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The L.A. Times says “only time will tell” if The Descent has what it takes to join its club of “the greatest suspense/horror films of all time,” but its latest review indicates that at least three critics clearly think that it has what it takes. The review says it has just the right combination of gore and suspense to break into a group it calls the “Classics of Horror.” These are represented by the first 13 arrows shown on this chart. They are “not necessarily the goriest or most gonzo” movies every made, but they are the most groundbreaking. According to the  L.A. Times they all “sank into the viewer's psyche — and stayed there.” Even if it doesn’t break new ground, our bet is that The Descent is as well named as it well timed.

               (Image from The Descent)

Of the films on the L.A. Times list, all were made in bear markets except Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs. The timing of Alfred Hitchcock’s pioneering suspense thriller, Psycho, was explained by following entry in the October 2004 entry from The Elliott Wave Theorist:
Back in 2000, I discreetly mentioned in an interview for Prechter’s Perspective the forecast that entertainment during the bear market would feature torture themes. It was an uncomfortable thing to say, but the signs were there. The prediction derived from the observation that the social characteristics of fourth waves foreshadow more severe manifestations in the next bear market of larger degree. For example, at the wave IV low in 1921, Nosferatu presaged a series of vampire films in the larger bear market of the 1930s. Likewise, at the wave 4 low in 1962, Psycho presaged a series of slasher films near the end of the larger bear market of the 1970s and early 1980s in constant-dollar terms. A caption in a book on movies said that slasher films had broken, “The Final Taboo.” There is no such thing, as bear markets must continue to shock people with new horrors.

Silence of the Lambs came out just a few months after another fourth wave low. Its foreshadowing of tastes for horror in the larger degree bear market that started in 2000 was covered in the March 2001 issue of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast (see Additional References below).

Interestingly, the last time a groundbreaking film appeared at near top was 1968 when there were two critically acclaimed movie frights, Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead.  So, Descent marks yet another creepy correspondence with the late 1960s (for the significance of this parallel see the entry of  July 25 ).

July 2005, EWFF
According to The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior, two dominant bear market movie themes are anti-heroes and horror. Among the few successful offerings are Batman Begins and George Romero’s Land of the Dead. The lineage of both films fits right in with the start of a major bear phase. Batman goes back to 1939 when the comic book version of “The Dark Knight” first appeared as an antidote to the classic bull market hero of Supercycle I, Superman. A campy TV version emerged at the end of Cycle III in 1966, but Batman Begins “positions its hero at the dark end of the street. It’s a film noir Batman, a brooding, disturbing piece of work.” In a nod to more down-to-earth bear market sensibilities, the latest Batman’s lack of “super powers” is part of the marketing appeal. Land of the Dead is Romero’s “long-awaited return to the horror genre he invented, beginning with the seminal Night of the Living Dead” in October 1968, shortly before an all-time peak in the Value Line index that stayed in place for 15 years. Back in 1999, EWFF cited the box office success of a single scary movie, The blair witch Project, as “the strongest evidence that a sudden social mood trend change” was in the cards. Now the same signal is flashing, only many times stronger, as horror has become Hollywood’s one reliable money-maker. “The genre’s raging success has led to some almost frightening developments of late,” says The New York Times. “Horror is now very much filmdom’s stylish inner track.” “You’d be shocked at who’s calling and wants to be in these movies,” says a producer.

March 2001, EWFF
A New Role Model
 In 1985, EWT identified bear markets as the domain of complex anti-heroes. Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter certainly fits the bill. First, recall that Hannibal Lecter played an important but not central role in the 1991 horror movie Silence of The Lambs, which rode the cultural after-shocks of the last bear market in social mood to critical and box office success. Now Lecter is back as the focal point in Hannibal, and he is “bloodier and more violent” than ever. As the cutting edge in a new wave of horror movies, the most important element of this blockbuster is that Hannibal manages to gain the sympathies of the audience. “Here’s a thriller in which, by the end, you are rooting for a serial-killing cannibal to escape his hunters,” says one reviewer. As grisly as this seems, audiences are clearly thirsty for such a character. Hannibal had the best opening ever for an R-rated movie, grossing more in its first weekend than the next 15 movies combined. Hannibal signals a profound shift from the horror films produced by the downturns of the 1930s and 1970s. In the 1930s, the monsters got killed by the heroes; in the 1970s, the heroes got killed by the monsters; this time around, the monsters are the heroes. These are profound shifts that will undoubtedly put traditional, white-hat heroes that rule in bull markets on the sidelines for some time to come.

August 1999, EWFF
Evidence of a BIG Social Mood Reversal Perhaps the strongest cultural evidence of a sudden social mood trend change is the surprising box office success in July 1999 of a what one film critic called “old-fashioned horror, the kind that taps into our deepest subconscious fears and draws on universal myths and the iconography of fairy tales.” Within a week of the Dow high, The Haunting was No. 1 at the box office even though some reviewers panned it for not being scary enough. The true strength of this trend is signaled by the sleeper hit of the summer, The blair witch Project, a $60,000 independent film that opened to a mixed reaction just six months ago. In the weekend after the high, it was pulling in a record $5 million from 30 theaters. “We wanted to make a horror movie based on the reality-based programming that freaked us out as kids,” said the film’s producer. “We wanted to really scare and truly horrify people. There hasn’t been anything in recent memory that’s disturbed people like such films as The Omen or The Exorcist.

All the recent horror films have been sex-ridden and cool to watch. We didn’t want that.” When The Elliott Wave Theorist first looked broadly at cultural trends and the stock market in 1985, one of the most striking patterns observed was the relationship between bear markets and horror movies. “While musicals, adventures and comedies weave into the pattern, one particularly clear example is provided by horror movies.” We cited two periods, the classic horror films of the early 1930s, when as the Dow crashed to its low of 41, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, King Kong and Mr. Hyde made their debuts, and the slasher and zombie films of the 1970s, a big bear market decade in inflation-adjusted terms. “Hollywood had to horrify us to satisfy us, and it did!” Don’t look now, but these new “reality” horror movies are just the beginning. Ten more “thinking man’s horror” films are set to debut in coming weeks. On some level, bear markets are that simple. People want a good fright, and they get it. Later, they want a good fight, and they will get that, too.