A Broken Promise… and The Anatomy of Good Horror

So any of you who follow my video blog over on YouTube (and for those of you who don’t, I am very disappointed, get yourself over there now and hit that big green subscribe button.  Or don’t.  You know, whatever)  As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, by myself, those of you who follow my video blog will be aware that a few weeks ago I made a promise to update this written blog every Wednesday.  As you can probably gather, I have failed so far in that endeavour.  In my defence, when Edison first set about creating a commercially viable incandescent light-bulb he failed numerous times.  So if Edison can fall short of the mark a few times, I think I can too.

For today’s ramble of incoherent murmurings, I have decided to look at the concept of a horror film.  Partly because horror films fascinate me, and partly because I am planning to write a new horror film shortly and it would help to explore the concept a little more clearly.  To start I am going to be looking at:

What Things Ruin Horror Films

1) Too much gore – Ok, so I realise that lots of people out there love gorey horror films.  But surely that statement shows you exactly what the problem is.  People enjoy gore filled films.  People aren’t supposed to enjoy horror.  Horror is supposed to keep you on the edge of your seat, terrified of what’s coming next.  Gore films (or TorturePorn as the genre is sometimes defined) seemed to revel in the over-the-top mindless blood and violence that pervades certain films.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with gore, but the spectacle of gore shouldn’t detract from the horror of the storyline. 
A film that use gore badly: Saw. 
A film that uses gore well: The Cabin in the Woods
A film that does away with mindless gore and instead focuses on a successful storyline to carry the horror forward: the Exorcist

2) Over-the-top special effects – Ok right off the bat I should say I am all for special effects in horror films, for most horror films, you need them to make it believable.  What I have a problem with is when the special effects overshadow the performance of the actors, overshadow the plot, or are just plain ridiculous.  Why make a huge ravaging hell demon burst out of someone’s left ventricle and viciously ravage the entire school ground, if you could just as easily have the hell demon possess one of the teachers and make the teacher go Jack Nicolson in The Shining on the kids?  That’s where I think modern horror falls down.  Special effects are made too obvious and ruin the true horror of the film.
A film that uses special effects badly: The Haunting
A film that uses special effects well: The Ring
A film that does away with obvious special effects and uses a more subtle approach: The Others

3) Ridiculously predictable (or completely absurd) plot twists – For this one there is no excuse.  If you have a plot twist in the final act of your horror film, as all good horror films should, do not make it so painfully obvious that your audience figures it out in the first five minutes.  On the other hand, don’t throw me a curveball so farfetched I’m questioning the legality of the roll-up in the writer’s hand.  Not really much else to say on this.  Don’t make it pointedly obvious, but keep it within the confines of the world you’ve spent the last 60 minutes explaining to me.
A film that uses plot twists badly: Knowing
A film that uses plot twists well: Session 9
A film that does away with plot twists and instead focuses on just giving you a damn story to follow: The Cabin in the Woods (technically does have a twist, but it’s explained so early on you can’t really count it)

4) Completely obvious archetypal characters – So we all have a good understanding of what characters are in a horror film.  Not only that, but these stereotypes have been used to so often we can usually tell which ones live and which ones die (sometimes figuring out the order as well).  I get that horror films work better with certain characters, fine.  But you don’t need each character to be EXACTLY the same as the other 15,000,000 horror films that came out before it.
A film that uses stereotypes badly: Scream
A film that uses stereotypes well: The Cabin in the Woods
A film that does away with stereotypes and instead uses a completely different set of characters resulting in an unpredictable series of events: None that I have seen

Those eagle-eyed readers amongst you will have noticed that Cabin in The Woods is on the list three times as being successful in its endeavour and there is a very good reason for this.  Cabin in The Woods doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is, it quite happily pokes fun at the horror clichés and in doing so makes a film that is both disturbingly horrifying to watch, but also quite hilarious at points as it does tear apart the conventions of horror cinema.

So if anyone out there is considering making a horror film, please take heed of the four pointers above.  I will be as I create my next cinematic masterpiece.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be taking some of my favourite horror films, and some of my least favourites, and giving them a post-mortem to explore there deepest successes and failures.  There will be spoilers, so beware.

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