What are generally not screened for reviewers – and despite the title inflation, we are talking about movie reviewers, not film critics – are the lower end of the Hollywood output, horror movies and lowbrow comedies, films which are, in essence, being dumped into theatres with a strong ad campaign hoping for a good opening weekend to hype the video release, as that window gets ever smaller.
One of the arguments heard from the studio flacks is, “These are the sort of movies where the audience doesn’t read reviewers anyway, so why spend the money.” This of course, insults the audience (“fans of horror movies are too dumb to read”). So far, in Toronto in 2007, there has not been a single major studio horror film screened in time for reviews to appear.
You might want to consider what this means next time a horror movie opens on Friday and there are no reviews. I went to see Dead Silence last weekend (no screening), which wasn’t bad, as I got to see friends there. At the end of the movie, three people sitting a couple of rows ahead got up and one of them said “Well, that was disappointing.” What the hell did they expect? This is an unreviewed horror movie whose trailer makes it very clear that it’s about scary puppets.
