The Four Facets of Horror

Or, what makes for the best horror

Time again to be a horror snob, I suppose. I'm sorry! It's my favorite subject!

As such, I've spent a lot of time analyzing what makes for the best horror. What key ingredients there are, and finally arrived at the four facets. While this may be useless to most people, I still feel compelled to write on it, so here goes:

The Unknown

You're in an uncertain place, a place foreign or alien to you. Something is there with you. You don't know what it is, what it wants - but you know that it wants to hurt you.

A fear of the unknown is especially common in mankind. We fear the deep ocean because it is unknown, we fear the supernatural because it is unknown.

As an example, let's take PT aka Silent Hills.

You're trapped in an endless loop with the unknown. You see only a wailing fetus in a sink and a ghostly woman -- no explanation, no prompting, but it is there. You have no means to fight it, you can't escape it, and it becomes very clear very quickly that it means you harm. That feeling alone prompts the next facet.

Helplessness

There is nothing worse than being rendered powerless, facing a foe with no means to fight it. I think this is why spirits especially scare people. How do you fight an incorporeal being? Sure, you can be a Ghostbuster, but how about the really mean ones.

Like the ones in Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining. Not only is it an unknown, but Jack is helpless against the forces driving him mad. Worse still, he is helpless to fight the demonic call to always return to the Overlook Hotel, to kill again. A river of blood runs in its wake, and the only way to fight it is to destroy the hotel.

But how can you really be sure it will ever die? Especially when you are all alone with hundreds of malevolent spirits. That being said...

Isolation

Isolation is the spirit killer. The feeling of being alone, trapped, with only your own pounding heart beat and the unknown can drive a person to do terrible and drastic things.

Let's look at Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This game is touted as being terrifying, and while I feel it is a bit over hyped, I can appreciate how well it implements the feeling of all three aforementioned facets.

SOMA, by the same studio, is an even more powerful example. Deep in the ocean, most of humanity dead, trapped and alone except for the bare remnants of humanity. The feeling of isolation in such an alien circumstance can make a person weep.

Or, they can become desperate.

Desperation

 

AKA the best of the worst situation. I equate this to being forced to kill people in a desperate bid to survive, to leave people behind, to go as far as cannibalism. The Saw series, when it was still OK, implemented this feeling quite well.

But I feel that System Shock II did it in one of the best ways possible.

Alone, in space, with a malevolent, insane AI that constantly taunts you? Fuck. All of your former crew absorbed into a hive mind? FUCK.

And the only one you can rely on is the AI.

This is the equivalent of being with a mother. A mother who calls you an insect, a mother who is a sociopath. You have no one else, you're trapped, and this is your one desperate bid to maybe escape with your life.

Ah, horror. How I love thee. 
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