Okay, so this evening I went to see a horror film with my sister in law. This was the second time seeing it so I had a better chance to pay attention to the audience for the bulk of the film and I got to noticing.
I know I have mentioned on here before about people's defense mechanisms and they will have a tendency to react certain was, but it got me wondering. The audience, although they would scream and jump when something freaky happened; afterwards, it would turn to hysterical laughter.
I understand that is part of the fun of seeing scary movies in theaters but it ultimately came across to me as saying the audience wasn't truly scared. They were startled and then that gave way and they were fine.
My question is this: How do you scare an audience that seems to be fearless?
Based on the reaction of the audience, Once the film was over only a small number were actually scared and bolted out of the theater but the over-whelming mass wasn't.
Any thoughts?
Well, the first thing that you have to understand is that people use the word itself in different ways and that people who are going to see "scary" movies are often going for very different experiences and have very different expectations of what "scares" in movies are -- of what a "horror" movie is -- of what they expect those kinds of movies to deliver to them -- and so what might satisfy one viewer's expectation might very well fail to deliver to another.
I found myself in just such a situation with a development exec on a project I was working on, which was much more of a science fiction thriller and she kept saying, we're looking to make this more of a horror movie. We want more horror in it -- so I'd be writing it more in the direction of what *I* considered to be horror -- more sort of creepy stalking suspenseful stuff -- and I'd keeping the note -- "No, we want more *horror.*" -- Until I finally realized that what she meant by horror was -- more shocking bloody gratuitous gory violence. That, to her, was what a horror movie was. A "Saw" movie, or Hostel, or one of those things.
And the fact is, for a lot of people, that's what a horror movie -- that's what a scary movie is. The goal is to experience something like what people want when they go on ever higher and more extreme roller coasters -- can I take every more gruesome and grotesque visual shocks.
And just as with riding a roller coaster -- there is this tension/shock/fright/release response. You're taken to the top -- hit with a big drop that shocks the hell out of you -- and then you react with laughter as a release.
And people who go to that kind of movie, expecting that kind of experience respond in exactly the same way. That's why they're there, that's what they've paid for, and that's how they respond.
So, for that audience, the idea of suspense or a shocking image, as part of a serious story in which they are expected to become involved is simple alien to their experience -- you might as well ask them to become emotionally committed to a scare ride at an amusement park.
That's why (and you'll see this sometime) -- you'll get people watching a movie like Private Ryan and when those shocking bloody images appear in the opening Normandy Beach sequence -- those people respond in exactly the same way -- it's like, "Hooolly shee-it! Ya see that guy holding his armm!" Bursts of hysterical laughter. They don't get that every movie isn't "Saw Part 12" and that the image isn't there simply to give that a creepy "are you tough enough to take it" thrill.
And the fact is those audience members, even though in some weird way, they are among the most committed fans of these kinds of movies, are never going to be really scared -- because they measure "scares" the same way that roller coaster fans measure rides -- simply by the height of the coaster -- how big a shock can you hit me with?
But the fact is, for a viewer to be really scared, you have to become involved, you have to be drawn into the world of the story. You have to care about the characters and the situations. The "real scares" that they want, they can't get, simply ticking off how shocking a particular image is, or how bloody a particular effect is, of how loud a particular unexpected surprise "bang" on the sound track is.
So if the experience of watching a movie is simply waiting for the "boring stuff" to get over so that you can get to the scary stuff -- you're never going to really experience the full force of the scary stuff.
That's because that "boring" stuff is there for a reason and once a viewer closes himself off to it, he closes himself off to what makes the scary stuff really effective.
Now, if you're asking what the basis of fear is on screen, or just generally, it's what is known as a sense of dread.
It's not just the kind of fear that you might feel when confronted by a mugger on the street or if you're in the jungle and a tiger suddenly appears. Those things are definitely scary and you can't make very scary scenes in movies based on things like that. But those would be "thrill" scenes -- not something in a horror movie.
A tiger produces fear. Not dread. Finding a parasite moving under your skin -- that produced dread, even though it's probably much less of an immediate threat to your life than an approaching tiger.
So what is dread?
We are surrounded by all sorts of barriers that, in the normal course of our lives, we consider to be impenetrable -- realms within which we think of ourselves as safe. We are safe within our houses, within our families, within our communities, within our physical bodies, within our minds.
When those realms where we feel safe -- where we feel most safe, are suddenly penetrated, when the places and people and things that we consider to be normal and under our control (or at least under some kind of control) suddenly go out of control -- that produces a feeling of dread.
There shouldn't be a stranger in our house, or in our bedroom at night, or things visiting our children, or living inside our bodies, or occupying our minds and making us do things we don't want to do.
Toys should just be toys. Inanimate objects should stay that way. The dead should stay in their coffins and living people should stay out of them.
So many of these movies, in one way or another, involve "average people" who enter forbidden realms which, thematically, mean that they open themselves up, allowing those forbidden realms to enter them.
It is that "interpenetration" of the realms of the normal and the realms of forbidden that you find explored over and over in the genre.
NMS
