The End of the World

[Categories: Editorials]

Musings on horror

Posted by Martin  [Tags: Random thoughts]

Yeah, this is as near as I’m likely to get to a Halloween-themed post…and I know it’s a day late as well. I actually couldn’t care less about Halloween but it’s good inspiration for another editorial. The genre of ‘horror’ has left me a bit apathetic in recent years, to the point where I’ve questioned the definition of what makes a horror movie or TV show from my own point of view. What I consider to be ‘horror’ is an umbrella term for a variety of subcategories, which probably differ from other people’s.

For sure, I really enjoy vampire and zombie films but usually for the atmosphere and storyline rather than the fright factor. The aesthetic and the psychological aspects are what drew me into the likes of Vampire Hunter D, Tsukihime and Lament of the Lamb, as well as other non-anime flicks. I simply don’t find the undead scary at all - the same goes for monsters of various shapes and sizes. It’s rare that I watch something to be scared witless, but that doesn’t do it as effectively these days. Perhaps even cinema itself has become more sophisticated over the years because the older choices of plot device and subject matter simply aren’t scary any more - House on Haunted Hill is a possible exception, but that’s more a victim of Inferior Remake Syndrome, which is a different matter entirely.

Perhaps the ‘monster flick’ type of horror movie that makes up the trademarks of the scary movie genre is too out of date and predictable - it’s a threat that comes from a source that’s external, not human, not familiar. You can hide behind the metaphorical sofa and lock the doors, which offers some sense of security: vampires, werewolves and even evil spirits have their weak points which allows them to be defeated or destroyed, and we can run or hide from them to varying degrees. Don’t get me wrong, films such as Coppola’s Dracula and Dog Soldiers (although the latter is also a comedy) are good films but they don’t scare me nearly as much for this reason.

Forget the scariness, he just looks damn cool

My own definition of a scary film, which overlaps the popular view but also excludes many, is one that offers a sense of tension and unease that eschews dumb shocks and gore (e.g. the woeful Hostel) in favour of a more psychological thriller-type approach. The reason why The Shining is such a classic is not seeing the ghosts, the elevator full of blood and so on; it’s what you DON’T see. In the case of the psychological horror, less is more - Blair Witch Project, anyone?

In an effort to keep this on-topic and anime-related the likes of Perfect Blue, Ghost Hound and, to a lesser degree, Tsukihime are good examples of this alternative and more modern approach. There’s a bit of death and bloodshed here and there, but as with the Ring movies it’s as much about the moody atmospherics as it is about the shock(s) that everything is leading up to - even Mushishi dabbles in this from time to time too. Instead of making the audience jump out of their seats, these plant thoughts and ideas in our minds and let the dark recesses of our imaginations do the rest. They don’t always use what would otherwise be the vital ingredient of some supernatural theme or other either - it can be centred around the evil that stems from human beings and the ‘real world’, which is something that is all around us and impossible to run from…much more frightening in my opinion, at least.

A Perfect Blue murder…loads of gore and not a ghost or ghoul in sight

Monster for instance is at times very frightening and unsettling but the monster of the title is not some supernatural manifestation but a very evil and intelligent human being. Johan isn’t a vampire, a werewolf or a ghost: he’s a man who looks and when necessary behaves like anyone else but harbours an almost superhuman ability to destroy and end life. When the threat comes from part of reality - especially within the human mind - I personally find this much more frightening than a mythical or spiritual creature. Perhaps due to the way in which cultures have become more scientifically- rather than spiritually-orientated, contemporary things such as televisions (Ring) and computers (Lain) have become the vessel for evil and danger instead of graveyards and forests. It stands to reason really that in our less superstitious and more cynical and ‘enlightened’ times that spirits and mythical monsters provide cinema with material for nostalgia purposes while crime- and science-fiction offer the really scary stuff. It’s not the local cemetary or bogeyman under the bed that you should be worried about - it’s that ‘former scientific researcher’ guy next door with the funny walk and the knife collection…

Seriously guys, does he look scary to you?

I should note that I mean ‘enlightened’ with a dose of cynicism. Like Frankenstein and Godzilla, some horror stems from human hubris, folly and ignorance. While many of us aren’t fazed by mythical monsters, the fundamental fear of the unknown, a primal sensation that will always be part of the human condition, will never go away. Regardless of the subject matter, horror movies always boil down to this and even when contemporary slasher efforts become quaint nostalgia rather than cutting edge cinema we’ll still be scared shitless by something. Even the supernatural has dark corners that the torchlight of science has yet to penetrate; sometimes we create our own horrors but the universe still harbours much that we don’t understand.

I know it’s been a while since an update and this has turned into a spillage of rambling rather than the focused essay I hoped it would be but there you go. I’ve wanted to get a horror-themed post out for a while and this seemed the best time to do it. Now I have to dig out my review DVD discs from that pile of removal boxes…

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