The Physics of Fear

Let me start off by explaining that I have been a horror fan my entire life. I didn't watch scary movies as a child, so it was only later that I got into serious horror. Even so, as a kid, I loved ghost stories, the spookier the better. I must have read every collection of ghost stories the local library had.

Later on, in my early teens, my friends and I would watch with great glee, what are now some of the most iconic horror movies in cinematic history. Movies like The Exorcist (1973), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Hellraiser (1987) are now classics. But back in those days there was nothing cooler. We devoured every scream, every splash of blood, every demonic gurgle emanating from below the stairs. Over the years, we watched so many gruesome movies, I can't recall half of them.

However, I can honestly say I was never scared. It's only in recent years that I found myself being affected by horror movies. This has made me reflect more on the philosophy of horror, and that is what this is about.

My personal take on the physics of fear, not as a scientist or a doctor, as I am neither, but as both a fan and a creator of horror.

H. P. Lovecraft wrote: ”The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. He was so right. A monster is always scariest before we see it, when our imagination fills in the blanks. This is what makes horror so difficult to create. What one person finds terrifying is trivial, perhaps even laughable, to someone else. You can't please everyone all the time, but if you can scare the majority, you're on to something.

In the late 90's, I ran a horror game for a couple of friends, who were an item at the time. We played in her kitchen late into the night. When we were done, he walked me to the bus stop while we chatted. He told me he thought the game was cool, and he'd had a good time. It was only later she told me that she was so scared she refused to leave the kitchen until he came back. I was incredibly flattered. I had succeeded in genuinely scaring someone. I'm not telling this to brag, but to illustrate an example. My friend liked my game, but wasn't really scared, but his girlfriend found the same game terrifying.

Fear is an intensly personal thing, and in order to be really scary, you have to push buttons.

The perhaps most basic trick to accomplish this, is to make horror relatable. If the story is too alien it looses a great deal of power. The most popular, and therefore most effective horror stories are all relatable somehow. It's all about making people think What if? Could this happen to me? Even if you rationally know it can't happen, that it's just a book, a movie or a game, the killer could be in your bathroom, right now. That makes it scary. The rest comes down to trappings.

Let's take Freddy Krueger from Elm Street as an example. Sure he looks scary, but that's not what makes the movie so creepy. It's the fact that you have to sleep for real that makes him frightening. Not the burned face and knife-glove, but the idea that you'll see him in your dreams tonight.

In The Grudge, a victim hiding in her own bed is taken by the ghost. Michael Myers of Halloween fame stalks you in your own house. This makes these creatures so effective, the fact that you aren't safe in your own home, in your own bed. You, not just the characters, are not safe. Period.

The trappings, while not as vital as the relatability, are none the less very important. Like mentioned above, Freddy has his sweater, hat and glove. Myers has his blank mask, which incidentally hightens the unknown nature of the monster. The Grudge ghosts are horribly pale and move in unnatural jerking movements. Without these trappings, they wouldn't be interesting, they wouldn't be as frightening. The story can't stand on trappings alone, but they are essential. They are like spices. You can't cook dinner on just spices, but without them you have a very bland meal. It's getting the combination right that's so hard.

John Carpenter said that there are fundamentally only two kinds of horror stories; the external horror, i.e. the evil is out there, and the internal horror, i.e. the horror is inside us all.

The umbrella of horror covers a great many sub-genres, from pure gore fests to slow, subtle mood pieces. I love the fact, that when Bela Lugosi's Dracula appeared in cinemas in 1931, they had nurses in the theaters to take care of people who got so scared they fainted. I was about sixteen when I saw that version of Dracula for the first time, and I couldn't believe how cheesy it was. But it illustrates really well in my mind, how our reaction to horror can and will evolve over time.