Images of Horror as Not-So-Friendly Reminders

copyright 2014 by Gary Pullman

Bodies severed at their waists. Eyes without irises or pupils. Furry faces full of fangs. Cheeks stitched from the corners of the mouth to the ears. Mouths devoid of lips. Decapitated bodies. Skulls showing through flesh. Bloody necks slashed and slashed. Faces streaming blood. Crowns of skulls cut away. Craniums transformed into slug-like monstrosities. Faces without noses. Eyes become fanged mouths. Flesh pockmarked and riddled with open sores.

The results of special effects, these images of violence horrify because they display death, dismemberment, injury, monstrous transformation, and disease. They are graphic reminders of our humanity—and, thus, our vulnerability—as much as they are mementos mori.

These pictures remind us of the facts: we are not only going to die someday, but we are, in fact, dying day by day.

Life itself reminds us of our mortality, but in much more subtle ways, ways that seem too small to disturb us more than a moment, if at all.

Our skin wrinkles and sags.

Our hair grays, recedes, or thins.

We put on a little weight.

Our joints ache and stiffen.

Our ears and noses sprout hair.

Our ears get bigger.

Age spots appear on our faces and hands.

Our bones become brittle.

Vision or hearing erode.

We become forgetful.

We wear dentures where, once, we had teeth.

We fall and we cannot get up.

But these signs of aging (and of eventual death) occur gradually, giving us time to adjust and to accept the inevitable. We say that we are getting older, not that we are dying.

And, yet, we are dying, day by day, a wrinkle here, an age spot there.

But we become accustomed to our fate.

Images of horror—of death and destruction, injury and pain, madness and loss of control—don't allow us such a luxury. Such depictions shock and frighten.

They get the blood running and the adrenaline flowing, preparing us to fight or to take flight.

In reminding us of death, they also remind us of life.

Such images remind us to stop, to think, to listen, and to smell the roses. . .

. . . while we can.

Before it's too late.

And the bogeyman hiding within emerges, born of blood and flesh, pain and bone, reducing us, at last, to food for worms.

The WHO?, WHAT?, WHEN?, WHERE?, HOW?, and WHY? of Horror: A Sampler

copyright 2014 by Gary Pullman

WHO?: A motel owner; the devil; a writer—what is scary about some is what they are by nature, in and of themselves (the devil); what is scary about others is what they are secretly (Norman Bates), what they are incipiently (Jack Torrance), or what they become (Seth Brundle). Human beings gone bad, in other words, are frightening. The selves we present to others are our personas, masks that we wear to appear normal and rational and acceptable; horror fiction shows readers or audiences the true face behind these masks. We do what we are.

WHAT?: Madness, evil, experiments gone awry—what is scary about some is that they represent loss of control (madness); what is scary about others is that they represent helplessness in the face of merciless cruelty (evil); what is scary about still others is that they represent the unintended harm that can come of good intentions or mistakes (experiments gone awry). Actions are frightening because they show that human behavior is not insignificant, but causal. We are what we do.

WHEN/WHERE?: An isolated motel, a house in Georgetown, a vacant hotel in the middle of nowhere. Some settings are scary because they isolate (Bates' motel); others are scary because they show that evil can occur anywhere—and, therefore, everywhere—including the nation's capital); still others are scary because they combine two or more sources of fear, such as isolation and familial dysfunction). Places are frightening because they are the sites in which human behavior and its consequences are displayed. In building places, we reveal ourselves: the architect is visible in the buildings he or she designs.

HOW?: Rental, possession, experimentation. A motel room can be a motel room—or it can be a Venus flytrap-like chamber of death; the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but it can also become the devil's pig sty; scientific instruments can deliver us into evil as well as good. The means we use to achieve our ends depend upon our ends—or, sometimes, they have unanticipated results too horrible to have imagined. We are not only what we do, but we are also often the victims of what we, or others, do.

WHY?: To appease another, to assert the self or to defy God, to discover new possibilities or to control nature—what is scary about appeasing others is that, in doing so, we subject our wills—indeed, our very selves—to the wills of those whom we seek to appease; what is scary about one's assertion of will is that, as Shakespeare observes, “one can smile and smile and be a villain”; what is scary about attempts to discover new possibilities is that some possibilities are better left alone, and what is scary about controlling nature is that doing so subverts or, at least, alters the effects of natural law. The “why” of behavior is, at bottom, a mystery, and this, too, makes motive and cause frightening in themselves; the unintended—or, sometimes, intended—consequences of such motives and causes make the whole cause-and-effect chain of events potentially even more horrible yet.

Techniques for Devising Plot Twists

copyright 2014 by Gary Pullman

By analyzing movies which end with an unexpected twist, one may discern various techniques that writers have employed to accomplish this feat. With some overlap among a few instances, here is one classification of such techniques:

Denial: the apparent experience never happened. Example: April Fool's Day (1986): It seems that a serial killer is murdering people, but the apparent deaths are all results of practical jokes (it's April Fool's Day, after all) perpetuated by pranksters who could be gainfully employed, if they weren't so immature, as Hollywood special effects wizards.

Inversion: life is but a dream (or an hallucination). Example: When  a Stranger Calls (1979): A babysitter is terrorized by a psychotic killer who calls her repeatedly on the family's telephone—and the killer is in the house! The Descent (2005) also relies upon inversion for its plot twist, as does HighTension (2005) and Identity (2003).

Substitution: one person, place, or thing is replaced by another person, place, or thing. Example: Fallen (1998): The hero says he almost died in an ordeal, but he is possessed by the killer while he's speaking, so, in fact, it's the killer who almost dies, while the hero is already dead. Fridaythe 13th (1980) also uses this technique to generate its plot twist.

Marvelous: that which seems, in Tzvetan Todorov's terms, to be uncanny actually turns out to be marvelous (in other words, that which appears to be natural is really supernatural). Example: Carnivalof Souls (1962): A woman who believes she is the lone survivor of a car crash sees strange ghouls chasing her, but she's dead all the while. The SixthSense (1999) and TheOthers (2001) also employ the marvelous to create their plot twists.

Multiplication: e pluribus unum, reversed. Example: Scream (1986): A serial killer who stalks teens turns out to be two killers.

Impersonation: The Cabinet ofDr. Caligari (1920): A man relates his tale of madman Dr. Caligari, who along with his zombie-like henchman, committed a string of murders, but the narrator is the real madman, and he's telling his tale in an insane asylum; Caligari is, in fact, his doctor in the asylum. Angel Heart (1987), Sleepaway Camp and Saw (2004) also use impersonation to generate their plot twists.

Impersonation via split personality: a character masquerades as someone else. Example: Psycho (1960): Norman Bates seeks to cover up his mother's murders. The problem is that, years earlier, Norman killed his mother and developed a split personality: he has become both himself and his mother. This same technique generates the plot twist in Hideand Seek (2005).

Mistaken identity and Irony: through mistaken identity, something happens that is other than that which the audience has been led to expect. Example: Black Christmas (1974): When a sorority house must deal with a series of threatening telephone calls and the disappearances of some of their sisters, it is discovered that the man who dies, who is assumed to have been the killer, was not the murderer; the actual killer is still inside the house.

Duplicity: an actual situation is misrepresented to deceive someone. Example: The Wicker Man (1973): A policeman investigates a missing child on a British isle that celebrates pagan customs, but the story of the missing girl was fabricated to lure the cop to the island so that he could be sacrificed to the gods after being enclosed inside a burning "wicker man." Diabolique (1964) also uses duplicity to create its plot twist.

Jumped Conclusion: someone other than the suspect is guilty of a crime. Example: Friday the 13th (1980): In 1957, Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake; a year later, two counselors are murdered and the camp is closed. In 1979, the camp reopens, and a mysterious killer—possibly Jason, whose body was never found—begins to stalk the camp's counselors once again, but it's not Jason; it's his mother, Mrs. Vorhees. Substitution also creates the plot twist in Fallen (1998).

Unanticipated consequences: an act that is believed to effect a specific result has unanticipated consequences. Example: The Ring (2000): Rachel, a reporter investigating a video tape rumored to bring death to anyone who watches it, finds out that it is somehow tied to a mysterious young girl named Samara, whose body Rachel retrieves from a well, thereby freeing her spirit to kill again, rather than putting the ghost to rest, as Rachel believed would happen.

Irony: something happens that is other than that which the audience has been led to expect. (In a sense, most twist endings are ironic in one way or another. However, this category is reserved for plots that are intrinsically ironic: the irony results from the very nature of the storyline, rather than an element added at the end.) Example: When a Stranger Calls (1979): A babysitter is terrorized by a psychotic killer who calls her repeatedly on the family's telephone, and the killer is calling from within the house. The Mist (2007) also uses irony to create its plot twist.

"The Cabin in the Woods": A Review

Okay, Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse) is the producer, and the film, The Cabin in the Woods, was scheduled to open on Friday the 13^th. So far, so good. Moreover, the poster advertising the movie promises something different, a new twist, an unexpected spin on a familiar story: “You think you know the story.” But, of course, we don't know the story. We only think we do. Surprises—probably shocks, even—are in store. We've been warned.

The imagery suggests a mystery, too, or a difficult puzzle. The cabin floats (or falls) before an indistinct, rather sketchy forest, and, like a Rubik's Cube, it's turned this way and that. In fact, there are three cabins, none of which are actually in the forest (in the poster, at least), and they're stacked atop one another, the topmost right-side up, the middle one set on its side, the lower one upside down. We're disoriented; we're confused; we don't know which way is “up” (or “down” or “sideways,” for that matter). This movie's going to turn us every way but loose.

Those in the know know that Whedon is to movies what Dean Koontz is to novels: a genre bender who throws in a little of everything: comedy, tragedy, romance, adventure, mystery, horror, and the kitchen sink, and, from what reviewers have said about this film, Cabin in the Woods was meant to be no exception to the Whedon formula: it's satire; it's pastiche; it's filmed in Vancouver, of all places. According to the A. V. Club, the script, which took Whedon and co-writer Drew Goddard a whole three days to write, exhibits ”Whedon’s love of subverting clichés while embracing them and teasing out their deeper meaning,” if any. (The film was produced in only three months, too, by the way.) The authors themselves claim that their masterpiece is intended to “revitalize” the slasher film, a genre that so deserves such effort.

It cost about $30 million to make and grossed $65 million worldwide, so it's judged a “financial success.” Critical reviews were mixed, but generally favorable. It seems that the whole thing is a bit unnecessary, to say the least. Whedon has the talent to offer more—much more—than a revitalization of death warmed over.

Perhaps the best thing about the movie, though, is the poster that promoted it.