Andy Ross | Arthouse horror

What genre is totally missing from this years awards? Horror. Understandable, since it carries the stigma (and sometimes stigmata) of the slasher pic. However, this year saw a wealth of visually innovative, and what I will call "arthouse" horror.

Donnie Darko
From Hell
Hannibal
Jeepers Creepers
The Others

What is it about these movies that keeps them from taking all the visual categories' nominations? Is it just their genre? If so, then the thinking among the cinematographers and visual effects supervisors in taking on these films must be that of loving the visual artistry. Becaus they're certainly not going to get the kind of awards that their non-horror colleagues recieve.

Eric Wittmershaus | Don't forget

I'd like to add The Devil's Backbone to that list, though it suffers from the double stigma of both being a foreign film and an arthouse horror film. I can't comment on those five because I missed them, though From Hell and Donnie Darko were on my list for a while. They didn't stick around long enough.

Sean Weitner | Chills

When I think of "arthouse horror," my mind immediately skips to The Exorcist, since William Friedkin was consciously melding New Wave filmmaking techniques to B-movies in order to make them A-movies. (It had already worked for him; The French Connection got Oscar props.)

Where'd it go? The slasher ghetto, for sure, because John Carpenter's Halloween left such a huge wake. Arthouse horror peeked its head up again earlier this decade — Coppola's Dracula, Branagh's Frankenstein and Jordan's Interview with a Vampire form an early-'90s clot — and is it back again? If it is, it's on the tails of The Sixth Sense, which proved that you can finesse in the supernatural without alienating mass audiences.

As far as nominations are concerned, well, yeah, From Hell and Hannibal are as slick as they come. (What last year was for Soderbergh and Zemeckis, this year is for Scott — two signature movies, both blockbusters.) But Oscar has always overlooked genre stuff, and it's not like those two movies were the crop's creamiest when it came to looking good, or that they were good enough movies to warrant that much consideration.

But what does it mean for audiences that arthouse horror is re-establishing itself? Well, horror has always drawn innovators — in our lifetimes, Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro (whose Cronos and Mimic predate The Devil's Backbone), Kathryn Bigelow, etc. — and you see that in something audacious like Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, which is more imaginative than five or six mediocre movies crammed together. Alejandro Amenabar of The Others is more in the M. Night Shyamalan school — lush storytelling with creepy undertones.

But that still dodges the question of what it means, and that's this, which I addressed some 14 months ago: The national cinema that has good horror movies reflects a national cinema that's at least healthy enough to be introspective. I'm not saying the pending release of Jason X is a barometer for the mental health of the zeitgeist, but a nation that can rally behind a protagonist facing demons translates somewhat to a nation that might be inclined to face its own demons. Glib horror reflects glibness, but the acute ache of, say, The Others is made especially transcendant and parable-like through its horror undertones.

Andy Ross | Although?

Don't you think that a national cinema with good horror represents a scared nation? A protagonist surrounded by demons translates to a nation surrounded by demons. Something like Hannibal or the upcoming Panic Room speaks more to a aura of impending doom than to one of introspection. And, that the innovative, ahead-of-the-mainstream arthouse guys are the first to notice that signals that it's on the rise.

Sean Weitner | A little fear is healthy

Well, I think they communicate foreboding. A little fear is healthy; the occasional reminder of our mortality is often a valuable wake-up call. Panic Room, I know, was a spec script written by David Koepp, and I don't know if we can call him one of popular cinema's great poets, exactly, but it's true that the artistry of blockbusters is being able to anticipate what the audience will respond to in the coming year.