Die, Yuppies, Die!

While I love a good horror jolt as much as the next person, why is it that many horror films coming out these days are of the "get yourself in a bad situation, then die slowly and painfully, until you're dead" type? I ask this, because I've just seen the trailer of yet another one, called "The Canyon." Yes, folks, you heard it here first: the Grand Canyon is a deadly wilderness of fear, terror, snakes and wolves. You're gonna die if you don't follow the rules, and maybe even if you do.

So, what have we had: "Deep Water" (death by accidental tourist abandonment); "The Descent" (death by poor cave choice and cannibals); "The Ruins" (death by carnivorous plants surrounded by multiple warning signs); "Turistas" (thanks for the liver); and so on, and so on.

While many real-life wilderness adventures are pretty grisly (the guy sawing his arm off with a Leatherman in order to not die of thirst and hunger whilst trapped by a big boulder is pretty harrowing), why do we have to continually invent stories of a) people behaving slightly stupidly, which leads to b) un- as well as necessary mutilations of various pretty young bodies, leading further to c) terrible death? Horror stories used to end with at least one person making it out alive, who then has to suffer for the rest of their lives with survivor guilt, but we don't have to watch that part... "28 Days Later" was an overall grim little movie, but it wasn't totally devoid of hope.

We're going to have slow grim death in a shopping mall one of these days, because a group of kids decide to throw a party in the shopping mall, get locked in, accidentally kill the security guard in a horrible escalator accident, and then slowly die of thirst and hunger over the next thirty-six hours (with one or two possibly trying to survive by eating the dead security guard) because the mall is - "Closed for Christmas."