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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We are the real monsters in horror movies and games

Damn you, humanity! I shake my fist at thee! 

Ha, ha, you thought I was going to get preachy, didn't you?

No, no. Actually, when I say that we are the real monsters, I am talking about projecting. Projecting one's self into various forms of media is nothing new. Whether it is in fanfics where the writer introduces their original character or themselves to seduce hot anime boys, or where directors project themselves into a character. Sort of like James Nguyen, the director of Birdemic 1 and 2, who makes one main character a director (hurr) and another one a software engineer (which is his day job). I Hate Everything talks about it in his Search For the Worst review of Birdemic 2, and he is hilarious, so check him out.

Now, let's take it a step further. Why do you think so many slasher films have unstoppable monsters and killers going after idiotic teens?

Well, because those teens are dicks. Sluts, jocks, idiots, etc. They're the people that probably picked on the director or writer while they were in school. It's easy to loathe them and even cathartic to watch them die. At the hands of who? Their creator that is hiding behind a hockey mask.

Rob Schrab makes a poignant point with this quote:

There's a little monster inside all of us, a little wolf-faced monkey that needs to be satiated. As people, we mustn't ignore that monster. If we do, we cheat ourselves. We deny an emotion, a feeling.
Think of someone who pissed you off. Some yutz who cut you in traffic; a prick-ass Kinko's employee who took three hours to copy your resume; the big bully who in your face when you were eight. Now, in your head, relive that moment. This time, however, don't just stand their and take it. This time you've got a knife. Pull it out from behind your back and watch the status flip-flop. Suddenly, Mr. Kinko isn't so cocky. The playground bully is crying for his mother. Smell their fear. Then, kill them. Kill them like you see in the movies. Make it as horrible as possible. Release that monster and stab that knife deep into their face.
As humans, we are taught to forget that we are animals. Animals kill to survive and its just as natural for us. To deny nature is to deny life. Now that you've committed murder in our dream world, relax. Take a deep breath, give your monster a high five and put him away. You've just used an evil fantasy to keep you civilized and sane.
Some may call this irresponsible advice. They kid themselves that their monster doesn't exist. And when a person lies to themselves, there is a less chance for spiritual growth. More than likely, their monster will step out of the Dreamworld and into the Realworld. That's how a society gets messy. Lots of neglected, hungry monsters.

Really, those monsters manifest in the media. We're the idiot teen facing down the worst parts of ourselves -- and we typically lose. Why? Because we don't want to deny that nature, that catharsis. We're made to feel so helpless and guilty for being angry, for indulging in any kind of violent release, even if it doesn't hurt people. There's always some self-righteous soccer mom that doesn't get laid enough ready to scream about how her snotty little crotch welts are being corrupted.

Don't buy them GTA then, you dumb twatiron.

We're the hunter and the hunted. Deep down, we want to kill that idiot in us and become the hunter, the monster.

So, be a monster on the inside and a nice person on the outside. If it gets to be where you're doing nothing but violently fantasizing, then it might be time to see a shrink. 

On the subject of horror and why it is my cocaine

There are many different ways to look at the horror genre

It's cheap, it's dumb, it's full of jumpscares (when something pops into your face and says 'Boo', in short). It's a work of art, a genre that is ever-evolving, and a genre that is the most fascinating way to look into the horrible things in all of our brains.

When I first began to love it, I was four or five. My parents didn't give two shits about age appropriate anything, so they let me sit up til midnight to watch the Twilight Zone movie; I didn't sleep well for weeks after. Not because I was scared, mind you, but because I was fascinated. A movie with cockroaches pouring from a man's mouth, a monster on the wing, a werewolf in a crate -- oh my God, I was in love. It's something that would take me over a decade to learn.

I was easy to scary in the years before that epiphany. I got scared at the monster under the bed in a freaking episode of Rugrats, for example (fuck that thing). I saw Stanley Kubrick's The Shining when I was eight or so. I couldn't appreciate it then, but I knew that Room 237 traumatized me for years after.

Then, along came System Shock II. The echoing, cruel voice of SHODAN and The Many still haunt me. Again, I couldn't understand why.

See, when you grow up in a house with people who were not fit to be parents, there's a chance you might become a little morbid. I've been called creepy, I've been called weird, but it's sort of irrelevant. I read Junji Ito -- if you're a horror fan, you really do need to see his work -- and couldn't put it down.

But why?

I think, when it comes down to it, we all have a monster in us. It's that thing that really wants to tear someone who pissed us off apart. We don't know what it looks like and we often don't indulge it, but it's ours. Horror gives the monsters of the world form. It's beautiful that way. It reminds us that inside our fragile shell lies something with the capability to do unspeakable things.

Some people like getting scared. Many others do not. They don't want to think about spiders, clowns, creepy dolls, etc.

Me, I like to use my writing to bring them to life. It's the best way to let my own monsters run free.

Indulge your imagination once in awhile. Get scared. It's a wonderful thing.