Is it any wonder that horror movies only really seem to be popular around Halloween? They fit the mood, being scary and all. But if they were so good, would they not be more popular year round? 

While every film genre has bummer movies and flops among many great movies, it seems that horror films are the opposite, with the occasional watchable movie mixed in with a litany of poor films.

After all, 1984’s “The Thing” and the 2018 miniseries “The Terror” were critically acclaimed and had great casts, but they are outliers.

These pieces had great casts, good writing; they built suspense and did not rely on jump scares and frightening imagery to instill a sense of fear in viewers. The sad fact of the matter is that this does not seem to be the case for most pieces in the genre.

Dalton Cardoso, junior history education major, said he likes specific types of fear-based storylines in the horror genre. 

“I much prefer psychological horror, as that actually gets me on the edge of my seat,” he said.

Unfortunately the aforementioned pieces were scary because of the directors’ incorporation of psychological horror. While there are other movies and maybe even TV shows in the horror genre that incorporate these elements, there are a great many more that do not.

This leads to a glut of horror films in theaters every year during October, and they are quickly forgotten because of how bad and, frankly, how forgettable they end up being. Hollywood pushes these films out to make a quick buck every time the environment is ripe for it, leading to poor movies.

This is an issue that only horror runs into as a genre because while action, drama and comedy are always in season, horror movies are treated by Hollywood as something that needs to be reserved for October. This is problematic and kills the quality of horror media released.

“There’s some movies I wouldn’t really watch unless it was like, around Halloween. But then there’s some horror movies that are so classic that I would be okay with watching them anytime,” junior psychology major Cole Inglis said.

While it sounds like horror movies are enjoyed year round, it is important to be cognizant of the fact that this is still a minority of horror films. Furthermore, just because a movie is a classic, does not mean it is a quality film.

While there is nothing necessarily intrinsic about the horror genre that makes it so bad, it is a genre that suffers from a dearth of quality films and, for the most part, has only seasonal appeal.

Even if some like to watch horror films and TV shows year round, the issue is that Hollywood does not want to produce them year round.

Instead, what is often found in horror movies are poor plots, jump scares (which are an admission that the writer can not think of frightening material), one-dimensional characters and the same old tropes that are seen too often, such as ditzy blondes or meathead athletes.

For the most part, horror movies are just plain dull and unimaginative, so it is time to stop pretending that you like them.

It is time to find better movies.