The Abhorrible Genre
II. Counterpoint: Genre Undead
III. Final Word: Motiveless Malevolence
Point: Abhor Horror
What exactly is the point of a horror movie? They can’t really be trying to scare, for the simple fact that actually being frightened is not an enjoyable adult experience. Nobody actually wants to be scared for their own safety unless they know that their personal safety is not really at risk, which kind of obviates the whole “being afraid” thing. A good example of this is a roller coaster. I love roller coasters because they induce a sensory overload that makes me perceive I am in danger without actually distorting my higher level brain functions so I always know that I am not actually in any danger whatsoever. If the rollercoaster had even a one in one thousand chance that my harness would fail and I’d go flying out of the thing to certain pain and death, I’d never go on the thing. So a horror movie would have to make you believe that something unimaginably terrible could happen to you without actually fooling your brain into thinking that your safety is of immediate concern.
Well, the mature homo sapiens sapiens brain is pretty incapable of doing this, which is why ghost stories only scare children and the elderly. I am totally capable of believing that a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away I might be able to lift a spaceship out of a swamp by thinking. In contrast my brain is incapable of actually believing that I could go to sleep and be attacked by Edward Scissorhands to my untimely demise. If I thought there is even the smallest chance of such a thing I’d run to my nearest neurophysiologist. If I believed for a second that a man in a hockey mask was waiting for me outside my lake house, I’d call the police; if I further believed that this man could not be killed, I’d never ever under any circumstances travel to said Lake House. Humans only willingly put themselves in danger of life and limb when they’ve been brainwashed by the military, because God told them, or because society leaves them no honorable alternative. There’s no possibility of having fun with the nagging suspicion that somebody or something is actively trying to kill you.
Due to these psychological limitations I have to assume that the purveyors of horror are not trying to scare you, rather they have the simple goal of entertaining you enough that you don’t feel like you’ve once again been mugged by Hollywood. If that is the case a simple examination of how they attempt to do this will show why horror movies are the worst kind of celluloid tripe this side of the “romantic comedy.”
Sci-fi films and horror movies ask their audience to suspend all manner of disbelief. Science fiction screenwriters are asked to do one crucial thing: make their world internally consistent. Tell me the rules of your world and make sure that everything and everybody follows the rules/physics/supernatural conventions of the world you are asking me to believe in. All of the best Sci-Fi films have this key aspect. The world is a massive computer simulation but some people can bend or break the rules of that simulation to varying degrees. OK Wachowski brothers, if those are your rules, let’s go for a ride.
For some reason horror movies are not required to be internally consistent at any level. Nowhere is this more problematic than when it comes to the death of the antagonist. Most horror figures can not be killed, even though they exist in a world that is like ours in every other way. Why? Nobody ever knows! It is never adequately explained why Jason can’t be killed, or how Freddy invades you dreams, or why zombies need nothing but their disembodied head to survive. Notwithstanding the fact that these things cannot be killed in the normal manner, there’s always one guy who spontaneously figures out how the thing can be killed, or stopped temporarily. What? So now, not only do I have to believe that there is this thing that can live in my world but cannot be killed but conventional weapons, but I am also asked to accept that an old disheveled doctor/specialist knows how to stop this thing? That’s not frightening and it’s not entertaining. It’s lazy. Horror movies are a bastion for lazy writers who for some reason get a pass on applying reason to their ghoulish drivel. Even normally good writers like Quentin Tarantino are allowed to throw away conventions of making sense when they get into the horror genre.
Then there’s the acting in these movies, which is universally atrocious. See, the problem is that these movies are generally low production values pieces of crap, so quality actors generally steer clear of them. Yet acting scared is one of the more difficult things to do. Screaming is not acting scared, nor is being oblivious to the dangers closing in around you until the last blood curdling second. Acting afraid is what you do when you are trying to avoid those last contentious seconds, and because it usually happens alone, thereby depriving the actor of dialog, it’s very hard to convey on screen. I recently saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose (as usual, a pretty crap movie). There was one scene where Laura Linney is being frightened and she does an excellent job. Hears a bump in the night (actually smells something out of place, even harder to act) goes to check her kitchen, hears more unnatural sounds, looks furtively around for a weapon, thinks about calling for help, decides that she’s probably just being paranoid. You can see on her face that she is terrified but is telling herself, “This is ridiculous. Satanic demons don’t exist.” In the end she runs back to bed and hides under the covers, self aware that she is now acting like a little girl instead of a professional woman. It’s a great scene, too bad the rest of the movie was your standard faceless terror nonsensically abusing innocents for thin motives while the resident town coot tried to stop it. Linney is a professional actor using her skills to do something difficult, not a wet tee-shirted teen reading “Oh my God, I’m so scared” off a cue card. In other genres we demand that our actors at least try to make us believe something. In horror flicks we accept that the actors will tell us how they feel instead of showing us.
The 1973 Exorcist is the best horror movie ever made. I will not argue about this. Aside from basically competent acting and screenplay the movie works primarily because it creates an internally consistent universe where terrifying things can happen. Those terrors can also be prevented by a group of heroes committed to beating back evil. Of course the movie doesn’t create that universe, the Bible created that universe and the movie makers relied on my nascent Catholicism to fill in the blanks about why things worked out the way they did. The Bible asks me to believe in a lot of crap, but at least it’s consistent (do not examine that statement too closely).
What again is the mythology and ethos behind zombies? What the hell does it mean to be undead? You see, it’s not enough to tell me that the undead can do whatever they want, except what they can’t, because you said so. You have to tell me before people start getting bitten how long it takes to go from bite to full zombification, and once you tell me, you have to stick with those time parameters all the way through your movie. You have to tell the audience why they can’t be killed (or killed again I guess). Most importantly you have to tell us why the heck they want to kill the other people in the movie. You want to tell me that Satan wants to posses souls to piss off God, okay St. Luke, let’s go for a ride. But don’t tell me that zombies want to eat my brain because they are hungry when what they really seem to want to do is turn me into a zombie and not eat me at all. That just insults my intelligence.
Maybe that is the point of a horror movie: to insult the intelligence of those stupid enough to watch them. Maybe it’s all a big joke to see how much money they can bilk out of the public with low grade refried drivel. It is terrifying to think that so many people are entertained by Michael Myers.
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Counterpoint: Genre Undead
Saying you don’t like horror movies is like saying you don’t like rap music: it is a genre prejudice mostly born out of ignorance, disinterest, and the unfortunate fact that, yes, okay—a lot of the material is without merit. Soon, I will be posting reviews for an unholy alliance of recent garbage, hailed as great horror by wannabe horror geeks: Hostel, Wolf Creek, and Saw (both of them). These are the best of recent horror efforts, and they are all terrible films. More importantly, every one of the so-called “Masters of Horror” (Showtime’s very lame series dedicated to the macabre) has either checked out entirely or never checked in to begin with. I am not a defender of horror movies in a particular sense—but I am a defender of the genre. So I will also soon post reviews of classic horror films that I think lead the way for future horror filmmakers to follow. Put another way: I come here not to praise the horror film, but to bring it back from where it has been buried alive. The horror film is the great undead genre—and I am here to remind you all of what it can do, and what it should do again.
A perfect horror film is more exciting than any other genre’s perfect work. There is nothing that can compare to a horror film done well. The reason is simple: there is no greater subject for anyone now alive than the thought of our own demise (or, as can happen in a horror film, the thought of our dismemberment of everyone we care about). Horror films are about people confronting death and the power of death—and specifically, the death that doesn’t come gently to you in your sleep when you’re eighty-nine and all your loose ends are tied up and your family members are all around, holding your hand. The death that comes for people in horror films comes baring fangs. Horror is the great metaphor for the unfair, chaotic mess of destruction of which we cannot rid the world. Horror stands for all the people who die in mangled car wrecks, airplane crashes, cafe bombings, and the general madness of war. But like all art, it approaches you indirectly, through symbols and archetypes that can transcend the ordinary and take you someplace a little more metaphysical. Horror films, when they are really good, can dig into an underground version of yourself that you may not even really know too much about. Because death for most of us isn’t just a biological concern; most of us worry about a spiritual component. Only horror films can touch on these subjects with any accuracy or honesty of emotion.
And yes, a horror film should be scary. And scary means suspenseful and suspenseful means exciting. It is exactly like a rollercoaster: fear in a controlled environment. It’s too bad my colleague can’t get scared; I can, but it takes a good film to do it. And as far as Edward Scissorhands goes—that’s an interesting one. I never thought he was supposed to be scary. Elie, is there something you’d like to admit about your fear of pretty Johnny Depp?
In terms of some of the criticisms given regarding the internal logic of a horror film, all I can say is: you got me. I don’t think you have to explain your demons. I think it’s scarier that way. I think that you do have to set up rules and follow them, but an explanation? Please. Horror is about the dangerous mystery of things we can never understand. (I’m giving a pass here to the comment made about the Bible being consistent because I think Elie already understands what a foolish statement that was.) A good horror film should never be predictable or boring. Just like any film, it ought, you know, to be good. While most horror films fall far short of anything approaching quality, this failure should indict the filmmakers and not the genre.
If you doubt that horror films are more interesting than other movies, look back through the last thirty years of Best Picture Oscar winners and see what rises to the top. If one of your favorite films in the list is not The Silence of the Lambs, I just don’t get you. I would gladly watch this film before, say, Schindler’s List or even Braveheart any old day of the week. The trouble is that if a film becomes too good, it ceases to be categorized as a horror film. The Silence of the Lambs tends to be considered a drama (it’s not; Hannibal Lecter is as close an approximation of Satan as you are ever likely to see, the film has a scene of mad cannibalism, and how could we forget the killer, who is making a dress made of the flesh of his victims), and other films such as Jaws fall into the action/adventure category in people’s minds. But these two films are both great movies—they top my personal favorites of all time—and yet the genre is still derided.
I actually don’t rate The Exorcist very high on my personal list; I just don’t think it’s all that well-written. Horror films should hold up as well as any other film, and I don’t think The Exorcist really has much going for it outside of Regan’s bedroom scenes. The drama between the non-possessed characters is really flat, and too much of it comes off like—yep—a bad horror film. On the other hand, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining (Kubrick’s version, not Stephen King’s misguided TV version; King just doesn’t get scary movies), Ridley Scott’s perfect Alien, and the 1978 Philip Kaufman version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers are not only great horror films—they are all extraordinarily well made movies and should be examples for any filmmaker out there turning his or her eye toward the horror genre.
I will dedicate a great deal of my future energies to reviewing films in the horror genre so that I might continue to put the word out that this is a breed of film in need of—and deserving of—a revolution. But in the meantime, let me throw out a few guidelines for would-be horror filmmakers:
1. Be ballsy enough to try and actually scare your audience.
2. Give campiness a rest already and see suggestion #1. Did Kubrick get campy with The Shining? No. You know why? Because he wanted to be scary.
3. Stop making me watch unlikable characters who are only capable of yelling and screaming at each other. I.e., no more godforsaken histrionics! People don’t start behaving like selfish brats when there’s a crisis of supernatural proportions going down. They tend, in fact, to band together and behave like responsible people. And remember King’s advice: ‘scare’ is ‘care’ with an s. Likable characters make things so much scarier.
4. Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere! Most of the reason a lot of horror films are failing now is because no one is bothering to really work up any kind of spooky vibe in their films. They coat the walls of a set in cheesy grime and think they have atmosphere covered. Um, note to those guys: it’s not working. Everything these days is overproduced, over-edited, and looks more like a music video than any kind of place where A.) I would find myself, or B.) actually exists anywhere on planet Earth.
5. Realism. Similar to above, this is by far the hardest thing to pull off. Characters must be believable and must do believable things. Otherwise, the audience is taken out of the picture. But the good news is that if you keep your film real, you will scare people. Oh, yes. You will.
6. Stop thinking that direct references to other horror movies belong in new horror movies. References are not scary. They do not belong in horror films. They break the fourth wall and are unforgivable. As I will probably rail again in my upcoming review of Wolf Creek, your killer should not be a cartoony lunatic that quotes Crocodile Dundee. Not scary.
7. Keep the following things out of your scary movie: guns (not scary, unless you have a really super-cool monster or villain—in other words, one that cannot be killed by a gun—so no guns unless they’re useless pieces of crap anyway), computers (commit this to memory: the Internet is not scary at all), cops (always a mistake), and monologuing bad guys (I am not scared of people who want to sit down and chat with me about their master plan of crap).
8. Do not—whatever you do—compromise the menace of your prime monster. Preferably, your villain/monster/whathaveyou should kill whoever it sees as soon as it sees them.
9. Kill lots of your characters, if not all of them. After all, this is a horror movie, folks, not a romantic comedy. Doom for all should be the guiding principle.
And before you all tell me that it’s easy to sit back and complain about the work of others while doing nothing myself, hear this now: Quarantine, my first film and a horror film that will obey all the rules listed above, will be made available online, January 2007.
With any luck, it will be the best defense I could ever hope to make for the genre.
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Final Word: Motiveless Malevolence
I think it is fair to reason that my colleague does not think motive is a necessary component in a good horror movie. As rules 7 and 8 clearly state, the antagonist of the picture should generally not explain why he/she/it kills everything in sight as quickly as possible. In the horror genre it is completely acceptable to have a villain kill everything for no reason other than the fact that you happen to be watching a horror movie.
Shakespeare’s Iago is generally viewed as one of the greatest villains of all time. Tomes of verbiage have been spent desperately trying to define Iago’s motives. I have nothing to add to that great debate, but I think it’s worth pointing out that so much effort has been sunk into the issue. Every generation feels compelled to give Iago their own reasons for his actions, suggesting that the character is somehow less satisfying without a motive. In fact, the first time I ever heard the phrase “motiveless malevolence” was in connection with that character. It’s as if his very lack of motive, his nihilistic ethos, is what motivates him to seek the ruin of those around him.
Iago of course is the exception that proves the rule. Without a motive villains devolve into the kind of painfully uninteresting caricatures that plague 16 of the 20 Bond films and many other “this almost made sense” movies. The greatest villains anybody can think of always have a pretty clear (if ultimately flawed) reason for their chaotic actions. Agent Smith must get out, Vader wants to rule the galaxy as father and son, Sollozzo wants political cover for his drug operations.
A defining characteristic of the horror genre is however that the baddies and monsters have no motive, no even slightly plausible reason for seeking the death and destruction of so many summer lake skinny dippers. Horror writers act as if dark terrors killing for no reason are the most frightening experience known to film. It’s not and I don’t know how many more Fridays we have to mock until they get it.
Mr. Pumpkinhead over there brought up three excellent films and tried to claim them for the (would wishing made it so) defunct genre of horror. I will reclaim them for thinking people all across the land. The Silence of Lambs is undoubtedly one of the best films of the past 30 years. The core of that movie was not Hannibal Lecter running around crazily eating everyone in sight. In fact for most of the movie the “monster” was behind reinforced Plexiglas. Most of the deaths happen off screen (Miggs, the census taker, the ambulance crew, and Dr. Chilton I presume). The movie lives off the tension of two characters literally sitting and talking with each other. Sitting and talking and trying to cipher through riddles. That’s not a horror movie anymore than The Shawshank Redemption is a horror movie. It’s a drama, heck you could argue that it’s a love story, but it is not a scary movie that was trying to give you nightmares about Boogeyman Lecter waiting under your bed. Lecter (and Buffalo Bill for that matter) had their reasons. Silence is the highest form of drama, not a horror movie that struck a mainstream cord.
Jaws is not the first movie to rely on animals to obviate the need to give the antagonist a motive. “It’s hungry” is all we really need to know about why the shark eats yuppies. With the scary music and disappearing swimmers it’s tempting to put Jaws into the horror genre, and I certainly would have 31 years ago. Luckily, we know more now than we did in 1975. Viewed with the perspective that only history can provide we can now see that cocaine doesn’t make you aerodynamic and that Jaws is something wholly original from both horror/adventure movies and the sci-fi thrillers that came before it. Jaws was the first of what we now call “disaster movies.” Here is the plot of Jaws: silent terror stalks blissfully unsuspecting community, a fringe scientist unsuccessfully tries to convince the civic leaders of the menace bearing down on all. After enough bodies pile up, a hero accepts the teachings of the fringe scientist and together they set out with cunning and courage to save the community from its backwards ways by ending the threat. This is Jaws in a nutshell and it is also every disaster movie we’ve seen in the CGI era. The term disaster movies conjure up images of some American iconic structure getting blown to the stone age (or “Jesus time” as the republicans call it), but we shouldn’t let the limitations of 1975 technology obscure what Jaws really is. If Jaws was made today the sharks would be attacking both coasts after years of over fishing made them turn to the one food source left, the deadliest prey, man. Halfway through the movie the sharks would eat through the moorings of the Golden Gate Bridge, killing thousands, at which point Paul Giamatti would finally convince President Phillip Seymour Hoffman to send crack submariner Keanu Reeves, captain of the nuclear super sub “Jaws”, across the Pacific to “fight the sharks over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
You don’t even have to imagine a whole other movie to see what Jaws with CGI would look like. Substitute the ’75 shark for a meteor and you get Deep Impact (or Armageddon, depending on which poison you swallowed). Substitute the shark for global warming and you get The Day After Tomorrow. Substitute the shark for aliens and add the President, and you get Independence Day.
Independence Day belongs to the newer genre of disaster movies and not the older tradition of the Alien Invader movies precisely because it follows the arch set by movies like Jaws, as opposed to something like Body Snatchers. Alien, the Ridley Scott version, is also not an aliens taking over the Earth movie, but it’s not a horror film either. Alien is Die Hard in Space (or I guess, Die Hard is Alien in a High Rise, whatever). It’s fun, it’s thrilling, and it’s totally and completely an action movie about running around and blowing things up. Not knowing exactly what is coming to kill you doesn’t make it a horror movie, especially when your main response is to get a bigger gun. The only reason Alien seems different than your classic Rambo action movie is the brilliance of its hero Ripley, brilliantly embodied by Sigourney Weaver. She is a woman in a man’s world, she is so much smaller than the things that want to kill her. Unlike Stallone when the guns are taken away from her, she cannot hope to physically overpower the baddies, a point made even more clearly by the grotesque and unnatural size and speed of her pursuers. She has got … to … reach … the airlock. Alien is a brilliant twist on the traditional action flick. But it is, in every other way, the traditional action flick.
The Shining, now that is a horror movie, the best horror movie ever and I apologize for the shameful oversight in my previous article. I can level no criticism against that excellent piece of work (except the inexcusable escape of Wendy. I just pretend that she dies in that bathroom and that Danny drives the snowcat himself). However I can point out that, like Iago before him, Jack has no easily discernable or comfortable motive for his madness and his attempts to destroy those around him. We don’t really know why Wendy and Danny need to be killed, but we absolutely believe that they must be corrected. We don’t know why Jack goes mad, but there’s irrefutable evidence that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Motiveless malevolence is usually a terrible recipe for an entertaining film; The Shining is the shining exception.