Top 10 Movie Genres That Died Out

The success of franchises like “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games” was so huge that you cannot blame the studios for raiding the Young Adult sections of their bookstores overnight for ideas. However, lighting would not strike again, as Hollywood quickly learned, with adaptations like “The Mortal Instruments,” the “Divergent” series, and “Beautiful Creatures” becoming critical – and some even financial - duds. All attempts to create the next big franchise died quick deaths at the box office while quieter YA adaptations did fairly well, but are rarely heard from during the early 2010s.

Thanks to a little film called “Halloween,” film studios tuned into the morbid attraction of slasher films. All kinds of masked killers reigned supreme throughout the ‘80s, and revitalized the home video market with cheap, entertaining, over-the-top horror manias. Although over-saturation killed the genre dead by the ‘90s, Wes Craven’s “Scream” both brought the genre back from the dead, and showed us how ridiculous slasher films are come mid-decade. However, thanks in part to “Scream,” as well as to the rise of Torture Porn, the Slasher Renaissance was butchered to death before it even had a chance.

The found footage gimmick has been used frequently in horror throughout the years, usually with mixed results. The notorious “Cannibal Holocaust” and “The Blair Witch Project” were smart manipulations, and subversive thrill rides. However, the moment “Paranormal Activity” exploded into cinemas, and studios saw how much they could accomplish with such a minute budget, all hell broke loose. For a while, it seemed all horror films were using found footage techniques, and received worse and worse reviews. But thankfully, they are also now practically extinct from our theatres. The straight-to-DVD bin, though, is another story.

Parody films may not have always been major hits, but they were always around to send you into a fit of giggles. The blockbuster gold of the ‘80s and ‘90s, with hits as like the “Airplane!,” “Hot Shots!,” and “Naked Gun” series, created comedy classics, and made comedy superstars out of serious actors like Charlie Sheen and Leslie Nielsen. However, thins slowly went downhill from there, as the quality of these films progressively declined, from the Wayans brothers and their “Scary Movie” franchise to the abysmal attempts by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

More a product of the time, Film Noir was more of a stylistic choice that grew to immense popularity in the 1940s and 50s. The genre’s dangerous and violent stories and mysterious shadowy aesthetics gave the pristine Hollywood machine some gritty realism. While the days of Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson may be long gone, we occasionally got some great neo-noir films towards the end of the 20th century, like “Blade Runner” and “Basic Instinct,” but they’re no longer a staple of cinemas today. Even so, some of the aesthetics are nevertheless used in the early 21st century, like in films like “John Wick.”

Before we reveal our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:
- Creature Features
- Vampire Films

Sadly considered by many modern moviegoers to be boring and out of style, Westerns saw an immediate drop in popularity after the 1960s. The star power of John Wayne and Glenn Ford piqued the interest of audiences, and they flocked to see daring “Cowboys-and-Indians” adventures. The genre was so popular it even took over televisions in 1950s. While Spaghetti Westerns out of Italy brought a bit of new life to the genre, and some remakes today do fairly well, like “True Grit” and “The Magnificent Seven,” you’ll mostly have a hard time finding an original – and good - western adventure to watch these days.