Misconceptions About Horror

It all has to be a clone of Stephen King's writing or it's "not horror".

*headdesk* I've actually had this said to my face.

It needs blood and gore.

IMHO, I think a lot of people seem to confuse gore with horror. I see it in movies all the time, but I've also read several books where the 'horror' is really just gorey stuff. Nothing scary about gore, to me.

For example, the Saw movies are supposed to be horror. No, they're just some guy doing gorey stuff. Torture porn isn't scarey, just dull, predictable and disgusting.

Horror creeps up on you, makes you afraid to turn around. If you're reading well-written horror, you should be afraid to get up and go to the bathroom alone. It should make you snuggle under a blanket with your dogs and cats and even the lights on in the house don't provide comfort because there are shadows cast by the lights.

The scariest thing I can imagine would be to be home, maybe alone, maybe with family in another part of the house, and just notice one small thing out of place; something that wasn't out of place the last time you walked into that room or down that hall. Why is it moved? What or who moved it? Are they still here? Have they been here the whole time? Are they even now watching you? Are they hiding in your house, waiting for you to go to bed?

I think very often people try to categorize horror more than they do other genres which leads to a misconception about horror tropes. Common horror themes become the "kind" of book it is. ("a vampire book, a zombie book, a werewolf book, a supernatural evil book, a good vs. evil of epic proportions based on bible and satan and 666 book) When really, any of those things can be a vehicle or premise for a horror story, but doesn't limit the style or plot to many other things. I think it might also lead to the creation of limits in the genre.
There's also a misconception that horror can't be literary. I disagree. I think it can.

Biggest misconception about horror? It's all gore all the time, and that's the purpose of the genre.

jodiodi said:

The scariest thing I can imagine would be to be home, maybe alone, maybe with family in another part of the house, and just notice one small thing out of place; something that wasn't out of place the last time you walked into that room or down that hall. Why is it moved? What or who moved it? Are they still here? Have they been here the whole time? Are they even now watching you? Are they hiding in your house, waiting for you to go to bed?

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A great definition jodi. Perhaps one of the most frightening movies I recall was Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn, who portrays a blind woman who's accidentally come into the possession of some drugs that a very bad man wants. That one got way down into your subconscious.

Another was the original movie done of The Bad Seed. That one made me understand that we know absolutely nothing of what really is in another's mind, even a child.

It's never the gore that hits you, it's a subtle thought that takes root and begins to grow.

Biggest misconceptions about horror?

That it's cheap trick writing. Ha! Horror is about the hardest kind of writing to do because it is so character involved.

Blood and guts has been covered. No need to rehash that.

That if it has a vampire it's horror. Umm... not anymore, sadly enough.

If it doesn't have ghosts, it's not horror. Hmm... there's nothing else in the world that's scary! Just ghosts! Oh me oh my...

If there are no deaths, it's not horror. "What? You mean no one dies? How is THAT scary?" (An actual quote from someone I know. Yeah... I didn't say they were a smart someone.)

If there's any romantic interest for the main character, it's not horror. Sorry, but most people have a romantic interest. That's just being human.

Every ghost in every story is just a demon in disguise. (Said to me by a religious fanatic.)

All horror stories are works of Satan. (Same religious fanatic. He wanted to save my soul. I told him he had to find one that actually belonged to me first LOL!)

Since plenty of my gripes have been covered I'm adding in the impossible to kill villan.

If you can't kill the villan it's not horror.

The horrors that get me the most are the ones that are most possible. Those are the freaky ones.

If it's misconceptions in general, rather than specific instances of ignorance in 'popular media', then you can look at the numerous instances where horror media was cited as an influence in some atrocity or another. It seems to crop up every few years in the wake of a school shooting, or a particularly nasty murder (the Jamie Bulger reports were filled with stupid and unfounded allegations that Child's Play 3 was to blame) because people don't want to accept that there are people who are willing to take the lives of others with no outside influence.

It was horror comics, lets not forget, which screwed the comic book industry up in the 1950s after Wertham got on his high horse and started drawing conclusions based on nothing more than his personal opinion. It took decades before the damage was repaired, and many great creators' reputations were tarnished because of The Seduction Of The Innocent.

Same thing with film. The DPP's list of Video Nasties was a blatant attack on horror as a bad influence on the public. It didn't occur to James Ferman, or anyone involved in the absurd law, that highlighting one particular genre would make those films even more attractive, thus drawing more people to the genre later. And it helps that (nearly) all of those films have later been released (more or less uncut) on DVD for the current fans of horror to enjoy.

We've been fed the same crap arguments against horror for decades. If in doubt, use horror as a scapegoat.

Another minor rant:

Since when did every other website decide 'dripping blood' fonts were scary? It's almost as bad as when comics' sites use the BIFF! POW! shit that was in the old Batman series, and it has little-to-nothing to do with what horror is. In most cases it looks like spilled ketchup rather than blood. The use of red and black as catch-all colors for a quick visual desciption of an entire genre is also enough to raise my blood pressure a couple of notches.

That is all. (For now)

Jcomp said:

What I find really interesting about this misconception is how many alleged horror fans feel that "real" horror is about blood and guts, and that the story doesn't matter as much. This has always bugged me. I hate it when a lousy horror movie comes out and fans on horror sites rebut criticisms by saying "well it's a horror movie, it's not about the story or characters." Drives me nuts. I want to shout motherf*!@-rs it's almost always about story and characters. Even in deliberately comedic, tongue-in-cheek stories. Bozhe moi. Drives me bats, I tells ya.

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In fairness, blood and guts is a part of horror too. Usually, though, that's for the early teen market--a group generally more interested in special effects than story line or character development. But it's a small part of horror. How the normals have come to think it's the whole thing is something I'll never understand.

I still say half the characters have to die, they have to say "fuck" a lot, and there is a gratuitous sex scene that has nothing to do with the plot.

Outside of that, horror needs to be somehow horrifying, in either a creepy way, or a fun way. I prefer the fun way. The entire story may have nobody die, no blood, no guts, but there has to be a thread of unease, something very tense that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, or at least off guard.

The creepiest book I ever read was while I was in England and found it on a book exchange shelf. It was called The Cormorant. I wanted to take a hot shower after reading each bit of it! I don't even remember if anyone actually died, but that book sure creeped me out, especially whith that gloomy English weather.

I like a bit of blood, a monster (usually), and humor. Those things make the best horror for me. I don't consider Vampires horror at all. Bloody romances. Werewolves only sometimes. Zombies can be good horror. Though supposed to be horror, I'm not fond of slasher stories. They are more real than horror, unfortunately!

However, to hold it all together, you have to have a great MC or there really is no story.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see all the time out of Hollywood is that "horror" is something to do with a psychopath murdering people (usually young teens) in increasingly grisly ways, that "horror" is madness and death and destruction especially on a grand scale.

jodiodi said:

Horror creeps up on you, makes you afraid to turn around. If you're reading well-written horror, you should be afraid to get up and go to the bathroom alone. It should make you snuggle under a blanket with your dogs and cats and even the lights on in the house don't provide comfort because there are shadows cast by the lights.

The scariest thing I can imagine would be to be home, maybe alone, maybe with family in another part of the house, and just notice one small thing out of place; something that wasn't out of place the last time you walked into that room or down that hall. Why is it moved? What or who moved it? Are they still here? Have they been here the whole time? Are they even now watching you? Are they hiding in your house, waiting for you to go to bed?

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^ This is why I don't read horror. I freak myself out, let alone when someone is trying to help me freak myself out, and I wind up holding it all night and not getting up to go pee because I'm afraid of what's in the bathroom mirror. And yes, I'm almost 40. I don't do horror.

ETA: I truly respect people who read and write horror. Their minds are much stronger than mine.

I think Jodi's explanation says what I was thinking, but better. Well-written horror can be many things. There seems to be a good deal of over-categorizing and an idea that it can't be literary. Well-written horror stays with you long after the book is put down and creates an emotional response in the reader in a very real way.

Horror is more than it's premise and plot when it's done well.

Horror is only a theme, a genre. It attempts to set a mood and tell a story through text, rather than speech as was done back when the genre was truly created, that reaches into our psyche and invokes some primitive feeling of fear and suspense. It tries to awaken the reptile brain in our own brains which cringes in fear from fire, from the dark things that are hunting it, from the shadows which might hold something dangerous.

There's a little piece inside us, however, that still likes that feeling - that lives for the rush, the exhiliration, the flow of endorphins and serotonin and adrenaline that comes with being suddenly afraid and wondering "What's out there" just beyond the edge of the light from the campfire.

What we call truly "good" horror" doesn;t hit us all at once with this response. It's not the mad rush of a killer descending upon the poor, innocent, and unsuspecting victim with a machete or a cold, slimy tentacle and flaying them limb-from-limb.

No, "good" horror trickles the clues to us, spreading them across a few hundred pages and keeping us constantly on the edge, feeding our brain cells and that tiny reptile portion of our brain with suspense and dread and those endorphins and serotonins and adrenaline until finally the story reaches its final crescendo and we are pumping so much chemical through our neurons we can literally be shaking with pleasure at the end of the story.

Hollywood likes to smack us around, give us the highs instantly and then let us down hard, and then smack us again. We go from high to low to high to low so fast that we end up exhausted and drained, numb, but not pleasured and comfortable.

There's a huge difference between the two in my not so humble opinion.

"You have to explain why."

No. No, you don't. The best horror doesn't stop at the end. It leaves you with that uneasy feeling, because you still don't know WTF was going on. And if all your questions are answered, you're too satisfied with the explanation. You don't have anything to wonder about.

Jcomp said:

What I find really interesting about this misconception is how many alleged horror fans feel that "real" horror is about blood and guts, and that the story doesn't matter as much. This has always bugged me. I hate it when a lousy horror movie comes out and fans on horror sites rebut criticisms by saying "well it's a horror movie, it's not about the story or characters." Drives me nuts. I want to shout motherf*!@-rs it's almost always about story and characters. Even in deliberately comedic, tongue-in-cheek stories. Bozhe moi. Drives me bats, I tells ya.

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I think this is probably the single biggest misconception about horror. And it's rampant in hollywood. How many horror movies have you seen that had the exact same group of cardboard cutout, mary sue characters as the last horror movie you watched? And the story was pretty much exactly the same thing in a different setting? Like the story and characters are an afterthought.

And--a bit off topic--are they ever going to stop making those god damn Final Destination movies?

jodiodi said:

The scariest thing I can imagine would be to be home, maybe alone, maybe with family in another part of the house, and just notice one small thing out of place; something that wasn't out of place the last time you walked into that room or down that hall. Why is it moved? What or who moved it? Are they still here? Have they been here the whole time? Are they even now watching you? Are they hiding in your house, waiting for you to go to bed?

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Like those stories where a person secretly lives in someone else's house. I think they had that on CSI once, and I've read about an allegedly real case in the news. I like that sort of subtle horror, but I do like the slash and gore stuff from so many movies. That can be creepy too. And horror like Ju-On, Ringu, Phone, and so on.

The biggest misconception about horror? "Hey, everything Stephen King duz makes shitloads of money. I better write like Stephen King, only not just like him because I don't wanna copy Stephen King. I just wanna be as rich and have Hollywood make movies offa my books like Stephen King."

The other biggest misconception is the myth of the incredibly cunning, clever, sophisticated serial killer and the rogue cop/lawyer/beautiful female DA that tracks him/her down.

Everyone's pretty much covered my main gripes, especially about "horror = no interesting characters, boring story."

"Horror means that characters can act implausibly and nobody will care." Argh. Slasher movies are the worst for this.

Really, I think the best kind of horror is the type of stuff that makes me feel a little disturbed after I finish reading (or viewing). Not gross stuff, but things that make me question the safety of the real world, etc.

kct webber said:

And--a bit off topic--are they ever going to stop making those god damn Final Destination movies?

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They're not, and that's the true horror.

Blood, gore, and sex are misconceptions because a lot of people think that is what the horror genre is. Well, I agree that blood and gore can be included in horror--and it is, but it should be done correctly. If it isn't, it sucks. And the gratuitous sex is very annoying.

Well, all of the horror hounds here can break those misconceptions.