Writing article about what makes movies scary: feedback please?

Here's my second draft so far:

Break the rules

I’m not talking about the censors’ rules about nudity, gore, and/or violence (believe it or not, those are actually there for a reason, and some of the greatest horror films of all time were deliberately understated in those regards). I’m talking about the rules of reality.

When Laurie Strode stabbed Michael Meyers in the neck, there was no reason for him to wake up, she knew it, we knew it, but John Carpenter didn’t care, and neither did Michael. The real world has lists of things that simply cannot happen, and that is nothing but comforting.

If just some guy is chasing you with a baseball bat, then you know that there are things he can't do, that there is something that you can do that will make him stop (out running him, fighting back, calling for help), and that is less scary.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t go over board with this in the beginning. Michael waking up from being stabbed in the neck was terrifying because it was surprising; if the movie had not started out with us thinking that he was terrifying enough as a mortal, then we would’ve burned out by the end and not cared as much after so many other “surprises.”

In the words of a complete and utter psychopath, there is no true despair without false hope.

Exploit the rules

This one is about the censors: disgusting images are not scary; they are disgusting. While the censors (and artists) may believe that they exist to keep movies from being “too scary,” artists should actually use them as a way of determining which images are accentuating the atmosphere of horror, and which ones are distracting.

Internet quote: “While many have criticized the [Hays] code, critic Michael Medved makes a reasonable point: ‘While many of the specific rules in the old Production Code look thoroughly ludicrous by today’s standards, it is instructive to recall that Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, John Ford and Billy Wilder, George Cukor and Frank Capra and Orson Welles all somehow managed to create their masterpieces under its auspices.’ He also points out that after the demise of the Code, motion picture attendance *fell* — from 44 million per week in 1965 to19 million per week in 1969 — and that attendance has never reached the levels even [sic] the post-TV, pre-ratings age.

There is a tendency for some writers/directors to use shocking imagery to get a reaction from audiences, believing that that is a substitute for scaring them. In counterpoint, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini were often told by censors that scenes they had drafted for “Batman: the Animated Series” were too scary for children’s programming and needed to be changed. They were notorious for, after being given specific instructions on how to make the scenes less scary, using the exact words given too them to make the scene even scarier, simply because they weren’t focusing as much on the imagery anymore as they were on the atmosphere.

In addition, there is a scene towards the end of “Quarantine” where Jennifer Carpenter’s character and her cameraman are just standing still for the better part of a minute, desperately hoping that the zombie we see standing behind her doesn’t hear them moving and come after them. There was also a scene in “Daybreakers” where a man was tied to a chair while a bunch of starving vampires ripped him to pieces and splashed blood all over the walls. I always thought that the part from “Quarantine” was scarier.

Alfred Hitchcock would talk about how, in a scene where we can see a bomb under the table where people are sitting, the minute when the bomb isn’t blowing up is scarier than the second when it is.

Make intelligent characters

If a character dies doing something that the audience thinks is stupid, then the movie playing in the audience’s head isn’t the one where s/he died, but the one where s/he survived by doing what they were supposed to. If the audience is being mad at the characters for not doing something right, then the movie is not scary. If they are focused on the scenario where the victim did survive, then the movie is not scary.

What really scares the audience is when the characters are acting sensibly (initially, at least), doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, and still getting horrible murdered. In this, not only does the audience not have a movie happening in their head where the victim reasonably survives, but they have a movie playing where they get killed, not the characters, because they just saw the consequences of what they themselves wanted to do.

After doing this in the beginning, you can get away with making your characters make inane decisions later in the movie, because: 1, the audience doesn’t trust themselves to correct them anymore; 2, the characters should be emotionally messed up at this point after everything that has happened, in which case it would be more surprising if they were still thinking clearly; 3, and most importantly, the audience knows that they would also be in the same position and getting themselves killed (if they hadn’t been already).

This doesn’t just apply to the protagonists. The villain also needs to be shown to be intelligent and “reasonable” (as in rational, not moral). If s/he does not have a good reason for why the protagonists’ savvy or pragmatic approach would not work, then the audience will be mad at you for pretending that the good plan wouldn’t work, they will know that the movie is happening because you - not the villain - want the characters to suffer, and the movie playing in their heads will be the one where the plan worked because they saw no reason for it not to.

Any other ideas I could use?

edited 15th Nov '12 8:01:36 AM by Simpson17866

I actually think this article serves its purpose. I especially like the first tip (that one part of being scary is breaking real-life rules) and you use plenty of examples, both real and abstract.

However, you should break up the paragraphs, or at the very least, set off the quotes in their own paragraphs. On the Internet, shorter paragraphs are king.

Also, the first two subheadings are good, but you should probably revise the third to match the first two...or make the last section its own article. I'd like to read a post called "How to Write Scaey Stories By Following—and Breaking—the Rules".

Lastly, you should write some sort of introduction and conclusion.

By the way, where are you intending to publish this article?

Personally, I find the third point especially significant, and applicable to more than just scary movies. It's something of an inverted The Villain Makes the Plot: an antagonist is only as compelling as his victims' competence.

On the other hand, I think this and the first point need something of a caveat: if you go too far with this kind of thing, the audience may react poorly. There's a reason why Death By Genre Savvy has something of a negative tone (or used to, anyway). It's hard to be invested in a character who the story is blatantly rigged against.

edited 12th Nov '12 9:27:14 PM by nrjxll

I'll agree with # 2 whole heartedly. One of the most frightening things I've seen on screen was the sequence in Pulp Fiction where the hillbillies have taken Ving Rhames' character into a back room and closed the door, and you can hear something of what's happening but you can't see anything. Implication is much more frightening.

Still, I'm not sure that calling that "following the rules" is quite accurate, because what you're really asking the creative types to do is to construct scenes in creative, thoughtful, and unique ways. To not just go for what's easiest or simplest. You'd want them to do that regardless of whether any rules existed at all, right?

I think that one thing that ties together all of what you have said so far is an element of the unexpected or, more importantly, the unknown. All of the scariest and most unsettling films that I have seen are, at their heart, about a gap in knowledge or understanding. You never find out the "reason" behind what happens in The Haunting of Hill House or Session 9 or Repulsion; if anything, the attempts to explain the events in the context of the films only raise more questions. A small dose of ambiguity can be totally disarming as far as horror goes.

Wow, thanks everybody!

Edits so far if anybody's interested:

Paragraph break between "... rules of reality." and "When Laurie..."

PB between "... nothing but comforting." and "If just some guy..."

Added: "On the other hand ... false hope."

Changed: "Follow the rules" to "'Exploit'" to make it less about what not to do

Added: "While the censors ... distracting," PB before "Internet quote..."

PB between: "... 'Quarantine' was scarier." and "Alfred Hitchcock ..."

Changed: "Intelligent Characters" to "Make ..." to make it a suggestion - rather than a description - more like the first two.

PB between: "... not scary." and "What really ..."

Added: "This doesn't just... reason for it not to."

edited 13th Nov '12 6:27:49 AM by Simpson17866