My understanding of horror may not coincide with the traditional one and yours specifically. I warned you.
Half of these thoughts are probably stupid. The second half is probably garbage. I warned you again, yeah.
However, I’m really interested in comments, especially from horror fans. The text itself is under the cut.
Just fear, apprehension, tension and horror – all different things. What interests me now is the horror that freezes in my veins everything that originally flowed in them.
1. In my opinion, real and genuine horror in a person is always reliably caused only by the transformation of familiar landmarks into something foreign and alien to man. Moreover, this something does not have to be hostile. It is enough that it does not contain anything human.
So, a walking corpse in itself in https://no2betcasino.co.uk/mobile-app/ a movie, book or game will cause disgust and disgust in some, hunting excitement in others, fear in others. But, no matter how ugly and scary the “dead man” may be, he is not terrible.
But a walking corpse, for example, the main character’s child, whom she spent half of the film/book dragging with her on a carousel and feeding with ice cream, with whom she played with blocks or had intimate conversations – yes, with proper execution, this image may well cause horror. Of course, provided that we already identify enough with the heroine. However, the image of a dead child, behind whose mask there is a ruthless creature, also worked well before it was used up and down, first in Japanese cinema, and then in Hollywood based on Japanese cinema.
2. A “horrible” image that suddenly appears on your head will never cause horror. Surprise, stunned – yes. But in order to bring the consumer of a media product to the point where the hairs on his head are moving, one must always “unwind” the transformation gradually, laying out the main trump card closer to the end.
3. If one familiar image, turned inside out, is already good for horror, then the crowning trick of the masters of “blood chilling” is to turn inside out the entire world in which the hero is immersed. Moreover, preferably, not completely, but preserving some familiar landmarks, but not all. This is a great illustration of Bradbury’s story “A Sound of Thunder,” which in itself is not horror at all, but the idea of transforming the world is presented there in an extremely concise, concise and effective way.
4.Therefore, in order to build a proper, heart-tugging horror, you must first properly describe or show the normal, human world. Preferably – devoid of any signs of mysticism. A gloomy medieval town that evokes thoughts of curses, witches and the fires of the Inquisition is not the best option. The same with abandoned houses and castles. In general, the plot “the hero ends up in a terrible cursed place and then all sorts of nightmares happen there” is no longer the best option. The transformation will have a much stronger effect if the hero lived in this nice village house for thirty years before the nightmare, said hello to the neighbors, supported the local football team and generally felt great.
5. Horror’s worst enemy is obviousness and predictability. Therefore, all kinds of magical artifacts, tombs, mummies, cemeteries, ancient grimoires no longer work. Yes, that’s it. Yes, from the word “absolutely”. By the way, everything is bad with mirrors too. We won’t be scared if we imagine where the nightmare might come from. It’s best when, up to a certain point, the work doesn’t look like horror at all.
6. Music itself is never terrible. That is, it can be terrible, but it can not cause horror. But without music it’s very difficult for horror to survive. (This, of course, only applies to games and movies).
7. The meaning and purpose of real, proper horror is not to titillate the nerves, but to achieve catharsis, since any proper horror is a tragedy first and foremost (I understand that this is a controversial idea, yes).
8. Dismemberment, blood, an abundance of corpses and scenes of violence are the primary opponents of horror after obviousness and predictability, since all these things take us from the sphere of horror to the sphere of disgust. In addition, the banal death of a hero from the paws, tentacles or pseudopods of unknown garbage, in terms of the degree of impact on the viewer/reader/player, cannot be compared with some kind of irrevocable loss of the hero of his “I”, with the loss of personality in one form or another.
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