Forums Horror Movie Talk
Do Studios Think AT ALL About the Titles They Choose For Horror Movies?

In a recent post, I lamented what I conder to be a poor title choice for newly released film "The Thing". My concern is that it is not, purely speaking, a remake and is actually intended to be something of a prequel. Yet the studio went ahead and just called it "The Thing", which is the exact same title as the John Carpenter original. That certainly sounds more like a remake than a prequel. They could have called it "The Thing, part 1", "The Thing: First Assault" or gone with any number of other titles if they wanted to help the audience understand what was being put before them. Just imagine if "A Nightmare on Elm Street part 2" through "A Nightmare On Elm Street part 7" had all just lazily been titled "A Nightmare On Elm Street", leaving new inductees to the franchise to try and piece together what order they occurred in. This got me thinking about other instances where titles of horror movies have been lly, confung, meaningless, or just plain grammatically incorrect.Remember the sequel to "I Know What You Did Last Summer", which was called "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" ? Yeah, kind of unclear what summer the title is even referring to. If it was the same summer the title of the first film refers to, it wouldn't be LAST summer anymore. If it was the series of events leading to the supposed death of the Fisherman at the end of the first movie, it would have been mpler to just call it "I Know What You Did Last Summer part 2". Then there was the straight to DVD "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer". Really? ALWAYS? Most people don't even do things interesting enough to remember EVERY ngle summer of their lives, not to mention the fact that if the Fisherman intends to MURDER these kids, they don't exactly have an "always" or an eternal "last summer" for him to remember. Calling the film "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer" sort of implies that the Fisherman has no intention of murdering anybody, but merely wants to spy on people like a gospy neighborhood busybody. How about "Halloween: H20". Yeah, yeah, I know, it was meant to be a clever shorthand veron of "Halloween: 20 Years Later", but that's not how it actually reads. Most people understand that "H20" is the symbol for "water", making it seem like this installment is absurdly called "Halloween: Water". Someone refresh my memory, did people die in this movie because of a serial killer or rampant flooding? Not to mention the fact that the "H" in "H20" stands for the word "Halloween", so by calling it "Halloween: H20", the studios made it so the long form title of the film is technically "Halloween: Halloween 20 Years Later". Do we really need the word "Halloween" in there twice, back to back? Am I quibbling here? Does this sort of thing bother anyone else or am I being a petty grammar Nazi? Do you think it hurts the horror franchise as a whole when the titles of scary movies make the minds behind them seem halfway illiterate, or do you think people don't care WHAT these movies are called as long as the trailer looks appealing? Seems to me any measure that CAN be taken to increase the appeal and coheveness of a movie SHOULD be taken, and that if they're not even bothering to think the title through, they may not have thought much about the story or the direction, either.