'Horror' Movie or 'Horrible' Movie?

I watched the movies Valentine and House of 1000 Corpses today. I not a real big fan of the slasher flicks in general, and these two movies are great examples of why.

Valentine is a story about a group of friends haunted by an incident, as well as a person, from their past that ends up murdering most of them and a bunch of other innocent people in the meantime. (Plot courtesy of I Know What You Did Last Summer.) And like any other slasher film, the audience is supposed to try and figure out who the masked and mysterious murderer is before he/she kills the entire cast, being misdirected the whole time by accusations and assumptions from every character about who they think the killer is.

This film, though, is unique (at least to my knowledge) in that it has a double-twist at the end. You see, once the main character has determined who the killer is (so you know that person can't actually be the killer), the 'twist' happens: the killer is finally vanquished by the thought-to-be-killer and is shown to be, via a very suspenseful mask off-ripping scene (Device courtesy of Scooby Doo, Where Are You?.), one of the group of friends!

Da-da-dun!

But, Valentine doesn't stop there. No, it adds a second twist in which the person who the main character thought was the killer (now hold on to your buckets) actually is the killer!

Da-da-dun!

I can't wait until a slasher movie comes out that has the incredible triple twist in which the thought-to-be-killer kills the killer, but then turns out to be the killer himself, but when he pulls off the mask he finds that he's killed the main character who was, in fact, himself!

DA-DA-DUN!

As for House of 1000 Corpses, Rob Zombie needs to stick to making mediocre music instead of really bad movies. The plot: a group of friends (gee, there's a lot of them in horror movies) that gets held hostage in a creepy house by a freakin' weird-ass family (Story courtesy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) I use the term plot loosely here, because, try as I may, I just couldn't find one.

While House of 1000 Corpses was basically plotless, it did at least have a unique style that appealed to me. However, that wasn't enough to save this movie. I also use the term movie loosely. This was more like a series of random scenes about torture methods (granted, with the same characters in most scenes) than a movie about anything in particular. It had stunning (and appalling) visuals, but shiney and shimmering (or in this case, bloody and gruesome) objects won't distract me from a poor story.

The actors did great (except the two girls who, for most of the movie, I couldn't tell apart) despite a poorly written script. It had uninteresting characters (except for the funny but seemingly unnecessary Captain Spaulding) that lacked motivation. Yeah, sure, the main characters were scared and the villains were creepy, but if I don't know why they do what they do, then I'm sure as hell not going to care what they do.

Overall, my faith in the slasher film genre was not restored by either of these two movies. Fortunately, though, it hasn't deminished either.