At The Telegraph, Anne Billson shares the bad news about Universal’s “reimagining” its classic monsters, the problem with big budget horror, and filmmakers who don’t get horror. “Another problem is that upmarket film-makers who have built their reputations in more prestigious genres just don’t “get” horror, so when they deign to make a horror movie, they imagine they’re the first to spot the symbolic and metaphorical content that has always formed part of horror’s subliminal appeal. Take the late Mike Nichols, who saw Wolf as ‘transcending the horror genre’ and apparently imagined, rather endearingly, that he was the first director ever to portray the wolfman as a metaphor for modern masculinity and the beast within. Or Robert De Niro, agreeing to play the creature in Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein, ‘because I knew that Ken was going to make more than just another horror film, that he was going to give it a deeper meaning.’ You idiots! The ‘deeper meaning’ is already there. It always has been.”  (Via Kate Laity)