The Horror of it All

What is the appeal of the horror genre?

Graham Masterson believes that the appeal of the horror genre lies within the human psyche. He reports that humans like to imagine what they would do should “a dark shadow with glowing red eyes appear in their bedroom at night.” Essentially, people like to read horror novels and watch horror films because they want to put themselves in the shoes of the characters, according to Masterson.

However, FilmmakerIQ presents a number of different theories regarding the appeal of the horror genre. Although they discuss studies over the synapses of the brain and the psychological reasons for macabre attraction, they settle on this:

People use horror fiction to face their fears and find ways to understand them.

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I, however, believe that the motives for watching horror films come from the person themselves. Throughout the years, I’ve watched horror movies with each member of my family and a few friends. Based upon my observations of a various pool of people, horror does not appeal to some while it does appeal to others. For instance, my mother cannot even be in the room while I watch the AMC drama, The Walking Dead, because of the gore that frequents the show. Despite this, my mother will watch older movies that hold suspense above gore, like Psycho.

After further consideration, my initial reaction to the report has changed to lead me to believe that its results are correct. My mother cannot face the things which make her cringe --fingernail yanking, stabbing, disemboweling--, but this is not the fear she wishes to face. I find that, when I reconsider the conclusion presented, I agree. My mother’s greater fear lies within the average world. In this world, people do in fact get murdered, but what she fears more is that she is living next door to a sociopath or “psycho.” This is the fear she must face, leading suspense thrillers to be the movies which appeal to her.

Masterson’s theory only goes as far to say that people want to imagine what they would do in a certain situation, while FilmmakerIQ makes it more about the viewer. Instead of arguing that horror is a way to imagine what oneself may do, this site seems to sway towards saying that one must see it on a screen so their fear won’t fuel such thoughts.

Has horror maintained its appeal?

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From gore, guts, ghosts and gritting psychological thrillers, horror has many different facets and has seen great change since its inception.

Building off what I previously asserted, I believe that modern horror movies have lost their appeal on two fronts. First, they have lost their appeal in the sense that filmmakers no longer produce a variety of films to cater to the fears of the many. Instead, they seem to cater to those who fear the supernatural and buckets of blood and gore. Therefore, an appeal for horror still exists, but the appeal is absent as a result of this development. Secondly, however, the constant recycling of old ideas through “original” scripts, remakes, and sequels of horror movies worsens this phenomenon because the constant repetition begins to desensitize the audience.

First of all, if they want ratings, filmmakers must consider creating different types of horror movies if they hope to continually attract an audience. The pure reality is that there are different types of viewers who enjoy a variety of fear methods. Constantly making movies full of blood and or ghosts haunting leaves a small audience, for not all are attracted to such films. Even makeup artist for the Texas Chainsaw, Dorothy Pearl, argued against "over kill" when it came to use of blood and gore.

"Sometimes when you put too much blood in a movie, it gets boring," she said. "It doesn't shock you. We wanted to use the amount we did, and when we used it, it would come across as very strong."

In turn, the majority consensus settled upon from the audience may be that the movie was a flop. If the filmmakers presented a greater variety of film to the audience, this trend might lessen. The audience would then be more pleased with their viewing experience, while the movie makers and producers would be more likely to hold the popular opinion.

Returning to my secondary observation, recycling is good for the environment, not the horror genre. When the original Halloween came out, of course it scared the audience to see a teenage girl walking home alone as, unbeknownst to her, a masked killer stalks close behind. Yet the endless throwing out of sequels followed by not one but two remakes (one of the first film and one of the second) make the whole concept feel overdone. Not to mention that one merely has to observe that a number of other films following this featured a similar plot and conflict. The movie makers have to accept that they must reinvent rather than recycle, or this genre will go down the drain faster than Marion Crane’s blood.

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A similar example would be the modern success Paranormal Activity. This film actually put footage of its audience screaming in fear in its commercials, promising to be the best ghost film in years. The audience deemed it as successful as advertised. Of course, the movie makers cranked out sequels with all the same elements, and they destroyed the original’s thrill. Soon, the films felt sillier than they did scary.

Essentially, more creative individuals need to think up the plots because the franchises are merely following trends and ruining the genre. People want to see this genre, but they don't want to see it suffer. Instead of employing the same old devices and horror stereotypes, the genre needs expansion and improvement. Otherwise, horror shall die despite its potential to become greater than we know it to be.

Dead or Flowering?

If horror should die, think only this of it:

That there’s some mourner of  a now foreign time

That has forever lost its sand. There shall be

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In that poor earth a darkness lost to lust revealed;

A lust with which cinema shall lure, shade, make horror remade,

Gave, once, no flowers of blood, with suspense to spill,

A body of Hitchcock thrillers, not slasher killers,

Washed by the writers, lost by the imagined sons of those who sat upon the throne.

And think, this start of fictional evil led astray,

A pulse beats in the underbelly, I confess

  Gives some mourner back the thoughts by Englund given;

Their ideas rebound; dreams come that make others run away.

And screams, learnt from a foreign time; and psychoanalysis

  To stop hearts, under a false face of heaven.




From Page to Screen: Does horror literature translate well into film?

I believe that literature may translate well into film, but, from what I've seen of horror literature, this is not the case. I'm not asserting that the films do not turn out well, but I do claim that literature is twisted in the making.

I must first, however, note the variations which stood out to me.

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For instance, he primary thing that interested me reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was that the monster’s presentation, development and deliverance to the reader. The reason I appreciate this is because it is hard not to pity the monster, but it is easier to lose pity when one is presented with the nature of the monster. The nature of the monster is cold, calculated, and neglected. This leads the monster to kill only a few.

In the versions of film which I find myself familiar with, Frankenstein's monster is presented quite differently. The monster of the novel develops his brain over time, while the monster of the screen doesn't seem to discover that he does in fact have a working brain. When the monster kills, the way it kills, like in the novel, reflects the manner of thinking. This version of the monster kills many.

The contrast between the two is quite evident merely because of the manner of thinking and the concept of pity. I found myself never losing pity for the creature on the screen, as I did for the creature on the page. For the creature on the page had the basic awareness of self while the counterpart I saw on the screen lived in sheer ignorance.

I wonder if this is why the movie makers did this...


Yet I believe that the elements of the literature were eliminated to heighten the fear factor for the audience. The initial reaction to a blundering figure like that which I am familiar to may appear quite frightening. Not to mention that he had the same quest for a bride as the monster on the page. When reconsidered, I believe that this sad tale of a misunderstood beast is not nearly as terrifying as it is tragic. Shelley quite brilliantly conveys the terror an audience should feel because she writes the parts of the monster as isolated and premeditated. Not only is this a more likely occurrence in our lives, it also is not performed as a result of ignorance but of malice. Therefore, in my opinion as a reader and viewer, Frankenstein's monster is only a terrifying creature on the page.

Consequently, I must conclude that the elements of horror literature do not always translate well into film, for creative liberties are taken with the story. This changes the composition of a story and tends to harm the original intentions of authors such as Shelley.

From The Shining to 11/22/63: What are effective elements in horror literature?

Thirty five years elapsed between the release of Stephen King’s The Shining and his 2012 novel 11/22/63. While I initially did not expect that King could be any better of a writer after I so thoroughly enjoyed The Shining, his more recent work proved me wrong. Honestly, I find it intriguing that a writer could be so talented yet still improve.

My favorite improvement was the difference in the depth of characterization. While King obviously characterized well in The Shining, he only characterized in certain areas, which left certain characters without open interpretation of the reader.

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The primary example of this is the antagonist, Jack Torrance. I cannot deny that the character is well developed. His problems and his train of thought are the primary means of presentation to the reader. At times, Torrance even seems the protagonist, making it arguable if he only serves one role in the novel. The descriptions of his past alongside his vivid memories of the tormenting alcoholism which plagued it reveal a great deal about how he reached his current state. However, I believe that King primarily chose to characterize this way in order to heighten the “fear factor” of the novel because this method primarily contributed to his progressive descent into madness. Therefore, I assumed that King chose to develop adult male in this way less to characterize for the reader but at the reader. Essentially, I’m trying to say that Torrance’s characterization, while well thought out, was left slightly shallow in places as a method for King to instill fear within the reader as opposed to attachment, for there are fewer incidents of sincerity from Torrance than there are descending moments.

Meanwhile, after decades more experience, King shows growth in his characterization or, at the very least, his methodology in which he develops his stories. The clear protagonist in 11/22/63, Jake Epping, contrasts the characterization of Torrance in many ways. Although I have not yet finished this novel, I completed The Shining just before, and the difference of the storytelling astounds me as both a reader and inexperienced writer. While The Shining may have a more original plot or better suspense, the characterization of 11/22/63 is far better. I may understand certain logic in not developing Torrance to the extent to which Epping is developed, but I can’t say I prefer it without first seeing it. Honestly, the story instead lends to the characterization of the protagonist in this novel. Epping’s story is presented in first person, allowing for a deeper look at his thoughts and experiences. The tale differs in plot from that which I compare it to, but it is nearly as psychologically oriented. Throughout, Epping finds himself facing challenges from what one expects in classic science fiction to what one expects in classic King horror. However, Epping’s personality --from his divorce, to his basic instincts about cities like Derry and Dallas, and even his personal relationships as a teacher-- make the storyline seem deeper. While one knows that the outer force controlling his circumstances and coloring the cards could drive him insane at anytime, King doesn’t want to drive his audience to believe that this is bound to happen, as he means to with Torrance. Instead, King wants to attach the reader to Epping. Whether or not this is to make the breaking point of Epping more shocking or build support for the character despite his future actions, I have yet to discover.

Overall, I cannot say whether or not Epping will break, while King made it practically blatant that Torrance needed only a single push. Essentially, I admire this slow attachment method of the unknown better. The Shining presents no unknown result, but it presents a constant battle between the reader and the unknown time of the result. Personally, the tale depicted in 11/22/63 is a more successful method of psychological horror because the result of insanity like Torrance’s is subtle. This is almost more likely to instill fear, because attachment to a character leads one to fear losing Epping to insanity rather than the insanity itself.

Of course, I’d love to think that Stephen King is the master writer who plans all and intended all of this. That, of course, also may be true. However, reading two of his novels back to back makes me believe that even the best writers grow over time. Therefore, the fact that King’s characterization methods seem greatly improved after a thirty five year time period should come as no great surprise. If he hadn’t improved in that time, what kind of novelist would he really be? Moreover, I now want to read his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. If I am to truly confirm this theory, I can’t think of a better way to do this than to see if his characterization is fresh when he depicts at least one of the original characters.

My primary thought from this theory is that this may be why humans only live to a certain allotment of time. If we lived too long, someone might eliminate room for improvement all together. What would be the point of reading something somebody’s written if not to read something better than before?

Now, I’m not saying that 11/22/63 is wholly superior to The Shining, but both novels have their strengths that makes them truly outstanding.

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Such books as the ones I responded to above inspired me to attempt to write my own fictional piece and present a sort of answer to my initial argument. I began to wonder, can a horror stereotype be manipulated creatively using techniques unique to literature?

Stark as the white walls around it, a single page sat atop a bleached wooden podium. A man, chained by his neck to a matching wooden block, slept like a corpse. Deceased to the naked eye.

He startled awake. His scenery flooded into his senses as air does out the automatic doors at the supermarket. Instantly, he perceived the scenario but could not think beyond the mere idea.

He couldn’t stand, the man realized, when he tried to tear himself from the forced slump which pained his back. The pain only intensified with this action, for it tugged and threatened to tear at the very ligaments clinging to his skeleton. Endorphins rushed as the ligaments resisted. Soreness leaked into his muscles like he’d received a syringe of acid where the collar restrained him.

Above his head but victimizing his pupils with incessant stinging, a fluorescent light appeared to hang without a string. Yet it rocked slightly like the type one might see in a police interrogation show.

Maybe the string is white too, he thought. So pure that I’m looking right at it, but I can’t see it.

He never discovered whether or not he was right, whether or not the string was as bland or undetailed. The light burned his searching eyes so that his head began to ache. Desperate to find a new place to look, he discovered that the restraints allowed his eyes to fall one other place.

The podium.

He almost felt as if the podium could see him as he could see it.

Speculation entered his mind about the motives of the podium. What did it want from him? Why did it call him here?

I wonder what I look like to it.

The man cursed the ideas from his mind. An eyeless thing could not watch, especially when said eyeless thing was inanimate. Someone’s watching you, his instincts warned.

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That’s when he noticed the doors.

The doors seemed to tower into existence, as if he’d blinked them to life. Like all else in the room, the doors stood purely white. He assumed that was the reason he’d missed them.

Unlike the string that may not exist, the man found he could bear to study the twin doors. Curved and ornate carvings graced their surface, free of the naturally occurring pores of wood. Paint didn’t cover the pores either. The wood was ash white without a single drop. Its surface merely lacked imperfections.

In fact, perfection carved the set with its bare hands and kissed the surfaces to color them white, the man began to believe the longer he stared.

The beauty was nearly enough to make him forget about the person he believed was staring at him. With the fluorescence of the light shining down, it felt close to heaven.

Heaven opened suddenly, snapping the man’s trance and blinding him with the same sort of light shining above. His eyelids resisted as he pried them open to behold the sheer awesomeness of the silhouetted being taking form before him.

Just as his teary eyes felt as if they’d become as stale as week old crackers and crumble, the doors slammed shut with a deafening BOOM! The figure no longer appeared in silhouette, for the ample light source disappeared behind the doors. It remained a blur, and, at first, the man blamed it on the tears bleeding from his eyes.

Except he could still see the doors.

This time, the surface held no beauty. Splinters littered the surface. Some appeared to have created and become lodged in the once nonexistent pores. Porcupine shapes decimated any sign of the carvings that once distracted the man from the who watching him behind the door.

The man glanced from the figure to the door and back again, his dilated pupils searching for something beyond destruction to connect the two. At times, he lingered on the door longer than the figure and the figure longer than the door. Like subjects in school, each time he paid more mind to one thing, it became clearer than that which he neglected.

So he kept his gaze on the figure.

After what seemed like an eternity of rapid blinking, the figure took a form. It altered so suddenly that the man wasn’t sure if it truly held such a form or if it changed at will to further deceive his eyesight.

What appeared to be a paper mache man stood in front of him. His texture gave away his mache identity. Instead of smooth human skin, strips of uneven newspaper scarred his face. Like Edward Scissorhands, somebody had tried to cover the scarring with makeup. Craft paint, in this case.

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Whoever painted this project was not one of great talent. The mache on his face looked as if somebody took leftover clay water and smeared it all over to give him a freshly baked look when dry. Above this, his hair looked the color of dead grass, trapped on a nasty continuum somewhere between dead yellow and sprout green. While below, the artist had attempted a pink polo, shoes to match, and blue jeans for in between.

The mache man looked like a country club member who stepped into a sand trap with a stack of the day’s post and snapped his spine.

The spine was the worst. Maybe a balloon or two hadn’t popped beneath the papers, but the man couldn’t tell for sure. All he could see was that the mache man --that hellish, innocent creature-- hunched his shoulders as if permanently shrugging at questions which no one asked.

All the man --leaving his compassion in the flesh-- could see was a hideous creature. A creature whom deserved the fate which befell Frankenstein’s monster. The fate of a failed creation. He wondered if, like Frankenstein's monster, the paper mache man imagined a perfect version of himself.

The man opened his mouth to test the creature’s understanding. Frankenstein created a sophisticated monster. Who’s to say this creature was any different?

The creature answered his question before a syllable fell from his lips. It moved its stiff body side to side as if attempting to shake its head, instead taking its whole body with it. It shuffled to the podium and thumped a paralyzed appendage against the paper.

After, the doors burst open and blinded the man a second time. After they slammed shut, the man regained his sight to find himself and his wooden block just close enough to the podium to reach a pen which seemed to have appeared in the flash.

The paper mache creature was nowhere in sight. But there’s someone watching you still, his mind protested.

Range of motion and potential solutions limited, the man reached for the pen. Fearing what he might summon next, he hesitated. Soon, however the pen rested in his palm.

He turned it over in his hand and felt it was familiar. Your first fountain pen.

“Of course!” he shouted to no one in particular. “I remember this old thing!”

Removing the cap brought back the nostalgic smell of the blue, Japanese ink that stained his finger and his callous during his high school days. Some time in college, between all the papers and typed essays, he’d lost the thing. He remembered a vague midnight.

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He remembered lying in bed. He remembered turning and turning that sweet old starter pen between his fingers. He remembered he’d freshly refilled it just to write something new, something creative, something special.

Something more than the standard drivel you cranked out in your essays in those days…

Wistful thoughts aside, the man returned to the present. He stopped turning the fountain pen and merely stared at its dark body. Why was it there with him? The brief thought that this could potentially be a void for lost things entered his mind, but he pushed it aside.

“That wouldn’t make any sense,” he thought aloud. “This room is empty, and you’ve lost a lot more than this pen. Besides, you’re not lost.”

The man doubted his last conclusion some.

His next idea poisoned his outlook even more. What if he’d had the heart attack he’d fought and feared since he was a teenager, burning the midnight oil to complete his school work? His chest pained him slightly earlier that evening, after he’d spiked his tea with about a cup of whole milk. His in-denial side wrote it off as hypochondria because he drank the milk, but now he wondered. He wondered if this was death.

Drinking the milk had been easy. Midnight came for him, but he wanted to keep writing. English tea --black, frothing with liquid protein-- seemed like the perfect reprieve before he returned to-

Returned to what? What was I doing?

Writing. He’d been writing. The last thing he remembered was his blue lit screen in pitch darkness and the fading sound of lazy keys drifting into blackness.

Now everything was white.

But it didn’t all have to be white.

The man held the pen up to the bright light and turned it over. Gravity did its work. Thick blue ink rolled down the stained walls of the cartridge.

A laugh escaped his lips. The sound came as a mixture of hysteria and hope in the silence. Even if the bondage remained, he could reach the paper. He could make something blue in this heavenly white hell.

Though it was purgatorial in nature, he didn’t believe it was any better than the level below just below the white stone flooring. The level that made him sweat when he removed the pen’s cap.

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Stretching forward to write the simplest phrase, the man found that the podium deceived him. His wooden block impeded his arm from marking even a single dot with his pen. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and pearled down his face.

The acidic sensation began where the collar pressed into his neck once more, but now it felt like ten syringes working in unison to morph into a single blade. His muscles felt as if they sweated with his skin, oozing flame into his bones.

Only his collared neck stifled his screams.

As the man fought to mark the page blue, he imagined he’d write some description of choking. Maybe drowning or strangling. Gravity worked in favor of the ink choking some fictional person. Now all he needed was a bit more force, and he could-

The nib nearly stroked the page when the man’s face turned as blue as the velvet ink it would release. His fountain pen tumbled from his fingers, clattering on the cold, white stone.

His muscles gave up the battle to push forward, and the man released himself, gagging and dry heaving. Air seemed to corrode his lungs like a poison mucus, but he craved its presence despite the sensation.

Once again, the doors blinded him by opening. It returned. The paper mache creature approached again and hit the paper like a toddler throwing a tantrum. All the man could hear were his own labored breaths.

The unintellectual creature, clearly no Frankenstein’s monster, continued banging its arms against the podium. The podium fell, taking the creature down with it.

A mache monster does not fall evenly. Gravity does not will things as fairly as it does others, so it fell the opposite direction which it originally tipped. When its ballooned shoulder smacked against the stone, it contacted the nib of the fountain pen. A resounding POP! filled the room.

For the first time in its life, the monster made a sound instead of shaking. The air leaked after the shoulder’s surface broke, leading the man to assume that the other swollen balloon received a puncture wound as well. This balloon didn’t pop.

For a minute, the air squeaked out from the wound as if the monster was a euthanized cat, releasing its final breath. Like a cry of pain in death.

Although the man remembered his fountain pen as a strong one, blue ink bled a puddle onto the floor beneath the newspaper corpse.

Funny, he thought in a dot stained daze. That cartridge is too small to hold a puddle.

With blue, the blackness returned.

He gasped and gripped his throat as he startled awake again, without a lick of fluorescent light. The pain was gone, and air felt familiar again. He fumbled around to his left and found the switch for his lamp.

Yellow light cast warm shadows about the room.

On his right, he saw his laptop open and heard it purring, its screen black with sleep. Beside it, he saw his notebook with a familiar lump in it. His fountain pen.

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The man took in his surroundings to find that he was in the very bed he’d somehow thought he’d lost his pen in. The time wasn’t years later as it was in the white room but in the present, in his college dorm. Life came flooding back to him like a bad dream, while his nightmare drifted away from him as all his dreams did. Soon, consciousness flashed all but the message of the dream away.

He closed his laptop and picked up his notebook. The man sighed in relief when he gripped his old fountain friend again. Its weight felt correct, freshly filled with the velvet blue ink.

The man wrote ribbons, and his laptop watched until its ever present hum died with its battery.

Gravity led the ink to the page, without block and without bond, and he wrote something new, something creative, something special.

To All Those Who Appreciate Horror and May Wish to Write Something New, Something Creative, Something Special:

I do not have an incredible amount of experience and probably left plenty out of my arguments. However, one thing that cannot be denied is my love for this genre, even if my knowledge needs building. The whole point of my writing this mass rant is because I love this genre. Scary stories hold more value than some realize.

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Now, I feel as if I’m seeing constant reiterations of the same old plot with different people acting, without a thought to the value behind the story. The moral of the story can’t be “Don’t go out to the lake with your friends, or you’ll die.” Originally, scary stories were told with morals in mind.

I concede that we live in an age that constantly shifts its morality quite quickly. That does not stop me from the belief that the horror genre should be altered to return to its original purpose. Changes in morality do not warrant a sacrifice of its enforcement.

We must strive to reinvent cautionary tales for new ages, but we must do so in a manner which is both relevant and suitable to ourselves.