Forgive the salty language in my title tonight, Vault Dwellers, but your host for all things horror is biting mad. Why, you ask? Well, it might have something to do with the newly announced winners of the 2009 Saturn Awards, handed out mere hours ago. And the fact that the winner for Best Horror Film was.... Hellboy II: The Golden Army.Hellboy II: The Golden Army. It's official, people. The Saturns no longer have any credibility when it comes to horror! I'm calling it--June 25, 2009, 3:01 A.M.
Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Hellboy. Guillermo del Toro is a mad genius, and his latest Hellboy sequel brilliantly transitioned the series from Lovecraft to Tolkien. Enjoyed every second of it, as did my pint-sized protege/son. An underrated movie that deserved more box office love than it got.
But Hellboy II is barely horror-related, being more of a fantasy action flick than anything else. Sure there are monsters and whatnot, but horror? I'm all for stretching the definition of horror. But not this year. Not when there were so many unbelievable true horror films put out there.
Have we forgotten so soon? The year 2008 gave us The Midnight Meat Train. Eden Lake. Martyrs. The Strangers. Repo! The Genetic Opera. The Ruins. And what was for my money the finest film of the entire year hands down, horror or otherwise, Let the Right One In. And you're going to tell me that the movie that wins out is a fantasy/action/comedy with some vague horror-ish elements thrown in? This is buffoonery of the highest order.The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films has really dropped the ball here. I mean, there have been Saturns bestowed that have made me scratch my head, and wonder if it was even necessary to give them out to anyone at all, but this one is beyond head-scratching. This one is just negligent.
The film that should've won, Let the Right One In, was instead given the patronizing Best International Film award. But I say, why couldn't it have won both? Hell, I would've been satisfied had ANY of the flicks mentioned two paragraphs up walked away with the prize. But it's almost as if the Academy went out of its way to reward a movie that was furthest from horror out of anything nominated.
Past winners have hinted to me that this organization is out of touch, but this is the clincher. These people wouldn't know good horror if it jumped up from behind and ate their brains out.
And that means only one thing, as far as I'm concerned. That's right, it means that the Cyber-Horror Awards now have more credibility than the Saturns when it comes to our genre of choice! And to that I say, huzzah! I had a blast doing them the first time, and I'm already looking forward to next year's awards. And now that I know that the Saturns are worthless, the pressure is really on...