Horror Movies Are Not Scary Anymore
As I relax on my couch watching scary movies back-to-back with a blank expressionless look on my face, I realize that I’m wasting my time. I used to watch horror films because they scared me. Creatures that I could never imagine terrified me to my core. I noticed as time went on, jump scares became predictable, monsters became computer generated and practical effects slowly vanished.
Horror That Works
Even though we’ve recently had great films such as The Conjuring, Hereditary, IT, and Midsommar, these are unfortunately rare gems. They’re horrifying due to the situations and unknown entities the protagonists face. The audience wants to see the journey and conclusion of whether or not they survive against an impossible situation. We leave the theater talking about how bad we feel for the characters and the nightmares they had to overcome. Directors like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers have carefully formulated stories that make me think about the plot more than any other horror film I’ve seen in the last 15 years.
Horror That Doesn’t
Movies like The Boy, The Forest, One Missed Call and pretty much every Conjuring spin-off is poorly written and lack real fear. You might enjoy them for what they are, but they lack everything from a filmmaking and horror perspective. What these movies all have in common is their over-reliance on jump scares, poor dialogue, unrealistic acting, and the protagonists’ ability to fight the creature after boring “research” scenes.
Ultimately, I don’t get the same sensation from most horror films like when I was a kid struggling to sleep at night when I saw the Grudge for the first time. Putting my hands over my face and peeking between my fingers just to get a glimpse of the monster, quickly closing my fingers again so I don’t have to dream about it that night. I hated being that scared, but I also loved it. Those movies resonated with me.
What’s Scary?
In response, I’ve been thinking about what’s actually scary. Why is it sometimes difficult to walk around your own house at night? Why does a long dark hallway feel so ominous? What gives us that uneasy feeling before getting on a roller coaster for the first time? You may have figured it out by now, but the thing that’s truly terrifying is the fear of the unknown.
The fear of the unknown is a powerful tool that some films have started to utilize more frequently in recent years. Movies such as Color Out Of Space, The Void, and The Witch play on our inability to understand the threat or situation at hand. I feel that once we start to understand the threat and how to stop it, fear gets thrown out the window.
Here’s What Makes a Horror Movie Scary
1. An Unknown or Unexplained Villain.
The audience should know literally nothing about the villain. You can drip feed tidbits of information and allow the viewer to put the pieces together themselves. We should never 100% know what the entity is and what it’s fully capable of doing.
2. A Constant Threat.
The movie It Follows makes a creature that literally follows the protagonists all the time and nothing can stand in its path. Even if they decided to fly to the other side of the world, the creature would eventually catch up with them. Make a threat that can appear at any time, day or night, to give the audience a feeling of uncertainty.
3. Hard To Look At.
Make the creature really hard to look at because of how scary it is. Some examples are monsters that are always smiling, gaping eyes and mouth, unnatural body movements, or mannequins/dolls that move. If you’re asking yourself, “Why is it doing that?” then you know you’re on the right track. To start generating ideas, check out this YouTube video from VSauce called, “Why Are Things Creepy?”
4. Get Creative.
Start drawing what you think would terrify you even if you’re not an artist. Get a basic image of a creature you want and make it a reality. There are millions of creative artists on the internet that can help you conceptualize your perfect monster. Explore websites like Deviantart and reach out to horror artists.
5. It Already Exists.
If you can’t think of a unique creature, use one that already exists that hasn’t been used in movies before. Research urban legends from different countries or cultures, then create a story around it. A great source of inspiration could come from user-created stories written for the SCP Foundation. The site lists many creatures and artifacts collected by a fictional organization that secures and contains anomalies to protect mankind.
6. Cosmic Horror.
The vast emptiness of space can be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. What if there are extraterrestrials that our minds can’t possibly comprehend? What if these beings are so advanced that they could wipe out human civilization in the blink of an eye? The best source to learn about cosmic horror would be from the books of author H.P. Lovecraft and the authors that have continued his stories by expanding on the creatures in the Cthulhu mythos.
7. Likable Characters.
Killers in horror often hunt the most horrible, irredeemable, sex-driven teens in movies. The last characters to live or die are always the morally grounded protagonists. As the audience, we really don’t care when the jerks of the film die because they sucked. They did nothing but create problems so we’re happy they don’t make it. Plus we get to see a gory kill scene. We only care about the protagonists since they’re kind, heroic, likable, and relatable. Thus, all the characters in a horror film should be likable, and here’s why:
· Their deaths would weigh heavily on us.
· It would be hard to determine who would live and die.
· We would worry about every character, not just the protagonist.
· We want to root for the survivors, not the killer.
· Realistic dialogue among characters creates a realistic world, so avoid stereotypes.
8. Avoid The Dreaded Scene.
Some horror movies have the infamous research scene. The protagonists stop being scared for almost ten minutes to research the back story of the villain and how to defeat it. They do online searches, read books, speak to someone that has fought the entity before, and then they set the trap and beat the monster. If they fail, then they just wasted our time with a research scene that led to nothing but their deaths and a sequel. Sometimes research scenes work if it’s done in an interesting way, but it’s usually poorly executed.
Think About This Scenario
You’re standing at the entrance of a dark hotel hallway. The lights are out, its pitch black and you can only see about 5 feet in front of you. You need to get to your room but the darkness feels eerie. The hall is dead silent and you think there’s nothing waiting for you in the darkness, but you aren’t certain. Your instinct is to run down the hallway to get to your room, but that seems a bit irrational. You just don’t know for sure unless the light was on. Even if you had a flashlight to brighten your path, there are corners that the light can’t touch. Now imagine a barley visible smiling set of teeth at the end of the hall. As it gets closer you notice that the head baring the teeth is touching the ceiling. At this point, I’m sure you’d run the opposite direction. I don’t think anyone would stay and fight it. It might not be a threat but not knowing is the worse part. Not knowing is scary.
