Horror

I’m not entirely sure I “get” the purpose of a pure horror story. I usually feel like my enjoyment of it is one level removed. Oh, sure, there are some great horror stories I really like — a handful of Lovecraft’s, and maybe a dozen by other writers (like Bierce’s “The Damned Thing”), but I always feel like I’m not quite the target audience.

The odd thing is that I love some horrifying monsters and dreadful, dire spells and have them in the tales I write. They frequently turn up in the stories I most enjoy. But in sword-and-sorcery and heroic fiction the characters can fight back, or, at the least, flee.

I mention all this because I’ve been watching Hill House with my daughter. We just finished watching the 6th episode last night. Let me share some spoiler-free observations.

The writing so far is very strong. The acting is so brilliant that I’m completely sold that these people are experiencing these terrible events. So much so that it’s like watching a bunch of people I quite like get tortured and traumatized, and I don’t find that fun. I turned to my daughter last night and told her that it just seems like the haunted house was screwing with this really nice family, and I hope that by the end those who are still alive get to kick its ass. I was angry upon their behalf and ready to take action, and I guess maybe that’s not where I’m supposed to be while watching.

While I was away at World Fantasy Con last year my daughter watched Hill House with my wife. Keeping in mind that my wife has a pretty traumatic job, she stays away from shows with a whole lot of violence or disturbing images, because she hears enough about that at work. She watched Hill House with my daughter anyway, and it really left her unsettled. She informs me that it does NOT end with the character’s solving the mystery and beating the house. I’m going to watch to the end, but from what she says I think I’m going to be left feeling unsettled and dis-satisfied.

Maybe I don’t have the right genes to be enjoying pure horror? I dunno. Can any of you tell me what I’m not getting? How am I out of sync with the intended audience?

5 Comments

Fletcher Vredenburgh January 30, 2019 at 3:36 pm

Pleasure might not be the right word, but I do enjoy the chills I get from a good horror tale. Some of us just like being scared, though perhaps only because we know it’s not real. I don’t want to experience real fear, but I do like a good fright or extended moment of haunting spookiness. Even the best horror isn’t fundamentally different from a jump scare. The trick someone like MR James or Laird Barron pulls off of it is fooling you long and well enough in to believing it’s something more than just a man in a mask screaming “Boo!”

I’m also pulled in (and impressed) by the ability of good horror to make me feel uneasy and, if only for the length of a book, to believe in something I don’t – ie. spooks and monsters.

I’m torn about Hill House, at least aesthetically as a work of horror For me, its most effective elements are the family tragedy, not the actual horror but (though most of those are quite good). I think Mike Flanagan could have told nearly the same story but dropping the supernatural elements. So were they really needed or not?

As to the ending, well, I didn’t like it, but I expect for very different reasons than you might.

Reply
Matthew January 30, 2019 at 6:25 pm

You probably just aren’t the right reader for horror. Everyone has different tastes. Me, I like a good horror story.

Reply
Todd January 30, 2019 at 11:40 pm

I think this particular kind of story is an artifact of the current times. Hollywood has adopted a rejection of the “happy ending” in favor of bleakness and despair. While that was certainly a solid marketing strategy for a while – as most Hollywood stories did used to have a happy ending – I feel like it has run its course. What used to be different and edgy has now become the norm from overuse. Now I feel surprised when I watch something that ends on a high note. And it really doesn’t have anything to do with the thrills and chills along the way.

Reply
Mick February 1, 2019 at 6:43 pm

Honestly I think so much of it boils down to the ending.
Stephen King definitely writes horror, but his characters struggle and fight back and almost always come out victorious over the monster.
(Best horror I read in 2018: Stephen King’s The Outsider; a great police/prosecutor procedural where an alleged serial killer is found to be in two places at one time, with supernatural help!)
But yeah the horror stories that go “evil thing inflicts suffering and evil on normal humans, humans cannot stop it, evil thing keeps being evil”… that can be a bummer and doesn’t do much for me.

Reply
M Harold Page February 20, 2019 at 2:37 pm

I think there’s a Circus Maximus “consumption protocol” (?) whereby the viewer/reader is expected to *enjoy* watching people meet their grisly or unhappy fates, basically schaudenfraude-the-meta-genre, or CSI without the detection.

It explains a lot of TV, including GOT, and some of the current grimdark literary offerings, and I suspect editors and producers have latched onto “bad things to people, some of them nice”” as a kind of rule of the thumb, much like “nobody got fired for buying IBM”.

I ‘m also not on board for this: I always prefered Howard’s horror to HPL’s. Hopefully fashions will change.

Reply

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Jul
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Horror

5 Comments

Categories

Blogroll

Podcasts

Publishers