Sunday, March 05, 2006

heart of darkness

Horror is important. It reminds you that you can bleed. It scares the life out of you just to show you how safe you are.

Horror knows its business. It knows to keep things simple, to play with your childhood fears - being alone, in the dark, with a man behind the door.

Horror knows the power of pace. When to go slow, to make you think the danger is over, and when to bombard with sensory overload.

Horror knows to balance sound and its absence. The silence sets the scene for the scream and the screaming ceases for you to enjoy the silence - while it lasts…

Horror kills your desire to dream. It throws you over its shoulder and carries you to a locked room where it leaves you to wait and shake while the nightmares seep up through the floor.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You make horror sound like an actual person with thoughts and feelings and hopes and ambitions. Which obviously frightens me a lot.....
'It scares the life out of you just to show you how safe you are' This is only the reason why i ever watch a horror film. But i still check under my bed.....

fjl said...

Tea with the birds sums it up, the sort of 'hollywood movie man', who horrifies by being fear personified, but there's a distinction between horror and fear; fear is useful, but horror is a result of what ideally should never happen to you and didn't need to. You emotional reaction to what happenned when your good fear related instincts failed. 'Beyond fear' isn't good, it isn't a good thing to promote,I don't care which movie mogul's trying to make money out of his banalities really.

Michelle said...

Fear is a great motivator.