The St. Petersburg Times finds it newsworthy that good Halloween costumes need to be scary. Yet Abha Bhattarai’s article laments the evolution from the wholesome, all-American horror of the 1960s to “‘strange, erotic images’ like the ones in The Ring” and increasing levels of gore drawn from modern horror movies like the Saw trilogy. Obviously, Abha wasn’t filled in on a few things. Namely: a) most horror movies aren’t actually scary, because the protagonists are so stupid that the audience ends up rooting for the killer by default, assuming they can endure the corny dialogue, lousy acting and substandard budget; and b) any horror movie’s potential fright factor has been permanently eclipsed by the Internet, whose masturbatory exaltation of the mundane is infinitely more terrifying. And speaking of unnecessary fetishism, who really thinks The Ring’s drowned, prepubescent girl (shown here) is an “erotic image”?

—Posted by David Kiefaber