I think there's a huge problem with the way new horror movies are made.

What I think they should do is switch the positions of the new filmmakers and the old. They give the bigger budgets to the people who end up directing the remakes, and the masters end up getting the Masters of Horror deal.

It's beyond insulting. To the genre and the filmmakers. But I agree with the poster above who said it's because of profits from corporate people and studios. The kids who get the big budgets and mainstream exposure are hacks with no vision, and the masters have to get by with crappy budgets or a 10-day shooting schedule and have to cut it under an hour.

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As for the great atmosphere of yesterday's horror films, I think that's sort of the fault of films like Scream. As much as I love it, the money people always try to copy everything they think that contributed to each big film's success. So, they copy Scream's big orchestral score. Which really is not how a lot of great atmosphere was created - John Carpenter, Goblin, Pino Donaggio, and Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave were kings of music-driven atmosphere and that's why we love and remember the films they scored.

As for atmosphere and mood driven by cinematographers, Mario Bava was a master at that. And nobody today takes lessons from him. Argento and John Carpenter always knew how to shoot a 2.35:1 movie masterfully. And in terms of visual style and such, those filmmakers always used camerawork and pacing to enhance the feel of a movie and make it creepy, spooky, or unsettling.

Almost all horror movies today have the same sense of atmosphere, because all horror movies today seem to copy each other. And there are only maybe 2 or 3 kinds- the ghost story movie which is always PG-13 or PG, the torture film that rips off Se7en's gritty and dark look, and whatever passes today as the horror comedy (things like Slither and Shaun of the Dead).

And atmosphere of yesterday's films was almost always about each filmmaker's distinctive style or influences. They have to stand apart to stand up at all. And all of today's films copy each other. There's no sense of uniqueness.