What Frightens You In Film and Fiction?

[Katie-Ellen]

Only one movie ever gave me the willies for longer than the credits ran. "The Thing". An alien that can be anyone and you can't tell? Creepy stuff! There was one other (can't remember the title) about some teens that cheated "death", by not getting killed in a traffic accident, and "death" was trying to catch up to them. They made a lot of sequels, but the idea of trying to escape something you can't see and can't hide from is pretty terrifying.

I would not like that. Too much like a nightmare I used to have. I was locked in a room with SOMETHING. I couldn't see it, or hear it but I knew it was evil, and I was trying to fight it, and also, trying and failing to remember the words of the Lord's Prayer to hurl at it. My subconscious must think that might work at least as well as any other kind of banishing.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

How about an EVIL jammy dodger?

Good idea. You eat it and then it becomes you-00000. Time to get out the prunes, and quick.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I honestly didn't find Pet Sematary scary or even interesting.

I found 28 Days Later to be the best zombie movie ever because you have these people trying to escape monsters by joining up with other surviving humans (the military), only to discover that those other humans are monsters as well. The philosophy of that made me think . . . and the soundtrack was amazing.

The scariest movie I think I ever saw was the original Blair Witch Project. I watched it late one Friday night when I was alone in the house when I lived in New England. It terrified me because it was all psychological, with very little gore, if any. Psychological movies scare me the most.

For books, I did find Salem's Lot terrifying when I read it at 14. I slept with a nightlight for a long time after that. Seriously!

But as an adult, The Trial is the scariest book I've read, as it could so happen in real life.

Blair Witch was excellently atmospheric, nastily claustrophobic and subtle. It's true though, history trumps horror fiction, hands down. Matthew Hopkins, who needed drowning at birth had anyone known. Salem witch trials, Giles Corey pressed to death and all because of ergot poisoning.

So, the consensus seems to be, it's pretty hard to write serious, good quality frightening fiction, and film trumps books?

 

[Jason Byrne]

Blair Witch was excellently atmospheric, nastily claustrophobic and subtle. It's true though, history trumps horror fiction, hands down. Matthew Hopkins, who needed drowning at birth had anyone known. Salem witch trials, Giles Corey pressed to death and all because of ergot poisoning.

So, the consensus seems to be, it's pretty hard to write serious, good quality frightening fiction, and film trumps books?

I think film has more tools at its disposal, and thus more often achieve something that can be considered frightening, but that the books which do it successfully achieve a sort of fear that film could never hope to match. Take Dracula, for example.

The fear that this could happen to me makes the scare easier to achieve successfully, and including truth in the horror is definitely helpful, but Dracula is also proof that this is by no means required. I know, I know, he's based upon Vlad III of House Drăculești, but show me how many of the details match up, really.

I think to achieve something truly frightening, you have to work at it for a long time. And probably go through at least a little horrific stuff, yourself.

 

[Mark Odell]

Or you just have to be afraid of what your own brain can create. That is how I work. I have led a fairly sheltered life but sometimes my imagination does genuinely scare me. That sounds like I'm being Mr 'Oh I'm so imaginative' perhaps, but I no, it's just that sometimes I write things that surprise even me.

 

[Marc Joan]

Or you just have to be afraid of what your own brain can create. That is how I work. I have led a fairly sheltered life but sometimes my imagination does genuinely scare me. That sounds like I'm being Mr 'Oh I'm so imaginative' perhaps, but I no, it's just that sometimes I write things that surprise even me.

Totally agree, at least about sometimes being horrified by what I write (not always in a good way!). The trick, I suppose, is to induce the same feelings in others via one's writing....But yes, it's scary what gets generated from thoughts...

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Perhaps you have to be afraid, yourself, in order to transmit that in writing? Have to let rip with your demon. It might never fit back in the bottle. Stephen King's tweets are so funny, sometimes. His little dog, Molly, he refers to as The Thing. A photo of her with a toy purple dinosaur in the garden is captioned something like, The Thing doesn't just bring down and kill the last bastion, the Dinosaur of Decency, it gloats over the body. Words to that effect.

 

[Karen Gray]

Perhaps you have to be afraid, yourself, in order to transmit that in writing? Have to let rip with your demon. It might never fit back in the bottle. Stephen King's tweets are so funny, sometimes. His little dog, Molly, he refers to as The Thing. A photo of her with a toy purple dinosaur in the garden is captioned something like, The Thing doesn't just bring down and kill the last bastion, the Dinosaur of Decency, it gloats over the body. Words to that effect.

That makes a lot of sense. I'd say that is relevant for most emotions in writing but I think it would be particularly so for fear and sadness.

 

[David Steele]

What gets me all annoyed and unnecessary is the way movie studios will set out to make a horror that can slip under the 15 certificate bar. This maximises the amount of cash the movie will make, at the cost of watering the offering down so much that it's guaranteed to do nothing more than make you jump a couple of times.

 

[Karen Gray]

What gets me all annoyed and unnecessary is the way movie studios will set out to make a horror that can slip under the 15 certificate bar. This maximises the amount of cash the movie will make, at the cost of watering the offering down so much that it's guaranteed to do nothing more than make you jump a couple of times.

Oh!!! Don't even get me started on that one. I'll not get any writing done this morning through ranting! :/ (I totally agree)

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I find that there's a difference between what scares me in reading a book and watching a film. I can certainly react with fright to terrifying film monsters, such as in the first The Howling movie or John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing, though reading about monsters, creepy-crawlies and ghosts leaves me unmoved. This is why I find it hard to take Stephen King's horror stories featuring demented creatures seriously, whereas his stories showing humans who've gone off the rails are terrifying.
Man's inhumanity to man frightens me more than anything. This can include 'The Man', those in control of the populace, or on a person-to-person level. I vividly recall sneak-reading two nonfiction books on the WWII war crimes trials of Nazi and Japanese leaders, prison camp staff and soldiers. I was a young child when I looked at my parents' copies of The Knights of Bushido and The Scourge of The Swastika, which both contained horrifying photographs of atrocities, and it affected me forever. It certainly showed the lies of action comics, television cartoons and war movies.
I think that it's the fear of being trapped which is a common theme of many of the stories that have intimidated me. Situations such as Rorke's Drift, where British soldiers were faced with an overwhelming force of victorious Zulu warriors, who'd just decimated the British camp at Isandlwana. This kill-or-be-killed scenario gives me the collywobbles. My grandfather fought in the trenches during WWI, and told me several horrifying tales about what happened to him. Again, it was the idea of being trapped, one's fate determined by unthinking and uncaring leaders that moved me.
Along those lines, and one of the most frightening war films ever made, is Come And See. This was made by Elem Klimov in 1985, and tells the story of a boy who is swept up by the Nazi occupation of Belarus. It's truly shocking, and well-worth seeking out. It's the sort of thing that would have scared me as a book or as a film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See

 

[Mark Odell]

Again, not to keep banging this drum, it's one of the reasons Pet Sematary is so effective. There is no ghost or specific monster, beyond that of the awful power of grief.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I haven't read any of these: the reviewer unpacks the 'why' of the scare: http://bookriot.com/2015/07/02/5-books-that-are-legit-nightmare-fuel-2/

 

[Jason Byrne]

I haven't read any of these: the reviewer unpacks the 'why' of the scare: http://bookriot.com/2015/07/02/5-books-that-are-legit-nightmare-fuel-2/

The House of Leaves! Great. Book. Very unorthodox.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Ah? Thank you, Jason.

 

[Jason Byrne]

On the other end of the scale, I thought I would share these articles, as well.

Rare Brain Disorder Prevents All Fear
The Woman Who Knows No Fear
The No-Fear Woman

 

[Nicole Wilson]

The House of Leaves! Great. Book. Very unorthodox.

I really liked the premise. Though I didn't much care for the actual content of the book, it was very well put together and I loved the use of spacing words on the page to fit the action in the scene.

 

[Jason Byrne]

I really liked the premise. Though I didn't much care for the actual content of the book, it was very well put together and I loved the use of spacing words on the page to fit the action in the scene.

Yeah, it's like a Tarantino movie. You come for the style, not the deep meaning.

 

[Nicole Wilson]

I haven't read any of these: the reviewer unpacks the 'why' of the scare: http://bookriot.com/2015/07/02/5-books-that-are-legit-nightmare-fuel-2/

The Hot Zone is an intense book. One of the few non-fiction books I've read that has stuck with me.

 

[Mark Odell]

The House of Leaves! Great. Book. Very unorthodox.

It is a very cool book, though I still haven't finished it yet. It's scary but a bit meandering; the digressions started to just baffle me after awhile. I will finish it though! I will!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I've experienced a few ghosts, experienced poltergeists (which are created by or via the living, I am convinced) and not been frightened, only surprised, startled or intrigued. I experienced something once that did frighten me, a thing described by the archaeologist and paranormal investigator TC Lethbridge as a 'ghoul' . This is an emotionally charged atmosphere that haunts a specific location. There is a notorious site at Ladram Bay. I experienced it in a holiday cottage in Suffolk. Many years later I picked up a booklet about the house, which is no longer a holiday home but someone's permanent home, so I'm being careful. Something had happened to a man who lived there...not a death...but something so dreadful to him, so dire for his family, I think it must have been his terror, grief, shame and despair that I felt. I was truly terrified.

 

[Meerkat]

Book or film?

Book. I read it about two years ago for the first time, but saw the movie as a teenager. I don't remember the movie, so it probably didn't scare me, either.

 

[Meerkat]

When I was in college, I went to my first Haunted House attraction. (I don't know if you have those in the UK.) I was so terrified--I screamed my head off. But that one was held in an old industrial factory in which there was once a huge fire and a lot of people had died, so for me, it was naturally much more frightening.

 

[Nicole Wilson]

When I was in college, I went to my first Haunted House attraction. (I don't know if you have those in the UK.) I was so terrified--I screamed my head off. But that one was held in an old industrial factory in which there was once a huge fire and a lot of people had died, so for me, it was naturally much more frightening.

When I was younger, I used to think I was so brave that haunted houses and scary movies wouldn't affect me. Until the day I realized that I could handle the more campfire movies like Jason and Michael Myers. The real ones and the haunted houses I matured enough to know "nuh uh, no thanks."

 

[Jennifer Stone]

I do enjoy Richard Laymon's books, some would be horror, others more like suspense. One Rainy Night is good, thick oily rain falls, turning anyone who gets wet into a murderous psycho. The Beast-house Trilogy have creepy atmosphere, i almost shouted 'stay out of the basement!' many times. My favourite character of his is the Master of Games (MOG), in After Dark, i think. With increased risk comes increased financial reward, how far would you go for money?