Horror Movies

To me, true horror comes from the realization that something could truly happen to you or those you love. While it’s much easier to make a film with graphic torture scenes, is there anyone in the world who is actually truly frightened that they’re gonna be abducted, tied to a chair, and have their eyeballs ripped out by some big silly machine while they have to eat a live puppy? Yes, if that was common occurrence, it would be frightening, but who really has the resources, mechanical knowledge, and sadistic power to actually pull off something that overly elaborate and complex? Violence is easy- no one wants to be harmed, but that’s alright on the surface. Horror movies have the potential to be THE genre that can at once comment on human nature by showing us who the enemy truly is, and by forcing us to see that, we’re left with a conclusion which we’ve known all along but refuse to accept.
The films I’m going to mention aren’t all horror films, but some cause me to analyze something deeper than many others through…well, scariness. I almost typed the word “fear,” but that is incorrect. What motivates me isn’t necessarily fear but instead a combination of everything that makes me uneasy. There are certainly many, many more films other than the ones I analyze here that could be categorized as effective scariness and many other horror films I enjoy, but these are the ones most present in my mind tonight.

King Kong- We go to a place we don’t understand and encounter a creature that isn’t too difficult to understand; it’s a big, smelly ape with a big, hairy ass. However, a normal sized ape can be fatal to humans, so it’s quite frightening to think about something that makes what is normal look microscopic in comparison. After battling with this creature that we accept as wrong and a murderer on the basis that we intrude in its homeland and it retaliates, one person, Ann Darrow, accepts the creature as a living thing and doesn’t quite begin a romance with it as much as she sympathizes with its beauty and humanity. The humans’ reaction is to exploit it for material gain, and when the plan backfires, we force the creature to go with its animal instincts and climb the beacon of hope in times of uncertainty (the Empire State Building during the Great Depression) and then we kill it. Am I fearful of a giant ape ripping me out of my dorm room and making me an afternoon snack? No. Am I afraid of people exploiting something for money and fame with tragic results? You bet your ass.

The Mist- this movie was definitely a “love it or hate it” film. It’s easy to dismiss it as an attack on Christianity, but it truly wasn’t. There is something poignant in a film that shows isolation of a group of some strangers, some friends, but mostly acquaintances during a time when they must bond to fight a common enemy but instead form into groups trying to use scare tactics to make everyone else join their side because although there’s no way of knowing, they truly believe what they think to be right. Yes, one character uses religion to “convert” others (not the kind for self-improvement and the betterment of mankind but the kind that makes everyone so afraid that if they do A. they’ll go to hell and must do B. in order to not make God angry so he won’t punish them that they forget that they need to be loving of their fellow man and take time to listen to others and try to understand what they believe), but the way she uses it is what is used commonly in politics. She has no interest in what anyone else besides she believes, and as a point of fact, she despises other people. All of these beliefs aside, the movie was an effective suspense play and an analysis of fear. As a result, the gore didn’t have to be overly elaborate to be scary; it just had to say what it needed to say and instead focus on characters that are far scarier than any alien creature with tentacles. As it was also said in The Host, the creatures were moderately scary, but what will truly make you pessimistic of human nature is everyone’s (the government in The Host’s) reaction to adversity. Disaster movies should take note.

Bug- here is a film that I truly love. Although it’s basically a filmed version of the stageplay, the point remains clear. In one sentence, the movie is an analysis of psychoses that makes you question what is real and what is propaganda by blurring the lines and making everything, regardless of how bizarre, make some sense. Perhaps it’s a little too gory, but I didn’t care (then again, I’m the guy who sat through Inglourious Basterds without as much as a twitch from the scalpings). The violence wasn’t meant to be the scariest part but instead what is scariest is what people would do to each other and themselves when they believe something to be true. The best part of the movie was its reaction on me after it was over. I itched and felt detached from reality.

The Truman Show- if you know nothing about this movie at all, do yourself a huge favor and skip over this paragraph and watch it with fresh eyes. For those of you that have seen this masterwork, you know that like Bug, what makes the film scary is that something elaborate and bizarre could be true. A television company takes something as personal as someone’s life and exploits it. This movie takes it a step farther and has the company actually convince people that this is something that gives hope to the world. Perhaps it does, but at what cost? While life would be simpler if we were able to accept everything we know as fact to be real the movie challenges us to think differently. The studio becomes so paranoid that this man can live the life he wants that they attempt to murder him. Will the executive who creates a situation that almost kills him be put on trial for attempted murder or even reckless endangerment? I think not. They may even give him another Emmy.
Milk- The first time I saw the trailer for this beautiful film, I remembered being completely on edge before Harvey’s address when he received the postcard that the first bullet would enter him when he went up to the podium. What makes the film effective is its sympathetic view not only of its hero but also its villain. While there were those who opposed homosexuality because…well, they were scared of it and didn’t want to accept it in their perfect world, Josh Brolin’s character was driven to murder rather than unfulfilled physical threats was because he didn’t want to accept something within himself he knew to be true. I’m just gonna say it- homosexuality is not a big deal, and I hope people begin to realize this in the current day.

The Thing- I know not many people have seen this movie, so in the interest of maintaining a readable paper, I will not plot spoil except what is necessary. We’ll start with the concept: A shape-shifting creature begins to attack a group of people and discovers that the best way to kill them is to make them kill each other, namely, taking the form of those they know. This belief isn’t original (for other references try reading up on the witchcraft trials or the Red Scare), but never before has it been made this simple yet complex. In the days of the witchcraft trials and Red Scare, all you had to do was accuse someone of being a witch/communist, and they were dead. It was that simple. In The Thing, the thought that the enemy was walking amongst you was actually true. There are dozens of other motifs I could explain, but it’s more fun to discover them on your own.
The Silence of the Lambs- The human mind is a powerful thing. Hannibal Lector is locked in a cell with no way of contacting others, but what made the arrogant character the scariest villain I have and probably will ever see is that he knew that while his body was locked up, his mind wandered the world. He even managed to kill an inmate in another cell because he was disrespectful to Clarice, a woman he didn’t respect at the time. How he kills the inmate who informed Clarice that he could “smell [her] cunt” is unclear (well, he choked to death on his tongue, but how will never be known), but what is known is that the human mind is a powerful thing that will never be fully understood. Hannibal understood it more deeply than most people and used it to punish those who offended him.

The human mind is what will always scare me more than anything else. When people ask why the Saw movies will never keep me up at night and why torture porn has no effect on me, I wish I could explain this elegantly. While it’s simply easy to use physical and emotional pain to get an effect out of people, what has always frightened me is the result when people are forced into a situation to enable their baser instincts. I’m already detecting the belief, “that’s exactly what the Saw movies were about! The Jigsaw made people go into a situation where they were forced to sacrifice some personal part of their being to live!” I must differ. In the first film, yes, a woman was given the option that she could either cut a man’s stomach open or have her head explode, the way that scene was done (and you can tell by the director’s focus on the gore rather than the character) was not scary. The only thing we knew about her was that she was a drug addict. That’s it. Perhaps if she was a mother and upright citizen with a drug problem, that might be scarier, but alas, that kind of writing is quite difficult to pull off. While my thought could have been more effective, it would have taken a complete refocusing of the plot and situations to pull that off. Still, some people were kept up at night with the writing the way it was, but as someone who is attempting to explain himself, this is what I think and what I think isn’t universal and never will be. If the movie was more focused on making me sympathetic to characters rather than appealing to my dislike of being tortured, I would have been scared.

To me, the point of horror isn’t to make you piss your pants, but instead to make you question existence and analyze what would happen given a certain situation. Another one that I realize is either love-it-or-hate-it is The Descent. To me, it showed three levels of horror: loss, isolation, and the unexplainable. By the time the creatures show up, I was already on edge, but what had set up the third act to work for me was that the creatures could or could not have been real. Yeah, they mauled some of the spelunkers, but think about it. You didn’t see them in the beginning, and they didn’t show up until the problems amongst the group of women were made into an issue. In my belief, the creatures represented those problems consuming them and becoming impossible to outrun. I didn’t stay up late worrying about being caved into my room or being mauled by sound-hunters, but what moved me about the movie was the thought that like many other horror films that worked for me, it shows how people react and what their priorities became.

This is totally off-subject, but one of my on-and-off favorite films is Scream. To me, it was what a parody truly should be- it showed you how the genre was supposed to be done while poking fun at the logical fallacies and inevitable formulas present. There were some classic ‘slasher’ scenes present, but it didn’t frighten me other than making me think twice about answering the phone when I’m alone. It was a movie for movie lovers, and I loved it. Like The Descent, there were clear references to other films, but ultimately, it becomes the filmmaker’s movie, not an offspring of the best ideas of others.

If a horror movie is able to move me deeply like the above movies did, then I will be running to the theater to see it, but I’m not above having fun. I feel that a good horror movie should be like a good musical in that, in the end, you don’t feel mauled; you feel energized and ready to move. Certain scenes remain in my mind and occur to me at a time when I don’t think of them. An excellent example of a movie like this was a recent B-horrorfest called Drag Me to Hell. It was a morality play, and although the basic logic of religion tells you that someone can’t just bypass judgment and be shoved into hell, you have to sacrifice some personal belief and go with what the movie tries to say (the part where it’s a morality play changes a lot with the film in that *SPOILER* over the course of three days, this perfectly kind woman does whatever she can to avoid going to hell and warrants an eternity *NO SPOILER*). There were so many scenes I loved, such as the classic slasher showdown in the parking garage when the curse is first placed on her, The Evil Dead gore, and the fact that so much of the movie was really, really, really funny. Why was it funny? Well, that would be because the movie keeps its sense of humor and allows us to remain outsiders and watch the events unfold from an outsider’s perspective. As a result, the movie is stylized, fun, and kind of scary. I will admit it- after seeing the movie, one night, while alone, I heard a sound like the demon’s hooves clicking on the ground outside of my room, and I had to keep the light on for a little while.
The fact that I’m watching the episode of South Park entitled “Pandemic 2: The Startling” reminds me of one last belief I would like to share. Startle horror isn’t scary. Having something suddenly BUMP! jump in front of a camera isn’t scary to me. You jump, but how long does that jump last? The length of the scene. Certainly there are some startle-scares in The Descent, but they worked for me because they kept me absorbed in the scene while the film maintained a much deeper level of horror that couldn’t be summed up in any eye-gouging scene. Horror should, in my belief, not make me necessarily want to vomit (upon reading a spoiler for a film that I cannot remember the name of, I discovered that a killer cages a woman and at one point, force-feeds her a blender-made milkshake of blood, eyeballs, a nose, and other body parts) but instead give me a deeper reaction to the gore. If you’re going to make me sit through something like that, there had better be a damn good reason for it. That movie, I’m sure, had no reason for the gore other than to see what it could get away with.

Everyone’s motivated differently. I was told that Cloverfield was an epic film, but after seeing it, I was totally underwhelmed. There was potential, and its advertising campaign was borderline brilliant, but when I was left with the final result, I was disappointed. I saw stylized startle-horror.

I understand that it might be easy to throw out ways in which I seem to contradict myself, but I know what I like and what I don’t like. I’ve said it before, but my beliefs are not universals. I have a stomach for gore, but I think it should move the plot in some way such as the creature’s attack in The Mist or Hannibal’s escape plan in The Silence of the Lambs instead of forcing me to react to something so I can get a false sense of horror. There are movies that have torture scenes that are amazing films (the nail ripping part of Syriana is something I can’t ever shake), but there is always a purpose to that, I feel. What can I say? I’m always up for being moved above being startled.