Thoughts on horror

[valarltd]

grynner got me thinking, as he is wont to do.

Horror. What is it and what scares people?
I write horror now and then. And I read a LOT of horror.

There is supernatural horror. In which ordinary humans are called on to withstand outside forces that are much more powerful than they are. This is every vampire novel right on up to the Cthulhu Mythos, where glimpsing a lesser servant shatters human minds.

There is human horror. Serial killers. Mutants. Mad scientists. This can crossover with supernatural horror, as in Brian Keene's The Rising, where the terror is not JUST the zombie apocalypse, but the fear of one man for his son. Child-in-danger stuff is a very primal fear and movie makers know it.

There is psychological horrror, where all the stuff is in someone's head. My icon, from Gothic is this kind.

In supernatural horror, a person, or all of humanity, is up against a supernatural foe. This allows writers to show the best and worst of people, sometimes at the same time. The foe is, by definition, more powerful. Vampires scale walls, become a mist, have the strength of ten men and can command rats and wolves. Zombies (here the walking dead as opposed to Voodoo zombies) are implacable, do not tire, make more with every bite and cannot be bargained with or bribed. Demons are strong, brilliant and can leave a human a soulless husk.

This sets up the conflict and imbalance in the world. At best, it requires humans to think, to work around their foes and to use the advantages as weapons. In many cases, the foes have a built-in weakness that must be found and exploited. Vampires have the sun and stakes and running water and a host of other things, depending on where your vamp is from. Zombies are vulnerable to fire and decapitation. Demons tend to be proud and convinced of their superiority.

The humans have three choices: succumb, utilize the weaknesses, or call in a bigger supernatural power. In every Dracula movie, they go for the second (except, of course, the bosomy young thing in the low-cut nightie) In The Exorcist, the priests try the last, but their lack of faith costs them.

Human horror tends to interest me more. People are capable of more than we can imagine. Remember, one in every 25 people is a sociopath.

Human horror often branches into the supernatural. Serial killers in the movies have amazing skills and toughness, when in real life, they tend to be ordinary men who die of heart attacks while pumping gas. I liked the Hannibal Lecter movies, although anyone who eats the stupid and rude probably gets more than his share of sympathy from me.

The horror in Steven Shrewsbury's Hawg, to me, comes not from the murderous rampage of the beast (the supernatural element) but from the very ordinary people, a pig farmer and a blind woman. From the secrets and lies and seedy small-town underbelly stuff, which Hawg ripped open and dragged out like one of his victims.

An interesting side note here. In The Hills Have Eyes remake, it wasn't the copious amounts of gore. It wasn't the hideous mutants. It wasn't a brutal rape scene or some really gruesome deaths. In fact, the mutants were good for a single jump scene. What chilled me and keeps playing in my mind is a very brief moment of our hero, Doug, watching his teen-age sister-in-law sunbathe in a bikini. I expect it was put in to show Doug is young and sometimes misses his single status, now that he's saddled with a wife and kid and unpleasant in-laws. But what I saw was a desire to possess, the same look that the mutant, Lizard, has as he rapes the girl. And given the end, that makes me shudder every time.

It is not the hideous death of Inspector Howie in The Wicker Man, although that is bad. It is the moment when he tells Lord Summerisle that "It won't work and next year, they'll sacrifice YOU" and for the barest instant, Christopher Lee gives us a flash of fear and knowledge under the merry-making. He knows what's coming, but he will lead his people until it does. (of course the whole premise of The Wicker Man, the lengths a religious people will go to when driven by desperation and fear, is terrifying in itself)


Psychological horror is tougher to pull off. It's not really my thing so I can't speak as broadly on it. The idea that nothing we know is secure and real terrifies us. It leaves us without a frame of reference. A slow build, a sense of unease, followed by a rapid plunge into complete unreality can be very effective. Oddly, the movie that comes to mind for this is Alice in Wonderland, which is pretty creepy when you look at it.

This is me, shooting off my keyboard. What do you think?

Comments

Where would you place voodoo zombies?

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Does it fall under human horror? There really is a great deal of horror to me in both traditional tales of zombieism and in the actual historical use of tetrodotoxins, burial, etc. for purposes of enslavement. A really well-done voodooo zombie story creeps me out, but it's hard to find one.

I'm a sucker for well-written supernatural horror with believable characters, both human and "inhuman" and with lots of elements from folklore and tradition. Human horror also crosses over into folkways a lot as well.

Gods save us from cheesy supernatural horror, though, or from writers who try to make supernatural horror too mundane. I don't want anyone to try to remove all of the exoticism from it. I just made myself finish a good-sized zombie novel that had received considerable critical acclaim. It bored me to tears. When I finished it, I thought, "Well, gee. Haven't we been over this territory in a dozen other books?" I don't want to go back there again.

Re: Where would you place voodoo zombies?

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

The problem is, Voodoo zombies aren't really monsters. They're mindless slaves, unless something happens to their controller. The horror there is desecration horror, a violation of the taboos surrounding the dead. Also of your body being forced to work after death.

I'd put controlled zombies and the real ones under human horror. There it's fear of becoming one. There's also some Uncanny Valley stuff happening too.

The uncontrolled ones go under supernatural horror, since the main way to get rid of them is exploit their flaws: salt/sugar/spicy food and of course, shots to the head.

Re: Where would you place voodoo zombies?

[grynner.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm curious. Which Zombie novel???

Re: Where would you place voodoo zombies?

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

If I'm not mistaken, Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Kiwi, correct me as needed.

Yup

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

There is still balm in Gilead, however, meaning that I think that it's still POSSIBLE to write a novel with airship pirates, or an alternate universe Civil War, or zombies, or all of the above. It's just got to be done in a much fresher way than Cherie did it. When I find myself saying, "Oh, no, not THIS again", and MUCH preferring the sensationalistic fiction Louisa May Alcott wrote in the 1860s and 1870s, there's definitely something wrong with today's writers.

Re: Where would you place voodoo zombies?

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest. It had a lot of tropes in it that I'd seen done better by other people. For some reason that particular combination of undergroundcitypiratesinairshipszombiesandpicaresqueromancewithmadscientistallintheguiseofsteampunkalternatehistoryCivilWar came across as lifeless to me.

The Scary Creepy Stuff...

[grynner.livejournal.com]

It takes a bit for the supernatural stuff to really "click" as good horror for me. But then, while I like lots of what comes out under that label, very little of it really merits a creep factor...let alone actually scaring me. It's the human factors that seem to get me more often than not. Movies like "Mr Brooks" or "Fractured" or "Hostel 2" (the first was ok, but the 2nd was *SO* much better) that really get into the psychological horror. Or flicks like "Lair of the White Worm", "Hellraiser", or "Prince of Darkness" or even the originals for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Amityville Horror" or "Alien" where you turn on the lights and still are more than a bit creeped out.
But I think that what sets those aside from so many others is not so much "what's being done" or the "overpowering baddie" of the movie, but the human factor. In none of those movies are folks squished and swatted aside as so many modern horror stories will try. There's not really the HUGE CGI/FX budget to have the aliens/demons weilding such obviously overwhelming and all powerful abilities (far greater than any "god" can bring to bear against them...at least in that movie). It's more about the human element. Either that gets twisted into joining, or that is slowly and methodically beaten down and obliterated (sometimes happily so). But, even then, it's not that the "big bad" or "alien" or whatever actually beats the people in the end...it's how they ultimately beat themselves...or very nearly so until at least one of them "get's it" (hopefully before it's too late).
Yeah. that's what I call good horror.