Pardon me a ‘get off my lawn’ moment, if you will: supernatural horror-making in recent years has gone down the drain.
Oh sure, on occasion you’ll see a film which has its moments, but the fact that this often strikes us with such genuine surprise and delight should testify that for the most part, supernatural horror is badly-done, poorly-executed and just plain lazy. Box office success seems to hinge on the following: winning favour with a horde of recalcitrant teens who measure quality according to how much or how little a horror film makes the weakest member of their group amusingly shriek out loud. More and more films have begun to follow a formula, one which plumps for cheap thrills and sudden shocks over all else. Actually, to call it a formula is to suggest it has a number of elements which combine successfully. That would be overstating things. Lacking the wit to craft a slowly-building story, one which immerses you in the world of credible (even if unlikeable) characters whilst allowing you to feel the tension they feel in an incredible, otherworldly situation, the tendency now is to lob in a cookie-cutter family unit and then haunt them with all the subtlety of fireworks at a funeral. Move them in to a spooky house and then have a shitty CGI child leap out at them for eighty minutes so that the evil can be resolved for the final ten minutes before everyone – on screen and in the cinema – leaves. Promise some extra footage of said shitty CGI child for the DVD release, and rake in those pennies. You did good!
There’s a reason advertising campaigns rock out the night vision to promote their films these days. It’s because they make the error of thinking that the quality of horror is measured by how much – and how high – the audience members jump. That’s what it’s all about now. Terror has become a Richter scale of involuntary leaps and jerks; it’s a lowest-common-denominator way of thinking, and confusing a reflex action with genuine fear is a hell of a mistake to make. For example: if someone comes around a corner ahead of you and you didn’t hear them approach, then you’ll jump when you see them. This is the brain’s way of getting you ready for action should you need it; the good old reptile brain stops you daydreaming and puts you in ‘drive’ in case this new, unanticipated person is a threat. It’s non-discriminatory and it’s instantaneous. We can’t control it; we’re just primed to jump a foot into the air if we’re caught unawares. A small child can make you jump by popping up and shouting ‘boo!’ but give it a second and you realise you were just caught off guard.
In a movie it’s not foolproof, but it’s pretty foolproof. Yeah, you do get the odd build-up which is so ridiculously obvious that the scene fails because you’ve been tensed against it for a whole minute, but filmmakers aren’t about to give up yet. Perhaps even they are in doubt of the permanence of this approach in horror, as if even our oldest brain structures will eventually completely disengage from whatever is in front of us, we get the regular-as-clockwork ‘boo!’ moment, so what we get now is that hugely annoying sampled screech sound which is dubbed across every jerky GRAB! Or BOO! scene. Case in point: the Poltergeist reboot. At Brutal as Hell we were actively drawing straws against even going to see the film until Dustin stepped up to the plate, but for me the scene in the trailer where the kid gets yanked up a flight of stairs accompanied by that tedious bloody cacophony of screeching was proof positive that I would think it was shit.
The human imagination has the capacity for so much more than that. That’s where we feel a real scare; that’s where we try to process events which seem to point to an existence of ours beyond us, and consider the implications of this. Think back to when you were a child, which is when a lot of us get a taste for the type of frights we rarely see in modern horror cinema now. If you believed in ghosts, or monsters, or the thing in the closet, you feared its quiet presence, its potential, its all-seeing eye. You may have thought from time to time you heard something breathing, or saw something out of the corner of your eye, or heard something – but that initial shock invariably gave way to greater fears, and so, the best supernatural horror manages to accommodate that. The most frightening things don’t always move fast. They certainly don’t have to land on you like a tonne of bricks.
Of course, and although I’ll post video clips where they’re available for the following list, it’s important to remember that, taken out of context, any scene can lose its impact. In fact, if you haven’t seen the films or programmes I’m about to mention, I’d avoid the links and track down the end product.
Dracula (1979) – Mina’s Reunion with Van Helsing
Actress Jan Francis has been cheated of her horror reputation, in a way, as when she ‘made it big’, it involved crossing over to a lot of frankly underwhelming British TV, and this is what she’s now best-known for. However, before she was making the likes of Just Good Friends, she had turned her hand to Hammer’s television series House of Mystery and Suspense, tackled M R James in an ITV version of Casting the Runes, and – most notably of all – appeared in John Badham’s 1979 retelling of Dracula. It’s not a long filmography then, but it’s a good one. In this version of Dracula it’s Mina (Francis), rather than Lucy, who falls prey to the Count’s advances, sickens and dies. Her father Van Helsing, suspecting some sort of supernatural foul play, tracks her to the vault where she’s buried – with, for me, skin-crawling results. His shock and her blank-eyed, quiet requests for her father to go with her – in their native Dutch – are haunting. Badham has the good sense to keep her appearance low-key too, enclosing the whole scene in near total darkness.
Lost Hearts (1973) – the Hurdy Gurdy
Lost Hearts is probably M R James’s most visceral horror story: although framed with the usual (if still brilliant) rational account of a sequence of events which challenges convention, we shouldn’t forget that at the crux of the story, there are two ritually murdered children. MR James veteran director Lawrence Gordon Clark takes the story in some unanticipated directions here, including making the boy play a hurdy-gurdy: it seems to work, and the fact that it’s not a crashing cymbal or sharp flurry of violin notes makes it both quaint and defiant to modern ears. These ambiguous child spirits don’t seem to want to harm Stephen; they simply want to show what has happened to them, and when they reveal their chest wounds to him in his dream it’s a shocking moment, but one which appalls, rather than startles.
The Haunted (1991) – “Janet”
Once upon a time, the whole ‘inspired by real events’ was a lot rarer on our screens, and in the case of this largely unassuming direct-to-TV movie, the fact that the ‘real events’ were linked to a family called The Smurls would not have meant a great deal to many people. However, this family had sought the help of a pair of celebrity – if there can be such a thing – demon hunters, by the names of Ed and Lorraine Warren. If you’ve picked up The Conjuring and Annabelle of late (and my condolences for the latter, if you have) then you may know that these films are also ‘inspired by real events’ and that these events also involve the Warrens. However, despite the at-times hokey TV vibe of The Haunted, I think it is a deeply creepy film which outstrips Annabelle by miles and has the edge on The Conjuring too, although this is the better film of the two newer offerings. Its believable domesticity and order are most horrifically impinged upon by the quiet little shocks the film offers. There are manifestation scenes in here along the way, but for me the simple addition of a voice is one of the most effective, when Janet Smurl is called by – what she thinks is – her mother in an adjoining room. She’s not there. In fact, it’s just the start of their ordeal. If you wish, and this is correct at the time of writing, you may watch the whole film here.
The Innocents (1961) – end sequence
A great deal has already been written about The Innocents, a highly-regarded film based on Henry James’s lone decent book, The Turn of the Screw. It may have dispensed with the original title, but the action described in that title is abundant on the screen, as the hysterical, obsessive governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) becomes convinced that her employer’s house is haunted by the former governess, Miss Jessel, and another employee – Peter Quint, and gradually creates an unbearable situation at the house. With mental illness and sexuality bubbling cold beneath the surface, that old adage that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is never more true than in the case of Miss Giddens; in trying to protect the children, she causes immense harm, culminating in the end scene of the film. It’s able to its maintain ambiguity, however. Is there really something there? Does Miles see it? With no fanfare, the film’s tragedy unfolds here and we are never permitted a neat, one-size-fits-all ending – not for us or for them.
The Woman in Black (1989) – bedroom scene
I think this is a perfect point on which to end, as we now have two cinematic versions of the original Woman in Black story by Susan Hill. One was made over twenty-five years ago; the other is one of the smash-hit horrors of recent years, released in 2012. These don’t compare very closely.
It probably won’t be a surprise to anyone, by now, that I prefer the earlier film; although I quite enjoyed the 2012 retelling of the story for its locations, costumes and performances, it definitely had all the hallmarks of the jump-scare-horror (though, in fairness, so does the successful stage production of the novella). The whole film felt like a showcase for screenplay-writer Jane Goldman to have her spooky Victorian toys mysteriously start working; the Woman in Black here was bobbing up on camera on a regular basis, and she didn’t go about it quietly either. Clearly made to corral Harry Potter fans who turned up in their droves to see actor Daniel Radcliffe in his role as Mr Kipps, the lawyer, the newer version of The Woman in Black concentrated on how high it could get people out of their seats. Yes, it’s one of those films, and overall it’s a shame.
The Nigel Kneale production of two decades previous didn’t attempt to make people jump. It kept the Woman in Black herself off-screen most of the time, and for its fright effect it called to our thinking brains with quiet glimpses, or sounds, or other low-key phenomena. It had one trick up its sleeve, though; hence, this clip shows the film’s most startling moment. This was certainly a break from the material which had preceded it, and as such it seems to have stayed with people (hence the clip’s title!) One surprise change in direction – again, without massive ceremony – is more than adequate here, and works well with the film overall in this dynamic and well-wrought version of a classic story. Sure, to many modern viewers more amenable to ghosts who all look a certain way – and they do – this character may seem dated to you. Some of the comments on Youtube complained that the ghost wasn’t attractive enough; I know you shouldn’t put too much faith in what you read on the bottom half of the internet, but all the same – this has to tell you something about what people expect from their supernatural horror these days.
Less is more, folks. Less is more. And long may there be this kind of creeping, uneasy, understated cinema to remind us of this fact.