As a badass freelance entertainment journalist, I have to keep an eye out for trends–seriously, it’s part of the job!–and I think I’ve found one that’s downright disturbing.

Namely, the retraction of the horror genre.

Now, for the last roughly six years or so, horror movies were coming out fast and furious.  The theatres were getting in a new one every month, and in some cases maybe even two a month.  The video stores were having a heyday in terms of horror movies–it wasn’t uncommon to see as many as TEN new titles in a week, and a week with fewer than five was a noteworthy event and often a prelude to one of those bigger weeks.

But now, looking at the release calendar over at horror-movies.ca reveals only about twenty three movies slated for DVD release through January of 2009.  Knowing that the horror-movies.ca calendar isn’t always the most…thorough…I followed up with the calendars over at Upcoming Horror Movies. They only have fifteen slated through January of 2009.

The theatres proved little better–only nine theatrical releases slated through March of 2009 on horror-movies.ca, and ten for Upcoming Horror Movies, with some differences between the two.  UHM, for example, is counting the After Dark Horrorfest in theatrical releases as it’ll be out in January for some reason this year.

There is some potential reason for this–indie filmmaking is getting its ass handed to it by an horrific economy that says no one wants to invest in much of anything.  The studios, meanwhile, are up to their necks in sequels and remakes until the disasters pass.  In all honesty, folks…I knew it was bad out there.  I live in MICHIGAN, for crying out loud.  I can’t turn around without hearing someone talk about GM.  But that it would get so pervasively bad that no one wanted to put five grand into a movie for video stores?  That had me downright terrified.

It’s just one more reason to hope things get better in a hurry…one of very, very many.

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