For the uninitiated, the word refers to retelling of a traditional paranormal scary story updated to modern times. As an added bonus (redundancy alert), they often take place within the realms of things that we’re VERY familiar with, and bring a lot of popular bastions of pop culture into their canon. As an example, one of the freakiest things I’ve ever read on one of the many creepypasta archive sites out there is a story called “Squidward’s Suicide” about an intern on "SpongeBob Squarepants" who is handed…quite the interesting tape to review. And I’ll just leave it there. If you’re curious as to how it turns out, google it and get ready for the nightmares.
The true purpose of any horror story is to scare an audience, and that’s most assuredly what a good portion of these stories do. Apparently, I’m not alone. Several of the message boards that I frequent have posted appreciation threads for this particular form of horror story, and while there are always a few Debbie Downers piping in with “omg these thingz are so gayz!!” comments, almost all of the conversation is of the very rare positive variety, an incredibly rare thing on the good ol’ interwebz in this day and age. Going by the strength in numbers principle, I’ve come to the sad realization that these internet stories written by amateur writers are scarier than a lot of modern horror films.
‘Cus nothing screams terror like this guy. Having said that, his voice can make grown men weep.
Way back when I reviewed a Japanese film called "Marebito" (and if you ever want to be scared out of your wits and simultaneously mindf**ked to oblivion, look no further than this flick), I wrote that people watch horror films for different reasons. Mine has always been the same – the enjoyment of being scared, because being scared makes you feel alive. At the time of that writing, it didn’t happen often. At least when it came to the domestic United States releases that everyone is familiar with. Now, in August of 2011, that feeling is damn near nonexistent.
The reasons for this are numerous. For starters, the horror film – and pop culture in general – have turned almost completely over to the Vince Russo booking philosophy of storytelling. Car crash rules the day, with “all payoff, no build” being the primary result of this mindset. Most often, this rears its ugly head in the much-maligned “sound scare stinger” method of attempting to get a rise out of an audience.
Take a firecracker. Light it. Sneak up behind someone and hold it over their ear. Watch said person jump. Now, was this person scared? In a way, yes. They were startled by the sudden loud noise. Their pulse quickened and their breathing picked up. In a minute, will the person even care that this occurred? Probably not. So it is with many modern “scary” flicks at the multiplex, which are short on likable characters and disturbing ideas, but very long on that sudden “GONG” musical stinger accompanied by something rushing in front of the screen ever so briefly.
Extrapolating the car crash theory even further, sometimes films go with the other sensory extreme – the visual equivalent of the sound scare, often manifested in copious amounts of gore with little rhyme or reason attached to it. This reporter witnessed the fifth chapter in the "Final Destination" series last weekend, with a lasek machine run amok, a sickening gymnastic stunt gone awry and a cringe-inducing acupuncture-related stunt being among the flick’s more impressive visual set pieces in the fifth-go-round for the “grim reaper coming to get you” film franchise. Was it a fun movie? Yes. Loads of it, in fact. But was it scary? No. Not in the least.
Ladies and gentlemen, the most sound scare-ific horror movie of all time – the Platinum Dunes-ified version of "Friday the 13th." Sitting in the theater, I counted no less than 17 of them.
Secondly – and this is partially due to the homogenization of film as a whole - many modern horror films just don’t spend a whole lot of time on mood and atmosphere, two things that cannot be emphasized enough when it comes to how effective a horror film is in regards to how much it gets under the viewer’s skin. I’m often asked what the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is. Invariably, it’s always "Suspiria," Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece about a young American ballet dancer at a prestigious German dance academy, and finding out that said academy is really a gateway to hell. Plot and script-wise, the flick is definitely no labyrinthine maze, but director Argento gives the school such a dark, foreboding air (coupled with a soul-destroying score by Italian rock band Goblin) that watching the film is a tense, gut-wrenching experience. In a good way, I promise.
Thirdly, I’m sure you’ve all heard my endless diatribes about the remake trend by this point, but here we go again – these are remakes. They’re remakes of something we’ve seen before, and seen done WELL, more often than not. Thus, we’re familiar with it, and we’re not surprised. Even when said remakes are done with plenty of reverence for the source material and shot and scripted skillfully, it’s difficult to have any sense of dread, because we know what’s coming. A good example of this is the TV movie version of Stephen King’s "Carrie" (and the upcoming RE-remake, which may possibly star Megan f**king Fox). We know what happens at the prom. We don’t care.
Sometimes, familiarity isn’t enough, either. Sometimes, the victim characters are also so g***amn annoying that it’s impossible to be scared. But that’s another rant for another week [/foreshadowing]
Take some lessons from creepypasta, supposed horror auteurs in la-la-land. Beauty in simplicity. Less is more. The things that scare us the most are often the simplest ideas given just the slightest touches of complication. Being shown a graphic suicide. The end of the world. Getting a new job and finding out that one of your co-workers is a psychopath (and not in the fun way). The teachers at your college/academy are really witches (and that would be the amazingly simple hook of "Suspiria," which if you’ll recall is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen). All base ideas, but all base ideas that have been fleshed out to perfection. Rather than being immediately forgotten after being blasted in a theater’s Dolby Digital 600 channel sound, these simple ideas crop up in your mind at all the worst moments. And make you feel alive.
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