Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part IV

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Source: videobuster.de

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie Final Girl (2015). If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the plot.

What distinguishes the final girl of chillers and thrillers from other characters in such films. Which of her “evolved adaptations,” or traits, enables her to survive when many others in her situation and in similar environments have not?

Source: YouTube

The movie’s protagonist, Veronica, benefits from twelve years of martial arts training she receives from William, who takes her in after her parents die, when she is five years old, and from drug-induced hallucinations which result from the drugs William injects into her system so that she can experience her greatest fear, which turns out to be her dread of failing to accomplish her mission. As a result of William’s mentoring, Veronica learns both that she is a “special” person and how to fight.

She accepts a date with one of William’s targets, Shane, and Shane and his friends take her to a forest, where the seventeen-year-old boys hunt her, as they have hunted—and killed—other girls on previous occasions.

Source: regarder-films.net

 Given a head start after tricking three of the four hunters into drinking whiskey laced with a hallucinogen, she dispatches the predators, one by one, as, thanks to the hallucinogen they have ingested, the boys face their greatest fears, just as Veronica had, years ago.

So, what makes Veronica the film’s final girl?

In his article “Evolution, Population Thinking and Essentialism,” Elliot Sober distinguishes between “adaptive traits” and “adaptations.” The human appendix, for example, is an adaptation that is no longer adaptive.

Sober also distinguishes between “phylogenetic adaptations” and “ontogenetic adaptations.” The former “arise over evolutionary time and impact the fitness of the organism,” whereas the latter are “any behavior we learn in our lifetimes, [which] can be adaptive to the extent that an organism benefits from them but they are not adaptations in the relevant sense.” Clearly, the martial arts skills that Veronica learns from William are ontogenetic adaptations. As is true in regard to many other claims, these assertions are controversial and have met with several criticisms.

 Source: earth.com

In providing concrete examples for their points, evolutionary psychologists often refer to the morphological and physiological traits of animals, such as “clutch size (in birds), schooling (in fish), leaf arrangement, foraging strategies and all manner of traits.” This explanatory method can help us to see how Veronica’s fighting skills, her self-image as someone who is “special,” and her fear of failing at her mission promote her survival as a final girl.

 Source: reptilescove.com

As a World Atlas article points out, “Mimicry is an evolved resemblance in appearance or behavior between one organism and another.” Usually, a harmless animal mimics a predator to protect itself from the attack of other, lesser predators. For example, “non-venomous milk snakes appear brilliantly colored like venomous coral snakes [to] deter predators from approaching.” Veronica adopts this same strategy in reverse. A martial artist of the first rank, she is a dangerous predator, but she pretends to be simply a harmless, vulnerable teenage girl. Her attackers learn, too late, that they are the harmless snakes, as it were, and she is the deadly predator, a tactic she has learned from William.

e: pinterest.com

Veronica is also predatory in other ways. She uses her beauty and her sexuality to attract her victims, the way an orb-weaving spider lures its victims (bees in search of nectar) with “web decorations” and the “spiders' [own] bright body colorations.” Veronica’s beauty attracts the attention of Shane and his friends, and, like the beauty of the orb-weaving spider, prove their undoing. While her physical appearance is not a behavior, her use of it as a lure certainly qualifies as an ontogenetic adaptation, or trait, which she learns, again, from William.

Source: inaturalist.com

In giving her would-be victimizers whiskey laced with a hallucinogen, Veronica adapts a defense mechanism used by certain animals, making it an offense tactic. The “large granular glands on the neck and limbs” of the Sonoran desert toad (aka “psychedelic toad”) “secrete [a] thick, milky-white, neurotoxin venom called bufotenine,” which is a “potent hallucinogen.” Although this compound is often fatal in dogs, it can cause hallucinations in humans and, perhaps, in canines, since its symptoms in dogs include a “drunken gait” and “confusion.” Obviously, since William injected Veronica with a hallucinogenic substance so that she could feel what her enemies would experience when she gave them the same hallucinogen, her knowledge of its properties and use as a weapon result from his training and is, therefore, an ontogenetic adaptation.

Source: 7esl.com

The nature vs. nurture controversy is as important (and as controversial) to evolutionary psychology as it is to other disciplines. The question of “what matters more when it comes to personality, nature or nurture?” is important, although it may, ultimately, prove unanswerable. As both Backcountry and Final Girl suggest, we are products of both our genes and our surroundings, of our nature and our nurture.

Source: the-other-view.com

Veronica survives for the same reason as Jen: she is better adapted to her environment than the other characters. Her traits (self-esteem, ruthlessness, and duplicity), coupled with her deadly martial arts skills, make her, not her stalkers, the apex predator, just as her attacker’s traits (sexism, misogyny, perfidy) make them her prey.

Next post:Evolution, psychology, and The Exorcist

Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part III

Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie Backcountry. If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the film's plot.

 

 Source: boomstickcomics.com

As we saw in Part I, Alex is a foil to Jen; his traits, which are opposite to those of hers, highlight Jen's traits, or “evolved adaptations,” as they are known in evolutionary psychology. But, just as Alex is Jen's foil, Brad is a foil to Alex; Brad's traits are different from those of Alex and, therefore, highlight Alex's evolved adaptations, just as Alex's traits highlight those of Jen.

Source: netflix.com

Brad appears at Alex's and Jen's campsite while Alex is away, chopping firewood. After leaving his hatched stuck in a tree trunk, Alex returns to their campsite, where he is both surprised and annoyed to see Brad. Jen tells her boyfriend that she has invited Brad, a tour guide, to have dinner with them. Brad has offered to contribute a hefty string of fish he has caught.

Source: cinemamontreal.com

From the beginning of their encounter, Brad seeks to assert his dominance over Alex. Clearly, Brad is an alpha male, and he expects to lead, not follow, even if only during the meal he shares with his hosts. A skilled woodsman, Brad is confident, competent, knowledgeable, experienced, decisive, and aggressive.

Source: dailymotion.com

During their conversation, Brad suggests that, both as a woodsman and as a man, Alex is insecure, incompetent, ignorant, inexperienced, indecisive, and passive—the opposite of Brad himself. Brad's contribution to their meal are the fish that he himself has caught. Significantly, Jen provides her and Brad's contribution, which they bought in a store. Brad's contribution was caught, live, in the wild. Theirs was purchased in a package, already prepared. Brad's fish are animals; Jen's and Alex's contribution is bloodless vegetables harvested and packaged by strangers. When Jen offers to prepare a vegetable as a side dish, Alex chooses one kind, while Brad selects another. Jen sides with Alex, but Brad orders her to prepare the vegetable he wants, not the one Alex has chosen. Diplomatically, she says she will prepare both. Alex does not challenge Brad; he lets Jen answer their guest, despite Brad's usurpation of Alex's own authority as host.

 Source: fischpott.com

Brad also implicitly insults Brad. When Brad tells him that he plans to start a landscaping business, Brad replies, in a racist statement, that he that thought “Mexicans” did that type of work. On the other hand, Brad admires Jen's profession, law, which is, in Brad's view, superior to the manual labor that Alex names as his intended vocation. Brad has a “manly” profession: he is a tour guide with expert knowledge about the park, its trails, and its flora and fauna, a man at home in the wilderness, who can fend for himself while directing others in his charge.

Brad boldly violates propriety when he stands, his back to Jen and Alex, unzips his fly, and urinates. Most men would not only object to such conduct, but be willing to come to blows with any man who presumed to do such a thing in their girlfriends' presence. Alex neither says nothing to Brad nor reacts violently. He merely looks at Jen in disgust and says something to her: “Really?”

 Powassan, Ontario, Canada. Source: Wikipedia

Brad also impugns Alex's knowledge of the park that Alex claims to know well, asking him which side of the park's waterfall someone should climb down. When Alex correctly answers, “The right side,” Brad smirks. “Good guess,” he says.

Finally, as he is about to depart, Brad asks Alex what he'd meant when Alex had said Jen's inviting him to have dinner with them might have been dangerous. When Alex demurs from answering, Brad insists. Finally, Alex tells him that Jen did not know Brad; Brad had been a stranger. As far as Jen had known, Brad might have been “a nut.” By the time Brad takes his leave, he has dominated, insulted, humiliated, defied both Alex and Jen, but especially Alex. He has also make it clear that, in a hostile or dangerous encounter with nature, he is likely to triumph or, at least, survive; audiences cannot be as certain about Alex's fate under the same circumstances.

The conflict between Alex and Brad further defines Alex, just as his relationship with Jen defines him. In both cases, Alex loses. His traits, or evolved adaptations, might serve him well in other environments, but they are unlikely to help him survive in the wild, no matter how well he thinks he knows the provincial park or the ways of the woods and its wildlife.

Next post: Evolution, Psychology, and Final Girl.

 

The Middle Course

 Copyright 2021 by Michael Williams

  

In this post, Michael Williams contributes another superb article, full of insights, concerning the inner workings of plots related to all genres of fiction. (Thank you, Michael!)

 

Writers in various genres have tried-and-true ways not only of beginning, but also of continuing, stories, of extending them though their narratives' middle courses, of connecting the beginnings of the tales with their endings.

Let's review some of the traditional ways in which writers accomplish this objective while maintaining, or even heightening, suspense.

 

In Desperation, after gathering his characters together, Stephen King uses various mechanisms of repetition to keep his novel moving along while maintaining or heightening suspense, among which techniques are—

• Adding new arrivals to the ranks of Sheriff Collie Entragian's captives;

• Increasing characters' personal stakes in the conflict between Sheriff Collie Entragian and the demon Tak. (For example, David's kid sister “Pie” is killed);

• Requiring Tak to “jump” from one possessed person to another after the demon's intensity physically destroys one after another of his temporary hosts; and

• Following one bizarre incident with another.

  
   

The middle of Dorothy's quest involves the use of such tactics of development as—

• Frustrations of her desire to return home to Kansas by various means, including the Wicked Witch of the West and the Witch's minions' attacks; problems associated with the Wizard (fraud), the Scarecrow (lack of self-confidence), the Tin Man (susceptibility to rust), and Cowardly Lion (cowardice), and Toto (aggression); and problems associated with herself (passivity, dependence, uncertainty); and

• Dorothy's ignorance of her ruby slippers' power to transport her home at any time.

   

Geoffrey Chaucer extends The Canterbury Tales by—

• Descriptions of each of the characters;

• Each character's telling of a tale;

• Other characters' reactions to the tales; and

• Arguments among the characters.

 

The movie Armageddon develops the middle of its plot by—

• Having the characters undergo training;

• Teaming Americans with Russians;

• Missing the landing point;

• Performing drilling operations;

• Exploding methane gas;

• Dying (on the part of most of the landing party).

Many detective stories advance their plots by—

• Showing the interviewing various suspects;

• Disclosing clues (or red herrings)

• Otherwise investigating a crime (usually a murder).

In horror stories, the middle of the narrative often progresses by—

• Expanding the area involving the initial situation to include other towns, a whole country, or the entire world;

• Introducing new characters (often victims);

• Seeking clues as to the nature and origin of an unfamiliar or alien creature, force, or situation; and

• Varying the types of threats;

• Fending off attacks.

Falling Down uses these methods to get from A (the beginning) to Z (the end):

• Introducing new characters;

• Providing examples of moral, economic, and political decline;

• Developing the contrasting parallel personal lives of William Foster and Detective Martin Prendergast;

• Escalating Foster's aggressive behavior; and

• Visiting various areas of the city.

In developing the middle of a story, writers keep these purposes in mind:

• The beginning of the story must connect to the end of the story in a logical, emotionally satisfying way, and the middle of the story is the connector between these two points;

• The middle of the story's incidents are related through cause and effect;

• The middle of the story must escalate the conflict and, therefore, the suspense;

• The middle of the story must be appropriate for the story's genre (for example, things allowed in horror aren't usually welcome in a romance);

• The middle of the story (usually, the middle of the middle) contains the plot's turning point;

• The middle of the story is developmental: it develops elements introduced by the story's beginning: multiplies horrors [Desperation], complexities a quest [The Wizard of Oz]; more fully characterizes its players [The Canterbury Tales]; increases an already difficult challenge [Armageddon]; exemplifies a character's point of view [Falling Down];

• The middle of the story's tone must be appropriate to the story's genre and theme.

For examples of these techniques in action, so to speak, check out Michael Williams's own tales of horror, fantasy, and suspense, the Twisted Tales series: Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, and Tales with a Twist III.

 

US → C → E → FO w/ T

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Today, Michael Williams, the author of the Twisted Tales series, which presently consists of three books, shares a few tips about how he writes some of his flash fiction stories.

One way that I generate some of my Twisted Tales is by using a formula I've invented. It consists of four steps. First, imagine an unusual situation (US). Second, account for this unusual situation by showing its cause (C). Third, show the effects, or results, of the unusual situation (E). Fourth, show the final outcome, being sure to include a plot twist (FO w/T).

Here's an example, based on one of the stories in Tales with a Twist IV, which will appear on Amazon and other online retailers' sites.

US: A woman begins to hear voices.

C: She's not human; she's a android, and she hears the voices due to a faulty transmitter implant.

E: She is kidnapped.

FO w/T: In rescuing her, police stumble upon a top-secret government experiment gone awry: she is a prototypical android scheduled to be mass produced.

Of course, the steps, or elements, in the formula can be rearranged. Here's another possible configuration for the story:

US: A woman begins to hear voices.

E: She is kidnapped.

FO w/T: In rescuing her, police stumble upon a top-secret government experiment gone awry: she is a prototypical android scheduled to be mass produced.

C: She's not human; she's a android, and she hears the voices due to a faulty transmitter implant.

The elements should be arranged in the manner that best conceals the story's mystery (she's an android) until the end of the tale and best delivers the plot twist that represents the story's “punchline.”

There are plenty of other examples in the Twisted Tales volumes.

Watch this space! Michael may be back, as a guest speaker, sharing more tips on how he writes his Twisted Tales!

The Thrill of It All, Part 2

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Part 1 of “The Thrill of It All,” we analyzed some of the design techniques that movie posters for thrillers use to attract audiences. The techniques that we identified are:

• Make sure that your protagonist stands out from other characters.
• For as long as possible, merely suggest the menace that your main character faces.
• For as long as possible, withhold context: do not explain the cause of the protagonist's dilemma until the end of the story; this ploy keeps your readers guessing and maintains suspense.
• In dialogue or the protagonist's own thoughts, pose a rhetorical question or two (but not too many at once) to introduce or heighten suspense by hunting at the problems your protagonist faces or may face in the future.
• Deliver on the implied promises your use of each of these techniques creates in the minds of your readers.

In Part 2 of this series, we will examine how thriller movie posters use color to appeal to the interests of thriller movie audiences.

Black and dark colors, such as browns, may have symbolic significance that viewers and readers “read” on an a subconscious level, based on associations with such colors that are transmitted culturally, through the arts in general. Black, for example, is often linked to the unknown, to evil, and to death. Like dark colors, black also obscures vision, rendering characters “blind” and reducing them to helplessness. For these reasons, black and dark colors, in general, have taken on an ominous quality. When describing scenes, refer to black and dark colors to create a sense of menace or to obscure your protagonist's sense of sight, as the poster for Thriller (2018) does.

White and light or bright colors, such as yellow and orange, can illuminate darkness, for a few inches or feet, at least, allowing a character to see that which is obscured; at the same time, white or light colors can illuminate the protagonist's face, highlighting him or her, which, of course, can make the main character vulnerable, allowing the villain to locate or attack him or her, so such colors =can both benefit and endanger the main character.

Monochromatic color use can emphasize a protagonist while, at the same time, immersing him or her in the environment, since his or her surroundings are the of a hue that is lighter or darker than the hue in which the protagonist is shown. This technique is used with good effect in the poster for Gothika (2003).

Although this technique might not be used often in novels or other written forms of fiction, it can be the basis of a pertinent descriptive passage when it is warranted. For example, a girl in a green dress may awaken in a pasture, a boy dressed in blue may walk alongside a swimming pool the water in which is reflective of a blue sky, or a man or a woman in red may enter a red room. Usually, such scenes would be reserved for significant, stand-alone scenes or short stories. Edgar Allan Poe uses this technique to great effect in his masterful short story “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842).

The Regression (2016) poster combines the use of black and gray with the use of red. The latter color appears only in one place in the poster's image, in the form of a fiery inverted cross that burns along the junctures of a barn's hayloft doors. (The color also appears once in the text at the bottom of the poster, advising viewers that the picture will play in theaters in December.) An inverted cross represents evil, since it literally turns the Christian sign of Jesus's sacrificial death upside-down. (In occult lore, an inverted sign supposedly cancels out the power represented by the sign). The fact that the cross is afire also suggests its destruction, but this image may also imply the passion with which this destruction occurs—the passion, in other words, of the unseen foe.

On the literal level, the black and gray represent night; symbolically, they might also suggest evil. The judicious use of color can accomplish as much in a novel's description as it does in the imagery used in the Regression poster.

The poster for The Night Listener (2006) uses black, white, and blue to guide the viewer's eye downward and to the right. The left side of the poster shows a a line of dark trees in silhouette. The right side of the poster shows a large image of Ganriel Noone (Robin Williams) and Donna Logand (Toni Colletee) standing side by side. The treeline on the left and the couple on the right frame the white and blue colors which, together, form hazy light, perhaps the result of a full moon shining through fog.

The wedge-shaped light funnels the viewer's vision down and to the right, past Noone and Logand, to a much smaller image of Noone, standing alone in the middle of what looks like a forest trail or road. Bright white light appears at his sides and begind him. Although the source of the light is unseen, its placement seems to suggest that the illumination radiates from Noone himself. Deliberate placement of objects and color can create symbolic effects like the ones in this poster.

As we have seen, color, as it is used in movie posters, often has a symbolic significance. In the movie poster for the thriller Bardo Blues (2019), blue is the primary color. The face of the protagonist, Jack, a mentally ill young man (Stephen McClintik), is shown amid an inkblot formed by dark purple against a variety of blue tones that create a shimmering effect.

The title of the film, Bardo Blues, references depression (colloquially known as “the blues”), suggesting that the man depicted on the poster suffers from clinical is depression. The inkblot shape implies that he is mentally ill, since inkblots were once commonly used in the controversial Rorschach test designed to uncover thought disorder. The shimmering effect of the blue tones that form the poster's background suggest confusion or instability, complementing the inklblot shape's suggestion that the protagonist is in some way mentally unstable.

Colors are used in many other ways, for a variety of additional purposes. Study other posters' uses of color to discover how you can use color in your own writing to achieve similar effects as those that the posters employ.

A couple of caveats are in order, before this post concludes.

First, the posters are ads, not stories. As such, they are designed to sell the products, the films they promote, not to present a drama that enacts a well-plotted story. Therefore, posters often do not correspond to the dramas they promote or have only a slight correspondence to the films' plots.

 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) summary for Thriller reads: “A childhood prank comes back to haunt a clique of South Central Los Angeles teens when their victim returns home during their high-school Homecoming weekend.” The poster doesn't seem to have much to do with a “childhood prank,” with “a clique,” with “South Central Los Angeles teens,” or with a “high-school Homecoming weekend.”

IMDb summarizes Regression as involving the attempt by “a detective and a psychoanalyst [to] uncover evidence of a satanic cult while investigating a young woman's terrifying past.” The only indication of satanism as an element of the plot is the inverted fiery cross, and there is no hint of a police investiagtion, a psychoanalyst's involvement, or the young woman's “terrifying past.”

The poster for The Night Listener seems to have even less connection to the film it promotes. IMDb summarizes its plot: “In the midst of his crumbling relationship, a radio show host begins speaking to his biggest fan, a young boy, via the telephone. But when questions about the boy's identity come up, the host's life is thrown into chaos.” The poster shows no indication of the male figure's profession or “relationship,” does not refer to a “young boy,” and shows no “chaos.”

A more detailed summary of the movie's plot suggests that the poster is based on one scene, the pertinent sentence of which is, “Donna collapses in the middle of a road and tries to hold him [Noone] with her in the path of an oncoming truck.” Although the poster shows Noone in the road, a source of light behind him, Donna is not in the road with him; she is not hold him down, and there is not indication of a ruck, other than the light behind Noone, which is, apparently, produced by the truck's headlights.

Again, it must be remembered that the posters are intended to sell the movies, not to faithfully portray their plots or any details of the story (other than, perhaps, the appearance of the characters).

Second, as an integral part of a written work's story, description, wherein the visual techniques we are discussing—composition, imagery, color, symbolism—appear, must be a vital part of the narrative; it must be part of the story itself, not something that has no intrinsic significance. Description must be part of the product, not merely a sales pitch separate and largely unrelated to the action of the story.

How can a writer use the techniques that movie posters use to appeal to their audience's interests? We will take a look at some of these techniques in the last post of this series.

For now, let's sum up what we have learned about the techniques of color use:

• Color can convey symbolic meanings.
• Color can suggest emotional effects.
• Color can conceal, reveal, or highlight (or produce any combination of these effects).
• Color can emphasize a character's relationship to his or her environment while, at the same time, associating him or her with his or her surroundings.
• The study of other movie posters will show how color is used to accomplish a variety of other purposes and effects.
• In descriptions, color use must be an integral part of the story, not something used without narrative purpose.

There's more to learn from analyzing thriller movie posters. We'll do just that in a future Chillers and Thrillers post.

The Thrill of It All, Part 1

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Movie posters are ads, of course; they are designed to sell movie tickets. As such, writers can learn from these posters what their designers believe the movie's targeted audience is interested in. In other words, movie posters allow writers access to free audience analysis research (or, at the very least, expert speculation) on the part of industry insiders as to what prompts moviegoers to go to the sort of movies the posters promote.

Chillers and Thrillers has already analyzed several horror movie posters (and may do so again), but, in this post, we take a look at posters for movies that are sold as thrillers.

Although some thriller movie posters appeal to a few of the same elements as horror movies typically feature, thriller posters stress different focal points than many horror movie posters emphasize.

For example, thriller movie posters frequently highlight the protagonist and his or her dilemma. The size of the main character—often just his or her face (i. e., head)—is not to scale, to say the least: it is gigantic in comparison to the rest of the imagery; as such, the face stands out from the rest of the images. On the poster for Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo diCaprio) is represented by a gigantic face frowning out of the darkness; he is many times larger than the island facility shown below him, in a dark sea.

The protagonist is also emphasized over any other figures that are present (although, often, the main character is the only figure shown on the poster). On the poster for Law Abiding Citizen, the face of protagonist Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) face is larger than the body of the villain, Clyde Alexander Shelton (Gerald Butler).

There is also a suggestion of menace; the threat or danger, however, is often unseen. It is suggested by the imagery, including the protagonist's facial expression; the colors; and the caption, if any.

The plight of the protagonist is indicated in various ways. First, he or she is frequently alone, which means that the main character is unaided. The protagonist must fend for him- or herself, must gather intelligence, must formulate a battle or an escape plan, must administer first aid to him- or herself, must fight alone.

The very fact that the menace, if shown at all, is usually a dark, shadowy figure, perhaps hooded, and frequently armed, also suggests the protagonist's predicament: he or she is up against an unknown foe. It is difficult enough to fight against an opponent whose strengths and weaknesses one knows; it is much more difficult to combat a totally unknown foe.

Not only is the face of Jessica Allain (Lisa Walker) shown as huge in comparison with the poster's other images, but the shadowy figure who menaces her also wears a hood and gloves.

Thriller posters deprive viewers of a context, rendering the protagonists' situation mysterious. We don't know how the main character got into the present situation, and we have no idea how he or she will get out of the dilemma. To sharpen the protagonist's quandary, the poster's caption might pose a question, as the poster for Law Abiding Citizen does: “How do you stop a killer who is already behind bars?”

A poster may pinpoint the relationship that brings the protagonist face to face with his or her adversary, as Cold Comes the Night does: “She found a fortune. He found a target.”

Let's wrap up this post by listing the design features we've seen on the posters we've discussed:

• Make sure that your protagonist stands out from other characters.
• For as long as possible, merely suggest the menace that your main character faces.
• For as long as possible, withhold context: do not explain the cause of the protagonist's dilemma until the end of the story; this ploy keeps your readers guessing and maintains suspense.
• In dialogue or the protagonist's own thoughts, pose a rhetorical question or two (but not too many at once) to introduce or heighten suspense by hunting at the problems your protagonist faces or may face in the future.
• Deliver on the implied promises your use of each of these techniques creates in the minds of your readers.

There are exceptions to these general techniques, but there is also a reason that these methods have are general. Designers have found them to be effective; they work. They are adept at enticing audiences to buy tickets. They sell the work they promote. As such, incorporating them into the action of the thriller that you are writing can keep readers reading your stories and coming back for more.

There's more to learn from analyzing thriller movie posters. We'll do just that in a future Chillers and Thrillers post.

Stories That Will Bug Your Readers

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Chillers and Thrillers has posted several articles about using horror movie posters as prompts to fire up the imagination. Such posters make good muses for writers in search of themes, especially if authors brainstorm about the posters without knowing the plots of the movies the posters promote.

By using the posters' images, visual and textual figures of speech, and captions, authors can work out plots of their own; at the same time, they can acquire clues as to what the posters' creators regard as their audience's fears, anxieties, and concerns with respect to specific themes.

In this post, bugs are the topic. There's something about creepy crawlers that many people find unsettling.

A poster for the 2011 film Millennium Bugs suggests that this movie is aimed specifically at Millennials, those who are born between 1980 and 2000 or so. According to this label, the members of the targeted audience would be between 31 and 11 years old at the time of the motion picture's release.

According to “Childhood Fears By Age,” children between the ages of 12 and 18 typically “fear for their safety, fear . . . sickness, fear . . . throwing up at school, fear . . . failure in school or in sports, fear . . . school presentations, fear . . . how they look to others, [and] fear . . . violence and global issues.” Those who are between the ages of 18 and 20 “fear . . . germs and [other threats to] health, fear . . . homelessness, fear . . . death, fear [failure related to] academic performance, fear . . . romantic rejection, fear [a lack of] life purpose, [and] fear . . . being an adult.”

Curiously, a “fear of bugs” is characteristic of children between the ages of five and seven, but it's easy to see how many of the fears of children between the ages of 12 and 18 (and, indeed, young adulthood) could involve a fear of insects as well. Insects can threaten safety, cause sickness, carry germs, and even precipitate death. In addition, the presence of bugs which one fears and loathes could cause people to “throw up” in the presence of others or hamper romance.

 

The list of childhood fears suggests that a horror story, whether movie or novel, would likely include junior high or high school children and be set, at least part, in the children's public or private school. Other characters would be the principal, an assistant principal, coaches, parents, maybe the school nurse, a janitor or two, and perhaps a bus driver.

The poster's caption, “What's bugging you?” further suggests that the story would involve psychological issues. The bugs might, in fact, symbolize the characters' emotional states, in which case the school counselor or a psychologist would also apt to be among the story's characters.

The poster for the 1985 movie Creepers suggests a different take on insects as villains. The poster shows a teenage girl. The right side of her face is pretty, but the skin has been eaten away on the left side of her face, as has much of the underlying issue and muscle. In fact, her skull shows through the top of her head; a hole through the exposed cranium offers viewers a glimpse of blue sky.

A swarm of insects flies against a full moon; as they approach, they become visible in detail, and viewers can discern that the swarm is composed of an unlikely assortment of various kinds of insects, some of which appear to be unfamiliar, perhaps never-before-seen species. They land in the girl's open, upraised palm.

“It will make your skin crawl,” the poster's caption warns. “It” doesn't refer to the girl or to the insects (unless it alludes to the whole swarm), so it seems to suggest the movie itself. Either way, whether “it” refers to the film or to the swarm of insects the girl holds in the palm of her hand (and to the many others on their way), either will be enough, viewers are warned, to make their “skin crawl.”

Interestingly, this movie takes place in a school; the girl is herself a “school girl,” additional text informs viewers, but she is a teen with unusual abilities:

Horror movie enthusiasts know [director Dario] Argento as the master of modern gothic horror films . . . .

Now they can see what he does with maggots, spiders, killer bees, and a school girl who has telepathic powers over them all.

What she can do “will make your skin crawl.”

Much of the plot of a horror story built upon this theme is suggested by the poster, but there are questions yet to be answered, such as:

• Who is this school girl?
• How did she come by her strange power?
• Why does she seem intent upon harming, perhaps killing, others?
• Who are the “others” she targets?
• Can she be stopped?

This poster also suggests many of the characters such a story would include: high school students, the principal, an assistant principal, coaches, parents, maybe the school nurse, a janitor or two, and perhaps a bus driver, but also, at some point, an etymologist and maybe a team of exterminators. In a story of this sort, the paranormal teen's motives will be a big part of the narrative.

The poster also suggests a few scenes:

• A science teacher's classroom lecture on insects
• A science fair
• A field trip to a beekeeper's hives
• The school girl's collection of her swarm

In plotting a novel or a movie about villainous insects, it's probably a good idea to research phobias related to bugs: entomophobia, acarophobia, or insectophobia, as well as more specific insect-related phobias such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders), isopterophobia (fear of termites and other wood-eating insects), acarophobia (fear of insects that cause itching), scolopendrphobia or chilopodophobia (fear of centipedes), xarantaphobia or myriapodophobia (fear of millipedes), myriadpodophobia (fear of decamillipedes [millipedes with 10,000 legs]), lepidopterophobia (fear of butterflies), melissophobia, melissaphobia, or apiphobia (fear of honey bees), spheksophobia (fear of wasps), muscaphobia (fear of flies), katsaridaphobia (fear of cockroaches), mottephobia (fear of moths), myrmecophobia (fear of ants), pediculophobia (fear of lice), skathariphobia is the fear of beetles,

necroentomophobia (fear of dead insects), and

cnidophobia (not a fear of insects per se, but, rather, a fear of stingers and of being stung).

(With so many insect phobias, it's clear that the the school girl in Creepers is well-versed in insect fear; the variety of bugs at her command allows her to terrify a large number of victims.)

Although phobias are regarded as “irrational fears,” psychologists have developed theories as to why people tend to fear insects in general. Their appearance in itself can be seen as disgusting, generating a response of repugnance. Some insects carry pathogens. Other causes of insect fear include “environmental” factors, “medical conditions and trauma,” “social isolation,” “depression,” and, strangely enough, “age.” “Fear of Bugs and Insects Phobia—Entomophobia or Acarophobia” explains each of these causes in more detail. For example,

static electricity, [the] presence of mold, pollen, household allergens[,] and formaldehyde[-]impregnated products can all manifest as unexplained dermatitis or skin irritations. These lead the sufferer to believe that an insect or bug is crawling on the skin.

Brainstorming about horror movie posters' images, figures of speech, and text, initially without any other context, can often suggest ideas for characters, settings, conflicts, scenes, and plot development. Then, tossing in a bit of research concerning the posters' theme can further and refine these elements. As a result, the writer's tabula rasa is a blank slate no more, and he or she is ready to start writing the next cinematic or literary horror masterpiece.

For example, what do you make of the following poster as a horror story prompt?

Note: No insects were harmed in the writing of this article.