Which elements of horror actually scare you?

[Spacebeard]

This thread, among other things, rekindled my interest in why some horror films appeal to people and others do not. I've never personally been fond of very many horror movies, and I've decided that it's because they usually don't use the kind of imagery that can affect me: they'll bring out a monster, or a serial killer, or some zombies, and pour on loads and loads of graphics violence. I'd rather see those monsters and violence in a straight-up action movie with good fights, thanks. However, that kind of film certainly does have its fans and I'd be interested to know why that imagery appeals to some people but not others.

I've found that the imagery that actually can frighten me is scary places, not people or monsters. Very few films ever take advantage of this as much as I'd like; at best, they'll use it in combination with other images. I'll give some examples:

1. "The Haunting". The original 1960s movie, not the 1990s remake. This is probably the only horror movie I've ever really enjoyed, and the entire focus of the film is a house, not a ghost or a monster. It does it all with unsettling camera angles, editing, and sound effects.

2. The "Shalebridge Cradle" level of Thief 3. A bright spot in an otherwise lackluster game. Much like "The Haunting", it achieves most of its effect through sound, and being in a game it also profits from level geometry: you can rarely advance into a room or turn a corner without exposing a blind flank. It has ghosts and zombies, but they're almost beside the point; the outer area is completely empty but still frightening.

3. The mines of Moria in "Fellowship of the Ring". The book, not the film. A maze of dark, abandoned halls extending deep into the earth. Two moments stand out for me: the moment when they must choose between three passages, and the moment when a stone dropped into a well stirs up noises far below, starting with subtle taps and escalating into booming war drums. I think both of this moments were butchered by the film, first by unnecessarily dragging out the scene and turning the description of "foul air" into a joke about "following your nose", and then by making a bulky suit of armor be dropped instead of a simple stone and bringing out the war drums almost immediately instead of slowly progressing from taps.

4. "On the Beach". Both the book and the film adaptation spend a lot of time exploring the deserted, lifeless streets of post-nuclear war San Francisco, and it's quite unsettling, especially when our heroes have sailed all the way from Australia chasing after an erratic Morse code signal, only to discover that the source is a fallen window frame erratically hitting a radio transmitter in a completely empty naval base. I also find the ending of the film, a montage of the now-empty streets of Melbourne, quite effective even if the "Brother, It's Not Too Late" banner was heavy-handed.

I also find that in all literature, it's usually settings rather than characters or plots that appeal to me. Of course, the explanation could also be that fear of the unknown and of strange places is a fear that everyone can relate to, and that fear of zombies or monsters requires suspension of disbelief that I can't muster for those movies. In some cases, such as certain zombie movies, I can objectively understand the appeal even if I don't personally enjoy it.

So, what types of "horror" imagery appeal to you, and how if at all does this relate to your tastes in other genres?

[DPDarkPrimus]

Being frightened and being disturbed and unsettled go hand in hand. It's really quite difficult to actually put into words what will make me scared. It's a combination of any number of factors you've listed as poll options. Any one by itself can make for some good "boo" factors, but to have a true permeation of fear in the film, all the elements must gel together in a very coordinated fashion. And for god's sake, gore does not equate to scary.


For the record, I count the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as the horror film that had the most profound effect on me after viewing, followed by Alien.

They don't affect me so much now that I've seen them both multiple times, of course. That's the shortcoming of all horror films- after the first viewing, it can never be as intense.

[2000AD]

People, monsters and things.

Places don't really scare me, as most of the time it turns out the place has a person, monster or thing in it.
Zombies don't really scare me any more, unless they're some pseudo-zombie like 28 days later.

Monsters scare me because they're nasty shit.
Things scare me if their effective. For example The Ring scared me because the TV is an everyday object and suddenly it kills you.
People scare me because i'm a person and it's scary to see what fucked up stuff a person can do.

[Neko_Oni]

I find that the more is left to the imagination the scarier a movie will be for me. In more than a couple movies as soon as the monster was revealed the movie lost all freakiness.

It's all about atmosphere, gotta keep creeping me out the whole time, "boos" give me a physical shock, not so much the gnawing fear that I find WAY more disconcerting (and I mean in a "screw this, I've had enough" out comes the DVD or off goes the horror game kind of way).

[LadyTevar]

Places do it far more for me.

[Stark]

For me, like the OP, 'horror' works much better when it's a feeling, or environment. For instance, Lovecraft stories are hackneyed nonsense by todays standards, but they're 'creepy' because he could really establish a mood, or make a place seem sinister and full of unknown danger. It's like when you're a kid and afraid of the dark: you're not afraid of the darkness, you're afraid of what MIGHT be IN the darkness, and your mind runs away with you. That's why, for me, the most effective 'horror' is a slow-boil, not nonsense like zombie movies. Big angry aliens/monsters/blood beasts etc don't scare me one bit.

[K. A. Pital]

People creep the shit out of me. But it's a close tie with environment.
Things, monsters, zombies and the rest seem a bad joke compared to the first two fear factors.

[Sofia]

People, by far. More specifically, how easily and disturbingly the human mind can unravel. The minimal gore in The Sixth Sense didn't scare me at all, but the part where the other kids locked Haley Joel Osment in the closet at the birthday party scared the shit out of me, probably because you can't see what he sees in there, and the vague things I would imagine are always going to be worse than anything tangible.

Psycho, too, the part at the end when he's speaking in his mother's voice. The Poe story The Pit and the Pendulum was terrifying to read, because the man in the story is being tortured via droplets of water falling on his forehead over a long period of time. Repetition is frightening; HAL repeating the same phrases over and over in 2001, the drum taps in the Mines of Moria, a clock ticking, et cetera. Not sure why; maybe because repetition -- > obsession --- > insanity. Or, clock ticking -- > mortality.

[K. A. Pital]

The Poe story The Pit and the Pendulum was terrifying to read

Without spoilers, closer to the end, that story became really terrific. And terrifying.

[General Zod]

Environments and places for me. Monsters can be scary, but if they're out in the middle of broad daylight, shambling and you have a clear line of sight then frankly they're not as frightening. On the other hand, if you're in some foggy woods with lots of trees and dead vines/branches hanging around, without ever knowing what's around the corner, there's far more of a suspenseful element involved, as you never know what might be lurking around.

[jegs2]

The scariest movie to me was The Shining, which I suppose was a places horror-type of movie. The Overlook drove people insane, who in turn went on murderous rampages.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The unknown, that's probably something everyone can be afraid of.

[Balrog]

Haunted Places. If it's a person or a monster or zombie I'm not so scared, because I know a few rounds to the head will put it down. A haunted place, though, you can't get rid of it like that.

[Lusankya]

For some reason ghosts scare me. I'm completely ok with all other forms of horror, but ghosts just freak me out. Even if it's some unknown thing that's taking away the cast members, I'm cool with it, just so long as it's not a ghost. I think it might be the fact that ghosts can interact with you, but you can't do anything to the ghost - it's the ultimate in helplessness.


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[irishmick79]

Haunted houses do it for me. We try to make our living abodes as comfortable, open, and relaxing as possible. With only a slight twist, a few things out of place here and there, and our once comfortable homes can become claustrophobic, dark, and full of mysterious terror.

Just think about how scary it would be if you came home one day and found a book or a notepad on the floor, when you clearly remember leaving it on a table when you left. You'd instantly think somebody broke in, right? It's the violation of personal comfort zones, privacy and space that makes tiny little moments like a randomly misplaced notebook scary, and haunted house stories violate those senses without offering any sort of rational explanation (at least the good stories don't offer a rational explanation).

[Mr. T]

I'd have to say people because it's one element of horror that you can actually see happening in real life. You'll (probably ) never get attacked by a monster or a horde of zombies in your life, but you just need to read the newspaper or spend some time on the internet to know that their are all sorts of psycho crazy people out there.

Movies like "Scream"; horror movies without any sort of magical or fantasy element to them and seem like they can plausibly happen to me in real life are alot more scary than things that are impossible to have happen.

However some horror movies that could never plausibly happen are alot more entertaining.

[Qwerty 42]

Has to be the places, but mostly because you don't know what's going on. There was, ironically enough, pokemon fanfiction I read a while ago that was brutally effective because you didn't know what was going on until the very end. People were dying left and right, and it wasn't until the very end that you knew why.

[Surlethe]

I hate being scared, which is why I don't watch horror movies -- and what scares me is what I don't know. I'd guess that everyone's answer to the poll was the area in which he has the least experience or the most imagination, and thus can create the most horrendous spectre possible with the minimal information a well-crafted horror movie provides. Ideally, a horror movie should have characters you know very little about being separated in a place nobody can fully comprehend, being chased and scared (for the sympathy) by an entity nobody can identify, perhaps disappearing to an unknown fate, with all to be revealed in the end so there's some resolution.

[Vendetta]

Nothing and/or everything.

Horror works can only scare me if my empathy with the characters is particularly strong. If it isn't, I won't be scared, because I'll be too far out of the work.

That's also why I find good horror games (particularly Silent Hill and Project Zero, the first ones of each at least) much more threatening than movies or books, because it's easy to empathise with a character you are in control of, and that empathy means that when the character is threatened, you are threatened directly.

Project Zero terrified the living shit out of me, and there were times when I would have to save, turn the lights on, and do something else for a bit. I loved every second of it, every paranoid, terrified, sweaty second. (though I do know someone who had to stop at the first monster and couldn't continue at all). By contrast, Ring, which everyone else seemed to think was the bees knees of scary, didn't particularly frighten me at all, and I was very much in "Watching a movie" mode (and comparing it to the book as well.

The condition of what is threatening the characters I have attached myself to is not important, the strength of my attachment to them is everything.


(By the way, if you're a "places" person, you might want to go and read House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski, it's one of the best "scary place" books in existence, and plays many many tricks to draw you right into that place.)

[Drooling Iguana]

You could have picked a better example for the "zombies" bit. In Land of the Dead, like all the other Romero zombie movies, it's the people that are scary, not the zombies. The zombies are just there to create a situation that brings out the worst in the people.

Too bad the people responsible for the Dawn of the Dead remake completely forgot about that.

[Rye]

You could have picked a better example for the "zombies" bit. In Land of the Dead, like all the other Romero zombie movies, it's the people that are scary, not the zombies. The zombies are just there to create a situation that brings out the worst in the people.

Too bad the people responsible for the Dawn of the Dead remake completely forgot about that.

I'm as misanthropic as the next guy that I hate, but the empathy with the characters because everyone sees themselves as the good guy really made dotd04 a superior film to the frankly, tedious and up-their-own-arse with messages originals.

Take CJ, he's easily my favourite character in the whole film, we're introduced to him as an arsehole that's not concerned about the established characters' wellbeing, he manipulates them into being prisoners and is generally not that pleasant. But, on deeper analysis, he was great, he was looking out for his crew as far as he could. He was more loyal to them than he'd give himself credit for, and he ended up one of the main characters we all liked and was prepared to risk it all with the rest of them, ended up in a heroic sacrifice when it should've been Michael.

It was a far more engrossing and real-feeling film, and that's what I wanted to see. One of my favourite films of all time, there, one of the scariest things I've seen in the cinema, too. Event Horizon I think was the scariest thing I saw first time, up until Sam Neil became the proper monster, so I'll put my vote in "things" I guess. Especially when something fucks with electronics, like the kid in The Empty Child episode of Dr Who.

Edit: Oh, and i.e. should be e.g in the poll, and I have to say the ring didn't scare me at all.

[Spacebeard]

You could have picked a better example for the "zombies" bit. In Land of the Dead, like all the other Romero zombie movies, it's the people that are scary, not the zombies. The zombies are just there to create a situation that brings out the worst in the people.

Noted. I haven't actually seen Land of the Dead; I was actually going to use 28 Days Later as the example for zombies, but figured I'd be better off going with the undead instead of diseased humans and that was the first name that came to mind.

(By the way, if you're a "places" person, you might want to go and read House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski, it's one of the best "scary place" books in existence, and plays many many tricks to draw you right into that place.)

Thanks for the recommendation; it sounds interesting from the description on Amazon, so maybe I'll see if it's there the next time I'm at the library.

Edit: Oh, and i.e. should be e.g in the poll, and I have to say the ring didn't scare me at all.

Oops. I don't like Ring either, mostly because I simply can't get past the ridiculous premise; it was simply the first name that came to mind.

One thing I'd like to emphasize about the OP is that I'm interested in whether or not there's a connection between people's interest in certain elements of normal fiction and in similar elements in horror. I tend to be most interested in settings in both normal fiction and in horror, but I don't know whether or not that's simply a coincidence.

[Alyeska]

You could have picked a better example for the "zombies" bit. In Land of the Dead, like all the other Romero zombie movies, it's the people that are scary, not the zombies. The zombies are just there to create a situation that brings out the worst in the people.

Too bad the people responsible for the Dawn of the Dead remake completely forgot about that.

Dawn of the Dead was never meant as a horror movie. Its an action movie set with zombies.

[Lettuce]

For me, I think realism is scarier than anything else. I find Nightmare on Elm Street to be the scariest movie ever. Largely because it seems possible. ....You watch the movie, and when you see Kreuger in your dreams that night, you are terrified, because you can't distinguish the movie from reality or your dream from reality. Any time that line can be crossed like that I think it's completely terrifying.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

When I was younger, when Event Horizon first came out, it scared the motherfuck out of me. I don't think I slept right for a week.

It's derelict ships, especially space ships that creep me out. That segment in the Lost in Space movie, Bermuda Triangle stories, even the first sequence in Knight of the Old Republic 2 had me a little uneasy.

Zombies, hideous monsters, creepy little girls, whatever, yaaaawwwwn. Purge the mutant, the alien, the witch, no big freaking deal. But abandoned, listing, hauntingly empty ships - fucking hell.