The horror in a horror film is as essential as the West in a Western or the humor in a comedy. This book concentrates relentlessly on the nature and expression of horror, both in reality and in the cinema.

Overview

Horror films can be profound fables of human nature and important works of art, yet many people dismiss them out of hand, are too disgusted or frightened to watch them, or are simply reluctant to discuss them. One reason is that horror itself resists formulation and can be difficult and unpleasant to contemplate. The material is awful, a nightmare no one wants to come true. Horror can be filled with violence, cruelty and gore. It can scare us badly. It can be inexpressible, nameless. It can make us want to vomit. And it can be disturbing. The horror film can bring uncomfortably close the worst that could ever happen—to a character or to ourselves. It can explore forbidden aspects of human psychology. It can present dark beauty or sick fantasy. It can be sexist. It can be stupid. It can be badly produced. Arousing both terror and repugnance at once, it can be revolting in its moments of greatest power, when it shows us what we do and do not want to see. It can make us unable to express what we have seen. It can transgress and transcend limits. It can make the repellent, the terrifying and the creepy compelling. It can have the raw theatricality of a freak show. It can make a composition out of violence, blood and shadow, and can charge an image or a moment with the suspense and power of the unseen—with fear or awareness. It can offer a place for the fantastic and the uncanny to play, a place for monsters, lost places, things that cannot be, things from here and not from here. It can go to the limits of violent, insane human behavior, or it can open a way for the supernatural to intrude. It can put us in touch with old emotions and reactions: fight or flight, fear of the dark, the need for community.

It can give pleasure to feel how frightening and repulsive a scene is, how extreme, how expressive, and it can satisfy the critic and the fan in the viewer to appreciate how well it lives up to the potential of the genre.