What scares you? Discussing types of horror in fiction

[Inner Prop]

I feel like horror stories/movies etc are only fun when you can look back at yourself once you are out of the situation and laugh at yourself.  If it sticks with you it's not fun anymore. 

I guess the bottom line is that somewhere, inside you know it's not real, that you are safe. 

You can watch your hind-brain and your in-the-moment consciousness run off screaming while your higher intellect stands laughing.

An analogy would be a polar bear swim.  It's fun to jump in freezing water, get a shock, feel your body react as if it is deadly cold as long as you know you can get out and get warm when you want.  Jumping in the water off the Titanic was not fun for anyone I'm sure.

[Eric Lofgren]

Another nod here for Found Footage/ Mockumentary style movie making. I think it will have a limited life, but in the mean time, when it's done right I can still keep watching it and get a thrill. Case in point; The Blair Witch Project. You'd think that normally, once you know it's particular ending, you would never get any scare satisfaction from watching it again, but it still holds up for me after repeated viewings. Same with the Paranormal Activity movies. And even The Fourth Kind works for me, which is a riff on Communion somewhat. The Spanish made Rec and it's American counterpart Quarantine were also both quite good. One that really dissappointed me was Apollo 18. IT was just too contrived. But did have potential.  

Has anyone followed Marble Hornets on Youtube? The whole Slenderman thing? I think what those guys have done is incredible and does give me some hope that the Mockumentary in horror will keep going.

Conversely, I really enjoy indie horror movies, or lean production value movies. I watched one last night called The Conjuror on Netflix. Good old fashioned witch legend stuff that was genuinely creepy and very well acted on a meagre budget. I will always enjoy GOOD movie making that trumps stars and effects and that's never better than when in a scary movie. Another good indie style movie on Netflix was The Burrowers. It's a western themed horror movie that is VERY Lovecraftian. Highly recommended.    

[T. Kelly Lee]

It's worth pointing out that Whitley Strieber was a horror novelist before he was an alien contactee. Evidently a skilled one -- if it weren't sold as a true story, I'd call Communion one of the great horror novels of the 20th century.

Oh, yeah!  That's primal fear, man.  Nothing more terrifying than being violated in your "soft spots."  I took a primatology class in undergrad and when apes scared each other the one that was afraid would cover its private parts.  I've caught myself doing this when I've been startled!!  There's nothing more terrifying than, frankly, than the though of some cold alien presence - getting your hole. 

[Bob Lovecraft]

Another good indie style movie on Netflix was The Burrowers. It's a western themed horror movie that is VERY Lovecraftian. Highly recommended.    

I brought that movie up quite  awhile back, and someone mentioned that it had been a series at one point, I think. I've never investigated any further since the movie was so damn good. I believe I gave it 5 stars n Netflix.

Bob

[JulieH]

I saw the Burrowers at the HPL FF couple of years ago, I think.  Some film festival, anyway.

Liked much - bought it myself soon as I could.
That one raised the question of being "left for dead", but stuck knowing that something would eventually come back and get you. 
And there's absolutely nothing you could possibly do.
How's that for creepy?

[Bob Lovecraft]

he thing that really stuck with me about that movie was the little girl who they dug up who turned out to still be alive. The dirt in her opened eyes really got me for some reason. The movie made me wonder if the person who was in that state could still feel sensations, like victims of zombie voodoo powder, or if they were completely numb. I certainly hope it was the latter, but in keeping with the movie, I am almost certain it was the former.

Bob

[Genus Unknown]

Dude, spoilers.

[Yojimbo]

The Gross-Out gets me at times. When I was a kid, the movie Poltergeist really got me. The marionette and the tree were one thing, but the part that really made me shudder and look away was when the paranormal researcher bites into the chicken leg and suddenly maggots. Ew. There's also THAT SCENE in Peter Jackson's King Kong. You know, that one. Heebie jeebies, big time. Anything that hits that particular phobia triggers an autonomic response. I just can't help it.

Still, the older I get and the more I flip through Fangoria and see how it's done, the less I'm bothered by it all. My mind can parse that its just squibs and makeup and corn syrup.

Slasher movies, I've never been a fan, but I am quite susceptible to the cheap scares, the jolts and what have you. The slashers themselves don't do much for me, but contemplating actual serial killers and the things they have done makes me queasy.

The Horror I eat with a spoon. Dracula, Zombies, Godzilla, Cthulhu, Hammer films, Doctor Who villains, etc. I like a good monster. I like it even better when a hero punches it in the face, but I do enjoy the bleakness of a villain win from time to time.

But the Terror. That's the one that usually gets me, and it's the hardest to pull off. Part of the reason why I'm such a big Lovecraft fan is that a few of his stories hit that sweet spot when I was an impressionable teen. Again, as a kid, stuff like In Search Of... used to give me nightmares. The Amityville Horror episode, for example, and how the opening of the show always showed that doll on the rocking chair with the glowing eyes... and even as an adult, the first Silent Hill game gave me legitimate, wake up in the middle of the night sweating buckets, old fashioned nightmares. It's all about the Wrongness.

[Genus Unknown]

It's worth pointing out that Whitley Strieber was a horror novelist before he was an alien contactee. Evidently a skilled one -- if it weren't sold as a true story, I'd call Communion one of the great horror novels of the 20th century.

Oh, yeah!  That's primal fear, man.  Nothing more terrifying than being violated in your "soft spots."  I took a primatology class in undergrad and when apes scared each other the one that was afraid would cover its private parts.  I've caught myself doing this when I've been startled!!  There's nothing more terrifying than, frankly, than the though of some cold alien presence - getting your hole.  

Not even about that. The effect is more akin to what Stephen King classes as "Terror." The most chilling part, for me, is when Whitley Strieber is in his hypnotic state, and he's describing a light passing by the bedroom window, and he keeps saying "what the hell? What the hell?" because the window is on a top floor and there's nothing normal that could be causing the light. And then peering into the shadows in the corner of the bedroom, and just screaming for a full minute at what he sees there. It's the persistent hints of something really weird and unnatural that's been keeping tabs on him his whole life. The sordid details of the abductions barely register; it's the paranoia, the unnaturalness of it, and the way he describes his "encounters" with an inscrutable non-human intelligence that just... buuuuuh.

I'm led to understand that in the later chapters, he reveals a more positive side of the "grays" (or "greys," if you're British) and sees his "communion" with them as a blessing, but I never got that far. The first half was pure "supernatural horror in literature," and was effective enough to keep me from ever finishing the damn book.

[JulieH]

A simple version of "wrongness" is that feeling you get when you go back to your old neighborhood (home town, etc) and looking down the street, you KNOW something has changed, but you can't quite figure out what it is.  Obviously, the theater has been repainted and the blockbuster video has closed, but those are to be expected - maybe it's the donut shop that was vacant for most of your childhood now seems smaller? or what used to be an empty lot between the pharmacy and the taco restaurant is now an apartment building.

But it bugs the crap out of you.

[Drew Unspeakable Name]

I'm often scared of the oddest things. Twin Peaks scared me more than I ever wanted to admit. The scene where Laura's mother looks into her room and runs down the stairs, not realizing she saw BOB out of the corner of her eye until later gave me nightmares for years. I woke screaming about BOB for years afterward.
     ((Blair Witch looked like Mary Poppins in comparison to the unknowable mystery of BOB...and those creepy owls. Ah, if only David Lynch would make a version of Mountains of Madness...without Titanic Leo...of course))
      My partner would tease me mercilessly about it, but he has nightmares about my super hero Action fictures....looking at him and moving when he isn't watching them. I found this out because I kept finding a towel covering them every day and he fessed up that he did it before he came out of the shower in the morning. So I teased him, and thus the correct balance was restored to the relationship
Drew
     

[Bob Lovecraft]

The Gross-Out gets me at times. When I was a kid, the movie Poltergeist really got me. The marionette and the tree were one thing, but the part that really made me shudder and look away was when the paranormal researcher bites into the chicken leg and suddenly maggots. Ew. There's also THAT SCENE in Peter Jackson's King Kong. You know, that one. Heebie jeebies, big time. Anything that hits that particular phobia triggers an autonomic response. I just can't help it.

I was like that the first time I saw "Hellraiser". I was literally sitting on our coffee table, about 3 feet from the TV, with all of the lights in the house turned on. When it was over, I took my cat, went upstairs to my bedroom, and locked the door. When my parents got home, I just played it off, but I didn't sleep for a while after that. The cat was unfazed.

Bob

[T. Kelly Lee]

A simple version of "wrongness" is that feeling you get when you go back to your old neighborhood (home town, etc) and looking down the street, you KNOW something has changed, but you can't quite figure out what it is.  Obviously, the theater has been repainted and the blockbuster video has closed, but those are to be expected - maybe it's the donut shop that was vacant for most of your childhood now seems smaller? or what used to be an empty lot between the pharmacy and the taco restaurant is now an apartment building.

But it bugs the crap out of you.

Anything that takes me into the Uncanny Value gives me the creeps.  That's what I consider Sartre's "Nausea" to be existential Lovecraftiana. 

[Inner Prop]

The scariest movie I ever "saw" was The Exorcist, only it scared me LONG before I actually saw it.

I was about 7 and I overheard my uncle telling my parents about the movie.  I was up all night and could not imagine anything except the Devil possessing me.  There was nothing I could do about it, afterall the little girl in the movie hadn't done anything wrong.

Years later I read the book, then I saw the movie.  I liked it.  It doesn't bother me at all anymore because I understand what the author was saying.  I didn't like the movie because it hid the real meaning of the book behind special effects and the gross out factor.  The book hit on one of King's scares and the movie on another.

Jaws was another one.  Someone told me about it when they were reading the book.  All that summer I didn't want to go swimming, not even in a pool because someone might have slipped a shark into the pool in the night.  Later I saw the film and then read the book.  In that case the film and the book strike more of the same chords (except maybe blowing up the shark, in that the movie was FAR superior).

What did you guys think of my polar bear swim analogy?

[Eric Lofgren]

The cat was unfazed.

Bob

Cat's are my canary in a cage when I watch scary horror movies. If they're unfazed when I finally turn the lights out and go to bed, then it's safe to breathe and close my eyes. This is the other reason we don't kill cats. Although I admit I'd sure like to sometimes.