Elements of Horror

[HardcoreHunter]

Horror is often looked at as just gore, violence, and sometimes the supernatural. People rarely think about why something is scary. I sometimes reflect upon watching horror movies for the first time to remember how it used to feel seeing something for the first time; and what kind of impact stories can have depending on your age and view of the world at the time.  Directors and Authors often place their own fears into their works. Lovecraft had a fear of the ocean and sea life, so many of his works depicted aquatic horrors. Wes Craven was always bothered by a news story he read about teens who were so afraid to fall asleep that they overdosed on caffeine and self mutilated to stay awake until their hearts failed. While those are inspirations for horror it isn't really the elements to horror.  The Elements of horror get at something in our core of what we fear.  Here we can discuss and debate what horror really is, and the elements used by different stories.

 

 

Dracula is symbolic of an inferiority complex. Dracula and most singular vampire based stories are more a status symbol expy for a noble or rich businessman. His powers with men and women is hypnotic. Everything about him is above the average mans physical ability or refinement.  In the original story he targets a mans bride, visiting her at night slowly taking her from him (innuendo). This is targeting our own inferiority, a feeling of being powerless to someone who is by most senses above the law and can use their influence on others.  It makes you wonder if you can truly protect someone dear to you if someone else wants them. 

 

Group Vampires such as Salems Lot are aimed at peer pressure and isolation. In these stories it usually a whole town sans a few people become a vampire. It usually starts out with a friend goes to meet up with a new person then starts hanging out with that person/group. Their behavior steadily becomes stranger and they act as if they were different people. Before you know it the group is getting larger, and you are being treated as even more of an outsider.  A lot of this deals in our fears of not going along with the group and being isolated as a result.

 

Hatian Zombies depending on the narrative are a fear of losing control of your life, fears of industry collapse, or fears of Race.  Losing control of your life is shown in the Serpent and the Rainbow.  That someone else is controlling your life and you are just wondering through it being told what to do, much of what people suffer when falling into a mid-life crisis. The second fear is more for the owners of businesses, what if workers (unionize)? This was a large concern when these types of films were being made. It still holds true today but with mexican laborers. Lastly are inter Racial fears that a minority will attack because we are different.

 

Undead Zombies  are a fear of the inevitable, and our ability to adapt.  With the Undead Zombies you are forced to confront death. The idea that no matter what, you will one day die. No matter how hard you fight against the dead it doesn't change the end result.  That one day you will still die and be like them. Many people fear the idea of mortality and how momentary life is, or fear what will happen to their conscious mind and memories.  The other fear is loss of everything modern and our ability to adapt to it, or survive based on our current physical state.

 

Ghosts are a fear of things out of our control, what we can't explain, and paranoia. The human mind still retains much of it's primal instinct for survival. When you lay down to go to sleep but hear a sound your mind can paint a picture relating that sound to things you have experienced. However some sounds are not familiar enough and your mind will paint a darker image. From there paranoia sets in as a precaution to possible danger. Soon your mind begins attributing small occurrences back to the unknown sound, until eventually all the horrible things in your life are the result of that sound that can only have been a ghost. 

 

 

[Admin]

To me the scariest things are generally the simplest. 

 

The last thing to give me a chill was actually the last episode of Twin Peaks.  When Hastings is in the back of the car and Diane is just casually smoking off to the side, and she sees this figety little hobo man fading in and out like a memory.  and then she sees him creeping, almost comically, toward the car where Hastings is.

 

It was visually chilling.  Just sort of untethered evil, bound by no real discernible code of morals or ethics.  Bound by no society.  Just a dirty little hobo ghost man, fading in and out dimensionally. 

 

Though the show is good at keeping me off base, it wasn't like some formulaic scare, nor was it really something laid out or telegraphed in great detail.  It was a simple thing that happened.

 

And followed up to, with a bit of humor.  "yeah, he's dead"

 

My favorite horror movies growing up were never the ones that evoked a nostalgic commitment to a specific genre model, but more the ones that were like a concert of scares, humor, social commentary, and dark fantasy.  But also nothing is really scary if it's not rooted in a human reality in some form of perspective.

 

But those roller coaster rides that took me up and down and made me jump and then had me laughing out loud at some joke they tossed in, and stayed with me long after they were over in that they made me think about things. 

 

For me, the most essential elements of horror I think are just ordinary mundane things.  There's actually something about boredom that's peripherally scary.  The void of intent, of intellect, of purpose.

 

The 90 minute slasher/stalker movie where the good girl escapes at the end, but is the killer really dead?? isn't as scary to me as just open space.  The way the human mind works is scary sometimes.  Biology can be scary.  Nature can be scary.  I mean, there's a fight or flight thing that we all instinctively seem to possess, that probably informs horror almost exclusively.  And we tend to fear the unknown.  But I think to be effective those things have to be nailed down to common, routine, human, mundane things. 

[HardcoreHunter]

Somewhat reminds me of how Lovecraft's themes of horror are. Usually any of his stories that involve the old gods. People kinda miss the point of the old gods and how Lovecraft used them. The thing with the Old Gods is that they were just meant to look like something that would cause any sane person to go mad at trying to comprehend them. It plays into his fear of the ocean and views on outer space.  It's meant to be a sense of being utterly powerless against these forces of nature.