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Approaches to Horror
Oct. 30th, 2011 01:49 amAlthough I've mentioned that I'm talking out a possible found-footage film, it hasn't been pitched to me yet and I suspect it's not horror. However, my mind is naturally turning to horror in the context of found footage films, which is not surprising given both the time of year and the continuing thought experiment I play with myself: am I capable of writing horror, and why or why not?
My biggest roadblock when it comes to writing horror is that I automatically turn to existential horror, because it's perhaps the only type of horror that applies to my life - I don't believe in the supernatural*, I have a very weak flinch/startle reaction, and any violence I experience is likely to be random and out of my control (hence an existential threat rather than a personal one). Fear for me is either anxious dread that I'm about to be embarrassed, depression, or not fear at all, but instead disgust and outrage.
I revere "oh, creepy"; I do not easily access "oh, creepy." Hence I love movies that get it right Lady in White, The Orphanage, or for the more action oriented, Westworld. The key to what makes these films creepy is the inclusion of consequences - I am left to imagine what these characters will do and how they will grieve in the next days, hours, and years after the movie ends. Whereas I don't worry about the people in Poltergeist after the end of Poltergeist, or wonder what becomes of Danny after The Shining. I like and admire those films, but they end when they end for me.
In my work, I tend to shoot for David Lynch territory - everything seems fine, but beneath it is terrifying and senseless evil. I do not however pull off David Lynch. I wind up in Ted Hughes territory - everything seems fine, but beneath it, there are actually a lot of nice people yet you are going to die and everyone dies someday. Which is, you know, not exactly, um, horror. Horrifying, but not exactly horror, and anyway I'm not a nihilist, so I have to go in and add "well, but there was love, wasn't there, and existence in the first place which could so easily have not happened at all and isn't that terrifying, but also thrilling?"
One way to get around this is to take the fear of non-existence, aloneness, social rejection, obliteration of self, etc., but then balance it by placing the character or characters in a web of social connections, so that they can be afraid not only for themselves but for other people, the threat not simply to individuals but to their communal links. Done well, this leads to films like the aforementioned Lady in White and The Orphanage. More often, it guides writers to one of two horror formulas: "I have to save my child" or stranded groups of people who may or may not like each other, getting increasingly freaked out as the killer picks them off.
There's another metatextual reason for these constructions besides formula: most low-budget slasher films are written and directed by people in their early 20s, and they cast their friends of the same age, who are good sports who can run and scream and get naked but probably can't play subtle, tense drama, and who are volunteering in their time off rather than exploring intricate character backstories. Meanwhile, most higher-budget horror films are directed by people in their 30s who have young families and are overwhelmed by protective instincts toward their children.
Because of my own horror handicaps, I on the other hand think the appropriate residents of a haunted house would be an older couple, because what are the frightening things about aging? That you'll develop dementia and start to see or hear things, or lose things you could swear you put away. That you'll become injured or frail or let something slip and will be forced to leave your home. That your spouse who has been the other half of your brain for so long will die or deteriorate into someone you can't recognize. In that context, you'd let a haunting go pretty far before you were ready to say anything to anybody, even as you felt less and less safe in the home that was once so familiar and reliable. You might start, say, putting cameras everywhere in your house, reviewing the footage, not knowing whether obsessing over it was making things worse or better.
Sounds unsettling, is what I'm saying. Sounds a bit Poe. Sounds like a reasonable premise for a found-footage horror film, if one wanted to go in that direction.
* If ghosts, etc., exist, they are de facto part of nature and not supernatural. My own experience of the so-called supernatural is however more attributable to perceptual glitches than detection of things not yet explained by science. Your mileage my vary. Put another way, I find it spooky and baffling that I can have conversations with living people who sometimes help me and watch over me and other times work against my interest, or that I can look at a two dimensional surface like a painting and my brain will interpret certain objects as nearer and others as further away. You couldn't make this stuff up! (Note: You make this stuff up.) Hauntings tend to fall into this category for me, which does make them interesting, just not scary. I've been in certain "bad vibes" situations, of course, and have tended to pay attention to feelings of "get out of there" because among other things why would I want to stay in a place I clearly want to leave?
My biggest roadblock when it comes to writing horror is that I automatically turn to existential horror, because it's perhaps the only type of horror that applies to my life - I don't believe in the supernatural*, I have a very weak flinch/startle reaction, and any violence I experience is likely to be random and out of my control (hence an existential threat rather than a personal one). Fear for me is either anxious dread that I'm about to be embarrassed, depression, or not fear at all, but instead disgust and outrage.
I revere "oh, creepy"; I do not easily access "oh, creepy." Hence I love movies that get it right Lady in White, The Orphanage, or for the more action oriented, Westworld. The key to what makes these films creepy is the inclusion of consequences - I am left to imagine what these characters will do and how they will grieve in the next days, hours, and years after the movie ends. Whereas I don't worry about the people in Poltergeist after the end of Poltergeist, or wonder what becomes of Danny after The Shining. I like and admire those films, but they end when they end for me.
In my work, I tend to shoot for David Lynch territory - everything seems fine, but beneath it is terrifying and senseless evil. I do not however pull off David Lynch. I wind up in Ted Hughes territory - everything seems fine, but beneath it, there are actually a lot of nice people yet you are going to die and everyone dies someday. Which is, you know, not exactly, um, horror. Horrifying, but not exactly horror, and anyway I'm not a nihilist, so I have to go in and add "well, but there was love, wasn't there, and existence in the first place which could so easily have not happened at all and isn't that terrifying, but also thrilling?"
One way to get around this is to take the fear of non-existence, aloneness, social rejection, obliteration of self, etc., but then balance it by placing the character or characters in a web of social connections, so that they can be afraid not only for themselves but for other people, the threat not simply to individuals but to their communal links. Done well, this leads to films like the aforementioned Lady in White and The Orphanage. More often, it guides writers to one of two horror formulas: "I have to save my child" or stranded groups of people who may or may not like each other, getting increasingly freaked out as the killer picks them off.
There's another metatextual reason for these constructions besides formula: most low-budget slasher films are written and directed by people in their early 20s, and they cast their friends of the same age, who are good sports who can run and scream and get naked but probably can't play subtle, tense drama, and who are volunteering in their time off rather than exploring intricate character backstories. Meanwhile, most higher-budget horror films are directed by people in their 30s who have young families and are overwhelmed by protective instincts toward their children.
Because of my own horror handicaps, I on the other hand think the appropriate residents of a haunted house would be an older couple, because what are the frightening things about aging? That you'll develop dementia and start to see or hear things, or lose things you could swear you put away. That you'll become injured or frail or let something slip and will be forced to leave your home. That your spouse who has been the other half of your brain for so long will die or deteriorate into someone you can't recognize. In that context, you'd let a haunting go pretty far before you were ready to say anything to anybody, even as you felt less and less safe in the home that was once so familiar and reliable. You might start, say, putting cameras everywhere in your house, reviewing the footage, not knowing whether obsessing over it was making things worse or better.
Sounds unsettling, is what I'm saying. Sounds a bit Poe. Sounds like a reasonable premise for a found-footage horror film, if one wanted to go in that direction.
* If ghosts, etc., exist, they are de facto part of nature and not supernatural. My own experience of the so-called supernatural is however more attributable to perceptual glitches than detection of things not yet explained by science. Your mileage my vary. Put another way, I find it spooky and baffling that I can have conversations with living people who sometimes help me and watch over me and other times work against my interest, or that I can look at a two dimensional surface like a painting and my brain will interpret certain objects as nearer and others as further away. You couldn't make this stuff up! (Note: You make this stuff up.) Hauntings tend to fall into this category for me, which does make them interesting, just not scary. I've been in certain "bad vibes" situations, of course, and have tended to pay attention to feelings of "get out of there" because among other things why would I want to stay in a place I clearly want to leave?
