Agent 99 - Online story telling

Introduction

The horror genre is a chance to look into the dark heart of human nature - both personal and societal.

The aim

At a simple level a horror movies are meant to be scary. The audience must be frightened. This happens through mechanisms of the chase, the capture and the killing of victims. Emotional impact is made through the use of terror, fear and revulsion:

• Terror - what’s happening, pure fright
• Fear - the anticipation of what is about to happen
• Revulsion - physical disgust

A horror film is on ggod terms with these emotions, indeed a horror film, to fulfill its’ teaching’ function (see below) MUST not only show but get the audience to experience them.

Additionally (thankfully!) there is usually a societal element to a good horror movie:

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Fear of communism
• Psycho - Anxiety of parenthood (a new thing for the Freudian baby boomers)
• Godzilla - Fear of nuclear accident and mutation
• Night of the living dead (1968) - Zombies as ‘straights’ out to destroy counter culture
• Hostel - Contemplation of torture; particularly resonant given America’s actions at Guantanemo bay

This extended societal element is great for writers - it means that you can write something that is strongly bound by conventions and yet talk about wider anxieties.

You can also see that this societal element is about transgressing a taboo. Night of the Living Dead was almost single-handedly responsible for the introduction of a rating system in the US - the taboo of actually showing violence rather than cutting away from it was broken.

Finally is useful to say that the Monster is some form of adult life multiplied inordinately: As such it’s possible to image every horror film as a kind of ‘parents cautionary tale’:

• Alien, Jaws: Sometimes nature doesn’t care much about us humans
• Wolf Creek: there are people out there who are very nice
• Hostel: Are you sure it’s safe out there?
• The Fly: Should you really be playing with that machine?

Narrative pattern

Horror is of the meta-type ‘overcoming the monster’: There is a evil being who must be beaten. However where the emphasis in a maturation plot is character development through confrontation with the monster (Star Wars), in horror movies the mode is survival. If the Monster were always vanquished there would be no sequels and, as we shall see, the Monster is the star.

The pattern is three act, but there is usually an extended second act and compressed third act:

• Act one - the normality
• Act one big event - the Monster is revealed in all it’s intensity
• Act two - the Monster gets busy
• Act three - confrontation between the hero and monster

As the primary task of the Horror is to scare people witless a short third act makes sense as by this time the emphasis will be on the chase and final escape from the monster - essentially a mini action-adventure sequence with not much more in the way of terror. Logically the second act is the main time to scare people, so a pure horror film will reveal the Monster at the Act One turning point and then the whole of the second act is variation on a theme - being chased by the monster. Oh yeah, and dying a lot.

The Hero and character development

The hero survives in horror, they don’t usually prosper and often they are harmed by their encounter. What they ‘learn’ is that it’s better to be alive than dead.

They are tasked with survival by virtue of being the most mature amongst the victims. Maturity is not presented as a developing character arc, it is represented by ‘the Gang’ of victims, each of whom is dispatched for having one element of their personality dominant: The over-confident one, the sexy one, the rational one, the physical one etc. So ‘The Gang’ has a special role in the Horror, it’s a kind of combined single psyche - and it’s not accident that this is precisely the kind of audience that Horrors are aimed at: Gangs of friends still working out how they relate to society. As such the hero in Horror or Gang is usually young and about to take their first steps into the bigger world.

Setting

Horrors usually occur in ‘liminal’ times and/or spaces. The over-riding characteristic of the setting is it’s ‘between-ness’, again emphasising the idea of transition, of a risk taken (and punished).

Times of transition: Sleep and nightmare, outside time, at times of special significance(Halloween, Friday the 13th. Prom night, anniverseries)

Places of separation or difference: Extreme physical locations (Descent, Alien), holiday adventures, ‘out of bounds’ areas (haunted houses, cemeteries, churches), portals to other worlds.

The Monster

The Monster is the star in horror. There is a reason these films have these titles:

• Dracula
• The Thing
• Wolf Soldiers
• Godzilla
• The Fly
• Psycho
• Alien
• Jaws

Or else the monster’s lair is named, in place or time:

• Hostel
• Cabin Fever
• Cul de Sac
• Friday the 13th
• Halloween

The monster, if an individual, is far more interesting than the hero and the gang. Dracula is way more interesting than anyone else in the story. Not only are they cleverer they are usually stronger and can have an element of the demonic or magical about them:

• A killer who haunts your dreams
• A killer who never dies and lives off human blood
• A mutant created by a nuclear accident
• A mutant created by the intention to make people (frankenstein)
• An advanced insect from another world (alien)

If the Monster is not very interesting in themselves then there is something in their nature which makes them compelling, usually size (Godzilla) or number (zombies, piranha). With animal Monsters it is often something in nature exaggerated which is compelling: Alien is essentially an insect, but big and fast. Jaws is a big shark, but it also has an exaggerated appetite - it seems to kill for fun.

The monster has evolved through the decades, from the fabulous external (Dracula) to the man-made (The Fly, Godzilla, Frankenstein) through to ‘Man’ himself (Psycho, Scream, Hostel, Saw et al). The trend is for monsters to get ‘realer’, perhaps because we find that the really dangerous people are those closer to home.

The evolution that a monster doesn’t make is that of a personal journey. The monster is just bad from the start. We don’t need to spend much time justifying the monster. If we focus our story on how the monster becomes so what we are actually writing is a Tragedy (Macbeth).

Conclusion

Horrors are cited as a good way for writers to start out as horrors make a lot fo money, account for much of the income from film and are relatively low budget. I have not seen any figures to support this supposition - do first-time writers who start with horror end up with better careers?

One thing that is true is that the current A-list Hollywood Directors did often start or do early horrors - and delivering a good horror never seems to hurt a career. Whether the new round of Hollywood Auteur (Anderson Coppalla et al) need or want to do them is an interesting point - there seems to be a new round of directors for whom horror is a passion not just an assignment.

Some links

• Articles from ‘Necroscopy’ (really!)