this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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I've seen someone describe the difference between urban fantasy and horror as "in horror the protagonist and reader don't understand the monster," and I don't think it's strictly true, but I think it is directionally true.
If you're being attacked by an evil spirit and can't do shit other than try to get away, it's horror, if you know that salt that has been consecrated by a priest will kill it, the evil spirit is just an aesthetic for an action story.
Yeah, I think it stems from the fact that people don't grasp that there is an inherent terror to the unknown
It allows the mind to wander, to go into places where the writer never thought to
I think this is why collaborative horror projects (Slenderman, The SCP Foundation, The Backrooms, etc.) both stick around and also stop being good
Slenderman was spooky when he was just a weird thing in the background of photos, years later, he's one goofy doofus. Lives in a mansion in the middle of the woods, makes people kill for him so they can live in the mansion.
The mystique is gone, replaced by someone wanting to leave their mark on a legend
That sounds like 2 criteria: The monster isn't known, and the monster can't be defeated.
In Aliens, the monster is known, and can't be beaten except by means not easily available. Which would make it less of a horror than Jurassic Park, where the monsters are very known, but escape from the island is the only hope. Sime would consider neither of these horror, some might consider both of them horror.
I think both of those movies are horror, but not because of the Dinos/Aliens. The Dinos/Aliens are the Terror. The Horror comes from the False Sense of Control slowly disintegrating as the plot moves forward driven by the Terror. Both Hammond and Burke try to salvage the situation as it spirals further out of control.
Does this qualify Beetlejuice?
Yes, but Beetlejuice comes waltzing in wearing Comedy. I think the Horror comes as a kind of reverse haunted house, where the living haunt the dead with change. The False Sense of Control was their previous life, and its slowly disintegrating because of the Terror of the living intruding more into their lives. It hits that Existential Dread feeling of losing your (previous, living) identity. I think the Mother being an avant-garde modern artist helps drive the sense of unreality of the main characters experience.
EDIT: I bet you could recut the movie into a proper haunted house horror film by focusing on Lydia exclusively, and the ghosts are only shown fleetingly as she investigates the house.