Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, Author
“Predator
Facts” lays out four of the techniques many predators use to
attack prey. Not surprisingly, human predators use these same
methods, in both horror movies and in actual situations.
Many predators chase prey
in an effort to capture or exhaust them. This technique has been used
to good effect in many horror movies, one of which, I Know What
You Did Last Summer (1997),
contains a scene in which antagonist Ben Willis pursues Helen
Shivers.
After Willis kills the police officer who's arrested
Shivers, she seeks refuge in her sister's department store, evading
the pursuing predator and leaping from a third-story widow, into a
Dumpster, only to be killed, not far from the safety of a nearby
crowd.
Since the audience identifies with the damsel in distress,
rather than with the killer, moviegoers root for her; vicariously,
her fear becomes that of the audience, who shares it. Her gruesome
death shocks and saddens her well-wishers. Through her, the audience
experiences the flight and fright of the prey that the ruthless
killer's pursuit creates for Shivers—and for them.
Pursuing
prey takes both “time and effort” and can require a good deal of
energy. For predatory animals, the nutritional value of the prey must
warrant the time, effort, and energy the predator must expend in
pursuing its would-be meal. “This is one reason why the hawk tends
to eat more rodents and birds than grasshoppers. Grasshoppers
just don't provide enough food value to justify the effort it takes
to catch them.”
Unless
the pursuer is a cannibal (some are, but Willis is not among them),
the “nutritional value” of the prey is apt to be emotional,
rather than physical. The act of chasing and killing the victim must
deliver emotional satisfaction superior to the time, effort, and
energy, the killer uses to accomplish these tasks. (Wills must
really have wanted
Helen dead.) Otherwise, the antagonist is apt to use another means of
attack, one requiring less time, effort, and energy.
Some
predators stalk, rather than pursue, prey. By following prey at a
distance or by remaining motionless and observing prey, a predator
can lunge, at the right moment, and capture or kill its quarry. A
stalker can also make do with smaller
prey than a pursuer needs. Stalking has the advantage of
conserving energy, but it requires time to effect.
Stalkers populate
thrillers
more often than horror films per se, as their appearances in such
movies as Fatal Attraction (1987),
The Crush (1993), The
Fan (1996), and The
Boy Next Door (2015), among
others, show. However, stalkers also appear in full-fledged horror
movies. Halloween
(1978), Scream (1981),
and Cyberstalker
(2012) come to mind.
In
Halloween,
on October 31, 1963, twenty-one-year-old Michael Myers escapes from
Smith's Grove Sanitarium in Warren County, Illinois, where he's been
confined since killing his older sister Judith when he was six years
old. Now, he returns to his hometown, Haddonfield, to stalk a high
school student, Laurie Strode.
Scream
combines a murder mystery of sorts with horror, as a stalker murders
one victim after another and police seek to discover the murderer's
identity. Is it Billy Loomis? Neil Prescott? Stu Macher? Randy Meeks?
Cotton Weary? All of the above? None of the above?
As the audience is
kept in the dark as to the question of the stalker's identity, which
makes the situation all the more tense, the number of the gruesome
murders continues to rise, along with the movie's suspense.
Cyberstalker
capitalizes on a relatively new twist to stalking: the use of the
Internet to hunt victims. Animals, of course, lack the capability of
using technology to develop and extend their natural hunting
abilities and must rely upon the physical senses and weapons, such as
claws and teeth, with which God or nature has equipped them. (As
William Blake's “Tyger” suggests, such weapons are formidable,
indeed.) However, were lions and tigers and bears able to enhance
their powers to hunt through technology, they'd be using the Internet
to stalk their victims, too.
Human beings' ability to do this is
another reason that we are the deadliest species by far. It is the
increased ability to watch and follow his quarry, courtesy of the the
Internet, that makes the stalker in this movie potentially deadly as
well as highly disturbing.
Other
predators rely upon their ability to ambush their prey. In the animal
world, the alligator is one example of such predators. Ambush is the
technique of choice in such movies as Wrong
Turn (2003)
and Wrong Turn 2: Dead End
(2007).
In
the first movie (in which stalking also occurs), college students
Rick Stoker and Halley Smith are ambushed as they reach the top of a
rock they're climbing.
In the sequel, a series of ambushes occur, as
the family of cannibals who live in the West Virginia forest attack
contestants during the live filming of a survivalist reality
television show.
According
to “Predator
Facts,”
This
method of hunting requires little effort, but chances of getting food
are low. The cold-blooded alligator has minimal energy requirements.
It can get by with infrequent meals.
Presumably,
this technique works well for the cannibal family because, when
they're not hunting, they seem to lie about their cabin much of the
time, thereby conserving their energy. It appears that, like the
alligator, they can get by on “infrequent meals.”
The
fourth technique that predators use to hunt their prey, that of
teamwork, is frequently used by human marauders in horror films as
well. In the Wrong Turn
movies, The Hills Have Eyes
(1977), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
franchise, cannibal families work together to locate, attack, and
subdue or kill the victims they devour as their food. Hillbilly
families also slay together in Mother's
Day (1980),
Just Before Dawn
(1981), Backwoods
(2008), House of 1,000 Corpses
(2003), and others.
Although
more food is needed to sustain those who routinely hunt in groups,
this
technique provides such benefits to the team as allowing them to
“pursue larger and sometimes faster prey” while protecting their
offspring “from other large predators.” Being hunted by a pack—or
by a family—of merciless or crazed hunters with a need to feed or a
simple taste for blood or human flesh makes a horror movie all the
more horrific—and terrifying.