Horror & Capability

For the longest time, I've been thinking quite a bit about horror movies and horror as a genre entirely. I've made videos about my ideas of what horror movies really are, they're not about what they're about there more about the idea of what they're about. As an example, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" isn't about some chainsaw wielding nutcase ready to hack you and your friends up, it's actually about being on the outside of an inside joke, the fear of not knowing. Everyone in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was aware they were leading those guys to their doom EXCEPT for the main characters. That's what I mean; "Halloween" wasn't about a killer, it's about an unstoppable, unreasonable force. But I've recently found myself returning to more Lovecraftian notions of horror and really re-thinking what makes horror horror and what exactly makes it scary and I've discovered it comes down to one factor, what is that factor? Find out after the break!

Here's what horror comes down to, CAPABILITY! More specifically, the capability of the victim. While this is difficult in movies, it's much easier in video games. The more capable the victim is the less scary the movie/video games are. I realized this over time as I read more horror and looked into more horror games. As a writer myself, the genre of horror always interested me and I always interested in what made something scary to some people but not scary to others. For example, a great many people found "Paranormal Activity" scary, along with "The Blair Witch Project", "Insidious" and "The Conjuring" and I didn't find any of those scary, entertaining, yes, but scary, no. Likewise, "Resident Evil" is a horror game but can anyways actively say they're scared to play a "Resident Evil" game? Or a "Silent Hill" game in which they felt absolutely tense to turn that next corner or whatever? Probably not.

The reason why is because in "Resident Evil", sure you're going up against...hell, they're not even zombies anymore as they are mutated...whatever the hell those things are...anyway, the reason why you're not scared is because you've got guns, you've got agency! The characters you're playing with are highly trained military special forces people. The character in the game is trained to handle certain situations, not to mention that the game is in the 3rd person, which does enough to take you (personally, anyway) out of the story; mirror that with Ethan Winters in "Resident Evil: Biohazard", who is an average joe, and the game is told from the 1st person, putting you in the driver's seat. Having seen let's plays of the game, I can say even simply watching it you feel the absolute lack of agency that Ethan has in that situation. In the scene in which Ethan gets his hand cut off by a chainsaw is even more terrifying because you're under the impression "That's not supposed to happen!!".

Yes, this IS supposed to happen.

In the same way, take "Silent Hill", any "Silent Hill" game and mirror that with what could have been easily the best "Silent Hill" game that was never produced "P.T." , a "playable teaser" for "Silent Hills" a video which would have been produced by Hideo Kojima, directed by Guillermo del Toro and would have seen horror genius Junji Ito as artistic director, which puts you in the driver's seat again through 1st person and the entire "game" is merely you walking and re-walking the same hallway over and over again the horrifying variations. The game feels uncomfortable and claustrophobic, and the puzzles are so obtuse that solving them is incredibly difficult nerve-racking. There's only ONE jump scare in the game but aside from that, the whole game feels like one really long nightmare. In a VR headset, this would have been AMAZING! This was a game that lived through the atmosphere, the hallway gave you a sense of dread, that something dangerous was lurking around the corner, and the great thing is you had no weapons, no guns, no map, no nothing! All you know is that you're a guy in a hallway, walking the same damn hallway OVER AND OVER.

You're absolutely helpless. Helplessness is the general mode of Lovecraftian horror in which I think is the best kind of horror, not Lovecraftian exactly but the kind of horror that makes you helpless. I've said it time and time again but there were 2 books that scared me beyond belief, "Battle Royale Vol. 1" & "Misery" by Stephen King. Both of those stories involved protagonists who were ultimately helpless (at least in the beginning of "Battle Royale" anyways, once it gets going it gets a little less emotional and little bit more action driven, which is fine, but the first volume, hot damn was that a gut punch!). "Misery" terrified me and the reason why is because not only could such a scenario happen, but Paul was unfortunately at Annie's mercy every step of the way, which is not all that brutal BUT he was physically handicapped at the time and therefore incapable of defending himself.

Serious heartbreaking stuff right here

While there's some agency in "Battle Royale" & "Misery", the real horror comes from a Junji Ito story named "Uzumaki", I won't go into spoilers exactly but one of the really terrifying moments in the story is when one character discovers that he's going to turn into a snail. I know, it sounds goofy and there's a lot more that goes into it, but the fact that against his will and through no fault of his own, he didn't catch a disease, he wasn't a jerk to anybody, didn't have it coming, he wasn't bitten by anything, didn't come into contact with anything, he just so happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and now slowly but surely he's going to become a snail. He's rightfully terrified because he's going to essentially lose himself, he's not going to be him anymore...or worse, he will be him and he'll be stuck...as a snail.

The point I'm making here is that capability when introduced into a scary situation is no longer scary because you can do something about the situation to make it less scary. Think of it like this, the less you know about something you HAVE TO DO the more apprehensive and anxious you are as opposed to doing something you've done for years. If you're prepared, you're fine, if you're not prepared, you're anxious. This is why most scary movies happen in the dark, this is why communication is disabled, this is why people are often alone when the scary thing happens and so own, all of those cliches and tropes are designed to remove agency from the victim. However, with horror movies, while you can be swept up emotionally in a film, the personal touch isn't there and that's why I feel like video games, more specifically 1st person video games NEED to be the next step in the horror genre.

Horror is more than blood, guts, and gore and to be perfectly honest, action movies have blood and guts and gore. Horror is psychological, horror is coming home and knowing for a fact someone else has been there, horror is hiding in the closet because you just heard your brother's voice asking you to come downstairs when you're brother is hiding in the closet with you, horror is waking up buried alive, horror is helpless. And until we put the helpless back into horror, none of these movies or video games will ever be actually scary. None of them will leave a lasting mark on anyone psychologically...or at least not me. Anyways, those are just my thoughts, let me know what you guys think and I'll catch you lot on the flip-flop! Peace!