Before we get started, let's get one thing out of the way. I know that for every movie that can be tagged as "new horror" or a genre-bending masterpiece, there is usually a predecessor that blazed the trail in relative obscurity. For every Halloween, there is a Peeping Tom before it. So I say to those who want to nitpick over the chronology of breaking ground, I say, "Quiet, you!"

Okay. For the next few moments, I'd like to look at some of the masters, their works, and why we shouldn't care anymore. Horror, it turns out, has a half-life. The stories that scared the bejeezus out of us as children rarely maintain the same terrors, and those classic flicks that kept us up at night in the early years are often nostalgic disappointments when we go to revisit them (I'm looking at you, Humanoids from the Deep). There are a handful that still hold up, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, which seems to defy the passing of time. Others, of course, like Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Jaws still frighten, but much of the enjoyment of watching these films has more to do with the craft and daring with which they were made than with any genuine thrills. I'm not frightened by Halloween these days, but I still love to watch that movie unfold.

When I hear that John Carpenter has a new movie in the pipe, I have to remind mysef that he is an elder statesman, at this point, a director who may still have some juice left in him, but I doubt that he's going to be shifting the paradigm of horror again. He did it with Halloween, certainly, launching the slasher clones that still echo in theaters today, and I would argue that The Thing is his true masterpiece, a movie that is so unrelenting in the last act that you almost have to prep a new viewer to expect the worst. Despite the Lovecraftian fun in "Cigarette Burns" from the Masters of Horror series, Carpenter is now, officially, old school. So is Wes Craven, so is Tobe Hooper, so is Romero, so are all the auteurs of the 1970s and 1980s who now should be retired to the Horror Hall of Fame, allowed to work to remind us of their former greatness, but no longer as relevant to the landscape of the new horror.

What is the new horror? I have no clue. It's yet to be defined, though we see some inklings of it. The home invasion films, such as Ils and The Strangers seems to be tapping into something, as are the new cinema verite entries such as Cloverfield and [Rec]. The sub-genre unfairly labeled 'torture porn,' may have run its course for the time being, but I don't think we've seen the last of it. If rumors of Martyrs are accurate, that may be the one that raises the bar on this terror. And despite the backlash against Eli Roth, there is something special about Hostel's xenophobic body horror that reminds me quite a lot of Cronenberg's unsettling style.

What lies ahead for the genre is a mystery, but horror should and must reflect its time. Halloween is terrifying to audiences of the 1970s, fresh from a wave of sexual liberation, then shown how a little hanky-panky can result in a wall-mount via a maniac's knife. There is plenty out in the culture to horrify us - loss of civil liberties, rampant and seemingly unstoppable consumerism, a world where the good will of our nation was thrown away by the most unpopular president, a world where terrorism of any stripe seems to be lurking in the not-too-distant future, environmental holocaust... the terrors are out there and they are real.

What will be the next wave of films to capitalize on our modern terrors? The field is wide open. As fans and supporters of the genre, though, we can look back and appreciate the work left by the old guard, but it's time to move on. There are new chills awaiting us.

environmental holocaust... the terrors are out there and they are real.

What will be the next wave of films to capitalize on our modern terrors? The field is wide open. As fans and supporters of the genre, though, we can look back and appreciate the work left by the old guard, but it's time to move on. There are new chills awaiting us.