The Optimism of the Horror Genre

I'd of titled this entry 'The Optimism of the Horror Genre and why it Suffers Because of it', but it was too long.

Stanley Kubrick once said to Stephen King, after he was announced as director of The Shining, that he thought all ghost stories were optimistic because it means there is something after death.

I agree with that, but thinking about it has brought me to a broader point. A point which I think sheds some light onto why I'm no longer left scared by a movie and has led me to propose a remedy for this unfortunate lack of fear.

The horror genre, on a whole [because there are always exceptions], is a genre of optimism. 95% of horror films will follow the same path; introduction of heros, introduction of evil, conflict of hero vs evil, defeat of evil. That's not scary, because evil gets defeated and if at the end of the day evil is defeated, then who's scared? I can't really complain about the genre for having it's movies subscribe to that tradition, but to me it just isn't scary enough.

If a horror movie is going to be scary - truly scary, as in the images you see in it will haunt your imagination for time to come -, it has to be pessimistic as hell. Everyone needs to die. The evil doesn't need to just win, it needs to completely consume. The ending needs to be claustrophobic. It needs to hold you there, leaving not a good thought surviving in your mind. All hope must rescind before the credits roll.

And I'm not talking about these cop out endings that are the craze of the PG-13 horror of recent populus where the pale ghost eyes the camera. That's still optimistic simply because it is open ended. Same goes for the ending where the force of fear (the killer's body) just disappears. Your mind is up to debate as to what happens when the movie ends. There needs to be absolute closure in the viewers mind. There needs to be no possiblity of an optimistic ending.

Now, I'm certainly not attacking the genre, I adore the genre, but I want to be scared when I'm under the sheets - and I'm just not anymore. I want to be reduced to a child on my knees at the glory of fear projected on the screen. Is that too much to ask for?

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Huh.

And I thought the horror genre was my least favorite because most horror movies suck. Who knew?

I do see your point, though. Fortunately, most of the people I meet on the street who like horror movies mistake shock for fright. You know what I mean; a quick flash of something scary, loud screaming, shrill violins and horns all combined to make you jump out of your skin. It always makes my eyes roll when that happens, well, after I shove my heart that’s clogging my throat back into my chest cavity that is. For these people, what you say has little relevance at all it seems.

Hollywood doesn’t think people want to actually see evil win either, and most of the time they’re right. I’ve seen movies where evil triumphs, or sometimes it’s only the bad guys, and I’ve felt cheated. I want a happy ending usually. But it’s the movies that suck at making themselves still good, even though evil does win, that makes this presumption by Hollywood so accurate. There are just so many crappy horror movies out there. Yet, there are some that lets evil triumph that are good in spite of that, or because of it. Two that come to mind are Rosemary’s Baby and The Blair Witch Project. Evil certainly wins in both of these films, but they were both rather successful anyway. Maybe if better movies were made with these films in mind, the old stand-bys wouldn’t monopolize the market. Who knows?

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"I'm optimistic!"


"It's ok campers, we'll let him out in a bit!"


"Anyone smell chicken?"

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Great posts, guys...

I think you both (OG- and Slay) made very good points. There are probably too few horror movies that are downright evil and I too think that people mix up shock with fear. How many people are really afraid that zombies will eat their brains? But at the same time, what's cool with that kind of movies is that they symbolize our fear of the unknown.

Not really a horror movie, not even a movie, but the tv series "Twin Peaks" was a triumph for evil, wouldn't you say.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I have never seen Twin Peaks is it evil?

Twin Peaks had a truly evil ending. It was completly shocking and left you screaming "NO!" A brilliant way to end the show.

Not to mention how evil the movie was.

OG great posts i totaly agree with you. when a movie ends i dont want to feel safe i want to know the characters had no way to escape the evil because that freaks me out and makes me think about it long after the film is over. i remeber when i first saw The Blair Witch Project i went camping a few weeks later and at night all i was thinking about was the movie.

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"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theater admission and the babysitter were worth it."
- Alfred Hitchcock

This is true and I could write an endless rant about my opposition to the tripe fare that Hollywood churns out, but I won't - just yet.

It isn't even so much that Producers need to switch gears so they can finally start to make movies that are scary again, it's just that they need to start making movies that have something, anything, to them.

I want more Cabin Fevers, more Evil Deads, more Dead Alives [not literally of course]. If it isn't going to be 'walk backwards out of a dark hallway inducing scary' at least make it a wild romp through the genre. Make us laugh, make us cringe and make us smile. I'd propose it really isn't that hard, it's just not that marketable.

Matt Damon hit the trend on the head in the first episode of this new season of Project Greenlight. Whatever 'co-vice-assistant head of development' said "If you wanna talk about the movie that has the potential to be a hit, Feast is where we come out." And Matt Damon called 'em out on it, "You're sitting two seats away from the master of horror [Wes Craven] and he's telling you it sucks!" Now, I'd argue with Wes Craven being the master of horror, though his early work was deffinetely a benchmark for the modern, but what he says completely sums up why I am fed up with the movies Hollywood produces.

Yeah speaking of happy endings in horror movies, was anyone else dissappointed in IT about how those people were plagued for their whole lives by Pennywise the clown but in the end just ended up destroying him in a 10 second confrontation with slingshots. I love that movie in all its campy/creepy glory, but that was a pretty weak resolution.

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"Like all dreamers, Steven mistook disenchantment for truth."

This has shed light on the definition of Horror, thank you -OG, i agree with a lot of what you said

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Look, America is no longer scared. Movies that once made people question reality have been replaced by obvious CGI effects. What made America scared recently were those planes shown over-and-over again crashing into the World Trade Center! But what scares us today is the thought that the car next to you actually contains a bomb. Or that the lady with a baby, seated next to you on the bus, has put a small bomb in her childs diaper.

Face it men and women, what really scares you nowdays is that you're going to die in a world that no longer recognizes peace. And you will suffer a long and painful death. No movie will address that now because the emphasis is on how to make you feel safer.

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r66-The member who always asks WHY?

Ya know, I gotta disagree with you on that. I don't think that's what people are actually afraid of and if you wanna actually look at social research, 6 months after the towers fell fear of terrorism was, realisitically, back at the same level it was prior to 9/11.

The media keeps it in the spotlight, but it's left the majority of people's actual fears now. People are still more afraid of public speaking than they are of death.

I don't think the reason fear is lacking in American cinema is because of an 'emphasis on how to make you feel safer', I think it's just because the bar has been lowered. Not in the sense that what it takes to scare people has become easier, but in the sense that what passes off as horror is bottom-of-the-barrel-satisfactory. If it's passable enough to turn a profit, it gets the greenlight. The result of this is a litter of entries that contain localized scares over substance. And that just doesn't cut it, because once the credits roll (and usually 5 minutes prior) any fear that once was has evaporated.

Fog. That's all they are. Depending on the lighting, they're creepy when you're walking through it, but once you've been walking in it for 90 minutes, creepiness is gone.

I don't think everyone needs to die but if there were to be a survivor, he/she should not only "NOT" defeat the villain as you said, but walk away from this tragedy in a fragile mental state of which they would never recover from. In other word....go straight to the insane asylum.

I think it has at least as much, if not more, to do with what they decide to show and how they decide to show it. Cinematic subtlety is always much scarier than parrading a string of horribles in front of the camera. That's why The Blair Witch Project is the scariest movie ever. The bleak ending and pervading evil in that story definitely helped, but it wouldn't have done anything if they actually showed the evil, instead of subtly hinting at it throughout the movie. That's because no movie is ever going to show me something scarier than what I can imagine; if they bound my imagination to a specific, well-defined image they're only defeating themselves. I'll try to think of exceptions to this rule (subtlety = scary, nonsubtlety = not scary), there are usually at least a few to any cinematic truism.

EDIT ~ oh yeah and obviously I don't think every "horra" movie need to be scary to be good. Return of the Living Dead, Ninth Gate, Rosemary's Baby, Cemetery Man aren't really scary but they are still all super-narly anyway.

building on what linepalsy said, i think it was actually J. C. who said "hearing a noise behind a door and thinking a monster is there, is much scarier than seeing a monster in a doorway, and knowing he's there"

Event Horizon has a great evil ending. Unfortunately horror films suffer because many viewers go there for the one purpose of being scared, and because of that many good stories are thrown away and forgotten. I think many viewers dont appreciate the value of a good story. It's just like no one reads a book to be scared. If you want to be scared, spend a night in Compton, on the streets, fully dressed in white robes. Oh, and Blair Witch Project being the scariest movie ever...no.

well, on the whole, most horror films do scare people, assuming that they're under 8 years old and a very new to the genre, otherwise, i'd have to agree. However, part of this is due to the bar being raised. Jaws was terrifying 25 years ago, but today it's nothing, and slasher's as a whole, which once scared the **** out of teens, are more humorous than anything. Now, it takes more to scare people, especially since a lot of people show a false bravado.

I think the envelope has actually been pushed beyond the believable, and that is what makes things un-scary. I watched the old black-and-white, 1963 version of The Haunting of Hill House on a sunny afternoon and it creeped me out, but good. The remake of the same story has all sorts of insane CGI and it's just vulgar and ludicrous. Nothing scary there. Same story, good casts in both, so it's just the treatment.

People are way better at scaring themselves with the vague unknowns lurking in the recesses of their own minds than anyone else can be by making those fears specific. Hollywood needs to get back to subtlety and suggestion.

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Yes, yes they do. Which is why everyone should go out and rent Dead End and bath in it's low budget, warm, jovial, youthful and above all, anti-Hollywood glory.