Maynedon

I recently hung out with a friend of mine at a restaurant, talking about the kinds of stories we enjoy reading in books or watching on the big screen. My friend is the sort of fellow who likes very visual, in-your-face media. Whether it’s a mystery novel or a big budget Hollywood spectacular, he wants nothing left to the imagination by the end. Every question posed during the story must be neatly wrapped up by the end or he feels cheated

Me? Well, if you’ve been reading this blog right along, you’ll know I’m the exact opposite. The stories I like best are the ones where there are as few answers fed to the audience as possible–stories where not every plot point gets neatly resolved. I don’t want to be shown the monster, I want to be allowed to imagine it, to dwell on what it might be.

As my friend and I talked, I realized that horror stories and super hero tales are on opposite sides of the story-telling spectrum. Everything from the characters to the set pieces to the simplest stylistic choices are so completely different that a good horror tale and a good super hero story might as well inhabit separate universes.

It’s probably no coincidence that my friend loves his super heroes while I love a good scary story.

Horror relies on a feeling of dread, anxiety and uneasiness. The events you are witnessing, whether on screen or in a book, must be met by the characters with uncertainty. You cannot take as a given that everyone in the story will be fine by the end; that they’ll walk off into the sunset or otherwise be rewarded with a happy ending. If the characters in the story aren’t vulnerable, that feeling of dread never has a chance to rise.

With super heroes, you are dealing with powerful and resilient characters by definition. They may be challenged by the events unfolding, but few super hero tales feature mortal peril such that the audience is uncertain if the day will be saved. You can find exceptions easily enough, but at a fundamental level any tale of supers is an indestructible hero’s journey wrapped in spandex.

And when it comes to super hero movies, nothing is left to the imagination. In this day of 3D and IMAX, without a particle storm and full-frontal CGI at every turn, a super hero movie would feel flat and (gasp!) low budget. Even the sets must be larger than life, often featuring sweeping, epic views of vast cityscapes where the characters are free to move around and have plenty of room to show off their best moves.

With horror, it’s about the atmosphere, the pacing, the slow and steady build-up of dread within the viewer. For the setting, you’re more likely to find claustrophobic environments than grand vistas, because adding confinement to the mix often makes the Bad Things much more worrisome.

And at the end, the release of that pent up apprehension, if it comes at all, should leave as much room for the viewer as possible. Don’t show the monster, let us imagine it. Whatever a visual effects director thinks the monster should look like won’t be nearly as scary to the audience as whatever nightmare their own minds conjures up.

Now it’s true, some horror movies lean heavily on computer-generated special effects, but in my mind those are the ones that are inevitably bad. Any horror movie you could describe as an “action-packed thrill ride” or a “special effect spectacular” is unlikely to deliver on the dread. Without that, horror just ain’t horror.

Conversations like the one I had with my friend rarely lead to anything concrete, aside from a pleasant hour spent exchanging ideas with someone you enjoy hanging out with. In the case of supers versus horror, though, I think we might have been on to something.