We have all seen it but have been powerless to stop it. You go to a horror 
site and see a writer give the most god awful horror film a positive review even though you and everybody else on the planet thought it was awful. No matter how bad the film the reviewer will give the film a positive spin. Why does this happen and can you really trust what these people write?
Since I run my own blog/site I understand that it takes a lot of work to write articles. I also can understand that to make money off of such a venture would be very pleasant and nice. However, what I can’t understand is the need for kissing major ass in the horror community. Personally, I write movie reviews in order to tell others about what I have seen. Be it good or bad I am going to tell the truth about what I am reviewing because I want people to be able to come to trust my judgement. I feel that if I tell untruths and embellish things that I am not going to be trusted or respected. I would hope that a director or a screenplay writer would rather hear the
truth from somebody about their project than to hear a total lie. Constructive criticism can move you forward and make your future work even better. If all you get is positive feedback from everybody then how will you ever improve and move ahead?
So, would you rather be respected for telling it the way it is or become friends with movie studios and directors? I mean, what are those particular people ever going to do for you besides giving you free swag and maybe a blurb on a DVD cover? These people are not your real friends because most likely, especially in the case of the studios, they are using you and your site for publicity and a following as much as you are using them to gain some sort of popularity. It becomes this huge circle jerk of kissing ass that is not only obvious but a very sad thing to see. Perhaps, in the beginning, you were a regular horror fan, but now you have warped into this creature of the very system that you rail against in articles on you own site. You say down with the studios for making remake after remake, but when those films come out you give them good review after good review, despite the fact that you know they are total shit.
Having lived for quite a time in California I have always kind of known 
about the studios and how they operate. One hears things from time to time, and I have absorbed it and kept it stored in my brain because I knew that one day it would come in handy. You can’t trust them. No matter what they promise or what they say they can just as easily turn around and say something else. Do you really want you writing career and website purely dependent on these entities? They don’t even take horror fans seriously in the first place, because if they did they would be making better movies than the crap they have been churning out for a while now. The reason why they don’t take a lot of horror website writers seriously as journalists and the like is because they see how much ass a lot of them kiss. How can you be taken seriously when you let popularity within the horror community cloud your judgement as well as your writing itself?
Is the horror community the only place where this kind of behaviour is so prevalent? Of course not. However, it has always been a tight knit society and the film makers involved in it have, for the most part, been readily available to fans of the genre. The problem happens when a horror writer, or horror website owner, crosses the line of telling the news and reviewing films to wanting to be close friends with these filmmakers and stars. They will not say how bad the films are because they are afraid of losing the ‘friendship’ that they think they have with the person in question. In the end what is more important, this one sided imaginary friendship or the respect of others?
Bloofer lady
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s exactly how I felt after seeing the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bloody Disgusting made is sound like the second coming, but it was a huge pile of shit. Check out Fear of the Dark Online, http://www.fotd-online.com, we give stuff honest reviews, regardless of how much free stuff we get or how many reach arounds Michael Bay gives us.
Great article! And I’m not just saying that to curry favour…
I also tend to think that, in the case of my fellow reviewers who don’t necessarily have access to the stars or directors, they pump out the positive reviews in order to keep getting invited to the screenings at all. I think also that some of the larger sites receive funding from the studios so they very well can’t bite the hands that feed them. I think I’m fortunate enough to work for a site with an editor that encourages me to stick to my convictions and, if needs be, to be in touch with my inner asshole.
That sounds really wrong, but I stand by it. XD
Thank you for the responses!:-)
But to be fair, the ass-kissing is not just a problem of horror critics. It’s only most visible in this genre, because for any reason it’s where hype can start most easy. But you can say that most online critics tend to kiss ass whenever they can. And like Terror Scribe pointed out, many of them do this to get invited to screenings and stuff.
Remember, we live not just in a world where everybody with internet access can suddenly be a movie critic, but also in a world where amateur blogs can grow into something that big, that studios consider them as an important part of a marketing machinery. (Just ask Harry Knowles!)
Very true. In the sad case of myself- who was honest and lost the ability to follow Eli Roth on Twitter…. sigh. I know I tell that story everywhere but it really is some shiesty business. Sorry if I don’t like Hostel Eli I still like your FACE but I guess that’s not good enough…tsk tsk
Wonderful article my dear, stuff it to those ass kissers!!
Andre: Roth is childish prick so I really wouldn’t worry about what he thinks.
If some of these ‘directors’ can’t handle negative reviews then perhaps they should get out of the business. Thank you for liking my rant! 
Eli Roth can’t even handle the slightiest bit of criticism. I once wrote him on his MySpace page that I thought “Hostel” was more professional than many critics admit and it works pretty good as thriller, but less as a horror movie or exploitation hommage, because the script was too uneven. He deleted the comment within a few hours, although I gave it 7/10!
Man, there is SO much ass kissery in the horror community in Los Angeles, it makes one vomit, and not in a good way!
Seriously, it has become a big issue, you can’t trust sites anymore because the people who run them are more concerned with being friends with the cool people than critiquing their films.
I can’t imagine what it’s like living there! A lot of the major sites totally have an agenda of their own that doesn’t involve telling horror fans the real deal.