"Do it, Gordon" or The Proper Use of Horror

Before reading/writing crime, I was watching horror movies. Violent movies were the first interesting boundary of my childhood. The first one I actually distrusted my parents' word about. The first one I've ever seen (and kept fond memories of) is RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, but the top-of-the-line violent, the Holy Grail of cinematic trauma for kids has always been horror movies. Kids in my neighborhood watched them, so I wanted to watch them. GREMLINS, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, FRIDAY THE 13TH and everything adapted from Stephen King's novels were daring my young self to watch them. They may or may not be the reason why I suffer from insomnia today. 

Truth is, I have experience with horror fiction. Enough to know it's a funny word, "horror". According to  the Wiktionary, it means several things:

1. An intense painful emotion of fear or repugnance. 
2. An intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence. 
3. A literary genre, generally of a gothic character. 
4. (informal) An intense anxiety or a nervous depression; this sense can also be spoken or written as the horrors.

However you want to look at it, it's not something clear, precise. It's about evoking a feeling of visceral terror in their reader/viewer's heart. How do you do that? Since horror started being popular in Hollywood again (post-SCREAM era), they developed a strange way to sell it. It has been boiled down to a formula:

1. There is an inherent threat in the vicinity
2. Protagonist is trying to avoid aforementioned threat, presumably by walking through a poorly lit area.
3. The first occurrence will invariably be a decoy. An unaware friend, looking for protagonist. 
4. Second time around, protagonist will fall on the killer/threat/thing. A mad pursuit will ensue. The volume spike when the antagonist pops from the bushes is really what will make you jump.

Lame, I know. How many "horror movies" have you watched that were exactly like this? I call that the peek-a-boo technique. Create the conditions for your viewer to freak out. The effect is not lasting, but repeated until the point of numbness. Most of these movies will be promising for twenty minutes and have you want to pull your eyes out by the time they're over.

Then what's good horror and how do you create it? When I interviewed Tom Piccirilli  he said about the distinction between noir and horror: "I think there's more common ground than differences, that's for sure. Both fields ostensibly take you to a place where you are thrilled and horrified. Horror might be more graphic or delve into the supernatural whereas noir, historically, is more reality-based. But both deal with fearful situations, painful dead-ends, the long dark night of the soul." Piccirilli is right, but I'd also add that horror deals more straightforwardly with fear. The main point of it is to scare the pants off you. Make you uncomfortable and uneasy for the longest possible time.

What's the most devouring fear mankind always had? Easy answer. The unknown. Whatever the fuck that goes beyond what we can explain or control. EVENT HORIZON is about the limits of science, which they happen to hit in deep space. It's about the logical, rational world having a measurable size and what's in the greater unknown. Paul W.S Anderson just gives you a slight peak into what seems to be hell, but the change damnation causes in the crew members is so terrifying, you're left begging for mercy.

I remember not sleeping after watching THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES and having no idea why. The movies is deliberately vague about everything, which is its principal attraction. Who were these scary fucking being who roam around whenever disaster strikes? Are they causing it? Are they supposed to be benevolent? Then why are they so damn scary? THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES struck me as being zero logic and 100% playing on the visceral fear of the unknown. The movie fell more or less into oblivion since its release, a decade ago, but it left me a strong impression of a job well done. It preyed on my fear of the unknown and pulled it off, despite not really basing their point on anything precise. The unknown remained the unknown.

But the most fascinating horror movie award goes to Brad Anderson's timeless gem SESSION 9. It has to be the most realistic, ambiguous ghost story ever told. It preys both on your fear of the unknown and your personal beliefs. The way you see life and the Great Questions will color your viewing of SESSION 9 and Brad Anderson does an amazing job at scattering clues throughout the film, so you can argue every possible  hypothesis. The opinions on this movie are often polarized, because it's all atmosphere and tension. It's a slow moving film where you can feel the shifts in the air. I must've watched it fifteen, maybe twenty times and it keeps being as frightening. Pure horror lies in having to interpret this sentence: "Do it, Gordon."