Post by Martin Stett on Jan 24, 2024 13:43:50 GMT
Having watched Teaching Jake About the Camcorder, Jan '97 - an insistent recommendation from Pacinoyes - I'm reminded again of why I prefer horror short stories to full length movies. Camcorder is a horror on the malleability of memory - replaying the same moment over and over again, small changes happening each time, the memory of a cherished memory becoming more frightening and sinister the longer it is looked upon. (I actually think the story would have been improved by removing the overt horror elements entirely, as the film loses power each time it draws attention to the current iteration of the memory being different from the last... but that is a different discussion.) It got me to thinking about why I prefer the works of short horror from the likes of John Smith (The Black Tower), Kris Straub (the Local 58 Youtube channel and Broodhollow comic books - the latter of which also deals in the horror of (mis)remembering), and my queen Emily Carroll (Through the Woods, a pants-pissingly terrifying book).
All of them focus on the horror of the unknowable. A mysterious black tower that only the protagonist can see, a young woman claiming to have been visited by a man in the night "wearing a wide brimmed hat, with a smile that showed all his teeth" even though there are no footprints in the snow outside ("She was happy," notes the narrator). There is no protection from what cannot be fathomed, which makes the appearance of the unfathomable - benign or not - something to be feared. This is made explicit in Carroll's The Nesting Place, which allows the hero to learn about the monster and understand what drives it. As soon as something can be understood, it loses its power, because it can be defeated. A wooden stake through a vampire's heart, a bullet through a zombie's brain - as soon as you know what is scaring you, it has lost its power to do so, because you have control. Hunter and hunted have become reversed - it is the monster that cries and runs away, its "victim" holding all the cards.
Which creates a tough situation in regards to conventional storytelling. The normal structure of a long form story is of a protagonist learning about something and then overcoming it... but in the horror genre, that removes the horror. The solution for the writers I've mentioned has been to write short stories that needn't conform to conventional storytelling rules. The longer a story gets, however, the more need there is for convention - three-dimensional characters are not necessary if Brian David Gilbert is talking directly to a camera for 9 minutes, but stretch that out and you have a Skinamarink situation - a movie that is, admittedly, quite scary, but also features 40 minutes (to be conservative) on static shots of furniture to pad out the runtime between Youtube short and "theatrical motion picture."
There have been long form stories on unknowable, cosmic horror that have shown promise. History of the Occult and Skinamarink are scary movies that don't really bother with pesky things like character development and almost get away with it by simply scaring the bejeebus out of the audience. The aforementioned Broodhollow has its characters investigating evil to uncover what is *really* going on in town, only for each new revelation to prove that they know nothing at all, making them question if it is worth continuing (apparently Straub decided on "no," as he hasn't updated Broodhollow in nine years).
Still, the best horror in this vein - the only horror that really, truly scares me - is in short stories and films. Going past half an hour requires that different audiences be taken into account, that more explanations and rules be made clear, that characters exist as people instead of audience stand-ins. These are good things for most stories, but the more light is shone in a dark room, the more it just becomes a room, and less a place where monsters lurk.
What about you guys? What makes horror scary to you?
All of them focus on the horror of the unknowable. A mysterious black tower that only the protagonist can see, a young woman claiming to have been visited by a man in the night "wearing a wide brimmed hat, with a smile that showed all his teeth" even though there are no footprints in the snow outside ("She was happy," notes the narrator). There is no protection from what cannot be fathomed, which makes the appearance of the unfathomable - benign or not - something to be feared. This is made explicit in Carroll's The Nesting Place, which allows the hero to learn about the monster and understand what drives it. As soon as something can be understood, it loses its power, because it can be defeated. A wooden stake through a vampire's heart, a bullet through a zombie's brain - as soon as you know what is scaring you, it has lost its power to do so, because you have control. Hunter and hunted have become reversed - it is the monster that cries and runs away, its "victim" holding all the cards.
Which creates a tough situation in regards to conventional storytelling. The normal structure of a long form story is of a protagonist learning about something and then overcoming it... but in the horror genre, that removes the horror. The solution for the writers I've mentioned has been to write short stories that needn't conform to conventional storytelling rules. The longer a story gets, however, the more need there is for convention - three-dimensional characters are not necessary if Brian David Gilbert is talking directly to a camera for 9 minutes, but stretch that out and you have a Skinamarink situation - a movie that is, admittedly, quite scary, but also features 40 minutes (to be conservative) on static shots of furniture to pad out the runtime between Youtube short and "theatrical motion picture."
There have been long form stories on unknowable, cosmic horror that have shown promise. History of the Occult and Skinamarink are scary movies that don't really bother with pesky things like character development and almost get away with it by simply scaring the bejeebus out of the audience. The aforementioned Broodhollow has its characters investigating evil to uncover what is *really* going on in town, only for each new revelation to prove that they know nothing at all, making them question if it is worth continuing (apparently Straub decided on "no," as he hasn't updated Broodhollow in nine years).
Still, the best horror in this vein - the only horror that really, truly scares me - is in short stories and films. Going past half an hour requires that different audiences be taken into account, that more explanations and rules be made clear, that characters exist as people instead of audience stand-ins. These are good things for most stories, but the more light is shone in a dark room, the more it just becomes a room, and less a place where monsters lurk.
What about you guys? What makes horror scary to you?
) can insert its switch 
