HOME | DD

Description

Hello there, all my lovely abominations. Claire, here, for one last post of the weekend. And I think I would like to use this as a form of criticism of what I have been seeing to be a popular question in writing. What makes a good horror monster?

If I may propose my theory, horror comes in three stages:

Dread

Horror

Terror

Dread is being lost alone in a jungle within the darkness of night. Not a soul of your fellow Man in sight and the only sounds within the deafening silence is the subtle chirping of crickets. Horror is a sudden ruffling in the ferns far from you and the sight of glowing yellow orbs in the shadows. You don't know whether or not this is a threat to you, but you are aware that it is there and you are on high alert. Terror is when a Troodon comes bursting towards you. The threat is clear and present. You don't have time to think. You either run, fight, or die. With this example, it is important to note that in and of itself, the dinosaur is not what is scary. It is the very idea of being bitten with paralyzing venom, being eaten alive, and then used as a nest for eggs. So that hatchlings would eat you from the inside-out in a painfully-slow pace. And you are still alive through the entire process. The Troodon is merely the vessel of a horror movie concept.

While being mauled to death by a creature with fangs and claws is scary enough on the surface, it would not bring the monster in a higher level of fear factor that any real life predator has. Nowadays, mankind has grown to shed off this fear of predators due to thousands of years of us being on the top of the food chain. As long as you stay out of the marshlands in the wild, you are most unlikely to be eaten alive by a snake or an alligator. Even if you do go into the woods or the swamps, you would be smart enough to carry around a weapon. Either a gun or something as lethal as a machete. A bear or a mountain lion can be fast, but not as fast as a bullet. And an anaconda can be deadly, but not deadly enough to withstand a good blow of a machete.

This is why it is common to give this monster a sort of a supernatural element. You can't fight a ghost and your bullets may not work against an alien. Although, while making it nigh invulnerable does make the monster more threatening, it comes at the expense of making the monster believable. As children, we fear the monsters under the bed. This is due to how our imagination could go wild and lack the wisdom to rationalize the realism of the threat. As we grow older, our fears grow more on the real life aspect. Fears such as failure, addiction, loneliness, and so on. It is reasons like this that I believe should be the biggest rule of a good horror monster. Whether it is for a movie, show, or video game.
No monster is as terrifying as the abstract idea that it represents.

Let's look at a few examples from popular pop culture pieces.

Taking from a non-horror example, the infamous King of the Monsters Godzilla is a giant monster that spews radioactive fire, yes. However, back in 1954, that was only implied as a staple to the idea of the monster. It is ultimately an embodiment of a more dreadful aspect. You don't need a degree of psychology to see that Gojira is full of symbolism regarding nuclear destruction. And the overwhelming pain and dread that comes from the resulting onslaught of said destruction.

The beloved horror treasure that is The Thing may have repulsed the audience with gory imagery, but it reflects on the disgusting corruption of human flesh as the disgust that we have on deformities and disfigurement. It also preys on our general distrust of others and the thought of the people that you thought were your friends could suddenly turn on you.

The fan-favorite horror game, Silent Hill 2, is also a great example. While gamers find it shocking to see the protagonist being threatened by sexualized demon-nurses and being chased by a towering creature that violates other monsters, what makes the game scary is having to face the physical embodiments of your past sins.

This is only a handful of classic horror that stands out over a field polluted by lackluster crap. I think the reason for this is that it's rather difficult to convey an abstract idea and implement it into a film or a game. In a novel, you can easily describe a character's thoughts and emotions. However, with a movie or a game, you are forced to rely on visual concrete imagery. How do you design a monster that embodies an adult's fears such as loneliness or loss? Well, to do so would take a level of creativity and risk that mainstream media is adverse to. Why should you invest into a risky movie that may or may not work when you can make millions by making films that only have a few scary faces that go "BOO!"?

This is why you get so few films that are based of literary works such as books of H.P. Lovecraft. Despite him being, along with Steven King, one of the greatest horror writers in the twentieth century. Most of his stories are heavily-centered around themes such as mankind's insignificance, nature's indifference to one's suffering, and cosmic entities that we could never be able to resist or even understand. How do you explore these themes?

The difficulty in creating a good horror monster is the difficulty in trying to take inherently-terrifying aspects and applying them into creature and set design, cinematography, sounds and visuals, and literal symbolism. Fortunately, I don't think it's rather necessary to show the horror. What film makers and game designers need to understand is what the audience imagines is more terrifying that what is shown. There is a such thing as showing too much. While a movie or a video game is a passive medium to us, a good one makes us think of what's been presented to us.

In fact, this is a required key element for any genre - including horror. If you can encourage the audience to imagine something, you can horrify them far more effectively than you could with a jumpscare. When you are actually able to see the subject, it's not as scary because on some intellectual level, you would always know that it's fake. You naturally try to rationalize on what is presented and, above all else, it ends up looking silly. What is obvious is not scary, but ambiguity is. We fear the dark because anything could be there. It could be a small fluffy bunny or a pack of wolves. You fear the creepy guy staring at you in a subway because he may or may not be planning something. You fear a trail of blood that leads to a dark alleyway because you fear what could have made that blood trail. Nor would you know if the thing is still nearby. There is nothing more fearful than the unknown. Because what we don't know CAN hurt us.

It triggers that part of your brain that made you scared of the monster under the bed when you were a child. More importantly, if a monster is to be effective, horror needs a buildup. An atmosphere needs to be established to break down the audience's psychological defenses. They need to be made to feel vulnerable, but most importantly, to actually believe in the threat. The three examples that I have given - Gojira, the Thing, and the demons of Silent Hill - are all obviously not realistic. However, they are believable in the context of the movies and games they appear in. That is because they take the time to establish the setting and build up to the reveal of the monster.

You might notice that at the beginning of Gojira, you don't immediately see the actual monster. First, it just seems that multiple ships were caught in some strange series of accidents or supernatural phenomenons. The true nature of the threat isn't obvious. All we knew was that there was something clearly wrong going on. It becomes increasingly-difficult to explain until the point is reached where the scientists of Tokyo would have to accept that a monster lives among them.

As movies like Alien and games like Resident Evil demonstrate, horror is most effective when it evolves over the course of the story. The protagonist should be made aware of the threat by the end of the first act without knowing the true nature of it right away. As they try to deal with the threat, they learn more about it, but never come to a complete understanding. Because if you can understand it, you can deal with it. So, the threat should be shrouded in mystery.

Let's put this into perspective. In Alien, the crew members of the ship Nostromo were awaken early under orders of investigating a distress signal from an unknown planet. When they arrived to investigate, they found that the signal originated from a crashed alien ship. Within it, they discovered an alien creature that evidently died from unusual causes. The setting and visuals are creepy and unsettling, but there is no immediate danger that we could see. However, we are made to imagine what could have caused the alien's death. The crew does not realize that there was a threat until one of them got attached by a facehugger and they couldn't remove it. It eventually detaches on its own and just as the threat seems to be gone, a creature bursts out from the crew member's chest. It's a terrifying sight, but once the creature was out, it runs away. Thinking that the creature is still small, they try to capture it with nets and tasers, but it turns out that it has grown. By the time this was realized, it was too late. One crew member is killed and then another. Once they found out that the company was planning to have one of them implanted with an embryo and brought back to Earth, they descided to blow up the ship before the Xenomorph could make it to Earth.

The intensity of the horror grows as the story progresses. What makes Alien unique is that the setting of the horror literally evolves over time. The Xenomorph starts off as a spider-like creature that latches onto a man's face and plants an egg down his throat. The egg hatches the alien, which bursts out of the victim's chest and then grows into the size where it can tear a man limb-from-limb. However, what's more important is that the audience learns about the threat as the characters do. To a first-time viewer, seeing the alien bursting out of a man's chest is just as shocking as it is to the characters. Both of the characters and the audience are made to believe that, after the facehugger detaches, the alien was truly dead. When, in reality, the horror was just getting started.

So, when considering the key ingredients that are atmosphere, vulnerability, ambiguity, and danger, what it all boils down to is the escalation of the threat with no obvious solution. That said, while a horror movie should come with a scary concept of a threat, that doesn't necessarily mean that it needs a monster. The thought of having your home city being wiped out by a nuclear fallout is scary. As is the thought of fighting to escape a sinking ship. Or left stranded on an island. Though for some reason, with a few exceptions, we only consider a horror concept if it involves a monster of some sort. Whether it is a ferocious animal, a supernatural being like a Wendigo, or even a normal human being with homicidal tendencies. But even movies and games with scary monsters are not always considered horror.

As a veteran of such a topic, I believe what it truly boils down to is theme. A horror film must have an abstract concept embodied by its monster. While being trapped under rubble or stranded on an island is scary, those movies give a feeling of hope, salvation, and the human spirit overcoming incredible odds. And while playing a game that features going to war with an alien army or surviving a city of maniacs is horrifying on its own right, it gives the same feeling. However, horror films and games are based on ideas such as futility, inevitability, and fatality. And that is what makes a horror concept truly horrifying. These are ideas that we generally avoid thinking of.

The true horror in a great horror monster is that, through the veil of unrealistic but believable fiction, it forces us to confront our disturbing reality.

Credits!

Goth Nora from TheBlackBirdCalls

Gothic Dress from Resliee

Regenerator from DollyMolly323

Xenomorph Queen from mcchipy

PyramidHead from MrWhitefolks

Troodon from PekkaMemester

Yellow Herb from RyosukiKamui12

Classroom Stage from Maddokter2

Description

Hello there, all my lovely abominations. Claire, here, for one last post of the weekend. And I think I would like to use this as a form of criticism of what I have been seeing to be a popular question in writing. What makes a good horror monster?

If I may propose my theory, horror comes in three stages:

Dread

Horror

Terror

Dread is being lost alone in a jungle within the darkness of night. Not a soul of your fellow Man in sight and the only sounds within the deafening silence is the subtle chirping of crickets. Horror is a sudden ruffling in the ferns far from you and the sight of glowing yellow orbs in the shadows. You don't know whether or not this is a threat to you, but you are aware that it is there and you are on high alert. Terror is when a Troodon comes bursting towards you. The threat is clear and present. You don't have time to think. You either run, fight, or die. With this example, it is important to note that in and of itself, the dinosaur is not what is scary. It is the very idea of being bitten with paralyzing venom, being eaten alive, and then used as a nest for eggs. So that hatchlings would eat you from the inside-out in a painfully-slow pace. And you are still alive through the entire process. The Troodon is merely the vessel of a horror movie concept.

While being mauled to death by a creature with fangs and claws is scary enough on the surface, it would not bring the monster in a higher level of fear factor that any real life predator has. Nowadays, mankind has grown to shed off this fear of predators due to thousands of years of us being on the top of the food chain. As long as you stay out of the marshlands in the wild, you are most unlikely to be eaten alive by a snake or an alligator. Even if you do go into the woods or the swamps, you would be smart enough to carry around a weapon. Either a gun or something as lethal as a machete. A bear or a mountain lion can be fast, but not as fast as a bullet. And an anaconda can be deadly, but not deadly enough to withstand a good blow of a machete.

This is why it is common to give this monster a sort of a supernatural element. You can't fight a ghost and your bullets may not work against an alien. Although, while making it nigh invulnerable does make the monster more threatening, it comes at the expense of making the monster believable. As children, we fear the monsters under the bed. This is due to how our imagination could go wild and lack the wisdom to rationalize the realism of the threat. As we grow older, our fears grow more on the real life aspect. Fears such as failure, addiction, loneliness, and so on. It is reasons like this that I believe should be the biggest rule of a good horror monster. Whether it is for a movie, show, or video game.
No monster is as terrifying as the abstract idea that it represents.

Let's look at a few examples from popular pop culture pieces.

Taking from a non-horror example, the infamous King of the Monsters Godzilla is a giant monster that spews radioactive fire, yes. However, back in 1954, that was only implied as a staple to the idea of the monster. It is ultimately an embodiment of a more dreadful aspect. You don't need a degree of psychology to see that Gojira is full of symbolism regarding nuclear destruction. And the overwhelming pain and dread that comes from the resulting onslaught of said destruction.

The beloved horror treasure that is The Thing may have repulsed the audience with gory imagery, but it reflects on the disgusting corruption of human flesh as the disgust that we have on deformities and disfigurement. It also preys on our general distrust of others and the thought of the people that you thought were your friends could suddenly turn on you.

The fan-favorite horror game, Silent Hill 2, is also a great example. While gamers find it shocking to see the protagonist being threatened by sexualized demon-nurses and being chased by a towering creature that violates other monsters, what makes the game scary is having to face the physical embodiments of your past sins.

This is only a handful of classic horror that stands out over a field polluted by lackluster crap. I think the reason for this is that it's rather difficult to convey an abstract idea and implement it into a film or a game. In a novel, you can easily describe a character's thoughts and emotions. However, with a movie or a game, you are forced to rely on visual concrete imagery. How do you design a monster that embodies an adult's fears such as loneliness or loss? Well, to do so would take a level of creativity and risk that mainstream media is adverse to. Why should you invest into a risky movie that may or may not work when you can make millions by making films that only have a few scary faces that go "BOO!"?

This is why you get so few films that are based of literary works such as books of H.P. Lovecraft. Despite him being, along with Steven King, one of the greatest horror writers in the twentieth century. Most of his stories are heavily-centered around themes such as mankind's insignificance, nature's indifference to one's suffering, and cosmic entities that we could never be able to resist or even understand. How do you explore these themes?

The difficulty in creating a good horror monster is the difficulty in trying to take inherently-terrifying aspects and applying them into creature and set design, cinematography, sounds and visuals, and literal symbolism. Fortunately, I don't think it's rather necessary to show the horror. What film makers and game designers need to understand is what the audience imagines is more terrifying that what is shown. There is a such thing as showing too much. While a movie or a video game is a passive medium to us, a good one makes us think of what's been presented to us.

In fact, this is a required key element for any genre - including horror. If you can encourage the audience to imagine something, you can horrify them far more effectively than you could with a jumpscare. When you are actually able to see the subject, it's not as scary because on some intellectual level, you would always know that it's fake. You naturally try to rationalize on what is presented and, above all else, it ends up looking silly. What is obvious is not scary, but ambiguity is. We fear the dark because anything could be there. It could be a small fluffy bunny or a pack of wolves. You fear the creepy guy staring at you in a subway because he may or may not be planning something. You fear a trail of blood that leads to a dark alleyway because you fear what could have made that blood trail. Nor would you know if the thing is still nearby. There is nothing more fearful than the unknown. Because what we don't know CAN hurt us.

It triggers that part of your brain that made you scared of the monster under the bed when you were a child. More importantly, if a monster is to be effective, horror needs a buildup. An atmosphere needs to be established to break down the audience's psychological defenses. They need to be made to feel vulnerable, but most importantly, to actually believe in the threat. The three examples that I have given - Gojira, the Thing, and the demons of Silent Hill - are all obviously not realistic. However, they are believable in the context of the movies and games they appear in. That is because they take the time to establish the setting and build up to the reveal of the monster.

You might notice that at the beginning of Gojira, you don't immediately see the actual monster. First, it just seems that multiple ships were caught in some strange series of accidents or supernatural phenomenons. The true nature of the threat isn't obvious. All we knew was that there was something clearly wrong going on. It becomes increasingly-difficult to explain until the point is reached where the scientists of Tokyo would have to accept that a monster lives among them.

As movies like Alien and games like Resident Evil demonstrate, horror is most effective when it evolves over the course of the story. The protagonist should be made aware of the threat by the end of the first act without knowing the true nature of it right away. As they try to deal with the threat, they learn more about it, but never come to a complete understanding. Because if you can understand it, you can deal with it. So, the threat should be shrouded in mystery.

Let's put this into perspective. In Alien, the crew members of the ship Nostromo were awaken early under orders of investigating a distress signal from an unknown planet. When they arrived to investigate, they found that the signal originated from a crashed alien ship. Within it, they discovered an alien creature that evidently died from unusual causes. The setting and visuals are creepy and unsettling, but there is no immediate danger that we could see. However, we are made to imagine what could have caused the alien's death. The crew does not realize that there was a threat until one of them got attached by a facehugger and they couldn't remove it. It eventually detaches on its own and just as the threat seems to be gone, a creature bursts out from the crew member's chest. It's a terrifying sight, but once the creature was out, it runs away. Thinking that the creature is still small, they try to capture it with nets and tasers, but it turns out that it has grown. By the time this was realized, it was too late. One crew member is killed and then another. Once they found out that the company was planning to have one of them implanted with an embryo and brought back to Earth, they descided to blow up the ship before the Xenomorph could make it to Earth.

The intensity of the horror grows as the story progresses. What makes Alien unique is that the setting of the horror literally evolves over time. The Xenomorph starts off as a spider-like creature that latches onto a man's face and plants an egg down his throat. The egg hatches the alien, which bursts out of the victim's chest and then grows into the size where it can tear a man limb-from-limb. However, what's more important is that the audience learns about the threat as the characters do. To a first-time viewer, seeing the alien bursting out of a man's chest is just as shocking as it is to the characters. Both of the characters and the audience are made to believe that, after the facehugger detaches, the alien was truly dead. When, in reality, the horror was just getting started.

So, when considering the key ingredients that are atmosphere, vulnerability, ambiguity, and danger, what it all boils down to is the escalation of the threat with no obvious solution. That said, while a horror movie should come with a scary concept of a threat, that doesn't necessarily mean that it needs a monster. The thought of having your home city being wiped out by a nuclear fallout is scary. As is the thought of fighting to escape a sinking ship. Or left stranded on an island. Though for some reason, with a few exceptions, we only consider a horror concept if it involves a monster of some sort. Whether it is a ferocious animal, a supernatural being like a Wendigo, or even a normal human being with homicidal tendencies. But even movies and games with scary monsters are not always considered horror.

As a veteran of such a topic, I believe what it truly boils down to is theme. A horror film must have an abstract concept embodied by its monster. While being trapped under rubble or stranded on an island is scary, those movies give a feeling of hope, salvation, and the human spirit overcoming incredible odds. And while playing a game that features going to war with an alien army or surviving a city of maniacs is horrifying on its own right, it gives the same feeling. However, horror films and games are based on ideas such as futility, inevitability, and fatality. And that is what makes a horror concept truly horrifying. These are ideas that we generally avoid thinking of.

The true horror in a great horror monster is that, through the veil of unrealistic but believable fiction, it forces us to confront our disturbing reality.

Credits!

Goth Nora from TheBlackBirdCalls

Gothic Dress from Resliee

Regenerator from DollyMolly323

Xenomorph Queen from mcchipy

PyramidHead from MrWhitefolks

Troodon from PekkaMemester

Yellow Herb from RyosukiKamui12

Classroom Stage from Maddokter2