The Visage of Horror

The Horror
Horror in film is plagued by image-signaling and aesthetic indulgence. Under the hand of an excited writer, the horror script slaps on its foundation: a neutralisation of real, complex worlds, reducing the lives of characters to the story’s beginning and end; its eyeliner: a dark, isolated landscape in which no one can hear you scream; and, it’s lipstick: a vat of blood to blind watchers—causing them to do the opposite of what film is aimed to do: keep eyes on the screen.

It is true that we do not know how we will react to a situation until we enter it. However, I don’t think it should take even fifteen minutes to run as far as you can when you find out you’re staying with escaped killers and not your grandparents.

It is true that we do not know what environmental factors will come into play when we encounter those situations, but I think the police investigate a little more than beyond their desk when you mention that someone/something has been leaving an ominous book at your house with threatening messages inside. And once you have the police in range, why give up on their help within two minutes?

This is not to say that the solutions to the horror heroes’ issues is within reach. And yes, there are some useless police forces out there, even threatening ones in themselves. However, it doesn’t mean that they will always be sat back munching a donut whilst a killer smashes your house windows.

As is everyone’s request with horror, I wish people would act realistically.

So what’s causing this lack of behavioural realism in horror? I would put it down to the image-signalling and aesthetic indulgence. The writer wants brutal deaths, cosmic entities and imperceivable torture of their heroes. There is an image associated with horror that has been around for decades now, and that is hopeless victims in the face of a glorified horrific issue. They want to create a desperate situation that has audiences thinking “Oh, I haven’t seen that before—a killer, but this time he’s using a chainsaw.” And I use that hypothetical example because it shows that we’re really exhausting the aesthetic range of horror.

These bumper-stickers and brand logos of horror cover up for what the genre is really about: perspective.

The True Horror
My concept of true horror is the relativist’s dream. I would argue that almost any situation can be a horror depending on the lens from which it is viewed.

Let’s generate an example to practically demonstrate my view. Imagine a story in which there is the line, “Uncle Fred is coming to Christmas dinner.” And, let us say that the line has been announced by a mother to her husband and two children (sorry to go nuclear) around a dinner table in mid-December. Let us also say that Uncle Fred is not a biological uncle to the children, but someone who has known their father for a long time.

To the children, perhaps this is exciting—Uncle Fred usually brings sweets for them when he visits. To the mother, it is a minor inconvenience as she doesn’t like his character—Uncle Fred is quite loud and egoistic. To the father, at this moment in time, Uncle Fred is a threat with a hand over him—in the past, the father has observed Fred’s violence towards those and the families of those who cannot or will not fulfill their debts to him, and now the father owes Fred money. He knows that’s why Uncle Fred is coming to Christmas dinner. Perhaps Fred will insist on the two going out over Christmas to obtain money illegally (I know this is a jump that I didn’t preface).

The horror, then, is not how much blood is coating the floors of the house, but it is the threat that one character perceives another as having. The tension arises from what we understand of the father’s psyche and relationship with Uncle Fred.

This is not to say that characters are the only formation of horror. Nor does it mean that horror has to forego blood and killing if it so wishes.

A good example of a compromise, I would argue, is Patrick Brice’s Creep (2014). It demonstrates the classic tropes of horror: isolated characters and location, odd-natured stranger whom turns out to be the killer, even the found-footage essential—video tapes. What makes Creep so affective though is that at almost all points, we can sympathise with the decisions of the protagonist. Okay, maybe he could have made an effort to get the police involved or run as far as he can, but he convinces himself into sympathising with the killer. He is a sympathetic man. The killer himself actually describes all of this at the end, after the video screen is pulled back and he talks to the camera about the protagonist’s sympathy.

Creep is a crazy situation in which I am convinced that the lonely and compassionate nature of the hero would lead him into receiving an axe in the back of the head.

I do not want to rule out the slasher classics and haunted house adventures, but there is much room in modern horror for better work. New writers should consider horror through the eye’s of their protagonists—is the situation really so horrific, or does the one character just perceive it as such? Aesthetic indulgence needs to take a backseat, because although a grotesque Pinocchio story is cool as a concept and I will definitely go and watch it, I would also be interested in why it consumes the life of the characters—why is it such a threat that it is inescapable and how horrific is the situation to each character?

Horror is in the psyche, not in the world as it is.