Horror films; characters' responses
May. 7th, 2016 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcI went for many years without watching horror films then I grew more curious about their appeal and have been watching a good range of them from over the past couple of decades or so.
Some have been quite good. I enjoyed
It is very common in horror films for people to come across some horrifying inhuman entity that is aware of them yet they just shrink back and cower in terror or whatever for many seconds. In
I am reminded of an anecdote about officer selection in the British Army: one is asked what one would do if one's vehicle stalls in crossing a railway line and a train is coming. The specific answer doesn't matter so long as it isn't daft: what they're looking for is a fast answer.
Some have been quite good. I enjoyed
The Orphanage(2007) but before long it didn't really feel like horror, it became more a tragic tale and ended up making some sense. Films like
Wake Wood(2009) don't feel to me much like horror either, more like science fiction. A birthday habit for me has been to visit the cinema; a couple of years ago I saw
The Babadook(2014) and it pleased me: it felt more like what I was looking for in the genre.
It Follows(2014) further had the pleasing property that the troubled protagonist actually tried to do something about the issue. That brings me to the actual point of this entry:
It is very common in horror films for people to come across some horrifying inhuman entity that is aware of them yet they just shrink back and cower in terror or whatever for many seconds. In
The Grudge(2002) we have somebody hide under the bedcovers, for goodness' sake. Surely these people all deserve to die? I grant that I have never been in such a situation myself but I very much suspect that I would freeze only momentarily. I figure: try to interact politely with the entity if there is time but, more probably, if one feels threatened by something unnatural then one should beat a very hasty retreat or summon anger and attack ferociously. I certainly feel adrenaline: I would probably shake, and fumble acts that require dexterity, but it seems very common in films for people to withdraw into useless terror and become hapless prey. I thus wonder to what extent this would really happen (and, if so, could such behavior be favored by natural selection?) or is this simply an unimaginative dramatic device for extending suspense and raising the body count?
I am reminded of an anecdote about officer selection in the British Army: one is asked what one would do if one's vehicle stalls in crossing a railway line and a train is coming. The specific answer doesn't matter so long as it isn't daft: what they're looking for is a fast answer.
