(It's high time I actually make a contribution to this blog, so here's something I've been ruminating on for the past couple months...)
For the most part, a "good" horror film is hard to come by. When I say good, I mean a film that stands on its own two feet as being artistically credible; whether it actually elicits jumps or shrieks from the audience, is a different matter.
But I think we ought to differentiate between "horror" and "shock". Mind you, I scarcely ever watch "horror" films, but of the ones I have seen, I've discerned kind of two working categories.
1.) Films that startle you, but which you really can't admit are that great.
2.) Films that really leave an impression, regardless of how startling they are.
The first example of horror that I always come to is Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). The movie is nerve-racking the first time you see it, but in all honesty, the startling moments have lost their touch after the second or third screening.
The thing that gets me about the Alien (and its sequel, Aliens [1986]) is the sense of dread. The music over the opening titles is evocative of something solemn and ancient and the slow pan of black space, tiny stars, and an alien planet establishes a sense of isolation. You know there's something out there, and that it's been waiting for hundreds, thousands of years. It will stop at nothing to kill you, and there's nothing you can possibly do to kill it. Even if you don't encounter it personally yourself, the knowledge that it exists and that you may cross paths with it, is unsettling. It undermines a basic sense of security.
This atmosphere is replicated in The Shining (1980), by the bizarre music throughout, the foreboding titles, and the isolation conveyed through the cold cinematography and the sets of the hotel. It's not the shocking encounters--it's the dread leading up to them.
Another thing that's spooky about Alien is the feral nature of the alien and its utter disregard for human life. It has no motive and no objective--it just wants to kill. The same is true of the shark from Jaws (1975), only this critter eats you. Just think: how much would it suck to be eaten? For the shark, you are no more meaningful than a meal; for the alien, you are no more meaningful than a repository for an alien embryo.
I also found this same effect during the opening credits of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), which features footage of South American mummies against a foreboding score (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxE4yITfRLo). While these images don't pertain to the story, they set the mood rather nicely.
I've mentioned opening titles twice, but seriously, it's often the case that opening titles tell you volumes about the film to come.
John: a nice discussion on the genre. I see what you're saying about how that sense of dread (imminent or otherwise :p)distinguishes the genre. In particular, it's interesting how that dread can differentiate a film from simply "Sci-Fi". Initially, I would be inclined to classify "Alien" as science fiction, but there's something else hanging there, affording that creepiness.
ReplyDeleteBut there are "horror" films (care for a genre discussion, Dave?;) ) that don't possess this dread, and it has always baffled me how people enjoy watching them. Applied to the genre as a whole, why do we like horror films? Is it that the unsettling feeling we get when we watch them makes the real world so much sweeter/more stable/more comfortable? Or is it simply that some people just like an adrenaline rush?
In some capacity, I think "Alien" is regarded as somewhat as a benchmark for being a sci-fi film that goes beyond using sci-fi as an end but instead used it as a framework for a different genre. In a way, it sort of legitimizes the genre. But you're absolutely right in that "Alien" stands on its own two feet as a red-blooded science fiction.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of why people relish watching them, one explanation is a vicarious means to confront fear. "Alien" can be interpreted as a critique of industrial and commercial interests; I've also encountered essays that interpret it as a very stylized study of the more threatening aspects of sexuality...after all, it doesn't take too much imagination to read a fair quantity of phallic imagery into "Alien".
In another vein, some Hitchcock films, such as "Psycho" and "Rear Window" carry very sobering statements about society, even though they're not "horror" films, strictly speaking. When Hitchcock gives us a world of witty, attractive people who sip drinks and engage in flirtatious banter, while down the road or across the courtyard a murderer lurks in plain sight, he poses a two-way question. Is the reassuring, cosmopolitan world more real? Or is it the dirty, horrifying secrets that lie beneath the surface and assume an air of awful banality?
The adrenaline rush idea is completely valid in my mind as well.
I guess really the feelings I'm trying to describe here are dread and despair. I think of horror as the possibility that something awful MIGHT happen, and despair as the realization that something awful IS going to happen.
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