema is better known for costume drama than corroded corpses, is scaring the hell out of us. That might be about to change. The average U. The studio remake machine has already chomped up and spit out U. The Twilight producers have signed on to remake Marytrs. And when a U. Whether European horror proves a game-changer or a bloody flash in the pan remains to be seen.
Those are decent numbers for small, independent films, but not enough β yet β to convince the industry that the Europeans are here to stay. A more interesting question might be, why now? Why is Europe driving so many horror auteurs to rethink the genre while Hollywood remains trapped in that past?
The first is economic: The market for European art house has been in decline for the past 10 years. The gutting of the mini-majors has meant the U. But with horror, a European director can reach an international audience. I mean, so what if Dead Snow is in Norwegian? He makes his disturbing avant-garde movie. And throws in a few zombies. Thomas Alfredson took that approach when he adapted the Swedish novel Let the Right One In , a film already being hailed as a modern classic by many critics.
The book and film tell a very personal story about growing up in a desolate, despairing suburb near Stockholm during the s. Both are rooted in a gritty, kitchen-sink reality familiar to fans of traditional European drama. For horror fans, Let the Right One In was a revelation. In the U. Producer Brad Fuller of Platinum Dunes, which delivered the reboots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre , Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th , among others, admits that a lack of fresh stories is driving the American mania for horror remakes.
